Yoga Sutra

KNOWLEDGE IS indirect, knowing is direct. Knowledge is through many mediums; it is not reliable. Knowing is immediate, without any medium. Only knowing can be reliable.

This distinction has to be remembered. Knowledge is like a messenger comes and tells something to you: the messenger may have misunderstood the message; the messenger may have added something of his own into the message; the messenger may have dropped something from the message; the messenger may have forgotten something from the message; the messenger may have added his own interpretations into it, or the messenger may be simply cunning and deceptive. And you have to rely on the messenger. You don’t have any direct approach to the source of the message – this is knowledge.

Knowledge is not reliable, and not only one messenger is involved in knowledge, but four. Man is behind many closed doors, imprisoned. First knowledge comes to the senses; then the senses carry it through the nervous system, it reaches to the brain, and then the brain delivers it to the mind, and then the mind delivers it to you, to the consciousness. It is a vast process, and you don’t have any direct approach to the source of knowledge.

It happened in the Second World War: a soldier was hurt very deeply in his toe and the leg, and the toe was in severe pain. The pain was so much the soldier became unconscious. The surgeons decided to operate the whole leg. It could not be saved it was so damaged, so they cut it. The soldier was unconscious so he never knew what happened.

Next morning when the soldier came back to consciousness, he again complained about the pain in his toe. Now this is ridiculous: when the leg doesn’t exist, toe and all the leg has been completely removed, how pain can exist in a toe which doesn’t exist? The nurse laughed and she said, ”You are imagining, or you are in a hallucination.” She uncovered the blanket and showed to the soldier that ”Your whole leg is removed, so in the toe no pain can exist now, because the toe doesn’t exist.” But the soldier persisted. He said, ”I can see that the leg is not there and I can understand your  viewpoint, and I am ridiculous – but I still say the pain is severe and unbearable.”
 

Doctors were called; surgeons consulted amongst themselves. This was absolutely absurd! – the mind is playing some trick – but they tried to understand what is happening. Then the whole body was X-rayed, and this was the thing they came upon: the nerve that was carrying the message of the pain in the toe was still carrying it. It was trembling in the same way as it should tremble if there was a toe and there was pain in it.

And when the nerve is bringing the message, of course the brain has to decode it. The brain has no way to check whether the nerve is carrying a right message, a wrong message, real, unreal. The brain cannot come out and check the nerve. The brain has to depend on the nerve, and the brain decodes it to the mind. Now the mind has no way to check the brain – one has simply to believe it – and the mind delivers the knowledge to the consciousness. Now the consciousness suffers for a toe which doesn’t exist.

This is what Hindus call MAYA. ”The world doesn’t exist,” Hindus say, ”and you are suffering terribly, suffering for something which doesn’t exist.” This is how the mechanism functions of knowledge. It is very difficult in this process to check anywhere unless you can come out of yourself. Mind cannot do that because the mind cannot exist outside the body. It has to depend on the brain, it is rooted in the brain. The brain cannot do it because the brain is rooted in the whole nervous system; it cannot come out. Only at one point the possibility exists to check, and that is at consciousness.
Consciousness is not rooted in the body; the body is just an abode. As you come out of your house and go in, consciousness can come out of the house and go in. Only consciousness can come out of this whole mechanism and look at things, what is happening.

In nirvichara samadhi this happens – thoughts cease. The connection between the mind and the consciousness is cut, because thought is the connection. Without thought you don’t have any mind, and when you don’t have any mind the connection with the brain is broken. And when you don’t have any mind and the connection with the brain is broken, the connection with the nervous system is broken. Your consciousness now can float out and in; all doors are open. In nirvichara samadhi, when thoughts cease, consciousness is free to move and float. It becomes like a cloud without any roots, without any home. It becomes free of the mechanism you have lived with. It can come out, it can go in; there is no hindrance on its path.

Now direct knowledge is possible. Direct knowledge is knowing. Now you can see immediately, without any messengers between you and the source of know!edge. It is a tremendous phenomenon when your consciousness comes out and looks at a flower. You cannot imagine because it is not part of imagination; you cannot believe what happens! When the consciousness can look direct to the flower, for the first time the flower is known, and not only the flower, through the flower the whole existence. In a small pebble, the all is hidden; in a small leaf dancing in the wind, the whole dances.
In a small flower by the side of the road, the whole has a smile.
 

When you come out of your prison of senses, nervous system, brain, mind, layers and layers of walls, suddenly individuals disappear. A vast energy in millions of forms... and every form indicating towards the formless, and every form melting and merging into other forms – a vast ocean of formless beauty, truth, goodness. Hindus call it sat-chit-ananda: that which is, that which is beautiful, that which is good, that which is blissful. This is direct perception, aprokshanubhuti, immediate knowing.
 

