---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA7"
dategiven: "07 January 1976 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #7"
chaptertitle: "In a cold universe"
acode: "7601070"
shorttitle: "YOGA707"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "81mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7: Chapter #7"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
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<p class="sutra">15. THE VARIATION IN TRANSFORMATION IS CAUSED BY THE VARIETY IN THE UNDERLYING PROCESS.</p>
<p class="sutra">16 BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE THREE KINDS OF TRANSFORMATION -- NIRODH, SAMADHI AND EKAGRATA -- KNOWLEDGE OF PAST AND FUTURE.
17. THE SOUND AND THE PURPOSE AND IDEA BEHIND IT ARE TOGETHER IN THE MIND IN A CONFUSED STATE. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE SOUND, SEPARATION HAPPENS AND THERE ARISES COMPREHENSION OF THE MEANING OF SOUNDS MADE BY ANY LIVING BEING.</p>
<p class="sutra">18. BY OBSERVING PAST IMPRESSIONS, KNOWLEDGE OF PREVIOUS BIRTHS IS OBTAINED.</p>


There is a parable in Friedrich Nietzche's the gay science.


A madman enters a marketplace with a lantern, crying. "I see God! I see God!" but the busy crowd is unconcerned at his outbursts and laughs at his comical antics. Turning suddenly on them he demands, "Whither is God? I shall tell you, we have killed him -- you and I." But as they ignore the enormity of his announcement, he finally flings his lantern to the ground and cries. "I come too early. My time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way."


This parable is tremendously significant. As man grows, his God changes. Has to be so because man creates his own God in his own image. It is not vice versa. It is not as it is said in the Bible that God creates man in his own image. Man creates God in his own image. When man's image changes, his God obviously changes. And there comes a point in man's growth when God disappears completely. God as a personal God is out of the immature mind of humanity.


Existence as divine is a totally different concept. Then God is not a personal being somewhere high in the heaven ruling the world, manipulating, controlling, managing. No, all that nonsense disappears as man becomes mature. It is a childhood concept of God, a childish concept of God. If a small child is to understand God, he has to understand as a personal being. When humanity grows and becomes mature, that God is to die. Then a totally different existence arises. Now the whole existence is divine -- not that there is God.


For Nietzsche himself, this realization that there is no personal God was too much. He could not bear it: he went insane. He was not ready himself to understand what insight had happened to him. He himself was childish; he needed a personal God. But he meditated upon it, and as he meditated, the more and more he became aware that that God is no longer there in the skies. It is dead. And he also became aware that he has been killed by us.


Of course, if it was created by us, it has to be killed by us. The concept was created by man in his childhood. In his maturity the concept is dropped -- as when you were children you played with toys, then you became mature, and you forgot all about those toys. Suddenly one day you come across in a corner of the house, in the rubbish. An old toy. Then you remember how much you had loved it, but now it is meaningless. It has to be thrown; you have changed.


Man created the personal God, then man destroyed it. This realization was too much for Nietzsche himself; he became insane. His insanity is an indication that he was not prepared for the insight that happened to him.


But, in the East, Patanjali is absolutely godless. You cannot find a greater atheist than Patanjali, but it does not disturb him because really he is a grown-up man, really grown-up in consciousness, mature, integrated. For Buddha God doesn't exist....


If there is a personal God, he can forgive Friedrich Nietzsche because he will understand that this man still needed him. That man Nietzsche was still divided, confused -- half of his being was saying yes and half was saying no. If there is a personal God, he can even forgive Gautam Buddha because at least he denied him. He said. "There is no God." That too is paying attention. But he will not be able to forgive Patanjali. He used him. He not only not denied him, that he is not, he used the very concept as a device. He said, "For the ultimate growth of man, even the concept of God can be used as a hypothesis." Patanjali is absolutely cold about God, colder than Gautam Buddha, because when you say no there is a certain passion, when you say yes there is a certain passion -- in love, in hate, there is passion. Patanjali is absolutely indifferent. He says, "Yes, the concept of God can be used." He is the greatest atheist the world has ever known.


