THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI - THE CESSATION OF THOUGHTFORMS AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS.

We talk about the The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali One or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Two or Zen Meditation Stories or Zen, Nietszche and the Stars or Stories of the Tao by Ko Hsuan and other Taoist Meditations. Or Tantra and Tantric Meditations or even the Meditations of the Peace of the Guida Spiritual But we also have a few other web pages, sufi meditation tradition the Sufi Meditation master and Sufis People are Sleeping or Are You Angry, Mr Sufi? explained by Osho.

Constant inner practice

THE CESSATION OF THOUGHTFORMS IS BROUGHT ABOUT BY PERSISTENT INNER EFFORT AND NON-ATTACHMENT.

OF THESE TWO, ABHYASA THE INNER PRACTICE IS THE EFFORT FOR BEING FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN ONESELF.

IT BECOMES FIRMLY GROUNDED ON BEING CONTINUED FOR A LONG TIME, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION.

Man is not only his conscious mind and emotions. He has also nine times more than the conscious, the unconscious layer of the mind in which exists Energy Blockages and unconscious Emotions.. Not only that, man has the body, the soma, in which this mind exists. The body is absolutely unconscious. Its working is almost non-voluntary. Only the surface of the body is voluntary. The inner sources are non-voluntary; you cannot do anything about them. Your will is not effective.

This pattern of man's existence has to be understood before one can enter into oneself. And the understanding should not remain only intellectual. It must go deeper. It must penetrate the unconscious layers; it must reach to the very body itself.

Hence, the importance of abhyasa -- constant inner practice of Meditation.

These two words are very significant: abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa means constant inner practice, and vairagya means non-attachment, desirelessness. The coming sutras of Patanjali are concerned with these two most significant concepts, but before we enter the sutras, that this, the pattern of human personality, is not totally intellectual, has to be firmly grasped.

If it was only intellect, then there would be no need for abhyasa -- constant, repetitive effort. You can understand immediately anything, if it is rational, through the mind, but just that understanding won't do. You can understand easily anger is bad, poisonous, but this understanding is not enough for the anger to leave you, to disappear. In spite of your understanding the anger will continue, because the anger exists in many layers of your unconscious mind -- not only in the mind, but in your body also.

The body cannot understand just by verbal communication. Only your head can understand, but the body remains unaffected. And unless understanding reaches to the very roots of the body, you cannot be transformed. You will remain the same. Your ideas may go on changing, but your personality will persist. And then a new conflict will arise. And you will be in more turmoil than ever, because now you can see what is wrong and still you persist doing it; you go on doing it.

A self-guilt and condemnation is created. You start hating yourself; you start thinking yourself a sinner. And the more you understand, the more condemnation grows, because you see how it is difficult, almost impossible, to change yourself.

Yoga does not believe in intellectual understanding. It believes in bodily understanding in a total understanding in which your wholeness is involved. Not only you change in your head, but the deep sources of your being also change.

How they can change? Constant repetition of a particular practice becomes non-voluntary. If you do a particular practice constantly -- just repeating it continuously by and by it drops from the conscious, reaches to the unconscious and becomes part of it Once it becomes part of the unconscious, it starts functioning from that deep source.

Anything can become unconscious if you go on repeating it continuously. For example, your name has been repeated so constantly from your childhood. Now it is not part of the conscious, it has become part of the unconscious. You may be sleeping with one hundred persons in a room, and if somebody comes and calls "Ram? Is Ram there?" ninety-nine persons who are not concerned with the name will go on sleeping. They will not be disturbed. But the person who has the name "Ram" will suddenly ask, "Who is calling me? Why are you disturbing my sleep?"

Even in sleep, he knows his name is Ram. How this name has reached so deep? Just by constant repetition. Everybody is repeating his name; everybody is calling he himself, introducing himself. Continuous use. Now it is not conscious. It has reached to the unconscious

The language, your mother tongue, becomes a part of the unconscious. Whatsoever else you learn later on will never be so unconscious; it will remain conscious. That's why your unconscious language will continuously affect your conscious language.

If a German speaks English, it is different; if a Frenchman speaks English, it is different; if an Indian speaks English, it is different. The difference is not in English, the difference is in their innermost patterns. The Frenchman has a different pattern -- unconscious pattern. That affects. So whatsoever you learn later on will be affected by your mother tongue. And if you fall unconscious, then only your mother tongue can penetrate.

I remember one of my friends who was a Maharashtrian. He was in Germany for twenty years or even more. For twenty years he was using German language. He has completely forgotten his own mother tongue, Marathi. He couldn't read it, he couldn't talk in it. Consciously, the language was completely forgotten because it was not used.

Then he was ill. And in that illness sometimes he would become unconscious. Whenever he will become unconscious, a totally different type of personality will evolve. He will start behaving in a different way. In his unconscious he will utter words from Marathi, not from German. When he was unconscious, then he will utter words which are from Marathi language. And after his unconscious, when he will come back to the conscious, for few minutes he will not be able to understand German.

Constant repetition in the childhood goes deeper because the child has no conscious really. He has more of unconscious just near the surface; everything enters into the unconscious. As he will learn, as he will get educated, the conscious will become a thicker layer -- then less and less penetration towards the unconscious.

Psychologists say that almost fifty percent of your learning is finished by the seventh year of your age. The seventh year of your life, you have almost known half of the things that you are ever going to know. Your half education is finished, and this half is going to be the base. Now everything else will be just imposed on it. And the deeper pattern will remain of the childhood.

That's why modern psychology, modern psychoanalysis, psychiatry, they all try to penetrate in your childhood, because if you are mentally ill, somewhere the seed is to be found in your childhood-not now. The pattern must be located there in your childhood. Once that deep pattern is located, then something can be done and you can be transformed.

But how to penetrate it? Yoga has a method. That method is called abhyasa. Abhyasa means constant, repetitive practice of a certain thing. Why, through repetition, something becomes unconscious? There are few reasons for it.

If you want to learn something, you will have to repeat it. Why? If you read a poem just once, you may remember few words here and there, but if you read it twice, thrice, many more times, then you can remember lines, paragraphs. If you repeat it a hundred times, then you can remember it as a whole pattern. If you repeat it even more, then it may continue, persist in your memory for years. You may not be able to forget it.

What is happening? When you repeat a certain thing, the more you repeat, the more it is engraved on the brain cells. A constant repetition is a constant hammering. Then it is engrained. It becomes a part of your brain cells. And the more it becomes a part of your brain cells, less consciousness is needed Your consciousness can move; now it is not needed.

So whatsoever you learn deeply, for it you need not be conscious. In the beginning, if you learn driving, how to drive a car, then it is a conscious effort. That's why it is so much trouble, because you have to be alert continuously, and there are so many things to be aware -- the road, the traffic, the mechanism, the wheel, the accelerator, the brakes, and everything, and the rules and regulations of the road. You have to be constantly aware of everything. So you are so much involved in it, it becomes arduous, it becomes a deep effort.

But by and by, you will be able to completely forget everything. You will drive; driving will become unconscious. You need not bring your mind to it, you can go on thinking anything you like, you can be anywhere you like, and the car will move unconsciously. Now your body has learned it. Now the whole mechanism knows it. It has become an unconscious learning.

Whenever something becomes so deep that you need not be conscious about it, it falls into the unconscious. And once the thing has fallen into the unconscious, it will start changing your being, your life, your character. And the change will be effortless now; you need not be concerned with it. Simply you will move in the directions where the unconscious is leading you.

Yoga has worked very much on abhyasa, constant repetition. This constant repetition is just to bring your unconscious into work. And when unconscious starts functioning, you are at ease. No effort is needed; things become natural. It is said in old scriptures that a sage is not one who has a good character, because even that consciousness shows that the "anti" still exists, the opposite still exists. A sage is one who cannot do bad, cannot think about it. The goodness has become unconscious; it has become like breathing. Whatsoever he is going to do will be good. It has become so deep in his being that no effort is needed. It has become his life. So you cannot say a sage is a good man. He doesn't know what is good, what is bad. Now there is no conflict. The good has penetrated so deeply that there is no need to be aware about it.

If you are aware about your goodness, the badness still exists side by side. And there is a constant struggle. And every time you have to move into action, you have to choose: "I have to do good; I have not to do bad." And this choice is going to be a deep turmoil, struggle, a constant inner violence, inner war. And if conflict is there, you cannot be at ease, at home.

Now we should enter the sutra. The cessation of mind is yoga, but how can the mind, and its modifications, cease?

THEIR CESSATION IS BROUGHT ABOUT BY PERSISTENT INNER PRACTICE AND NON-ATTACHMENT.

Two things -- how the mind can cease with all its modifications: one -- abhyasa, persistent inner practice, and second -- non-attachment. Non-attachment will create the situation, and persistent practice is the technique to be used in that situation. Try to understand both.

Whatsoever you do, you do because you have certain desires. And those desires can be fulfilled only by doing certain things. Unless those desires are dropped your activities cannot be dropped. You have some investment in those activities, in those actions. This is one of the dilemmas of human character and mind, that you may want to stop certain actions because they lead you into misery.

But why you do them? You do them because you have certain desires, and those desires cannot be fulfilled without doing them. So these are two things. One, you have to do certain things. For example, anger. Why you get angry? You get angry only when somewhere, somehow, someone creates a hindrance. You are going to achieve something, and someone creates a hindrance. Your desire is obstructed. You get angry.

You can get angry even with things. If you are moving, and you are trying to reach somewhere immediately, and a chair comes in the way, you get angry with the chair. You try to unlock the door and the key is not working, you become angry with the door. It is absurd, because to be angry with a thing is nonsense. Anything that creates any type of obstruction createS anger.