Otherwise, all your knowing is indirect, depends on messengers which are not very reliable – cannot be. Their very nature is unreliable. Why? Your hand touches something; now the hand is an unconscious thing. From the very beginning an unconscious part of you takes the message.
 

Intelligence is hidden behind, and on the door an idiot is sitting, and the idiot takes the message. The idiot is the receptionist. Hand is not conscious, and the hand touches something and receives the message. Now through the nerves the message travels. Nerves are not conscious; they don’t have any intelligence – so from one idiot to another now the message is given. From the first idiot to the second much must have changed.

In the first place, the idiot cannot be hundred percent true because he cannot understand; understanding is not there. The hand is dull, very dull. It carries the work in a mechanical way, robot-like. The message is delivered much has changed already. The nerves take it to the brain and brain decodes it. And brain is not also very much intelligent, because brain is part of the body, it is the other end of the hand.

If you know something of physiology, you must be knowing that the right hand is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain and the left hand to the right hemisphere of the brain. Your two hands are two receiving ends of the brain. They function for the brain; they are extended brain. Your right hand carries message to the left brain, your left hand to the right brain. Brain is also not alert; brain is just like a computer – something is fed to it, it decodes, it is a mechanism. Sooner or later we will be able to make plastic brains, because they will be cheap and they will endure more and they will create less trouble. And they can be operated very easily and the parts can be changed: you can even have spare parts always with you.
 

Brain is a mechanism, and by the discovery of computers it has become perfectly clear that brain is a mechanism; it has no intelligence in it. Then the brain accumulates whole information, decodes it, gives the message to the mind. Your mind has a little intelligence; very little that, too... because your mind is not alert. Your hand is mechanical; your brain is mechanical; your nervous system mechanical, and your mind is asleep, as if drunk. So from one idiot to another idiot then finally to a drunkard the message reaches!

 

Gurdjieff used to give vast big dinners for his disciples, and the first toast was always for the idiots. These are the idiots.
 

And then this drunkard, half asleep, half awake, interprets it according to the past, because there is no other way. According to the past the mind interprets the present. Everything is going wrong because the present is always new and the mind is always old. But there is no other way; the mind cannot do anything else. It has accumulated much knowledge in the past through these same idiots, as unreliable as anything, and that past is brought to the present, and the present is understood through the past. Everything goes wrong. It is almost impossible to know anything through this process.
 

That’s why Hindus call the whole world that is known through this process maya, illusion, dreamlike; it is. You have not known the reality yet. These four messengers won’t allow you, and you don’t know how to avoid these messengers or how to come out into the open. The situation is as if you are closed in a dark cell, and just through the keyhole you are looking out, and the keyhole is not passive, the keyhole-is active – it interprets, it says, ”No, you are wrong; this is not so, this is like this.” Your hand interprets, your nervous system interprets, your brain interprets, and finally the drunkard interprets. And that interpretation is given to you and you live through that interpretation. This is the state of the ignorant mind, the state of the unenlightened.

In nirvichara samadhi, this whole state is shattered. You suddenly come out of this whole mechanism. You don’t rely on it, you simply drop the whole mechanism. You come directly to the source of knowledge; you look immediately to the flower.

This is possible. This is possible only in the highest state of meditation, nirvichara, when thoughts cease. Thought is the link. When thoughts cease, the whole mechanism ceases, and you are separate. Suddenly you are no more imprisoned. You are not looking through the keyhole. You have come out into the world under the sky, open. You look at things as they are, and you will see that things don’t exist; they were your interpretations. Only beings exist; there are no things in
the world. Even a rock is a being, howsoever fast asleep, snoring; a rock is a being because the ultimate source is a being. All its parts are beings, souls. A tree is a being a bird is a being, a rock is a being. Suddenly, the world of things disappears. ”Thing” is the interpretation of these idiots and the drunkard mind. Because of this process everything becomes dull. Because of this process only the surface is touched. Because of this process you miss the reality; you live in a dream.

You can create a dream in this way. Just try someday: your wife is sleeping, or your husband, or your child – just rub a cube of ice on the feet of the sleeping person. Do it just a little, not too much, otherwise he will be awakened – just a little and put it away. Immediately you will see the eyes under the lids are moving fast, what psychologists call REM, rapid eye movement. When the eyes are moving rapid, a dream has started. Because the person is seeing something, that’s why the eyes are moving so fast. Then just in the middle of the dream, you wake the person and ask what he saw. Either he would have seen that he is passing through a river which is very cold, ice cold, or he is walking on snow, or he has reached on the Gourishankar: something like this he will dream. You created a dream because you deceived the first idiot, you touched at the feet, ice. Immediately the idiot started working, the second idiot was given the message, the third idiot decoded; the fourth, drunkard – which is also asleep now – immediately started a dream.