But in the West the concept of atheist is totally different. It is not yet mature. It is on the same plane as the theist is. The theist goes on saying "there is a God" in childish terminology, as a father, and the atheist goes on denying, that there is no such God. They both exist on the same plane. Patanjali is the real atheist, but it does not mean that he is irreligious. He is the really religious man. A really religious man cannot believe in God. It will look like a paradox.


A really religious man cannot believe in God because to believe in God he has to divide existence in two -- God and no God, the creator and the creation, this world and that, matter and mind. He has to divide, and how can a religious man divide? He does not believe in God; he comes to understand the very divinity of existence. Then the whole existence is divine; then all that is there is divine. Then every place is a temple, and wherever you move and whatsoever you do you are moving in God and you are doing to God. The total -- you included -- becomes divine. This has to be understood.


Yoga is a perfect science. It does not teach to believe; it teaches to know. It does not say to you. "Become blind followers"; it says. "Open your eyes," and it gives you the method how to open your eyes. It does not say anything about the truth. It simply says everything about your vision how to attain the vision, the capacity to see, the eyes, so that whatsoever there is is revealed to you. It is more than you can ever conceive of; it is more than all your gods put together. It is infinite divineness.


One thing more about this parable. The madman said. "I come too early. My time has not come yet." Patanjali came really too early. His time has not come yet. He is still waiting for his time. It always happens people who realize truth are always ahead of their time -- sometimes thousands of years ahead. Patanjali is still ahead of time. Five thousand years have passed; still his time has not come yet. The inner world of man has not yet become a science. He has given all the foundations; he has given the whole structure. The structure is waiting for humanity to come close and to understand it.


Our religions, so-called religions, are juvenile. Patanjali is a giant, a pinnacle of a man. His height is so much that you cannot see the peak; it is hidden somewhere in the clouds. But everything about him is absolutely clear. If you are ready not to cling to your confusions, if you are ready to follow the path that he shows, everything is absolutely clear. About this man Patanjali there is nothing like mysticism. He is a mathematician of the mystery; he is a logician of the illogical; he is a scientist of the unknown. And it is tremendous even to conceive that one man has put the whole science together. Nothing is lacking, but the science is waiting for humanity to come close so that the science can be understood.


Man understands only that which he wants to understand. His understanding is dominated by his desires. That's why Patanjali, Buddha. Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, they always feel they have come too early. Because man is still asking for toys to play with. He is not ready to grow. He does not want to grow. He clings to stupidities. He has invested too much in his ignorance and he goes on deceiving himself.


Just watch yourself. When you talk about God -- you are not talking about God you are talking about your God. And what sort of God can your God be? It cannot be more Than you; it can only be less than you. It cannot be more beautiful than you; it can only be more ugly than you. It cannot be a clarity. It is bound to be a confusion, because in the concept of your God you will be involved. It cannot go higher than you. Your height -- at the most -- can be the height of your God.


People think according to their desires, ambitions, egos, and everything becomes colored by it.


It happened that Mulla Nasrudin contested an election:


He received only three votes. His wife, when she came to know, turned to him and snapped, "There! I always knew you were keeping another woman!"


One vote of Nasrudin, himself, one his wife, and from where comes the other? The jealous mind thinks in terms of jealousy. The possessive mind thinks in terms of possessiveness. The angry mind thinks in terms of anger.


Look at the Jewish God. He is as possessive as any man can be. He is as egoistic as any man can be. He is as revengeful as any man can be. He does not look divine at all. He looks more like a devil than like a god. The whole myth of Adam being turned out of the garden of Eden shows nothing much about Adam, but it shows much about the God. "Because Adam disobeyed" -- what type of God is that who cannot tolerate such a small disobedience, very intolerant, who cannot tolerate a little freedom? That God may be a slave owner, but he is not a god.


