---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA5"
dategiven: "09 July 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #9"
chaptertitle: "The law is for you"
acode: "7507090"
shorttitle: "YOGA509"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "90mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5: Chapter #9"
---

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<p class="sutra">32. PURITY, CONTENTMENT, AUSTERITY, SELF-STUDY, AND SURRENDER TO GOD ARE THE LAWS TO BE OBSERVED.</p>
<p class="sutra">33. WHEN THE MIND IS DISTURBED BY WRONG THOUGHTS, PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES.
34. IT IS NECESSARY TO PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES BECAUSE WRONG THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS, AND ACTIONS, SUCH AS VIOLENCE, RESULT IN IGNORANCE AND INTENSE MISERY WHETHER THEY BE PERFORMED, CAUSED, OR APPROVED THROUGH GREED, ANGER, OR DELUSION IN MILD, MEDIUM, OR INTENSE DEGREES.</p>


THERE are laws, and laws: laws to suppress man, laws to help him bloom; laws to Prohibit, restrict, and laws to help him expand, increase. A law which simply prohibits is destructive; a law that helps to grow and increase is creative. The Old Testament Ten Commandments are different from Patanjali's laws. Those ten commandments prohibit, restrict, suppress. The whole emphasis is: you should not do this, you must not do this, this is not allowed. Patanjali's laws are totally different; they are creative. The emphasis is not on what should not be done; the emphasis is on what should be done. And there is a vast difference between the two.


In the Old Testament it seems as if the laws are the goal -- as if man exists for them, not that they exist for man. For Patanjali there is a utility in the laws, but they are not ultimate or absolute in any sense. Man doesn't exist for them; they exist for man. They are means, and one has to go through them -- and go beyond them. That has to be remembered; otherwise you can carry a wrong impression about Patanjali.


Ordinarily, religions have been very destructive. They have crippled the whole of humanity. They have made everybody guilty  -- and this is the greatest crime that can be done against man. And the whole trick is: first, you make people guilty; when they are trembling with guilt -- afraid, scared, burdened, living in a hell -- then you help them out of it, then you come and teach them how to be free. In the first place, why create guilt? And when man is guilty he becomes so crippled and so afraid of growth, so afraid to move and grow, so afraid to go into the unknown and the unfamiliar and the strange that he becomes static. a dead thing; then everybody is there working for his salvation.


Patanjali never makes you guilty about anything. In that sense he is more scientific than religious, more a psychologist than a religious priest. He is not a preacher. Whatsoever he is saying. he i8 simply giving you a blueprint of how to grow; and if you want to grow you need a discipline. The discipline should not be imposed from the outside; otherwise it creates guilt. The discipline should come out of inner understanding, then it is beautiful. The difference is very subtle. You can be told to do something, and then you do it, but you do it like a slave. You can be helped to understand a certain phenomenon: through understanding you do it, then you do it as a master. Whenever you are a master you are beautiful; whenever you are a slave you become ugly.


I have heard one old Yiddish joke. There was a tailor named Zumbach. A man came to him. His suit was ready and he had come to take it, but the man found that one sleeve was longer than the other. He started fussing about it. Zumbach the tailor said, "So what? Why are you fussing so much? Look. This is a piece of art, and for just a small defect you are creating so much fuss. You can pull your hand inside a little, and then the sleeve will be okay."


So the man tried, but when he pulled his hand inside he felt that a bunch of material had gathered on his back. So he said, "Now this bunch of material has gathered on my back."


Said Zumbach the tailor, "So what? You can stoop a little, but this is a piece of art and I am not ready to change it. It looks so beautiful."


So the man hunched over and walked out. Just outside when he was going home (it was very difficult to walk because one hand had to be pulled in, and then he had to remain hunched over so the suit remains beautiful -- the man is completely forgotten; the coat has become more important) there came another guy and he said, "Such a beautiful suit. I bet it must have been prepared by Zumbach the tailor."


The first man was surprised. He said, "How do you know?"


The man said, "How do I know? Only that type of tailor can make such a beautiful suit for a cripple like you."


This is how it has been happening through all the religions to all humanity. They have made beautiful laws for you. "So what?" they say if you have to hunch over a little. "It's okay. You look so beautiful." It is the law that has to be followed and fulfilled: you are not the end; the law is the end. If you become crippled it is okay, if you become a hunchback it is okay, if you become ill it is okay -- but the law should be fulfilled.


Patanjali is not giving you laws of that type, no. He understands more. He understands the whole situation. The laws are there to help you. They are really like a structure which is made before you start constructing a building, the scaffold. It helps the new building to come up; once the building is ready the structure has to be taken away. It was for a certain purpose; it was not the end. All these laws are for a certain purpose: They help you grow.