You can create dreams; you create many times, unknowingly. Your both hands are on your chest and you are Lying on your bed, and you feel that somebody is sitting on your chest, a monster. And when you open your eyes, nobody is there – your own hands, or a pillow.

The same is happening while you are awake. It makes no difference because the whole mechanism is the same; whether the eyes are opened or closed makes not much difference, because there can be no check on the process. Even if you want to check, you will have to go through the whole process itself. How can you check unless you can come out and see what is happening?

This possibility is the whole world of spirituality: that the final consciousness can come out. Drop the whole mechanism, look at the thing directly: ”things” disappear. That’s why Hindus say this world is not real, and for the real knower it disappears. Not that rocks will not be there and trees will not be there they will be there even more so, but they will be no more trees, no more rocks; they will be beings. Your mind turns beings into things: your wife is a thing to be used; your husband is a thing to be possessed; your servant is a thing to be exploited; your boss is a thing to be deceived.

The mind, because of this whole idiotic process, turns every being into a thing. When you come out of the mind and have a look under the open sky, suddenly there is nothing at all. ”Thingness” disappears.

When thoughts drop, the second thing to drop is the thing. Suddenly the whole world is full of beings, beautiful beings, supreme beings, because they all participate into the ultimate being of God. Definitions disappear – you cannot separate. All separation existed because of the mechanism.

Suddenly you see a tree moving out of the earth, not separate – meeting with the sky, not separate, everything joined together; everybody is a member of everybody else. The whole world becomes a net of consciousness, millions and millions of consciousnesses, luminous, kindled from within, every house lighted. Bodies disappear because bodies belong to the world of things. Forms are there but they are no more material; they are forms of moving, dynamic energy, and they go on changing. That is what is happening.

You were a child, now you are young, now you are old. What is happening? – you don’t have a fixed form. The form is continuously flowing and changing. A child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old is moving into death.

Then you suddenly see: birth is not birth, death is not death. There are changing forms, and the formless remains the same. You can see that luminous formlessness always remaining the same, moving amidst millions of forms, changing, yet not changing; moving, yet not moving; becoming everything else and yet remaining the same. And that’s the beauty and the mystery; then life is one – a vast ocean of life. Then you don’t see alive beings and dead beings, no, because death doesn’t exist. It is because of the mechanism, wrong interpretation.

Neither exists birth nor death. That which exists is birthless and deathless, eternal. But this is how it looks when you come out of the mind.

Now try to penetrate the sutras of Patanjali.

IN THE STATE OF NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, AN OBJECT IS EXPERIENCED IN ITS FULL PERSPECTIVE, BECAUSE IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SENSES.

 

When senses are not used, when the keyhole is not used to look at the sky – because the keyhole will give its own frame to the sky and destroy everything the sky will not be bigger than the keyhole, cannot be. How can be your perspective bigger than your eyes? How can be your touch bigger than your hands, and how can be a sound deeper than your ears? – impossible! The eyes, ears, nose are keyholes: through them you are looking at reality. And suddenly you jump out of yourself, in nirvichara; for the first time the vastness, the infinity is known. Now the full perspective is attained. The beginning is not there, the end is not there. There are no boundaries in existence. It is unbounded; there are no limitations. All limitations belong to your senses; they were given by the senses. Existence itself is infinite; in all directions you go on and on and on. There is no end to it.

When the full perspective is attained, then for the first time the subtlest ego that was still clinging to you disappears. Because the existence is so vast – how can you cling to a small puny ego?

 

It happened: a very great egoist, a very rich man, a politician, came to Socrates. He had the biggest, most beautiful palace in Athens, in fact, in all of Greece. And you can see when an egoist walks, you can see when an egoist says something, the ego is always there, mixed in everything. He walked in a haughty way. He came to Socrates, talked to Socrates in a haughty way. Socrates talked for few minutes and he said, ”Wait. Now there is an urgency first that has to be solved, then we will talk” – and he asked a disciple to bring the map of the world. The rich man, the politician, the egoist, couldn’t understand what type of urgency has so suddenly arisen, and he couldn’t see the point of bringing a map of the world. But soon he realized the point was there. Socrates asked, ”Where is Greece in this big map of the world? – a small place. Where is Athens? – just a point.” And then Socrates asked, ”Where is your palace? Athens is a point. Where is your palace and where are you? And this map is only of the earth, and the earth is nothing. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger and our sun is a mediocre sun. Millions times bigger suns are there in the universe. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the solar system? – and our solar system is a very mediocre solar system. There are millions of solar systems. In one galaxy millions of suns and millions of solar systems. Where will be our earth if we make a map of the galaxy to which we belong? There are many millions of galaxies. Where will be our solar system? Where will be our sun?”