You have a desire to reach, to do, to achieve something. Whosoever comes in between your desire appearS to be your enemy. You want to destroy him. This is what anger means: you want to destroy the obstacles. But anger leads in misery; anger becomes an illness. So you want not to be angry.

But how you can drop anger if you have desires goals? If you have desires and goals, then anger is bound to be there because life is complex; you are not alone here on this earth. Millions of people striving for their own desires, they criss-cross each other; they come into each other's path. If you have desires, then anger is bound to be there, frustration is bound to be there, violence is bound to be there. And whosoever comes in your path your mind will think to destroy.

This attitude to destroy the obstacle is anger. But anger creates misery, so you want not to be angry. But just wanting not to be angry will not be of much help because anger is part of a greater pattern -- of a mind which desires, a mind which has goals, a mind which wants to reach somewhere. You cannot drop anger.

So the first thing is not to desire. Then half of the possibility of anger is dropped; the base is dropped. But then too it is not necessary that anger should disappear because you have been angry for millions of years. It has become a deep-rooted habit.

You may drop desires, but anger will still persist. It will not be so forceful, but it will persist because it is now a habit. It has become unconscious habit. For many, many lives you have been carrying it. It has become your heredity. It is in your cells; the body has taken it. It is now chemical and physiological. Just by your dropping your desires your body is not going to change its pattern. The pattern is very old. You will have to change this pattern also.

For that change, repetitive practice will be needed. Just to change the inner mechanism, repetitive practice will be needed -- a reconditioning of the whole body-mind pattern. But this is possible only if you have dropped desiring.

Look at it from another point of view. One man came to me and he said, "I don't want to be sad, but I am always sad and depressed. Sometimes, I cannot even feel what is the reason why I am sad, but I am sad. No visible cause, nothing that I can pinpoint that this is the reason. It seems that it has just become my style to be sad. I don't remember," he said, "that I was ever happy. And I don't want to be sad. It is a dead burden. I am the unhappiest person. So how I can drop?"

So I asked him, "Have you got any investment in your sadness?" He said, "Why I should have any investment?" But he had. I knew the person well. I knew the person for many years, but he was not aware that there is some vested interest in it. So he wants to drop sadness, but he is not aware why the sadness is there. He has been maintaining it for some other reasons which he cannot connect.

He needs love, but to be loving... If you need love you need to be loving. If you ask for love, you have to give love, and you have to give more than you can ask. But he is a miser; he cannot give love. Giving is impossible; he cannot give anything. Just the word "giving", and he will shrink within himself. He can only take; he cannot give. He is closed as far as giving is concerned.

But without love you cannot flower. Without love you cannot attain any joy; you cannot be happy. And he cannot love because love looks like giving something. It is a giving, wholehearted giving of all that you have, your being also. He cannot give love, he cannot receive love. Then what to do? But he hankers, as everybody hankers for love. It is a basic need just like food. Without food your body will die and without love your soul will shrink. It is a must.

Then he has created a substitute, and that substitute is sympathy. He cannot get love because he cannot give love, but he can get sympathy. Sympathy is a poor substitute for love. So he is sad. When he is sad people give him sympathy. Whosoever comes to him feels sympathetic because he is always crying and weeping. His mood is always that of a very miserable man. But he enjoys! Whenever you give him sympathy he enjoys it. He becomes more miserable, because the more he is miserable, the more he can get this sympathy.

So I told him, "You have a certain investment in your sadness. This whole pattern, just sadness, cannot be dropped. It is rooted somewhere else. Don't ask for sympathy. But you can stop asking for sympathy only when you start giving love, because it is a substitute. And once you start giving love, love will happen to you. Then you will be happy. Then a different pattern is created."

I have heard, one man entered one car-park. He was in a very ridiculous posture. It looked almost impossible how he was walking, because he was crouching as if he was driving a car. His hands on some invisible wheel, moving, his feet on some invisible accelerator, and he was walking. And it was so difficult, so impossible, how he was walking. A crowd gathered there. He was doing something impossible. And they asked the attendant, "What is the matter? What this man is doing?"

The attendant said, "Don't ask loudly. The man in his past loved cars. He was one of the best drivers. He has even won a national prize in car races. But now, due to some mental deficiency, he has been debarred. He is not allowed to drive a car, but just the old hobby."

The crowd said, "If you know that, then why don't you say to him,'You don't have a car. What are you doing here?' " The man said, "That's why I said,'Don't say so loudly.' I cannot do, because one rupee per day he gives me to wash the car. That I cannot do. I cannot say that 'You have no car.' He is going to park the car, and then I will wash."

That one rupee investment, the vested interest, is there. You have many vested interests in your misery also, in your anguish also, in your illness also. And then you go on saying, "We don't want. We don't want to be angry, we don't want to be this and that." But unless you come to see how all these things have happened to you, unless you see the whole pattern, nothing can be changed.

The deepest pattern of the mind is desire. You are whatsoever you are because you have certain desires, a group of desires. Patanjali says, "First thing is non-attachment." Drop all desires; don't be attached. And then, abhyasa.

For example, someone comes to me and he says, "I don't want to collect more fat in my body, but I go on eating. I want to stop it, but I go on eating."

The wanting is superficial. There is a pattern inside, why he goes on eating more and more. And even for a few days he stops, then again with more gusto he eats. And he will collect more weight than he has lost through few days fasting or dieting. And this has been continuously, for years. It is not just a question of eating less. Why he is eating more? Body doesn't need, then somewhere in the mind food has become a substitute for something.

He may be afraid of death. People who are afraid of death eat more because eating seems to be the base of life. The more you eat, the more alive. This is the arithmetic in their mind. Because if you don't eat you die. So non-eating is equivalent to death and more eating equivalent to more life. So if you are afraid of death you will eat more, or if nobody loves you, you will eat more.

Food can become a substitute for love, because the child, in the beginning, comes to associate food and love. The first thing the child is going to be aware is mother, the food from the mother and the love from the mother. Love and food enter in his consciousness simultaneously. And whenever the mother is loving, she gives more milk. The breast is given happy. But whenever mother is angry, non-loving, she snatches the breast.

Food is taken away whenever mother is non-loving; food is given whenever she is loving. Love and food become one. In the mind, in the child's mind, they become associated. So whenever the child will get more love, he will reduce his food, because the love is so much the food is not needed. Whenever love is not there, he will eat more because a balance has to be kept. If there is no love at all, then he will fill his belly.

You may be surprised -- whenever two persons are in love, they lose fat. That's why girls start gathering fat the moment they are married. When love is settled, they start getting fat because now there is no need. The love and the world of love is, in a way, finished.

In the countries where divorce has become more prevalent, the women are showing better figures. In the countries where divorce is not prevalent, women don't bother at all about their figures, because if divorce is possible then the women will have to find new lovers; they are figure conscious. The search for love helps the body figure. When love is settled, it is finished in a way. You need not worry about the body; you need not take any care.

So this person may be afraid of death; may be he is not in any deep, intimate love with anyone. And these two are again connected. If you are in deep love, you are not afraid of death. Love is so fulfilling that you don't care what is going to happen in the future. Love itself is the fulfillment. Even if death comes, it can be welcomed. But if you are not in love, then death creates a fear; because you have not even loved yet and death is approaching near. And death will finish and there will be no more time and no future after it.

If there is no love, fear of death will be more. If there is love, less fear of death. If total love, death disappears. These are all connected inside. Even very simple things are deeply rooted in greater patterns.

Mulla Nasruddin was standing before his veterinary doctor with his dog and insisting that, "Cut the tail of my dog." The doctor was saying, "But why, Nasruddin? If I cut the tail of your dog, this beautiful dog will be destroyed. He will look ugly. And why you are insisting this?" Nasruddin said, "Between you and me, don't say this to anybody: I want the dog's tail to be cut because my mother-in-law is going to come soon and I don't want any sign of welcome in my house. I have removed everything. Only this dog, he can welcome my mother-in-law."

Even a dog's tail has a bigger pattern of so many relationships. If Nasruddin cannot welcome even through his dog his mother-in-law, he cannot be in love with his wife; it is impossible, If you are in love with your wife, you will welcome the mother-in-law. You will be loving towards her.

Simple things on the surface are deeply rooted in complex things, and everything is interrelated. So just by changing a thought nothing is changed. Unless you go to the complex pattern, uncondition it, recondition it, create a new pattern, only then a new life can arise out of it. So these two things have to be done: non-attachment, non-attachment about everything.

That doesn't mean that you stop enjoying. That misunderstanding has been there, and yoga has been misinterpreted in many ways. One is this -- it seems that yoga is saying that you die to life because non-attachment means then you don't desire anything. If you don't desire anything, if you are not attached to anything, if you don't love anything, then you will be just a dead corpse. No, that is not the meaning.

Non-attachment means don't be dependent on anything, and don't make your life and happiness dependent on anything. Preference is okay, attachment is not okay. When I say preference is okay, I mean you can prefer, you have to prefer. If many persons are there, you have to love someone, you have to choose someone, you have to be friendly with someone. Prefer someone, but don't get attached.

What is the difference? If you get attached, then it becomes an obsession. If the person is not there, you are unhappy. If you miss the person, you are in misery. And attachment is such a disease that if the person is not there you are in misery, and if the person is there you are indifferent. Then it is okay; it is taken for granted. If the person is there it is okay -- no more than that. If the person is not there, then you are in misery. This is attachment.