What was the sin of Adam in fact? Curiosity, nothing else. Because God had said, "Don't eat the fruit of this tree. This is the tree of knowledge," and Adam became curious. Simple, very human. To think otherwise is impossible. And for that small thing -- how can you call it a sin? That is the whole base of all scientific curiosity and inquiry. All scientists are sinners. Patanjali, Buddha. Zarathustra -- all are sinners because they are tremendously curious to know what truth is, what life is. They are all Adams. But the Jewish God could not tolerate; he became mad. He turned Adam out of the garden the greatest sin has been committed. Curiosity is a sin? The effort to know the unknown is a sin? Then to seek truth is a sin. Disobeying, being rebellious is a sin? Then all great religious people are sinners because they are all rebellious.


No, it has nothing to do with God. It has something to do with the Jewish mind, small mind thinking about God, creating a God in its own image.


Mulla Nasrudin once staggered from a train, his complexion very white. I had gone to the station to receive him.


"Riding backwards for ten hours," he explained, "I never could stand that."


"Why," I inquired, "didn't you ask the person sitting opposite to change seats with you?"


"I could not do that." said the Mulla. "There wasn't anybody there."


There is nobody in the sky to listen to your prayers. Whatsoever you want to do, do. There is nobody who is going to give you permission to do it. Whatsoever you want to be, be. There is nobody you have to look to for the permission. Existence is free and available. This is the understanding of yoga: that existence is available to everybody. Whatsoever you want to be, you can be. Everything is ready. Don't wait for anybody's permission because there is nobody. The opposite seat is vacant -- if you want to sit, you can sit on it.


Mulla looks absurd, ridiculous, but that's what the whole of humanity has been doing for centuries looking at the sky, asking permission, praying -- to somebody who is not there. Prayer is not the right thing; the right thing is to meditate. And what is the difference? When you pray you have to believe in someone who is listening to your prayer. When you meditate you meditate alone. In prayer the other is required; in meditation you alone are enough.


Yoga is meditative. It has no place for prayer, because it has no place for God. It has no place for any childish notions about God.


Let this become a constant remembrance in you if you really want to be religious, you will have to pass through the state of atheism. If you really want to be authentically religious, then don't start by being a theist. Start by being an atheist. Start by being an Adam. Adam is the beginning of Christ. Adam starts the circle and Christ ends the circle. Start by saying no so that your yes can mean something. Don't be afraid and don't believe out of fear. If you have to believe someday, only believe out of knowing and love -- never out of fear.


That's why Christianity could not develop a yoga, Judaism could not develop a yoga, Mohammedanism could not develop a yoga. Yoga was developed by people who were courageous enough to say no to all beliefs, to all blind faiths, who were able to deny the convenience of belief to themselves and who, were ready to inquire and go into the wildness of their own being.


It is a tremendous responsibility. To be an atheist is to be very deeply responsible because when there is no God you are left alone in a cold world. When there is no God you are left alone with nothing to hang on to, with nothing to cling to. Great courage is needed, and you have to create the warmth out of your own being. This is the whole meaning of yoga to create warmth out of your own being. The existence is cold. No hypothetical God can give you warmth. You are simply dreaming. It may be a wish fulfillment, but it is not true. And it is better to be cold but to remain with truth than to live surrounded by lies and feel warm.


Yoga says realize the truth that you are alone. You are given an existence; now you have to create meaning out of it. Meaning is not already given.


Existentialists in the West say something with which Patanjali will agree totally. Existentialists say existence precedes essence. Let me explain it to you.


A rock is there. A rock's essence is given; it is already given. Its existence is its essence also. The rock is not going to grow: it is already that which it can be. But man is different man is born -- he brings his existence, but the essence is not given yet. He comes as an emptiness. Now he has to fill that emptiness by his own effort. He has to create meaning: he has to grope in the dark; he has to work it out, what life means. He has to discover; he has to be creative. Existence is given, essence has to be created -- and every moment the way you live, you create your essence. If you don't create it you will not have it.


People come to me and they ask, "Please tell us what is the meaning of life." As if meaning is given somewhere. Meaning is not given you have to create it.