And now scientists say there is no end – galaxies upon galaxies continue. Wherever we move, there seems to be no end to it. With such vastness, how can you cling to the ego? It simply disappears like a dewdrop in the morning when the sun rises. When the vastness rises and the perspective is total, your ego simply disappears like a dewdrop. It is not even that big. It is a misconception given by the idiot messengers. Because of the tiny hole of senses, you seem to be too big, comparatively. When you come under the sky, suddenly the ego disappears. It was a creation of the keyhole, because the keyhole was so small, and through the keyhole the whole world was so small, you are so big behind it. Under the sky it simply disappears.

Socrates said, ”Where is your palace on this map? Where are you?” The man could understand the point, but he asked, ”What was the urgency in it?” Socrates says, ”Urgency was there, because without understanding this there is no possibility of any dialogue; you waste my time and your time.

Now if you have understood the point, then there is a possibility of dialogue. You can put aside this ego; it doesn’t matter. Under the vast sky your ego becomes simply irrelevant. It drops on its own accord. Even to drop it looks foolish; it is not even worth that. When the perspective is full, you disappear: this is the point to be understood. You are because the perspective is narrow. Narrower the perspective, the bigger the ego; blinder the person, the bigger the ego... No perspective, there exists perfect ego. When the perspective grows, ego gets smaller and smaller. When the perspective is perfect, ego simply is not found.

This is my whole effort here – to make the perspective so full that the ego disappears. That’s why from many directions I go on hitting the wall of your mind, so at least few more keyholes in the beginning can be made. Through Buddha a new keyhole opens, through Patanjali another, through Tilopa still another. That is what I am doing. I don’t want you to become a follower of Buddha, Tilopa or Patanjali, no, because a follower can never have a bigger perspective – his doctrine is his keyhole.

 

Talking about so many standpoints, what I am trying to do? – I am trying to do only this: to give you a bigger perspective. Many keyholes in the walls and you can look at the east and you can look at the west, you can look at the south and you can look at the north; and looking at the east you don’t say, ”This is the only direction,” you know other directions are there. Looking at the east, you don’t say that ”This is the only true doctrine,” because then the perspective becomes narrow. I am talking about so many doctrines so that you can be freed of all directions and all doctrines.

 

Freedom comes through understanding. The more you understand, the more you become free. And by and by, when you come to know that through so many holes your old keyhole has just become out of date, doesn’t mean much, then an urge arises in you: what will happen if you break down all these walls and just simply run out? Even a single new hole and the whole perspective changes, and you come to know things which you have never known, not even imagined, not even dreamed.

What will happen when all the walls disappear and you are direct face to face with reality under the open sky?

 

And when I say under the open sky, remember that the sky is not a thing, it is a nothingness. It is everywhere, but you cannot find it anywhere; it is a nothingness. It is simply a vastness. So I never say God is vast – God is vastness. Existence is not vast, because even a vast existence will have limitations. Howsoever vast, somewhere the boundary must be there. Existence is vastness.

That is the Hindu conception of brahma. Brahma means: that which goes on expanding. The very word brahma means that which goes on expanding. The expanse is brahma. In English there is no word; you cannot call brahma God because God is very limited, a concept. Brahma is not God.

 

That’s why in India we don’t have a conception of one God, but many gods. Gods are many; brahma is one. And by brahma... the very word simply means the vastness, the expanse; you cannot exhaust it.

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That is the meaning when I say under the sky, open sky: with no walls around it, no doctrines, no senses, no thoughts, no mind; you are simply out of the mechanism, for the first time naked, face to face with reality. Then its full perspective... an object is experienced in its full perspective, and to experience an object in its full perspective means that the object simply disappears and becomes the vastness. It may be a focusing of energy.

It is just like, go and look at a well. A quantity of water is there in the well; if you draw the water out, more water is supplied through the hidden springs. You don’t see the springs. You go on taking the water out and new water is continuously flowing. The well is just a hole to the ocean. Many hidden springs are bringing water from all around. If you enter into the well, the well is nothing; really those springs are the things, the real things. The well is not a storage, because in a storage there are no springs. A storage is dead; a well is alive. A storage is a thing; a well is a person. Move now with the springs, go deeper into the springs, and finally you will reach to the ocean. And if you move through all the springs, then from all directions ocean is flowing in the well: it is all one.