Preference is just the reverse. If the person is not there, you are okay; if the person is there, you feel happy, thankful. If the person is there, you don't take it for granted. You are happy, you enjoy it, you celebrate it. But if the person is not there, you are okay. You don't demand, you are not obsessed. You can also be alone and happy. You would have preferred that the person was there, but this is not an obsession.

Preference is good, attachment is disease. And a man who lives with preference lives life in deep happiness. You cannot make him miserable. You can only make him happy, more happy. But you cannot make him miserable. And a person who lives with attachment -- you cannot make him happy, you can only make him more miserable. And you know this You know this well. If your friend is there you don't enjoy much; if the friend is not there you miss much.

Just a girl came a few days before to me. She had seen me two months before also with her boyfriend. And they were constantly fighting with each other and the fight has become just an illness, so I told them to be separate for a few weeks. They said it was impossible to live together, so I sent them away separately.

So the girl was here on Christmas Eve, and she said, "These two months, I have missed my boyfriend so much! I am thinking of him constantly. Even in my dreams he has started to appear. Never before it has happened. When we were together, never I have seen him in my dreams. In my dreams I was making love to other men. But now, constantly, my boyfriend is in my dreams. And now, allow us to live together again."

So I told her, "It is okay with me; you can live together again. But just remember this: that you were living together just two months before and you were never happy."

Attachment is a disease. When you are together, you are not happy. If you have riches, you are not happy. You will be miserable if you are poor. If you are healthy, you never feel thankfulness. If you are healthy, you never feel grateful to existence. But if you are ill you are condemning whole life and existence. Everything is meaningless, and there is no God.

Even an ordinary headache is enough to cancel all gods. But when you are happy and healthy, you never feel like going to a church or a temple just to thank, "I am happy and I am healthy, and I have not earned these. These are simply gifts from you."

Mulla Nasruddin once fell in a river, and he was just going to be drowned. He was not a religious man, but suddenly, at the verge of death, he cried loudly, "Allah, God, please save me, help me, and from today, now I will pray and I will do whatsoever is written in the scriptures."

While he was saying this "God help me", he caught hold of a branch hanging over on the river. And when he was grabbing and, coming toward safety, he felt relaxed, and he said, "Now it is okay. Now you need not worry." He told again to God, "Now you need not worry. Now I am safe." Suddenly the branch broke, and he fell again. So he said, "Can't you take a simple joke?"

But this is how our minds are moving. Attachment will make you more and more miserable; preference will make you more and more happy. Patanjali is against attachment, not against preference. Everybody has to prefer. You may like one food, you may not like another. But this is just a preference. If the food of your liking is not available, then you will choose the second food and you will be happy because you know the first is not available, and whatsoever is available had to be enjoyed. You will not cry and weep. You will accept life as it happens to you.

But a person who is constantly attached with everything never enjoys anything and misses always. The whole life becomes a continuous misery. If you are not attached, you are free; you have much energy; you are not dependent on anything. You are independent, and this energy can be moved into inner effort. It can become a practice. It can become abhyasa. What is abhyasa? Abhyasa is fighting the old habitual pattern. Every religion has developed many practices, but the base is this sutra of Patanjali.

For example, whenever you get angry, make it a constant practice that before entering into the anger you will take five deep breaths. A simple practice, apparently not related to anger at all. And somebody can even laugh, "How it is going to help?" But it is going to help. Whenever you feel anger is coming, before you express it take five deep exhalations, inhalations.

What it will do? It will do many things. Anger can be only if you are unconscious, and this is a conscious effort. Just before anger you consciously breathe in and out five times. This will make your mind alert, and with alertness anger cannot enter. This will not only make your mind alert, it will make your body also alert, because more oxygen in the body, the body is more alert. In this alert moment, suddenly you will feel that the anger has disappeared.

Secondly, your mind can be only one-pointed. Mind cannot think of two things simultaneously; it is impossible for the mind. It can change from one to another very swiftly, but it cannot have two points together in the mind simultaneously. One thing at a time. Mind has a very narrow window; only one thing at a time. So if anger is there, anger is there. If you breathe in and out five times suddenly the mind is with breathing. It has diverted. Now it is moving in a different direction. And even if you move again to anger, you cannot be the same again because the moment has been lost.

Gurdjieff says that, "When my father was dying, he told me to remember only one thing: 'Whenever you are angry wait for twenty-four hours, and then do whatsoever you like. Even if you want to murder, go and murder, but wait for twenty-four hours.'"

Twenty-four hours is too much, twenty-four seconds will do. Just the waiting changes you. The energy that was flowing towards anger has taken a new route. It is the same energy. It can become anger, it can become compassion. Just give it a chance.

So old scriptures say, "If a good thought comes to your mind, don't postpone it; do it immediately. And if a bad thought comes to your mind, postpone it; never do it immediately." But we are very cunning or very clever, we think. Whenever a good thought comes we postpone it.

Mark Twain has written in his memoirs that he was listening to a priest in a church for ten minutes. The lecture was just wonderful, and he thought in his mind that, "Today I am going to donate ten dollars. The priest is wonderful. This church must be helped!" He decided for ten dollars he is going to donate after the lecture. Ten minutes more and he started thinking that ten dollars would be too much, five would do. Ten minutes more, and he thought, "This is not even worth five, this man."

Now he is not listening. He is worried about those ten dollars. He has not told anybody, but now is convincing himself that this is too much. "By the time", he says, "the lecture finished, I decided not to give anything. And when the man came before me to take the donations, the man who was moving, even I thought to take a few dollars and escape from the church!"

Mind is continuously changing. It is never static; it is a flow. If something bad is there, wait a little. You cannot fix the mind, mind is a flow. Just wait! Just wait a little, and you will not be able to do bad. If some good is there and you want to do it, do it immediately because mind is changing, and after a few minutes you will not be able to do it. So if it is a loving and kind act, don't postpone it. If it is something violent or destructive, postpone it a little.

If anger comes, postpone it even for five breaths, and you will not be able to do it. This will become a practice. Every time anger comes, first you breathe five times in and out. Then you are free to do. Go on continuously. It becomes a habit; you need not even think. The moment anger enters, immediately your mechanism starts breathing fast, deep. Within years it will become absolutely impossible for you to be angry. You will not be able to be angry.

Any practice, any conscious effort, can change your old patterns. And this is not a work which can be done immediately; it will take time -- because you have created your pattern of habits in many, many lives. Even in one life you can't change it-it is too soon.

My sannyasins come to me and they say, "When it will happen?" and I say, "Soon." And they say, "What do you mean by your 'soon', because for years you have been telling us 'soon'."

Even in one life it happens -- it is soon. Whenever it happens, it has happened before its time because you have created this pattern in so many lives. It has to be destroyed, recreated. So any time, even lives, is not too late.

THEIR CESSATION IS BROUGHT ABOUT BY PERSISTENT INNER PRACTICE AND NON-ATTACHMENT. OF THESE TWO, abhyasa THE INNER PRACTICE IS THE EFFORT FOR BEING FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN ONESELF.

The essence of abhyasa is to be centered in oneself. Whatsoever happens, you should not move immediately. First you should be centered in yourself, and from that centering you should look around and then decide.

Someone insults you and you are pulled by his insult. You have moved without consulting your center. Without even for a single moment going back to the center and then moving, you have moved

Abhyasa means inner practice. Conscious effort means, "Before I move out, I must move within. First movement must be toward my center; first I must be in contact with my center. There, centered, I will look at the situation and then decide." And this is such a tremendous, such a transforming phenomenon. Once you are centered within, the whole thing appears different; the perspective has changed. It may not look like an insult. The man may just look stupid. Or, if you are really centered, you will come to know that he is right, "This is not an insult. He has not said anything wrong about it."

I have heard that once it happened -- I don't know whether it is true or not, but I have heard this anecdote -- that one newspaper was continuously writing against Richard Nixon, continuously! -- defaming him, condemning him. So Richard Nixon went to the editor and said, "What are you doing? You are telling lies about me and you know it well!" The editor said, "Yes, we know that we are telling lies about you, but if we start telling truths about you, you will be in more trouble!"

So if someone is saying something about you he may be lying, but just look again. If he is really true, it may be worse. Or, whatsoever he is saying may apply to you. But when you are centered, you can look about yourself also dispassionately.

Patanjali says that of these two, abhyasa the inner practice-is the effort for being firmly established in oneself. Before moving into act, any sort of act, move within yourself. First be established there-even if for only a single moment -- and your action will be totally different. It cannot be the same unconscious pattern of old. It will be something new, it will be an alive response. Just try it. Whenever you feel that you are going to act or to do something, move first within, because whatsoever you have been doing up until now has become robot-like, mechanical. You go on doing it continuously in a repetitive circle.

Just note down a diary for thirty days -- from the morning to the evening, thirty days, and you will be able to see the pattern. You are moving like a machine; you are not a man. Your responses are dead. Whatsoever you do is predictable. And if you study your diary penetratingly, you may be able to decipher the pattern -- that Monday, every Monday, you are angry; every Sunday you feel sexual; every Saturday you are fighting. Or in the morning you are good, in the afternoon you feel bitter, by the evening you are against the whole world. You may see the pattern. And once you see the pattern then you can just observe that you are working like a robot. And to be a robot is what is the misery. You have to be conscious, not a mechanical thing.

Gurdjieff used to say that, "Man is machine, as he is. You become man only when you become conscious. And this constant effort to be established in oneself will make you conscious, will make you non-mechanical, will make you unpredictable, will make you free. Then someone can insult you and you can still laugh; you have never laughed before. Someone can insult you and you can feel love for the man; you have not felt that before. Someone can insult you and you can be thankful towards him. Something new is being born. Now you are creating a conscious being within yourself.