And this is beautiful. If meaning was already given, man would have been a rock. Then there was no possibility to grow, no possibility to discover, no possibility to adventure -- no possibility. In fact, everything closed -- a rock is closed from every dimension. It is already that which it can be, but man is not already... only a possibility, a trembling possibility, with infinite future, with a thousand and one alternatives. It will depend on you who and what you become.


You are responsible. When there is no God the responsibility falls totally on you. That's why weaklings go on believing in God. Only very strong men can stand alone. But this is a basic necessity -- for yoga this is a basic requirement that you stand alone and that you come to realize that the meaning is not given; you have to search for it. You have to create it. You will come to a meaning -- life can come to a meaning -- but that meaning will have to be discovered by your own effort. Whatsoever you do will go on revealing you. Every act will make your life, your existence, more and more meaningful.


Only if this is the truth is yoga then possible. Otherwise, go on praying: otherwise go on kneeling down on the earth, go on praying to your own ideas and go on interpreting your own prayer, and live in a hallucination, live in an illusion.


Sigmund Freud has written a book. The name of the book is very significant THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION. The book is about religion. It is a misfortune that he never became aware of Patanjali; otherwise he would not have written that book -- because religion can exist without illusion. To Sigmund Freud religion means Christianity and Judaism. He was not aware of the depths of Eastern religions. Western religions are more or less political. Much of them is not religious at all; they are superficial. Eastern religions have gone to the very depth, and this is the depth where you deny God also and you say now there is no need to depend. Whenever you think you need somebody to depend on, you will create an illusion.


To realize that one is alone in a cold universe -- and there is nobody to pray to, and there is nobody to complain to, and there is nobody who is going to help you -- only you -- it is a tremendous responsibility. One staggers, one feels afraid, one starts trembling. Anguish arises, a great anxiety is created by the very fact that you are left alone.


"God is dead" Nietzsche said it only a hundred years before; Patanjali knew it five thousand years before. All those who have come nearer truth have known that God is man's imagination. It is man s interpretation, a lie, to give yourself a warmth.


People go on interpreting in their own ways. The whole concern of yoga is that you drop all interpretations, let your eyes be not clouded by any hypothesis and belief, look direct, look unclouded, look without smoke. Let your flame be without smoke and see whatsoever there is.


Overheard in a park; two men were describing their wives to each other:
"Mine is like Venus de Milo."


"You mean she has a shapely figure and stands about naked?" asked the other.
"No, she is an old relic and she is not all there."
"Mine makes me think of Mona Lisa."


"Do you mean she is French and has an enigmatic smile?"


"No, she is as flat as a canvas and she ought to be in a museum.

People go on interpreting.


Always listen to their meaning, not to their words. Always listen to their innermost being, not the sounds that they make on the outside. What they say is not significant... what they are.


Your God, your prayer, is not significant. Your churches, your temples, are not significant. Only you. When you pray, I don't listen to your prayer. I listen to you. When you kneel down on the earth, I don't see your gesture, I see you. It is out of fear -- and a religion out of fear is impossible. Religion is possible only out of understanding. That's the effort of Patanjali.


But with Patanjali, also, people go on interpreting. They bring their minds and then Patanjali is there no more. They listen to their own heartbeats in him.


In a small school the teacher asked a tardy student, "Why are you late?"
"Well, a sign down the street said -- ."


The teacher interrupting, "Now what can a sign possibly, have to do with it?"


"The sign said," said the student, "'School ahead. Go slow."


It depends on you what you will understand when you read Patanjali. Unless you can leave yourself behind, you will misunderstand. Understanding is possible only when you are absolutely absent -- you don't interfere, you don't interrupt, you don't give colors, shapes, and forms. You simply see, with no idea, no prejudice.
Now the sutras.
<p class="sutra">THE VARIATION IN TRANSFORMATION IS CAUSED BY THE VARIETY IN THE UNDERLYING PROCESSES.</p>


You have heard about so many miracles, so many siddhis. Patanjali says there is no miracle possible all miracles follow a certain law. The law may not be known. When the law is not known, people think out of their ignorance that it is a miracle. Patanjali believes in no miracles. He is utterly scientific in his understanding. He says if something happens there must be a law. The law may not be known, you may be ignorant about it -- even the person who is doing the miracle may be unaware of the law, but he has come, stumbled upon how to use it and he is using it.