The first was yam, self-discipline. You must have observed -- the five great vows, ahimsa, satya, et cetera, they have a peculiar quality about them: you can practice them only in the society. If you are living alone in a forest you cannot practice them; then there is no need and no opportunity. You have to be true when somebody else is there. When you are alone on a Himalayan peak there is no question of truth because how can you lie there -- to whom? The opportunity does not exist.


Yam is a bridge between you and others, and that is the first thing: that you should settle things between you and others. If things are unsettled between you and others they will constantly create worry. "Close all accounts with others" -- that is the meaning of the first, yam. Hmm?... if you are fighting with people, the tension, the worry will be there; even in your dreams it will become nightmares. It will follow you like a shadow. It will be wherever you are. Eating, sleeping, meditating -- the anger, the violence will be there. It will discolor everything. It will destroy everything. You cannot be at peace, at home.


So Patanjali says, first, with yam, you settle things with people. Don't be untrue, don't be violent, don't be possessive, so that between you and others there exists no conflict -- a harmony. This is the first circle of your being -- your periphery, where you touch others' peripheries. This has to be calmed down so you are in a deep friendship with the whole. In that deep friendship only, growth is possible. Otherwise, worries from the outside will be too many, and they will attract attention and they will distract and they will dissipate energy, and they will not leave you at peace and alone. If you are not at peace with others, you cannot be at peace with yourself. How can you be?


So the first thing is to be at peace with others so that you can be at peace with yourself. The periphery has no waves; suddenly a calm, collected phenomenon happens to your being. The first is between you and others.


Now is the second step: niyam. Niyam means "the law." This has nothing to do with others; you have done that. Now, something you have to do with yourself. So if you move to a Himalayan cave, the first step will not be possible because others will not be there. But you will have to follow the second step there also because it doesn't belong to a social situation -- it belongs to your aloneness. Yam is between you and others; niyam is between you and yourself.
<p class="sutra">PURITY, CONTENTMENT, AUSTERITY, SELF-STUDY, AND SURRENDER TO GOD ARE THE LAWS TO BE OBSERVED.</p>


Each has to be understood deeply. First is "purity," shauch.  You exist in the world as a body; embodied, you exist here. If your body is ill how can you be healthy? If your body is poisoned you are poisoned. If your body carries too many toxins, is heavily burdened, you cannot be light, you cannot have wings. So now you have to work on your body and its purity.


There are foods which make you more earth-rooted; there are foods which make you more sky-oriented. There is a way of living where you are more in the influence of gravitation; there are ways of living where you become more available to the opposite phenomenon of levitation.


There are two laws: one is gravitation, another is grace. Gravitation pulls you down; grace pulls you up. Science knows only gravitation; yoga knows grace also. And yoga seems to be more scientific about it than science itself because every law must have an opposite. If the earth pulls you down there must be something which is pulling you up also; otherwise the earth would have pulled you completely pulled you in -- you would have disappeared. You exist on the surface of the earth. That means there exists a balance between the law pulling you down and the law pulling you up. Otherwise you would have been destroyed by the earth long before -- you would have gone back into the womb of the earth and disappeared. But you exist. There is a balance between the opposites, and every law is possible only if the other, the opposite, exists. The name of the opposite law is "grace."


You may have felt sometimes, unknowingly, one day in the morning, suddenly, you feel light. Hmm?... as if you can fly. You walk on the earth, but your feet are not falling on the earth -- you are so weightless, featherlike. And someday you are so heavy, so burdened, that you cannot even walk. What is happening? Then you have to analyze your whole style of life.


Something helps you to be light, and something helps you to be heavy. All that makes you heavy is impure, and all that makes you light is pure. Purity is weightless; impurity is heavy and burdened. A healthy man feels light, weightless; an unhealthy man feels too much burdened by the earth, too much pulled down. A healthy man does not walk; really, he runs. An unhealthy man: even if he sits he is not sitting, he is sleeping.


Yoga knows three words, three gunas: sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattva is purity; rajas is energy; tamas is heaviness, darkness. What you eat makes your body and, in a certain sense, makes you. If you eat meat you will be more heavy. If you just live on milk and fruits you will be light. Have you observed sometimes being on a fast how weightless you feel, as if the whole weight of the body has disappeared? If you stand on a measuring machine it will show your weight, but you don't feel it. What has happened? The body has nothing to digest; the body is freed from the day-to-day routine. The energy is flowing, the energy has no work to do -- it is a holiday for the body. You feel relaxed; you feel beautiful.


One has to watch one's food. Whatsoever you eat, it is no ordinary matter. You should be careful because your body is constituted of whatsoever you have eaten in the past. Every day you are constituting it with whatsoever you are eating. Eating less or more, or just right, also, makes much difference. You can be an obsessive eater  -- you can eat too much of that which is not needed -- then you will be very, very low, very weighted down. You can eat just the right amount: you will feel happier, not weighted down -- energy flowing, not blocked. And one who is going to fly into the inner world, is trying to reach the inner center, will need to be weightless; otherwise the journey cannot be complete. Being lazy you will not be able to enter that inner center. Who will walk up to that inner center?