But the first thing to do before moving into act, because act means moving outward, moving without, moving toward others, going away from the self. Every act is a going away from the self. Before you go away, have a look, have a contact, have a dip in your inner being. First be established.

Before every moment, let there be a moment of meditation: this is what abhyasa is. Whatsoever you do, before doing it close your eyes, remain silent, move within. Just become dispassionate, non-attached, so you can look on as an observer, unprejudiced -- as if you are not involved, you are just a witness. And then move!

One day, just in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin's wife said to Mulla that, "In the night, while you were asleep, you were insulting me. You were saying things against me, swearing against me. What do you mean? You will have to explain." Mulla Nasruddin said, "But who says that I was asleep? I was not asleep. Just the things I want to say, I cannot say in the day. I cannot gather so much courage."

In your dreams, in your waking, you are constantly doing things, and those things are not consciously done -- as if you are being forced to do them. Even in your dreams, you are not free. This constant mechanical behavior is the bondage. So how to be established in oneself? Through abhyasa.

Sufis use continuously. Whatsoever they say, do; they sit, stand, whatsoever... Before a Sufi disciple stands, he will take Allah's name. First he will take God's name. He will sit, he will take God's name. An action is to be done -- even sitting is an action -- he will say, "Allah!" So, sitting, he will say, "Allah!" Standing he will say, "Allah!" If it is not possible to say loudly, he will say inside. Every action is done through the remembrance. And by and by, this remembrance becomes a constant barrier between him and the action -- a division, a gap.

And the more this gap grows, the more he can look at his own action as if he is not the doer. Continuous repetition of Allah, by and by, he starts seeing that only Allah is the doer. "I am not the doer. I am just a vehicle or an instrument." And the moment this gap grows, all that is evil falls. You cannot do evil. You can do evil only when there is no gap between the actor and the action. Then good flows automatically.

Greater the gap between the actor and the action, more the good. Life becomes a sacred thing. Your body becomes a temple. Anything that makes you alert, established within yourself, is abhyasa.

OF THESE TWO, ABHYASA -- THE INNER PRACTICE -- IS THE EFFORT FOR BEING FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN ONESELF. IT BECOMES FIRMLY GROUNDED ON BEING CONTINUED FOR A LONG TIME WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION.

Two things. "Continuous practice for a long time." How much long? It will depend. It will depend on you, on each person, how long. The length will depend on the intensity. If the intensity is total, then very soon it can happen, even immediately. If the intensity is not so deep, then it will take a longer period.

I have heard one Sufi mystic, Junaid, was walking, just taking a walk outside his village in the morning. One man came running and asked Junaid that, "The capital of this kingdom... I want to reach the capital, how much long I will still have to travel? How much time it will take?"

Junaid looked at the man and, without answering him, again started walking. And the man was also going in the same direction, so the man followed. The man thought, "This old man seems to be deaf," so a second time asked more loudly that, "I want to know how much time it will take for me to reach the capital!"

But Junaid still continued walking. After walking two miles with that man, Junaid said, "You will have to walk at least ten hours." The man said, "But you could have said that before!" Junaid said, "How can I say it? I first must know your speed. It depends on your speed. So for these two miles I was watching, what is your speed. Only then I can answer." It depends on your intensity, your speed.

The first thing is continued practice for a long time without interruption. This has to be remembered. If you interrupt, if you do for some days and then leave for some days, the whole effort is lost. And when you start again, it is again a beginning.

If you are meditating and then you say for a few days there is no problem, you feel lazy, you feel like sleeping in the morning, and you say, "I can postpone, I can do it tomorrow," -- even one day missed, you have undone the work of many days, because you are not doing meditation today, but you will be doing many other things. Those many other things belong to your old pattern, so a layer is created. Your yesterday and your tomorrow is cut off. Today has become a layer, a different layer. The continuity is lost, and when tomorrow you start again it is again a beginning. I see many persons starting, stopping, again starting. The work that can be done within months they take years.

So this is to be remembered: without interruption. Whatsoever practice you choose, then choose it for your whole life, and just go on hammering on it, don't listen to the mind. Mind will try to persuade you, and mind is a great seducer. It can give all kinds of reasons that today it is a must not to do because you are feeling ill, there is headache, you couldn't sleep in the night, you have been so much tired so you can just rest today. But these are tricks of the mind.

Mind wants to follow its old pattern. Why the mind wants to follow its old pattern? Because there is least resistance; it is easier. And everybody wants to follow the easier path, the easier course. It is easy for the mind just to follow the old. The new is difficult.

So mind resists everything that is new. If you are in practice, in abhyasa, don't listen to the mind, you go on doing. By and by this new practice will go deep in the mind, and mind will stop resisting it because then it will become easier. Then for mind it will be an easy flow. Unless it becomes an easy flow, don't interrupt. You can undo a long effort by a little laziness. So it must be uninterrupted.

And, second, with reverent devotion. You can do a practice mechanically, with no love, no devotion, no feeling of holiness about it. Then it will take very long, because through love things penetrate easily in you. Through devotion you are open, more open. Seeds fall deeper.

With no devotion you can do the same thing. Look at a temple, you can have a hired priest. He will do prayers continuously for years, with no result, with no fulfillment through it. He is doing as it is prescribed, but it is a work with no devotion. He may show devotion, but he is just a servant. He is interested in his salary -- not in the prayer, not in the puja, not in the ritual. It is to be done -- it is a duty; it is not a love. So he will do it, years. Even for his whole life he will be just a hired priest, a salaried man. In the end, he will die as if he has never prayed. He may die in the temple praying-but he will die as if he has never prayed, because there was no devotion.

So don't do abhyasa, a practice, without devotion, because then you are unnecessarily wasting energy. Much can come out of it if devotion is there. What is the difference? The difference is in duty and love. Duty is something you have to do; you don't enjoy doing it. You have to carry it on somehow; you have to finish it soon. It is just an outward work. If this is the attitude, then how it can penetrate in you?

A love is not a duty, you enjoy. There is no limit to its enjoyment; there is no hurry to finish it. The longer it is, the better. It is never enough. Always you feel something more, something more. It is always unfinished. If this is the attitude, then things go deep in you. The seeds reach to the deeper soil. Devotion means you are in love with a particular abhyasa, a particular practice.

I observe many people; I work with many people. This division is very clear. Those who practice meditation as if they are doing just a technique, they go on doing it for years, but no change happens. It may help a little, bodily. They may be more healthy; their physiques will get some benefits out of it. But it is just an exercise. And then they come to me and they say "Nothing is happening."

Nothing will happen, because the way they are doing, it is something outside, just like a work -- as they go to the office at eleven and leave the office at five. With no involvement, they can go to the meditation hall. They can meditate for one hour and come back, with no involvement. It is not in their heart.

The other category of people is those who do it with love. It is not a question of doing something. It is not quantitative, it is qualitative -- how much you are involved, how much deeply you love it, how much you enjoy it -not the goal, not the end, not the result, but the very practice.

Sufis say repetition of the name of God -- repetition of the name of Allah -- is in itself the bliss. They go on repeating and they enjoy. This becomes their whole life just the repetition of the name.

Nanak says, nam smaran -- remembering the name is enough. You are eating, you are going to sleep, you are taking your bath, and continuously your heart is filled with the remembrance. Just go on repeating "Ram" or "Allah" or whatsoever, but not as a word, as a devotion, as a love.

Your whole being feels filled, vibrates with it, it becomes your deeper breath. You cannot live without it. And by and by it creates an inner harmony, a music. Your whole being starts falling into harmony. An ecstasy is born, a humming sensation, a sweetness surrounds you. By and by this sweetness becomes your nature. Then whatsoever you say, it becomes the name of Allah; whatsoever you say, it becomes the remembrance of the divine.

Any practice WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION... for the western mind it is very difficult. They can understand practice; they cannot understand REVERENT DEVOTION. They have completely forgotten that language, and without that language practice is just Western seekers come to me and they say, "Whatsoever you say we will do," and they follow it exactly as it is said. But they work on it just as if they were working on any other know-how, a technique. They are not in love with it; they have not become mad; they are not lost in it. They remain manipulating.

They are the master, and they go on manipulating the technique just as any mechanical device they will manipulate. Just as you can push the button and the fan starts -- there is no need of any reverent devotion for the button or for the fan. And everything in life you do like that, but abhyasa cannot be done that way. You have to be so deeply related with your abhyasa, your practice, that you become secondary and the practice becomes primary, that you become the shadow and the practice becomes the soul -- as if it is not you who is doing the practice. But the practice is going on by itself, and you are just a part of it, vibrating with it. Then it may be that no time will be needed.

With deep devotion, results can follow immediately. In a single moment of devotion, you can undo many lives of the past. In a deep moment of devotion, you can become completely free from the past.

But it is difficult how to explain it, that reverent devotion. There is friendship, there is love, and there is a different quality of friendship plus love which is called reverend devotion. Friendship and love exist between equals. Love between opposite sex, freindship with the same sex, but on the same level -- you are equals.

Compassion is just the opposite of reverent devotion. Compassion exists from a higher source towards a lower source. Compassion is like a river flowing from the Himalayas to the ocean. A Buddha is compassion. Whosoever comes to him, his compassion is flowing downwards. Reverence is just the opposite, as if the Ganges is flowing from the ocean towards the Himalays, from the lower to the higher.

Love is between the equals, compassion from the higher to the lower; devotion is from the lower to the higher. Compassion and devotion both have disappeared; only friendship has remained. And without compassion and devotion friendship is just hanging in between, dead, because two poles are missing. And it can exist, living, only between those two poles.