This is the basic sutra for all miracles "The variation in transformation is caused by the variety in the underlying processes." If you change the underlying process, the manifestation changes. You may not be aware of the underlying process; you just see the manifestation. Because you just see the manifestation and you cannot go deep and you cannot see the underlying process, the undercurrent of the basic law, you think there is a miracle. There are no miracles.


For example, alchemists in the West tried hard for centuries to transform base metal into gold. There are reports that a few of them did succeed. Scientists had always been denying it, but now science itself has succeeded in it. Now you cannot deny -- now we know the underlying process. Now physics says that the whole world consists of atoms, and atoms consist of electrons. Then what is the difference between gold and steel? The difference is not in the basic reality; both consist of electrons, electric particles. Then what is the difference? Then why are they different? Gold, iron, they are different. And what is the difference? The difference is only in the structure, not in the basic substance.


Sometimes electrons are more, sometimes less -- that makes the difference. The quantity makes the difference, but the substance is the same. The structure is different. You can make many types of houses with the same bricks. The bricks are the same. You can make a poor man's hut and you can make a king's palace -- the bricks are the same. The basic reality is the same. If you want, the hut can be transformed into a palace and the palace can be transformed into a hut.


This is the basic sutra of Patanjali "The variation in transformation is caused by the variety in the underlying processes." So if you understand the underlying process you become capable of things which ordinarily people are not capable of doing.
<p class="sutra">BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE THREE KINDS OF TRANSFORMATION -- NIRODH, SAMADHI, AND EKAGRATA -- KNOWLEDGE OF PAST AND FUTURE.</p>


If you concentrate on nirodh, the gaps between two thoughts, and you go on piling up those gaps, you go on accumulating those gaps that is what Patanjali calls samadhi -- and then arises in you a situation where you become one and one-pointed -- ekagrata -- if this happens knowledge of the past and the future.


It will be a miracle if you can know the future. It is not a miracle.


There is a scientific record about a very rare man in the West, Swedenborg. He wrote a letter to Wesley, a famous priest, and told him, "In the world of the spirits, I have heard the rumor that you want to see me." Wesley was surprised because he was thinking to see him, but he had not said so to anybody. He could not believe it. He wrote a letter saying. "I am simply amazed. I don't know what you mean by the world of spirits, I don't know what you mean that you have heard the rumor, but this is certain that I have been thinking to see you -- and I have not said this to anybody I will be coming on such and such date, because I am going for a tour, and three, four months afterwards I will be coming to you." Swedenborg wrote to him, "That is not possible because, exactly on that date, I have heard the rumor in the world of the spirits that I am going to die." And exactly on That date he died.


Swedenborg was staying with a few friends at a holiday resort, and suddenly he started crying, "Fire! Fire!" They could not believe what he was saying. They ran out. There was no fire -- nothing a small village, a seaside village. They asked him what he meant -- and he was perspiring as if there was fire, and he was so trembling. Then he said. "Nearabout three hundred miles away a town is on fire." A horseman was sent immediately. He was right. The town was on fire, and at that moment the people of the town became aware, when he said. "Fire! Fire!"


The queen of Sweden became interested in this man. She said, "Can you say something to me which can give me proof that you move in the world of the spirits?" He closed his eyes and he said, "In your palace," where he had never been because he had never been called before to the palace and it was not a public place where anybody could go.... He said, "In a certain room," the number of the room, "in a certain drawer, which is locked, and the key will be found in another room, open it. Your husband has left a letter for you." The husband had been dead for almost twelve years. "And this is the message on the letter...." He wrote the message. The room was found, the key was searched for and found, the drawer was opened, and there was a letter and exactly those were the words that Swedenborg had written on the piece of paper.