Be careful what you eat, be careful what you drink -- be careful how you keep and care for your body. Small things matter. For an ordinary man they don't matter because he is not going anywhere. Once you start on the path, everything matters.


Whether you are taking a bath every day or not -- it matters. Ordinarily it doesn't matter. Working in the market, in the shop, it doesn't matter if you have taken a good bath or not. In fact, if you have been taking a good bath every day it may be a disturbance in your market. You may feel so light that to be cunning may be difficult; you may feel so fresh that to be cheating may be difficult; you may feel so virgin, innocent, that to exploit may almost become impossible. Being dirty may be a help in the market, but not in the temple. In the temple you have to be as fresh as dewdrops, as clean as flowers; only then can you enter the shrine. In the temple, where you leave your shoes, leave the whole world and all the burdens of it. Don't carry them in.


Bath is one of the most beautiful phenomena -- very simple, but if you start enjoying it, it becomes a meditation for the body. Just sitting under a shower and enjoying it, swaying or humming a song.... Or humming a mantra -- then it becomes doubly forceful. If you are sitting under your shower and humming "aum" and the water falls on your body and the aum falls in your mind, you are taking double showers: the body is being purified by the water, it belongs to the world of elements, and your mind is purified by the mantra of aum. After the bath you will feel ready to pray -- you would like to pray. After this bath and the mantra you will feel totally different; you will have a different quality and aroma around you.


Shauch, purity. means purity about food. purity. about body, purity about mind -- three layers of purities. And the fourth, which is your being, needs no purity because it cannot become impure. Your innermost core is always Pure, always virgin, but that innermost core is covered with other things which can become impure -- which become impure every day. You use your body every day; dust collects. You use your mind every day; thoughts collect. Thoughts are just like dust. Living in the world, how can you live without thoughts? You have to think. Body collects dust, becomes dirty; mind collects thoughts, becomes dirty. Both need a good, cleaning bath. It should become a part of your style. It should not be taken as a law; it should be just a way of living beautifully.


And if you feel pure then other possibilities immediately open because everything is linked with everything else; it is a chain. And if you want to change life always start from the beginning.


The second step of niyam is "contentment," santosh. A man who feels healthy, whole, light, weightless, fresh, young, virgin, will be able to understand what contentment is. Otherwise you will not be able to understand what it means -- it will remain a wold. Contentment means: whatsoever is s beautiful, the feeling that whatsoever is is the best that can be. A feeling of deep acceptance is santosh, contentment, a feeling of saying yes to the whole existence -- as it is.


Ordinarily the mind says, "Nothing is right." Ordinarily the mind goes on finding complaints -- "This is wrong, that is wrong...." Ordinarily mind is negative: it is a no-sayer, it says no easily. It is very difficult for the mind to say yes because once you say yes the mind stops; then there is no need for the mind. Have you watched this phenomenon? When you say no, mind can think on and on and on because "no" is not the end. "No" has no full stop to it; it is just a beginning. "No" is a starting phenomenon; "yes" is the end. When you say yes, there comes a full stop; now there is nothing for the mind to think about, to grumble about, to grudge, to complain -- nothing. Once you say yes, mind stops; and that very stopping of the mind is contentment.


Contentment is not consolation, remember it. I have seen many people who think they are contented because they are consoling themselves. No, contentment is not consolation; consolation is a false coin. When you console yourself you are not contented. In fact, you have a very deep discontent inside -- but seeing that discontent creates worry, seeing that discontent creates anxiety, seeing that discontent leads nowhere, logically, you have persuaded yourself that "this is not the way." So you have forced a false contentment on yourself: you go on saying, "I am content. I don't hanker for thrones, I don't hanker for riches, I don't hanker for this and that..." but you hanker. Otherwise, from where comes this "don't hankering"?


You hanker, you desire, but you have found that it is almost impossible to reach; so you are cunning. You are being clever: you say, "It is impossible to reach." Inside, you know it is impossible to reach, but you don't want to feel defeated, you don't want to feel impotent, you don't want to feel like a weakling, so you say, "I don't hanker."


You must have heard the beautiful story of one of the old storytellers, Aesop. A fox comes near a garden. She looks up: beautiful grapes are hanging. She jumps but her jump is not enough. She falls short. She tries and tries... but she can't reach. Then she looks all around, just to see that nobody has seen this defeat. Then she walks haughtily. A small hare who was hiding in a bush comes out and asks, "Aunt, what has happened?" He has seen that the fox was defeated, she was proved impotent. The fox says, "Nothing. Those grapes are sour."