If you are in devotion, then sooner or later compassion will start flowing towards you. If you are in de3votion,, then some higher peak will start flwoing towards you. But if you are not in devotion, compassion cannot flow towards you, you are not open to it.

All abhyasa, all practice, is to become the lowest so the highest can flow in you -- to become the lowest. As Jesus says, "Only those who stand last will become the first in my kingdom of God."

Become the lowest,, the last. Suddenly, when you are the lowest, you are capagble of receiving the highest. And to the lowest depth only is the highest attracted, pulled. It becomes the magnet. "With devotion" means you are the lowest. That is why Buddhists choose to be beggars,, Sufis have chosen to be beggars -- just the lowest, the beggars. And we have seen that in these beggars the highest has happened.

But this is their choice. They have put themselves in the last. They are the last ones -- not in competition with anybody, just valley-like, low, lowest.

That's why, in the old Sufi sayings it is said, "Become a slave of God" -- just a slave, repeating his name, constantly thanking him,, constantly feeling gratitude, constantly filled with so many blessings that he has poured upon you.

And with this reverence, devotion, uninterrupted abhyasa, practice. Patanjali says these two, vairagya and abhyasa, they help the mind to cease. And when mind ceases you are, for the first time, really taht which you are meant to be, that which is your destiny.

Stop, and it is here!

The first question:

Question 1

PATANJALI HAS STRESSED THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-ATTACHMENT, THAT IS, CESSATION OF DESIRES, FOR BEING ROOTED IN ONESELF. BUT IS NON-ATTACHMENT REALLY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY, OR AT THE VERY END?

The beginning and the end are not two things. The beginning is the end, so don't divide them and don't think in terms of duality. If you want to be silent in the end, you will have to be in silence from the very beginning. In the beginning the silence will be like a seed; in the end it will become a tree. But the tree is hidden in the seed, so the beginning is just the seed.

Whatsoever the ultimate goal, it must be hidden here and now, just in you, in the very beginning. If it is not there in the beginning, you cannot achieve it in the end. Of course, there will be a difference -- in the beginning it can only be a seed; in the end it will be the total flowering. You may not be able to recognize it when it is a seed, but it is there whether you recognize it or not. So when Patanjali says non-attachment is needed in the very beginning of the journey, he is not saying that it will not be needed in the end.

Non-attachment in the beginning will be with effort; non-attachment in the end will be spontaneous. In the beginning you will have to be conscious about it; in the end there will be no need to be conscious about it. It will be just your natural flow.

In the beginning you have to practice it. Constant alertness will be needed. A struggle will be there with your past, with your patterns of attachment; fight will be there. In the end there will be no fight, no alternative no choice. You will simply flow in the direction of desirelessness. That would have become your nature.

But, remember, whatsoever is the goal, it has to be practiced from the very beginning. The first step is also the last. So one has to be very careful about the first step. If the first is in the right direction, only then the last will be achieved. If you miss the first step, you have missed all.

This will come again and again to your mind, so understand it deeply because many things Patanjali will say which look like ends. Non-violence is the end -- when a person becomes so compassionate, so deeply love-filled, that there is no violence, no possibility of violence. Love or non-violence is the end. Patanjali will say to practice it from the very beginning.

The goal has to be in your view from the very beginning. The first step of the journey must be absolutely devoted to the goal, directed to the goal, moving towards the goal. It cannot be the absolute thing in the beginning, neither Patanjali expects it. You cannot be totally non-attached, but you can try. The very effort will help you.

You will fall many times; you will again and again get attached. And your mind is such that you may even get attached with non-attachment. Your pattern is so unconscious, but effort, conscious effort, by and by will make you alert and aware. And once you start feeling the misery of attachment then there will be less need for the effort, because no one wants to be miserable, no one wants to be unhappy.

We are unhappy because we don't know what we are doing, but the longing in every human being is for happiness. No one longs for misery; everybody creates misery because we don't know what we are doing. Or we may be moving in desires towards happiness, but the pattern of our mind is such that we actually move towards misery.

From the very beginning, a child is born, is brought up, wrong mechanisms are fed in his mind, wrong attitudes are fed. No one is trying to make him wrong, but wrong people are all around. They cannot be anything else; they are helpless.

A child is born without any pattern. Only a deep longing for happiness is present, but he doesn't know how to achieve it; the how is unknown. He knows this much is certain, that happiness is to be attained. He will struggle his whole life, but the means, the methods how it is to be achieved, where it is to be achieved, where he should go to find it, he doesn't know. The society teaches him how to achieve happiness, and the society is wrong.

A child wants happiness, but we don't know how to teach him to be happy. And whatsoever we teach him, it becomes the path towards misery. For example, we teach him to be good. We teach him not to do certain things and to do certain things without ever thinking that it is natural or unnatural. We say, "Do this; don't do that." Our "good" may be unnatural -- and if whatsoever we teach as good is unnatural, then we are creating a pattern of misery.

For example, a child is angry, and we tell him, "Anger is bad. Don't be angry." But anger is natural, and just by saying, "Don't be angry," we are not destroying anger, we are just teaching the child to suppress it. Suppression will become misery because whatsoever is suppressed becomes poisonous. It moves into the very chemicals of the body; it is toxic. And continuously teaching, that "Don't be angry," we are teaching him to poison his own system.

One thing we are not teaching him: how not to be angry. We are simply teaching him how to suppress the anger. And we can force him because he is dependent on us. He is helpless; he has to follow us. If we say, "Don't be angry," then he will smile. That smile will be false. Inside he is bubbling, inside he is in turmoil, inside there is fire, and he is smiling outside.

A small child -- we are making a hypocrite out of him. He is becoming false and divided. He knows that his smile is false, his anger is real, but the real has to be suppressed and the unreal has to be forced. He will be split. And by and by, the split will become so deep, the gap will become so deep, that whenever he smiles he will smile a false smile.

And if he cannot be really angry, then he cannot be really anything because reality is condemned. He cannot express his love, he cannot express his ecstasy -- he has become afraid of the real. If you condemn one part of the real, the whole reality is condemned, because reality cannot be divided and a child cannot divide.

One thing is certain: the child has come to understand that he is not accepted. As he is, he is not acceptable. The real is somehow bad, so he has to be false. He has to use faces, masks. Once he has learned this, the whole life will move in a false dimension. And the false can only lead to misery, the false cannot lead to happiness. Only the true, authentically real, can lead you towards ecstasy, towards peak experiences of life -- love, joy, meditation, whatsoever you name.

Everybody is brought up in this pattern, so you long for happiness, but whatsoever you do creates misery. The first thing towards happiness is to accept oneself, and the society never teaches you to accept yourself. It teaches you to condemn yourself, to be guilty about yourself, to cut many parts. It cripples you, and a crippled man cannot reach to the goal. And we are all crippled.

Attachment is misery, but from the very beginning the child is taught for attachment. The mother will say to the child, "Love me; I am your mother." The father will say, "Love me; I am your father" -- as if someone is a father or a mother so he becomes automatically lovable.

Just being a mother doesn't mean much or just being a father doesn't mean much. To be a father is to pass through a great discipline. One has to be lovable. To be a mother is not just to reproduce. To be a mother means a great training, a great inner discipline. One has to be lovable.

If the mother is lovable, then the child will love without any attachment. And wherever he will find that someone is lovable, he will love. But mothers are not lovable, fathers are not lovable; they have never thought in those terms -- that love is a quality. You have to create it; you have to become.

You have to grow. Only then can you create love in others. It cannot be demanded. If you demand it, it can become an attachment, but not love. So the child will love the mother because she is his mother. The mother or the father, they become the goals. These are relationships, not love. Then he becomes attached to the family, and family is a destructive force because the family of the neighbor is separate. It is not lovable because you don't belong to it. Then your community, your nation... but the neighboring nation is the enemy.

You cannot love the whole humanity. Your family is the root cause. And the family has not been bringing you to be a lovable person, and a loving person. It is forcing some relationships. Attachment is a relationship, and love -- love is a state of mind. Your father will not say to you, "Be loving," because if you are loving you can be loving to anybody. Even sometimes the neighbor may be mc re lovable than your father, but the father cannot accept this -- that anybody can be more lovable than him, because he is your father. So relationship has to be taught, not love.

This is my country; that's why I have to love this country. If simply this is taught: that love -- then I can love any country. But the politician will be against it, because if I love any country, if I love this earth, then I cannot be dragged into war. So the politicians will teach, "Love this country. This is your country. You are born here. You belong to this country; your life, your death, belongs to this country." So he sacrifices you for it.

The whole society is teaching you relationships, attachments, not love. Love is dangerous because it knows no boundaries. It can move; it is freedom. So your wife will teach you, "Love me because I am your wife." The husband is teaching the wife, "Love me because I am your husband." Nobody is teaching love.

If simply love is taught, then the wife can say, "But the other person is more lovable." If the world was really free to love, then just being a husband cannot carry any meaning, just by being a wife, doesn't mean anything. Then love will freely flow. But that is dangerous; the society cannot allow it, the family cannot allow it, religions cannot allow it. So in the name of love they teach attachment, and then everybody is in misery.

When Patanjali says "non-attachment", he is not anti-love. Really, he is for love. Non-attachment means be natural, loving, flowing, but don't get obsessed and addicted. Addiction is the problem. Then it is like a disease. You cannot love anybody except your child -- this is addiction. Then you will be in misery. Your child can die; then there is no possibility for your love to flow. Even if your child is not going to die, he will grow. And the more he grows, the more he will become independent. And then there will be pain. Every mother suffers, every father suffers.