Patanjali says if nirodh is accomplished it becomes samadhi. If samadhi is attained, one becomes one-pointed, consciousness becomes a sword, a sharp, one-pointed thing knowledge of past and future. Because then for you time disappears and you become part of eternity. Then past is not past for you and future is not future for you. Then for you all the three are available simultaneously.


But this is not a miracle. This is a simple Law, a basic Law. One has to understand and use it.
<p class="sutra">THE SOUND AND THE PURPOSE AND IDEA BEHIND IT
ARE TOGETHER IN THE MIND IN A CONFUSED STATE.
BY PERFORMING samyama ON THE SOUND.
SEPARATION HAPPENS AND THERE ARISES COMPREHENSION</p>
<p class="sutra">OF THE MEANING OF SOUNDS MADE BY ANY LIVING BEING.</p>


And Patanjali says if you bring your samyama -- that is your dharana, concentration; your contemplation dhyan; and your samadhi if you bring all these three -- one-pointed -- on any sound uttered by any living being -- animal, bird -- you will understand the meaning of it.


In the West there are stories about St. Francis that he would talk to animals. He would even talk to donkeys and say. "Brother Donkey." He would move into the forest and talk to the birds, and birds would come to him. Once, he called from the bank of the river, "Sisters." as he used to call the fish, and thousands of fish took their heads up all over the river to listen to him. These are records which have been witnessed by many people.


It is said about Lukman, who created the unani system of medicine, that he would go to the trees and ask their properties -- "For what disease can you be used, sir?" -- and the tree would answer. In fact he has reported so many medicines that modern scientists are simply bewildered because methods were not there: experiment was not possible. Only just now are we becoming capable of entering into the hidden properties of things, but Lukman has talked about them.


Patanjali says this too is not a miracle. If you concentrate -- you become one and you listen to the sound without any thought -- the very sound will reveal to you the truth behind it. It is not a question of understanding the language; it is a question of understanding the silence. If you are in silence you can understand silence. Ordinarily, if you know English you can understand English, if you know French you can understand French. The same is true if you are silent you can understand silence. That is the language of the whole.


In one-pointedness one becomes absolutely silent. In that absolute silence everything is revealed -- but not a miracle. Patanjali does not like the word "miracle." He is a man of science. There is nothing magic-like in it; it is simple.


I was at Mulla Nasrudin's house one day. Mulla Nasrudin and his wife were in the kitchen washing the dishes. I and Nasrudin's little son Fajalu were in the living room watching television. Suddenly there was a crash of falling dishes. I and Fajalu listened but heard nothing more.


"It was Mother who dropped them," little Fajalu announced, finally.
I was amazed. "How do you know?" I asked him.
"Because she is not saying anything."


There is a way of understanding when nothing is said -- because that says something. Silence is not just empty. Silence has its own messages. Because you are much too filled with thoughts, you cannot understand, you cannot hear, that small, still voice within.


Just listen to a cuckoo, the cuckoo's song. Patanjali says listen so meditatively that your thoughts disappear -- nirodh comes. Not in gaps showers on you like samadhi. No thoughts interfere, no distraction one-pointedness arises. Suddenly you are one with the cuckoo, you understand why she is calling, because we are part of one whole. Behind that sound there is a hidden meaning in the cuckoo's heart: if you are silent you will be able to understand it.


Patanjali says "The sound and the purpose and idea behind it are together in the mind in a confused state. By performing samyama on the sound, separation happens and there arises comprehension of the meaning of sounds made by any living being."


Mulla Nasrudin stood in an auction room all afternoon waiting for lot 455 which was a South American parrot in a chromium cage. Finally his chance came and the parrot was put up for sale. The Mulla bought it, but it cost him far more money then he had expected to spend on it. Still, his wife badly wanted one just like it.


As the assistant came down to him to get his name and address he said, "You have got yourself a nice bird there, sir."