This is consolation. Finding that you cannot reach, you rationalize that the grapes are sour; they are not worth reaching. Not that you are impotent, powerless -- "They are not worth reaching.Not that you are defeated, but that you have renounced them. I have seen many people who have renounced the world, and they are nothing but representations of the Aesop story. I have come across many sannyasins, "mahatmas," but you can see in their eyes... Still, the desire for the grapes. But they say they have renounced because the world is futile, it is illusion, maya. They have not read the Aesop fable. They should read it. It will be more helpful to them than reading the Vedas and the Geeta, and they should try to understand what has really happened: this is a rationalization of the ego.


Consolation is a trick: contentment is a revolution. Contentment does not mean that seeing failures all around, you close your eyes and you say, "This world is illusory; I don't desire for it." One of the greatest haiku poets of Japan, Baso, has written a small haiku. The meaning of it is, "The man is blessed who, seeing dewdrops disappear in the morning sun, does not say that the world is fleeting, it is illusory." A rare haiku. I will repeat: "Blessed is the man who, seeing the dewdrops in the morning sun disappearing, does not say that the world is illusory, that the world is just a dream." It is so easy to console yourself by saying that.


Contentment is a positive state of being; consolation is a suppression. But consolation looks like contentment. A man came to me and he said, "I am a man of contentment. For my whole life I have remained contented, but nothing happens." I was surprised. I asked, "What do you want? Contentment is enough. What else do you want?" He said, "I have read in all the scriptures that if you are contented, everything will happen to you. And nothing happens. And I have seen people who are not contented, and they have succeeded. I am a failure. I have been befooled."


This man was trying, through contentment, to attain some desires. The contentment is false -- he is being tricky. And with existence you can't be tricky. You cannot deceive it; you are part of it. How can the part deceive the whole? The whole knows before the part starts deceiving.


I also say that everything happens to the man who is contented -- because contentment is everything. This is not a result, that you should practice contentment in order so that everything happens to you -- God and bliss and nirvana -- no. Contentment in itself is the thing. A contented man comes to know that contentment is everything, everything has already happened. More and more his yes grows, more and more his being is attuned to acceptance. more and more he feels everywhere things are as they should be.


If you are pure, contentment becomes possible. What is contentment? It is seeing, seeing the whole -- how beautiful it is. Contentment comes automatically if you can see the morning, how beautiful; if you can see the afternoon, how beautiful; if you can see the night, how beautiful. If you can see that which surrounds you continuously, it is such a wonder, such a continuum of wonder, every moment a miracle... but you have become completely blind. Flowers bloom -- you never see; children laugh -- you never hear: rivers sing -- you are deaf; stars dance -- you are blind; Buddhas come and try to awake you -- you are fast asleep. Contentment is not possible.


Contentment is awareness of all that is already there. If you can just see the glimpse of what is happening already, what more can you expect? To expect more will be sheer ingratitude. If you can see the whole, you will be simply thankful; you will feel a tremendous gratitude arising out of your being. You will say, "All is good, everything is beautiful, everything is holy. And I am thankful, because I have not earned it and I was given the chance, the opportunity, to live, to be, to breathe, to see, to hear -- to see the trees blossoming and to hear the birds singing."


If you can become aware -- just a little awareness and you will not see that there is anything to be changed, anything to be desired -- everything has already been given to you. Because of your complaints -- clouds of complaints, negativity -- you cannot see; your eyes are filled with smoke and you cannot see the flame.


Contentment is a seeing -- a different seeing -- of life: not seeing through your desires, but trying to see whatsoever is already the case. If you see through the desire, you will never be contented. How can you be... because desire goes on and on? You have ten thousand rupees; the desire says one hundred thousand are needed. When you have one hundred thousand, the desire has gone away; now it is desiring ten lakh rupees, a hundred lakh rupees. Whenever you will reach to that point, the desire will always have gone ahead of you. It travels ahead of you. It is never with you; you will never meet it anywhere. Wherever you go you will always find it like the horizon -- just there, somewhere in the future. It will always be so. And there will follow discontent: desire ahead, then discontentment will be your state. And discontent is hell.


When you have understood this, you look at the reality not through the screen of desire; you look immediately, you look directly, you put aside the desire and you just see. You open the eyes and you just see, and everything seems to be so perfect.... I have seen it! That's why I say this to you. It is so perfect that it cannot be improved upon. It is simply the last thing. Then contentment descends on you like an evening: the sun, the scorching sun of desire has set, and the silent breeze of the evening and the silent darkness descend on you -- and soon you will be enveloped in it, in the warmth of the night, the womb of contentment.


Contentment is a way of seeing; but when you are innocent, light, weightless, only then it becomes possible.


And after contentment, Patanjali says "austerity," tapa. This is really something to be understood, very delicate and subtle. You can be austere before contentment; then your austerity will be through desire. Then through your austerities also you will be desiring moksha -- liberation -- heaven, God. Then your austerity will also be a means. That's why Patanjali first puts contentment and then austerity. When you are content then austerity is not a means; it is just a simple, beautiful way of living. Then it is not a question of having a few things or more -- that is not the problem then. Then it is not the question at all, having or not having. Then it is a simple way of living, not a complex way of living.