And the child will become adult, he will fall in love with some woman. And then the mother suffers: a competitor has entered. But this is because of attachment. If a mother really loved the child, she will help him to be independent. She will help him to move in the world and to make as many love contacts as possible, because she would know that the more you love, the more you are fulfilled. And when her child falls in love with a woman, she will be happy; she will dance with joy.

Love never gives you misery because if you love someone you love his happiness. If you are attached to someone, you don't love his happiness, you love only your selfishness; you are concerned only with your own egocentric demands.

Freud discovered many things. One of them is mother or father fixation. He says the most dangerous mother is that which forces the child to love her so much that he becomes fixed, and he will not be able to love anybody else. So there are millions of people suffering because of such fixations.

As far as I have been trying to study many people... Almost all the husbands, at least ninety-nine percent, are trying to find their mothers in their wives. Of course, you cannot find your mother in your wife; your wife is not your mother. But a deep fixation with the mother, and then they are dissatisfied with the wife because she is not mothering them. And every wife is searching for the father in the husband. No husband is your father. And if she is not satisfied with the fathering, then she is dissatisfied.

These are fixations. In Patanjali's language, he calls them attachments. Freud calls them fixations. The words differ, but the meaning is the same. Don't get fixed; be flowing. Non-attachment means you are not fixed. Don't be like ice cubes, be like water -- flowing. Don't be frozen.

Every attachment becomes a frozen thing, dead. It is not vibrating with life; it is not a constantly moving response. It is not moment to moment alive, it is fixed. You love a person -- if it is love, then you cannot predict what is going to happen next moment. It is impossible to predict; moods change like weather. You cannot say the next moment also your lover will be loving to you. Next moment he may not feel like loving. You cannot expect.

If he next moment also loves you, it is good, you are thankful. If he is not loving in the next moment, nothing can be done; you are helpless. You have to accept the fact that he is not in the mood. Nothing to cry about, simply there is no mood! You accept the situation. You don't force the lover to pretend, because pretension is dangerous.

If I feel loving towards you, I say, "I love you," but the next moment I can say, "No, I don't feel any love in this moment." So there are only two possibilities -- either you accept my non-loving mood, or you force that "Whether you love me or not, at least show that you love me." If you force me, then I become false and the relationship becomes a pretension, a hypocrisy. Then we are not true to each other. And two persons who are not true to each other how can they be in love? Their relationship will have become a fixation.

Wife and husband, they are fixed, dead. Everything is certain. They are behaving towards each other as if they are things. You come to your home, your furniture will be the same because furniture is dead. Your house will be the same because house is dead. But you cannot expect your wife to be the same, she is alive, a person. And if you expect her to be the same as she was when you left the house, then you are forcing her to be just a furniture, just a thing. Attachment forces the persons related to be things and love helps the persons to be more free, to be more independent, to be more true. But truth can only be in constant flow, it can never be frozen.

When Patanjali says "non-attachment, he is not saying to kill your love. Rather, on the contrary, he is saying that "Kill all that poisons your love, kill all the obstacles, destroy all the obstacles that kill your love." Only a yogi can be loving. The worldly person cannot be loving, he can be attached.

Remember this: attachment means fixation -- and you cannot accept anything new in it, only the past. You don't allow the present, you don't allow the future to change anything. And life is change. Only death is unchanging.

If you are unattached, then moment to moment you move without any fixation. Every moment life will bring new happinesses, new miseries. There will be dark nights and there will be sunny days, but you are open; you don't have a fixed mind. When you don't have a fixed mind even a miserable situation cannot give you misery, because you don't have anything to compare it. You were not expecting something against it, so you cannot be frustrated.

You get frustrated because of your demands. You were thinking that when you will come back home, your wife will be just standing outside to welcome you. And if she is not standing there outside to welcome you, you cannot accept it. And this gives you frustration and misery. You demand, and through demand you create misery. And demand is possible only if you are attached. You cannot demand with persons who are strangers to you. Only with attachment demand comes in. That is why all attachments become hellish.

Patanjali says be non-attached. That means be flowing, accepting, whatsoever life brings. Don't demand and don't force. Life is not going to follow you. You cannot force life to be according to you. It is better to flow with the river rather than pushing it. Just flow with it! Much happiness becomes possible. There is already much happiness all around you, but you cannot see it because of your wrong fixations.

But this non-attachment in the beginning will only be a seed. In the end, non-attachment becomes desirelessness. In the beginning non-attachment means non-fixation; in the end non-attachment will mean desirelessness, no desire. In the beginning no demand; in the end no desire.

But if you want to reach to this end of no-desire, start from no-demand. Even for twenty-four hours try Patanjali's formula. Just for twenty-four hours, flowing with life not demanding anything. Whatsoever life gives, feeling grateful, thankful. Just moving for twenty-four hours in a prayerful state of mind -- not asking, not demanding, not expecting -- and you will have a new opening. Those twenty-four hours will become a new window. And you will feel how ecstatic you can become.

But you will have to be alert in the beginning. It cannot be expected that non-attachment, for the seeker can be a spontaneous act.

The second question:

Question 2

HOW IS IT THAT AN ENLIGHTENED ONE GIVES OF HIMSELF TO ONE ONLY, AS LORD BUDDHA DID IN THE CASE OF MAHAKASHYAP? REALLY, THIS BUDDHIST TRADITION OF ONE DISCIPLE RECEIVING THE LIGHT CONTINUED FOR EIGHT GENERATIONS. WAS IT NOT POSSIBLE FOR A GROUP TO BE ITS RECIPIENT?

No, it is never possible because the group has got no soul, the group has got no self. Only the individual can be the recipient, the receiver, because only the individual has the heart. Group is not a person.

You are here, I am talking, but I am not talking to the group because with the group there can be no communication. I am talking to each individual here. You have gathered in a group, but you are not hearing me as a group; you are hearing me as individuals. Really, the group doesn't exist. Only individuals exist. "Group" is just a word. It has no reality, no substance. It is just the name of a collectivity.

You cannot love a group, you cannot love a nation, you cannot love humanity. But there are persons who claim that they love humanity. They deceive themselves because there is no one like humanity anywhere, only human beings are there. Go and search; you will never find humanity somewhere.

Really, these are the persons who claim that they love humanity; these are the persons who cannot love persons. They are incapable of being in love with persons. Then big names -- humanity, nation, universe. They may even love God, but they cannot love a person, because to love a person is arduous, difficult. It is a struggle. You have to change yourself. To love humanity, there is no problem -- there is no humanity; you are alone. Truth, beauty, love or anything that is significant always belongs to the individual. Only individuals can be recipients.

Ten thousand monks were there when Buddha poured his being into Mahakashyap, but the group was incapable. No group can be capable, because consciousness is individual, awareness is individual. Mahakashyap rose to the peak where he could receive Buddha. Other individuals can also become that peak, but no group.

Religion basically remains individualistic, and it cannot be otherwise. That is one of the basic fights between communism and religion. Communism thinks in terms of groups, societies, collectivities, and religion thinks in terms of the individual person, self. Communism thinks that the society can be changed as a whole, and religion thinks only individuals can be changed. Society cannot be changed as a whole because society has no soul, it cannot be transformed. In fact, there is no society, only individuals.

Communism says there are no individuals, only society. Communism and religion, they are absolutely antagonistic, and this is the antagonism -- if communism becomes prevalent, then individual freedom disappears. Then only the society exists. Individual is not allowed really to be there. He can exist only as a part, as a cog in the wheel. He cannot be allowed to be a self.

I have heard one anecdote. One man reported into a Moscow police station that his parrot is missing. So he was directed to the clerk concerned. The clerk wrote, and the clerk asked, "Does the parrot speak also? He talks?" The man became afraid, a little troubled, uncomfortable. The man said, "Yes, he talks. But whatsoever political opinion he expresses, those political opinions are strictly his own!" A parrot! This individual was afraid because parrot means those political opinions must belong to his master. A parrot simply imitates.

No individuality is allowed. You cannot have your opinions. Opinions are the concern of the state, the group mind. And group mind is the lowest thing possible. Individuals can reach to the peaks; no group has ever become Buddha-like or Jesus-like. Only individual peaks.

Buddha is giving his whole life's experience to Mahakashyap because there is no other way. It cannot be given to any group. It cannot be; it is just impossible. Communication, communion can only be between two individuals. It is a personal, deeply personal faith. Group is impersonal. And remember that group can do many things -- madness is possible with the group, but Buddhahood is not possible. A group can be mad, but a group cannot be enlightened.

Lower the phenomenon, the group can participate in it more. So all great sins are committed by the group not by individuals. An individual can murder few people, but an individual cannot become "Fascism", he cannot murder millions. Fascism can murder millions, and with good conscience!

After the Second World War all the war criminals confessed that they are not responsible: they were just ordered from above, and they followed the orders. They were just part of the group. Even Hitler and Mussolini were very much sensitive in their private lives. Hitler used to listen to music; loved music. Even sometimes he used to paint; loved painting. Seems impossible, Hitler loving painting and music, so sensitive, and killing millions of Jews without any inconvenience, without any discomfort in his conscience, not even a prick. He was "not responsible". Then he was just the leader of a group.

When you are moving in a crowd, you can commit anything because you feel "The crowd is doing it. I am just part of it." Alone, you would think thrice whether to do it or not. In the crowd responsibility is lost, your individual thinking is lost, your discrimination is lost, your awareness is lost. You have become just a part of a crowd. Crowds can go mad. Every country knows, every period knows crowds can go mad, and then they can do anything. But it has never been heard that crowds can become enlightened.