If you look at an object with full perspective, the object is joined from every part of it with the infinity; it cannot exist without that. No object exists independent. There is no individuality. Individuality is just an interpretation. Everywhere the whole exists. If you make the part the whole, you are misguided.

That is the standpoint of ignorance – then you make the part as if it is the whole. When you look at the part and the whole appears in it, this is the standpoint of an awakened consciousness.

AN OBJECT IS EXPERIENCED IN ITS FULL PERSPECTIVE IN THE STATE OF NIRVICHARA SAMADHI, BECAUSE IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SENSES.

No mediums are used; then many new things suddenly become possible. These new things are the siddhis, the powers. When you have no dependence on the senses, telepathy becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses telepathy is not possible. Clairvoyance becomes simply possible. It is because of the senses clairvoyance is not possible. Miracles become ordinary things.

You can read anybody’s thought; there is no need for him to say, no need for him to communicate it. With full perspective, everything becomes revealed, all the veils are taken up. Now there are no more veils; the whole reality is before you. Materialization of things becomes possible. Just whatsoever you want to do, immediately it happens; action is not needed. Action was needed because of the body.

That’s what Lao Tzu means when he says, ”The sage lives in inactivity and everything happens.” Millions of things happen around a sage without his doing anything. He looks at you and suddenly there is a transformation – suddenly you are no longer the body; while he looks you have become a consciousness.

Of course this cannot be permanent with you, because when his look has moved you are again the body. Just by being near him you become citizens of some unknown world. You have a taste of the unknown through him because he is now the vast sky himself. Not doing anything, many things happen. But when these things become possible... the desires of the sage have disappeared before these things become possible, so a sage never does any miracle. And those who do miracles are not sages, because the doer is not there, and their miracles cannot be miracles; they are ordinary
magical tricks. They are fooling people and deceiving them.

A miracle happens – cannot be done. It happens near the sage. Not that he produces Swiss-made watches... a sage producing Swiss-made watches is a fool. What you are doing? – and there is no miracle in fact, because no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do his miracles under scientific observation.

He cannot do, because Swiss-made watches have to be purchased from the market, have to be hidden in the long robe or the Negro-style hairdo! Under scientific observation no Satya Sai Baba is ready to do anything, and if these people are really true, they should do first before scientific observation. These are just ordinary magical tricks. When a magician does it you think, ”Just a trick, and when a Baba does it, suddenly it becomes a miracle. The trick is the same

Miracles happen only when nirvichara samadhi is attained and you come out of your body, but they are never done. That is the basic quality of a miracle – it is never done, it happens, and when it happens, it never produces Swiss-made watches. To attain to nirvichara samadhi and then to produce Swiss-made watches does not make sense! It transforms beings; it helps others to attain to the highest.

Through a sage you can become more watchful, but you will not get a Swiss-made watch! Watchfulness happens; he makes you more aware, alert. He does not give you time, he gives you timelessness. But these things happen, nobody does them, because the door is gone. Only then the nirvichara samadhi is possible. With the doer, how can you cease thinking? – doer is the thinker. In fact, before you do anything you have to think; thinker comes first, doer follows. When the thinker and the doer both are gone and only a witnessing, only a consciousness has remained, then many things simply become possible, they happen.

When Buddha moves, many things happen, but they are not so visible. Only few people will be able to understand what is happening because they belong to a very unknown world. You don’t have any language for it, no concepts for it, and you cannot see it unless it happens to you.

... IN THIS STATE KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED DIRECT, WITHOUT THE USE OF THE SENSES.

 

The mind has gone, and with the mind all the assistants, all the idiots. They are not functioning, they don’t distract you, they don’t disturb your perception, they don’t create any types of hindrances, they don’t project, they don’t interpret. That whole thing is no more there. Simply consciousness is there before reality. And when this happens, consciousness faces consciousness, because there is no matter.

The most beautiful metaphor that I have come across is a mirror facing another mirror. What will happen when a mirror faces another mirror? One mirror mirrors another mirror; the other mirrors this mirror, and there is nothing in the mirror, only mirroring reflected millions of times into each other.

The whole world becomes millions of mirrors – and you are also a mirror – and all mirrors empty, because nothing else is there to reflect, not even the frame of the mirror. There is just the mirror – two mirrors facing each other. That is the most graceful moment, the most blissful; grace descends, flowers shower, the whole celebrates that one more has attained, one more traveler has reached home.