And this is difficult to understand: if without contentment you try to be austere, your austerity will be complex.


It happened once, I was travelling in a first-class compartment with another sannyasi. I didn't know him, he didn't know me, but we were the only two passengers in the compartment. Many people at a certain station came to pay their respects to him; he must have been a very well-known man. He had nothing, just a small bag, maybe one or two dresses, and just a small lunghi, just covering up to the knees; and he was almost naked. And that lunghi was also made of the most inexpensive cloth possible.


Then, when we travelled together, by and by I became aware of his complexities; he was a simple man as far as the outward appearance is concerned. When the station passed and the people had gone and the train started and he saw that I was dozing, I had closed my eyes, immediately, he pulled something out of his bag. I was not asleep. I looked -- he was counting notes, somebody may have presented to him. Not many notes, must not have been more than a hundred rupees, but the way he was counting -- with such gusto, such lust that I couldn't believe.


Seeing that I was seeing, he immediately pushed the notes inside the bag and sat in a Buddha-posture again on the seat. Now this is complexity. If you are counting you are counting. What does it matter if I see or not? Why hide it? Why feel guilty about it? If you are enjoying counting notes, nothing is wrong -- innocent, harmless. But no, he felt guilty: that a sannyasi should not touch notes, and he has been caught.


Then, he was to get down at a station which was to come in the early morning, six o'clock. Wherever the train would stop, he was again and again asking -- two o'clock in the night and he will lean out of the window and ask -- which station it is. He was disturbing my sleep so much that I told him, "Don't be worried. It is not going to come before six o'clock. And this train does not go further than that station -- so you need not worry. Even if you are fast asleep you cannot miss the station -- that is going to be the last stop." But he couldn't sleep the whole night. He was so tense; and I could not understand what was the restlessness.


In the morning, when the station was coming nearer, I saw him standing before the mirror. Nothing to arrange, just one small lunghi, but he was binding it again and again and looking in the mirror and watching whether it looks good or not. Then he again found me looking. He was shocked. When I would close my eyes then he would do something else; if I would open my eyes he would immediately stop it. So guilty about everything.


This man has not attained to contentment, and he has done austerity. He remains an ordinary man of desire. I'm not saying there is anything wrong in looking in the mirror -- nothing is wrong. The wrong happens only when somebody else is looking -- why you are shocked. It is beautiful, you can look -- it is your face. You can look in the mirror. You are authorized, at least for your own face. And nothing is wrong in it. One should enjoy -- that face is also God s face. But he is guilty: he is an ordinary man posing, trying to be a saint.


Without contentment you can pose, you can suffer, you can be austere, you can become "simple" -- you can leave the house and clothes and become naked; but in your nakedness there will be complexity, there cannot be simplicity. Simplicity comes only as a shadow of contentment; then you can live in a palace and you can be simple. Simplicity has nothing to do with what you have: simplicity has something to do with the quality of the mind.


So restless just for a station, how can this man be restful when death will be reaching? So afraid of my seeing him, how much afraid would he not be if God were seeing him, and how much afraid will he not be when he will have to face the creator? He will not be able. He is playing a game with himself: nobody else is deceived.


Austerity is simplicity: to live a simple life. What is a simple life? It is like that of a child -- you enjoy everything, but you don't cling.


It happened: One of the greatest saints of India was Kabir. He had a son; his name was Kamal. He was an even greater man than the father, but nobody knows about Kamal much because he was really a very, very rare being. Many disciples were there, and much competition, as it happens with disciples. And many people were against Kamal living with Kabir because, they said, "This man is blameworthy." People would bring many gifts, donations, money, diamonds to Kabir's feet -- he would never take them. And Kamal would be sitting outside, and when they would come back, if they offered, he would take them. So people said. "Your son is greedy."


Kabir knew him well, that he was not greedy at all; he was a very simple man. That's why he used to call him Kamal. Kamal means "a miracle." He was a man who was really a miracle, and it has to be so: bound to Kabir he had to be a miracle-man. But he was really simple -- just like a child. Sometimes he would even ask: somebody's gift has been refused, Kabir has refused it -- someone has brought diamonds to give him and Kabir has refused them -- and the man will be taking them away and Kamal will say. "Beautiful stones. Where are you taking them? Bring them to me. If my father cannot accept, I can accept."


This was bad. So, finally, disciples persuaded Kabir, against his wishes, and Kabir said, "Okay, if you think... then I will throw him out."


Kamal was thrown out. He didn't say anything; he simply accepted: a man of contentment. He did not even argue that people who are complaining against him are wrong. no. There is no argument in such a man. He simply left, he made a small hut just alongside of Kabir, and started living there. Thousands of people would come to Kabir, and nobody would come to Kamal, because he was not known at all; and this was known all over. that Kabir has thrown him out, so this was enough condemnation.