The higher states of consciousness can be achieved only by individuals. More responsibility has to be felt -- more individual responsibility, more conscience. The more you feel you are responsible, the more you feel you have to be aware, the more you become individual.

Buddha communicates with Mahakashyap his silent experience, his silent sambodhi, his silent enlightenment, because Mahakashyap also has become a peak, a height, and two heights can meet now. And this will always be so. So if you want to reach higher peaks, don't think in terms of groups, think in terms of your own individuality. A group can be helpful in the beginning, but the more you grow, less and less group can be helpful.

A point comes when group cannot be of any help, you are left alone. And when you are totally alone and you start growing in your loneliness, for the first time you are crystallized. You become a soul, a self.

The third question:

Question 3

PRACTICE IS A SORT OF CONDITIONING AT PHYSICAL AND MENTAL LEVELS, AND IT IS THROUGH CONDITIONING THAT SOCIETY MAKES MAN ITS SLAVE. IN THAT CASE HOW CAN PATANJALI'S PRACTICE BE AN INSTRUMENT OF LIBERATION?

Society conditions you to make a slave out of you, an obedient member, so the question seems valid-how a continuous reconditioning of the mind can make you liberated? The question seems valid only because you are confusing two types of conditioning.

You have come to me, you have traveled a path. When you will be going back, you will travel the same path again. The mind can ask, "The path which brought you here, how it can take you back, the same path?" The path will be the same, your direction will be different -- quite the opposite. While you were coming towards me you were facing towards me, when going back you will be facing the opposite direction -- the path will be the same.

The society conditions you to make an obedient member, to make you a slave. Just a path. The same path has to be traveled to make you free, only the direction will be the opposite. The same method has to be used to "uncondition" you.

I remember one parable. Once Buddha came to his monks; he was going to deliver a sermon. He sat under his tree. He was having a handkerchief in his hand. He looked at the handkerchief. The whole congregation also looked what he was doing. Then he binds five knots in the handkerchief and then he asks, "What should I do now to unknot this handkerchief? What should I do now?" And he asked two questions. One: "Is the handkerchief the same when there were no knots on it or is it different?"

One bhikkhu, one monk, says that, "In a sense it is the same because the quality of the handkerchief has not changed. Even with knots it is the same, the same handkerchief. The inherent nature remains the same. But in a sense it has changed because something new has appeared. Knots were not there, now knots are there. So superficially it has changed, but deep down it has remained the same."

Buddha says, "This is the situation of human mind. Deep down it remains unknotted. The quality remains the same." When you become a Buddha, an enlightened one, you will not have a different consciousness. The quality will be the same. The difference is only that now you are a knotted handkerchief; your consciousness has a few knots.

Second thing Buddha asked: "What I should do to unknot the handkerchief?" Another monk says, "Unless we know what you have done to knot it we cannot say anything, because the reverse process will have to be applied. The way you have knotted it has to be known first, because that will be the way again in the reverse order to unknot." So Buddha says, "This is the second thing. How you have come into this bondage, this has to be understood. How you are conditioned in your bondage, this has to be understood, because the same will be the process, in reverse order, to uncondition you."

If attachment is the conditioning factor, then non-attachment will become the unconditioning factor. If expectation leads you in misery, then non-expectation will lead you into non-misery. If anger creates a hell within you, then compassion will create a heaven. So whatsoever the process of misery, the reverse will be the process of happiness. Unconditioning means you have to understand the whole knotted phenomenon of human consciousness as it is. This whole process of yoga will be nothing understanding the complex knots and then unknotting them, unconditioning them. It is not a reconditioning, remember. It is simply unconditioning; it is negative. If it is a reconditioning, then you will become a slave again -- a new type of slave in a new imprisonment. So this difference has to be remembered: it is unconditioning, not reconditioning.

Because of this, many problems have arisen. Krishnamurti goes on saying that if you do anything it will become a reconditioning, so don't do anything. If you do anything it will become a reconditioning. You may be a better slave, but you will remain a slave. Listening to him, many people have stopped all efforts. But that doesn't make them liberated. They are not liberated. The conditioning is there. They are not reconditioning. Listening to Krishnamurti, they have stopped, they are not reconditioning. But are they also not unconditioning. They remain the slaves.

So I am not for reconditioning, neither is Patanjali for reconditioning. I am for unconditioning, and Patanjali is also for unconditioning. Just understand the mind. Whatsoever its disease, understand the disease, diagnose it, and move in the reverse order.

What is the difference? Take some actual example. You feel anger. Anger is a conditioning; you have learned it. Psychologists say that it is a learning; it is a programmed thing. Your society teaches it to you. There are societies even now which never get angry, the members never get angry. There are societies, small tribal clans still in existence, which have never known any fight, no war.

In Philippines, a small aboriginal tribe exists. For three thousand years it has not known any fight, not a single murder, not a single suicide. What has happened to it? And they are the most peace-loving people, the most happy possible. Their society from the very beginning never conditions them for anger. In that tribe, even in your dream if you kill someone, you have to go and ask his forgiveness -- even in dream. If you are angry with someone and fighting, next day you have to declare to the village that you have done something wrong. Then the village will gather together, and the wise men of the village will diagnose your dream and they will suggest what is to be done now -- even small children!

I was reading their dream analyses. They seem to be one of the most penetrating people. A small child dreams. In dream he sees the boy of the neighbor, very sad. So he tells the dream to his father so in the morning that "I have seen the boy of the neighbor very sad."

So the father thinks over it, closes his eyes, meditates, and then he says, "If you have seen him sad, that means somehow his sadness is related to you. No one else has dreamed about him that he is sad, so either knowingly or unknowingly you have done something which creates his sadness. Or, if you have not done, in the future you are going to do. So the dream is just a prediction for the future. You go with many sweets, many gifts. Give sweets and gifts to the boy and ask for his forgiveness -- either of something done in the past or something which you are going to do in the future."

So the boy goes, gives the fruits, sweets, gifts, and asks his forgiveness because somehow, in the dream, he is responsible for his sadness. From the very beginning the children are brought up in this way. If this tribe has existed without strife, fight, murder, suicide, there is no wonder. They cannot conceive. A different type of mind is functioning there.

Psychologists say that hate or anger are not natural. Love is natural: hate and anger are just created. They are hindrances in love, and society conditions you for them. Unconditioning means whatsoever the society has done, it has done. There is no use going on condemning it; it is already the case. And by simply saying the society is responsible, you are not helped. It has been done. Now -- right now what you can do, you can uncondition. So whatsoever your problems, look deep in the problem. Penetrate it, analyze it, and look how you are conditioned for it.

For example, there are societies which never feel competitive. Even in India, there are aboriginal tribes -- no competition exists. Of course, they cannot be very progressive in our measurement, because our progress can only be through competition. They are not competitive. Because they are not competitive, they are not angry, they are not jealous, they are not so hate-filled, they are not so violent. They don't expect much, and whatsoever their life gives to them they feel happy and grateful.

To you, whatsoever life gives... you will never feel grateful. You will always be frustrated because you can always ask more. And there is no end to your expectations and desires. So if you feel miserable, look into the misery and analyze it. What are the conditioning factors which are creating the misery? And there is not much difficulty to understand. If you can create misery, if you are so capable of creating misery, there is no difficulty in understanding it. If you can create it, you can understand it.

Patanjali's whole standpoint is this: looking into the misery of man, it is found that man himself is responsible. He is doing something to create it. That doing has become habitual, so he goes on doing it. It has become repetitive, mechanical, robot-like. If you become alert, you can drop out of it. You can simply say, "I will not cooperate." The mechanism will start working.

Someone insults you. You just stand still, remain silent. The mechanism will start; it will bring the past pattern. The anger will be coming, the smoke will arise, and you will feel just on the verge of getting mad. But you stand. Don't cooperate and just look what the mechanism is doing. You will feel wheels within wheels within you, but they are impotent because you are not cooperating.

Or, if you feel it impossible to remain in such a still state, then close your door, move into the room, have a pillow before you, and beat the pillow. And be angry with the pillow. And when you are beating on, getting angry and mad with the pillow, just go on watching what you are doing, what is happening, how the pattern is repeating itself.

If you can stand still, that's the best. If you feel it is difficult, you are pulled, then move into a room and be angry on the pillow. Because with the pillow, your madness will be totally visible to you; it will become transparent. And the pillow is not going to react; you can watch more easily. And there is no danger, no safety problem. You can watch. Slowly, the rising of the anger and the decline of the anger.

Watch both, the rhythm. And when your anger is exhausted, you don't feel like beating the pillow any more, or you have started laughing or you feel ridiculous, close your eyes, sit on the floor, and meditate on what has happened. Do you still feel anger for the person who has insulted you, or it is thrown onto the pillow? You will feel a certain calmness falling on you. And you will not feel angry now with the person concerned. Rather, you may even feel compassion for him.

One young American boy was here two years before. He had escaped from America only because of one problem, one obsession: he was continuously thinking of murdering his father. The father must have been a dangerous man; must have suppressed this boy too much. In his dreams he was thinking of murdering, in his daydreams also he was thinking of murdering his father. He escaped from his home only just so that the father is not there. Otherwise, any day something can happen. The madness is there; it can erupt any moment.

He was here with me. And I told him, "Don't suppress it." I gave him a pillow and said, "This is your father. Now do whatsoever you like." At first he started laughing, laughing in a mad way. And he said, "It looks ridiculous." I told him, "Let it be ridiculous. If it is in the mind, let it come out." For fifteen days continuously he was beating and tearing the pillow, and doing it. On the sixteenth day he came with a knife. I had not told him. So I asked him, "Why this knife?"

He said, "Now don't stop me. Let me kill. Now the pillow is not pillow for me. The pillow has actually become my father." That day he killed his father. And then he started crying; tears came through his eyes. He became calmed down, relaxed, and he told me, "I am feeling much love for my father, much compassion. Now allow me to go back."

He is back now. The relationship has totally changed. What has happened? Just a mechanical obsession is released.

If you can stand still when some old pattern grips your mind, it is good. If you cannot, then allow it to happen in a dramatic way, but alone, not with someone. Because whenever you enact your pattern, allow your pattern with someone, it creates new reactions and it is a vicious circle.

The most significant point is to be watchful of the pattern -- whether you are standing silently or acting your anger and hate out -- watchful, looking how it uncoils. And if you can see the mechanism, you can undo it.

All the steps in yoga are just for undoing something which you have been doing. They are negative; nothing new is to be created. Only the wrong is to be destroyed, and the right is already there. Nothing positive is to be done, only something negative. The positive is hidden there. It is just like a stream is there, hidden under a rock. You are not to create the stream. It is already there, knocking; wants to be released and to become free and flowing. A rock is there. The rock has to be undone. Once the rock is removed, the stream starts flowing.

Bliss, happiness, joy or whatsoever you call it is there already flowing in you. Only some rocks are there. Those rocks are the conditionings of the society. Uncondition them. If you feel attachment is the rock, then make efforts for non-attachment. If you feel anger is the rock, then make efforts for non-anger. If you feel greed is the rock, then make efforts for non-greed. Just do the opposite. Don't suppress greed. Just do the opposite: do something which is non-greed. Just don't suppress anger; do something which is non-anger.

In Japan, when someone gets angry, they have a traditional teaching. If someone gets angry, immediately he has to do something which is non-anger. And the same energy which was going to move into anger moves into non-anger. Energy is neutral. If you feel angry with someone and you want to slap his face, give him a flower and see what happens.

You wanted to slap his face; you wanted to do something -- that was anger. Give him a flower and just watch what is happening within you -- you are doing something which is of non-anger. And the same energy which was going to move your hand will move your hand. And the same energy which was going to hit him is now going to give the flower. But the quality has changed. You have done something. And the energy is neutral. If you don't do something, then you suppress -- and suppression is poisonous. Do something, but just the opposite. And this is not a new conditioning, it is just to uncondition the old. When the old has disappeared, the knots have disappeared, you need not worry for anything to do. Then you can flow spontaneously.

The last question:

Question 4

YOU SAID THAT THE SPIRITUAL ENDEAVOR MAY TAKE TWENTY TO THIRTY YEARS OR EVEN LIVES, AND THAT EVEN THEN IT IS EARLY. BUT THE WESTERN MIND SEEMS TO BE RESULT-ORIENTED, IMPATIENT AND TOO PRACTICAL. IT WANTS INSTANTANEOUS RESULTS. RELIGIOUS TECHNIQUES COME AND GO LIKE OTHER FADS IN THE WEST. THEN HOW DO YOU INTEND TO INTRODUCE YOGA TO THE WESTERN MIND?

I am not interested in the western mind or the eastern mind. These are just two aspects of one mind. I am interested in the mind. And this eastern-western dichotomy is not very meaningful, not even significant now. There are eastern minds in the West and there are western minds in the East. And now the whole thing has become a mess. East is now also in a hurry. The old East has disappeared completely.

I am reminded of one Taoist anecdote. Three Taoists were meditating in a cave. One year passed. They were silent, sitting, meditating. One day one horseman passed nearby. They looked. One of the three hermits said, "The horse he was riding was white." The other two remained silent. After one year again, the second hermit said, "The horse was black, not white." Then one more year passed again. The third hermit said, "If there are going to be discussions, I am leaving. If there is going to be any bickering, I am leaving. I am leaving! You are disturbing my silence!"

What did it matter whether the horse was white or black? Three years! But this was the flow in the East. Time was not. East was not conscious of time at all. East lived into eternity, as if time was not passing. Everything was static.

But that East no longer exists. West has corrupted everything; the East has disappeared. Through western education everybody is now western. Only few island-like people are there who are eastern -- they can be in the West, they can be in the East, they are not in any way confined to the East. But the world as a whole, the earth as a whole, has become western.

Yoga says -- and let it penetrate you very deeply because it will be very meaningful -- yoga says that the more you are impatient, the more time will be needed for your transformation. The more in hurry, the more you will be delayed. Hurry itself creates such a confusion that delay will result.

The less in a hurry, earlier will be the results. If you are infinitely patient, this very moment transformation can happen. If you are ready to wait forever, you may not wait even for the next moment. This very moment the thing can happen, because it is not a question of time, it is a question of your quality of the mind.

Infinite patience. Simply not hankering for results gives you much depth. Hurry makes you shallow. You are in such a hurry that you cannot be deep. This moment you are not interested here in this moment, but what is going to happen in the next. In result you are interested. You are moving ahead of you; your movement is mad. So you may run too much, you may travel too much, you will not reach anywhere because the goal to be reached is just here. You have to drop into it, not to reach anywhere. And the dropping is possible only if you are totally patient.

I will tell you one Zen anecdote. One Zen monk is passing through a forest. Suddenly he becomes aware one tiger is following him, so he starts running. But his running is also of a Zen type; he is not in a hurry. He is not mad. His running also is smooth, harmonious. He is enjoying it. And it is said that the monk thinks in the mind, "If the tiger is enjoying it, then why not I?"

And the tiger is following him. Then he comes near a precipice. Just to escape from the tiger he hangs with the branch of a tree. And then he looks downwards. One lion is standing there in the valley, waiting for him. Then the tiger has reached, he is standing just near the tree on the hilltop. He is hanging in between, just with a branch, and another lion is waiting for him, deep down.

He laughs. Then he looks. Two mice are just cutting that branch... one white, one black. Then he laughs very loudly. He says, "This is life. Day and night, white and black mice cutting. And wherever I go, death is waiting. This is life!" And it is said that he achieves a satori -- the first glimpse of enlightenment. This is life! Nothing to worry about; this is how things go. Wherever you go death is waiting, and even if you don't go anywhere day and night are cutting your life. So he laughs loudly.

Then he looks around, because now it is fixed. Now there is no worry. When death is certain, what is the worry? Only in uncertainty there is worry. When everything is certain, there is no worry; now it has become a destiny. So he looks for these few moments how to enjoy. He becomes aware just by the side of the branch some strawberries, so he picks a few strawberries, eats them. They are the best of his life. He enjoys them, and it is said he becomes enlightened in that moment.

He has become a Buddha because death is so near even then he is not in any hurry. He can enjoy a strawberry. It is sweet! The taste of it is sweet! He thanks God. It is said in that moment everything disappears -- the tiger, the lion, the branch, he himself. He has become the cosmos.

This is patience, absolute patience! Wherever you are, in that moment enjoy without asking for the future. No futuring in the mind -- just the present moment, the nowness of the moment, and you are satisfied. Then there is no need to go anywhere. Wherever you are, from that very point you will drop into the ocean; you will become one with the cosmos.

But the mind is not interested in here and now. The mind is interested somewhere in the future in some results. So the question is, in a way, relevant for such a mind, the modern mind it will be better to call it rather than western. The modern mind is constantly obsessed with the future, with the result, not with the here and now.

How this mind can be taught yoga? This mind can be taught yoga because this future orientation is leading nowhere. And this future orientation is creating constant misery for the modern mind. We have created a hell, and we have created too much of it. Now either man will have to disappear from this planet earth, or he will have to transform himself. Either humanity will have to die completely -- because this hell cannot be continued any more -- or we will have to go through a mutation.

Hence, yoga can become very meaningful and significant for the modern mind because yoga can save. It can teach you again how to be here and now -- how to forget past, how to forget future, and how to remain in the present moment with such intensity that this moment becomes timeless; the very moment becomes eternity.

Patanjali can become more and more significant. As this century will come to its closure, techniques about human transformation will become more and more important. They are already becoming all over the world -- whether you call them yoga or Zen or you call them Sufi methods or you call them Tantra methods. In many, many ways, all the old traditional teachings are erupting. Some deep need is there, and those who are thinking, anywhere, in any part of the world, they have become interested to find again how humanity in the past existed with such beatitude, such bliss. With so poor conditions, how such rich men existed in the past, and we, with such a rich situation, why we are so poor?

This is a paradox, the modern paradox. For the first time on the earth we have created rich, scientific societies, and they are the most ugly and most unhappy. And in the past there was no scientific technology, no affluence, nothing of comfort, but humanity was existing in such a deep, peaceful milieu -- happy, thankful. What has happened? We can be more happy than anyone, but we have lost contact with existence.

And that existence is here and now, and an impatient mind cannot be in contact with it. Impatience is like a feverish, mad state of mind; you go on running. Even if the goal comes, you cannot stand there because the running has become just the habit. Even if you reach the goal you will miss it, you will pass it because you cannot stop. If you can stop, the goal is not to be searched.

Zen Master Hui-Hai, has said that, "Seek, and you will lose; don't seek, and you can get it immediately. Stop, and it is here. Run, it is nowhere."

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THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI - THE CESSATION OF THOUGHTFORMS AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS

patanjal yoga sutraS DIRECTORY

Ahimsa or Harmlessness The Greatest Spiritual Law to Remove Negative Karmic Mass

Ahimsa or Harmlessness The Greatest Spiritual Law to Remove Negative Karmic Mass