The king of Kashi, who was a devotee of Kabir, once came. and he asked, "Where is Kamal?" Kabir had to tell the story. The king said, "But I have never felt that that boy has any greed in him. He is simple. I would go and see." So he went to Kamal's hut with a very, very valuable diamond, the biggest that he had.


Kamal was hungry that day, and no food was there, so he said, "What will I do with this stone? Should I eat it? You should have brought some food because I'm hungry."


The king thought in his mind, "I was right. Hmm? such a valuable diamond and he simply refuses. So the king took the diamond when he was going back. Kamal said, "If you have understood that this is just a stone, why carry the weight again? You can leave it. In the first place you carried it up to here, that was wrong. Now why commit the same mistake again? It is just a stone."


Now, the king was puzzled, "Maybe this is just t}icky. Maybe this Kamal is interested in the diamond but being clever with me." But the king thought, "Okay, let us see." So he said, "Where should I put it?"


Kamal said, "Again, you do the same mistake. If it is a stone, nobody asks about where to put it. You can leave it anywhere; the hut is big enough."


The king wanted to see the whole thing to the very end, so he put it on the roof of the hut and left, knowing well, "The moment I have gone a little far away this Kamal is going to take that diamond back in the hut."


After seven days he came back to inquire what happened. He was certain that the diamond must be sold by now. He came, he talked about other things, and then he said, "What happened to the diamond?"


Kamal said, "Again diamond? And I have told you it was a stone. And why should I worry about what happened to it?"


Now the king thought, "He's really... really cunning. He has sold it or hidden it; now he is saying,'Why should I worry about it?'"


And then Kamal said, "But you can look wherever you had left it. If somebody has not taken it yet, it may be there."
And it was there.


This is simplicity. This is austerity. But difficult: a man can live in a palace, and if the palace is not in him, it is austerity. You can live in a hut, and if the hut has entered into your mind, it is not austerity. You can sit on a throne like an emperor, and you may be a sannyasin. You can be a sannyasin and you may be standing naked on the street, and you may not be a sannyasin. Things are not as simple as people think them to be, and appearances should not be believed much -- you should look deep down.


Austerity is possible only after contentment, because after contentment your austerity is not going to be a means to some goal; it will simply be an uncomplicated way of living, a simple way of living. And why simple? Because it is happier. The more complex your living, the more unhappy you will be, because you have to manage so many things. Simpler the life, the happier, because there is no management, really. You can simply live like breathing.


And then comes "self-study," swadhyaya. A man who has attained to purity, contentment, austerity, only he can study self; because now all the rubbish is thrown, all the rot is thrown away. Otherwise self-study will not be possible. You have so much rubbish in you, if you go to study self it will not be self-study, because all that rubbish will have to be studied. It may become a Freudian psychoanalysis, this is the difference between swadhhyaya and Freudian psychoanalysis.


Freud's psychoanalysis can continue for years -- five years, three years -- and then too nothing is finished; the rubbish goes on coming. You can go on and on and on... the rubbish is endless, because it is self-creating: today you throw the rubbish, tomorrow you come again for the analysis; in twenty-four hours, again, the rubbish has gathered there; again you throw it, again it gathers. Unless your whole base of life changes, you will go on accumulating rubbish. Rubbish is not the point -- you accumulate it. Your way of life is such that you attract it, accumulate it; you cling to it. Unless that is broken. unless that style of life is changed, you cannot study self. You are a crowd and your self is lost in the crowd.


Patanjali moves very, very scientifically. After austerity, when you have become very simple, no rubbish accumulates, when you have become so contented that no desire lives in you, when you have become so innocent and pure that no heaviness exists, you have become like fragrance, weightless, on the wings, in the air, riding on the air -- then self-study. Now, you can study the self.


Self-study is not self-analysis; it is just looking into the self. It is meditating on the self.


And after self-study comes the last step in the second stage. that is. surrender to God." Really wonderful, the way Patanjali moves. He must have considered every step for years because exactly it is so. When you have studied the self, only then can you surrender. Because what will you surrender otherwise? The self is to be surrendered. If you know it well, only then you can surrender. Otherwise how will you surrender?


People come to me and they say, "We would like to surrender," but what will you surrender to me? You don't have anything right now. It is an empty thing you are calling surrender. You have to be there tb be surrendered. In the first place, an integrated self is needed to be surrendered. Just by saying, surrender cannot happen: you have to be capable of it; it has to be earned. After self-study, when the self arises like a pillar of light within you and you have understood it, and all that was unessential has been cut and thrown, you have passed through the surgery, now only the self exists in its pristine purity and beauty -- now, you can surrender it to God.


And Patanjali has one more, very rare thing to say, and that is that it is not important whether God exists or not. God is not a theory for Patanjali; God is not to be proved. Patanjali says God is nothing but an excuse to surrender. Otherwise where will you surrender? If you can surrender without God, it is okay, for Patanjali there is no trouble. He doesn't insist that God has to be believed in. He is so scientific that he says God is not a necessity, it is just a way to surrender. Otherwise you will be in difficulty where to surrender. "To whom to surrender?" you will ask.


There have been people like Buddha and Mahavir who have surrendered without God, but those are rare phenomena, because your mind will always ask. If I tell you, "Love," you will ask, "Whom?" -- because you cannot love without the object of love. If I ask you to write a letter you will ask, "To what address?" You cannot just write the letter without the address because that will look too foolish. Your mind: in the end if there is no God and it is said to you, "Surrender," you will say. "Too whom?"


Just to give you an address -- God is just an address to help you. God is not the goal and God is not a person. For Patanjali God is just a help on the way -- the last help. In the name of God, surrender becomes easy. In the name of God, your mind is not in a puzzle where to surrender: you have a place to surrender: you have a space to surrender. God is that space, not a person.


And Patanjali says if you can surrender without God, we are not insisting on it. Surrender is the thing, not God. If you really understand what I am saying, then, surrender IS God. To surrender is to become divine, to surrender is to reach the divine. But you have to disappear. So first you have to find yourself so that you can disappear, first you have to integrate yourself so you can go to the shrine and surrender yourself into the divine feet, pour yourself into the ocean, and disappear.


"Purity, contentment, austerity, self-study, and surrender to God are the laws to be observed." These are laws for growth. They do not prohibit; they help. They are not restrictive; they are creative.
<p class="sutra">WHEN THE MIND IS DISTURBED BY WRONG THOUGHTS, PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES.</p>


This is a beautiful method, will be very useful for you. For example, if you are feeling very discontented, what to do? Patanjali says ponder on the opposite: if you are feeling discontented, contemplate about contentment, what is Contentment. Bring a balance. If your mind is angry, bring compassion in. think about compassion; and, immediately, the energy changes. Because they are the same; the opposite is the same energy. Once you bring it in, it absorbs. Anger is there: contemplate on compassion.


Do one thing: keep a statue of Buddha. Because that statue is the gesture of compassion. Whenever you are angry, go into the room, look at Buddha, sit Buddha-like, and feel compassion. Suddenly you will see a transformation happening within you: the anger is changing, excitement gone... compassion arising. And it is not different energy; it is the same energy -- the same energy of anger -- changing its quality, going higher. Try it.


It is not suppression, remember. People ask me, "Is Patanjali suppressing? Because when I am angry, if I think about compassion, will it not be a suppression?" No. It is sublimation: it is not suppression. If you are angry and you suppress anger without thinking of compassion then it is suppression. You go on pushing it down and you smile and you act as if you are not angry -- and anger is bubbling there and boiling there and ready to explode. Then it is suppression. No, we are not suppressing anything, and we are not creating a smile or anything; we are just changing the inner polarity.


The opposite is the pole. When you feel hateful, think of love. When you feel desire, think of desirelessness and the silence that comes in it. Whatsoever the case, bring the opposite in and watch what happens within you. Once you know the knack of it, you have become a master. Now you have the key: any moment anger can be changed into compassion, any moment hate can be turned into love, any moment sadness can become ecstasy. Suffering can become bliss because suffering has the same energy as the bliss; the energy is not different. You just have to know how to channel it.


And, there is no suppression because the whole energy of anger becomes compassion -- nothing is left to suppress. In fact, you have expressed it in compassion.


There are two ways of expression. In the West. now, catharsis has become very important. Encounter groups. Primal Therapy-all believe in catharsis. My own Dynamic Meditation is a method of catharsis because people have lost the key to sublimate. Patanjali does not talk about catharsis at all. Why doesn't he talk about it?people had the key. the knack. They knew how to sublimate. You have forgotten, so I have to teach you catharsis.


Anger is there; it can be transformed into compassion, but you have no idea how to do it. And it is not an art which can be taught; it is a knack. You have to do it, and learn it through doing it; there is no other way. It is just like swimming: you have to swim, and err, and sometimes get into danger, and sometimes you will feel lost, the life is lost, you are drowning. You have to pass all those, and then the knack comes, then you know what it is. And it is such a simple thing, swimming.


Have you observed? There are a few things you can Learn but you cannot forget: swimming is one of those things. Or cycling -- you can learn but you cannot forget. Everything else you can learn and you can forget. A thousand and one things you learned in your school; now you have almost forgotten all. The whole school system seems such a wastage. People learn, and then nobody remembers. Just to take the examination... then finished. then nothing is remembered, But swimming you cannot forget. If you have not been to the river for fifty years and suddenly you are thrown in, you will swim again as fresh as ever -- you will not have a single moment of hesitation about what to do. Why it happens so? Because it is a knack. It cannot be forgotten. It is not a Learning; it is not an art. And learning, art, can be forgotten, but a knack? A knack is something that goes so deep into your being it becomes part of you. Sublimation is a knack.


Patanjali never talks about catharsis; I have to talk about it because of you. But once you understand, and if you can sublimate, then there is no need for catharsis because catharsis is, in a way, a wastage of energy. But, unfortunately, nothing can be done right now. And you have been suppressed for so many centuries that sublimation looks like suppression, so only catharsis seems to be the way. First you have to relieve -- you become a little weightless, unburdened -- and then you can be taught the art of sublimation.


Sublimation is using the energy in a higher way, the same energy being used with a different quality to it. But you can try. Many of you have gone through Dynamic Meditation for a long time. You can try: next time when anger is there, sadness is there, just sit silently and allow the sadness to move towards happiness -- just help -- push it a little. Don't do too much and don't be in a hurry. Hmrn?... because the sadness will be reluctant at first to go towards happiness. Because for centuries, for many lives, you have not allowed it to move that way, it will be reluctant. Like a horse whom you are forcing towards a new path on which he has never been, he will be reluctant. He will try to go to the old pattern. to the old path, to the old rut. But by and by persuade, seduce. Tell Sadness then, "Don't be afraid. It is really groovy; come this way. You can become Happiness, and there is nothing wrong in it and nothing impossible."


Just persuade, talk to your sadness, and one day you will suddenly find the sadness has moved into a new channel: it has become happiness. That day the yogi is born, not before it. Before it you are simply preparing.
<p class="sutra">IT IS NECESSARY TO PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES BECAUSE WRONG THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS, AND ACTIONS, SUCH AS VIOLENCE, RESULT IN IGNORANCE AND INTENSE MISERY -- WHETHER THEY BE PERFORMED, CAUSED, OR APPROVED THROUGH GREED, ANGER, OR DELUSION IN MILD, MEDIUM, OR INTENSE DEGREES.</p>


Whatsoever is negative is dangerous for you and for others. Whatsoever is negative is already creating hell for you and for others; it is creating misery for you and for others. Be alert. Even if you think a negative thought, it has already become a reality in the world. It is not only that when you act it becomes reality: a thought is as real as any action. If you think to murder a man, you have already murdered. The man may live, but you have done your work: the man will not be able to live as fully as possible -- as it was possible. You have killed him a little. And the man may be able to live, but you have become a murderer and your own energy will carry that murder quality in you.


Thought, emotion, or action -- we don't make any distinction between them. They are the same. They are just like the seed and the plant and the tree. If the seed is there, already the tree is thereon the way, it is coming. So whenever you catch a negative thought. immediately sublimate it, transform it. It is dangerous. Every thought finally becomes action; every thought finally becomes a thing.


Have you watched sometimes? You come in a new room in a hotel to stay, and suddenly you feel a change within you. Or you come in a new house and there is a strange feeling that you are no longer yourself. It happens according to a certain law. In a hotel room many things go on happening; many types of people come and go. It becomes a very, very crowded place. A hotel room is a very, very crowded place -- thousands of thoughts are being released in that room. It is not empty, as you think it is; it is not. Those thoughts vibrate there. When you go in, suddenly, you are under the influence of so many thoughts.


You move into a new house -- it is strange. It takes almost three weeks, twenty-one days, for you to settle and to feel that this is your home, because in twenty-one days, by and by, your thoughts expel the thoughts that were already there and they get hold of the house. Then things become easier, you feel at home -- as if you have come back to your own self.


Sometimes, if a murderer was living in a room and was continuously thinking about murder and planning and this and that, and, if within six minutes after he leaves, you go in the room and you stay there; he may not have committed the murder, but you may commit murder -- because his thought is so powerful at that moment. Within six minutes the thought is as powerful as it can ever be. By and by it dissipates. Or, if the man was thinking of committing suicide, somebody else can commit it. Your thought can become action for somebody else.


But whenever you think anything negative you are creating bad karma for you and others; you are changing the nature of reality. The same happens with a positive energy, positive thought: whenever you send a thought of compassion to the world, it is received. You create a better world -- just by thinking about it. And if you can attain to a no-mind state you create a space around you which is empty. In that empty space somebody else can become a Buddha someday. Hence, so much respect and so much honor is paid and so much reverence for some places in the world -- Mecca, Medina, or Jerusalem, or Girnar, Kailash. Thousands of people have become Buddhas from those spots. They have left a vacuum there, a very alive vacuum, and so powerful that no thoughts can enter into that vacuum. If you can find the right spot on Kailash and you can sit in that spot, suddenly you will be transformed -- you are in a whirlpool of no-mind. It will cleanse you. The same happens with negative as it happens with positive.


Whenever you feel something negative, immediately change it into positive -- sublimate it. I am not saying force it, I am not saying suppress it -- I am saying allow it, help it, to become the opposite; help it to move to the opposite. And it is not difficult! One just has to know the knack.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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