The Mulla said, "I know. He is a beauty. Just one thing, I forgot to ask if that parrot can talk."


The assistant's eyebrows went up. "Talk?" he said, "Hell, he was bidding against you for the last five minutes!"


But we are so occupied in our own thoughts, who listens? Who listens to a parrot? People don't listen to their lovers. Who listens to the wife? Who listens to the husband? Who listens to the father, or who listens to the child? People are so occupied, preoccupied in their heads -- hung up -- there is no possibility for listening. Listening needs silence. Listening needs attentiveness. Listening needs a deep passivity, a receptivity. It is not absent-mindedness -- it is full of attention, full of awareness, full of light: but passive.
<p class="sutra">BY OBSERVING PAST IMPRESSIONS,
KNOWLEDGE OF PREVIOUS BIRTH IS OBTAINED.</p>


And when you become silent -- what Patanjali calls ekagrata parinam, the transformation that brings you one-pointedness of consciousness -- when that arises you can look into your past impressions. You can move backwards and you can go to your past lives. And that is very, very significant, because once you can look into your past lives you will instantly become different. It is because you have forgotten all that you have lived before, you go on repeating the old nonsense again and again.


If you can see back and you can see again the same pattern, again the same pattern... that you were jealous, that you were possessive, that you were full of hate and anger, that you were greedy, that you were trying to become powerful in the world, trying to attain to riches, success, ambition, that you were an egoist again and again and always you failed and always death came and all that you were doing was disrupted, and again you started the same game again.... If you go back and you can see millions of lives spread all over eternity, can you be the same? Can you still move into greed when you see the frustration that it has been bringing to you?


But we forget. The past is absorbed by ignorance; it moves into a dark night. An oblivion falls, a curtain, and you cannot move back.


The proprietor of an art gallery in Bombay showing pictures to a customer who did not know what he liked, tried out a landscape, a still life, a portrait, and a floral piece, all without results.


"Would you be interested in a nude?" the proprietor of the gallery asked in desperation. "Would you be interested in a nude?"


"Good heavens, no," said the visitor. "I am a gynecologist.


Please don't suspect anything about Dr. Phadnis! He has told me not to tell you.


If you are a gynecologist, how can you be interested in a nude? In fact it is impossible to be interested in the body. The more you know, the less the fascination. The more you know, the less the obsession. The more you know, the more the futility.


If one can move back into the past impressions of past lives... And that is simple just one-pointedness is needed. Buddha has told his past-life stories, the JATAK STORIES; they are a treasure. Never before had anybody done that. Each story is significant -- because that is the story of all humanity, all humanness the stupidity of man, the greed, the jealousy, the anger, the compassion, the love. If you can see back, that very vision will change your future. You will not be the same again.


A gentleman in the seventies got his nerve together and took a flight in an airplane. As he climbed out after the ride he turned to the pilot and said. "Sir, I wish to thank you for both of those rides."


"What are you talking about?" said the pilot. "You had only one ride."


"No, sir," said the passenger, "I had two -- my first and my last."


Experience transforms, but to transform you the experience needs to be conscious. Unconscious experience cannot change you. You have lived the same pattern that you are living now -- many times -- but you go on forgetting about it. Then again you start the same rut, as if something new is being started. Many times you have fallen in love and many times you were frustrated. Again you are seeking the old ways.


Your body may be new: your mind is not new. Your body is just like a new bottle, and your mind is very old wine. The bottles go on changing and the wine goes on remaining the same.


Patanjali says that if you become one-pointed -- and you can become because there is no secret in it; just effort, perseverance, patience is needed -- you will be able to see all that you have been before. Just the vision of it, and your pattern will collapse. No miracle in it; it is a simple, natural law.


The problem arises because you are unconscious. The problem arises because you have been dying and being born again and again, but each time, somehow, a curtain falls and your own past is hidden from you. You are like an iceberg, only a small part on the surface and the major part is under the surface. Your personality right now is just a small part protruding out of the surface. All your past is just underneath, underneath the surface. Once you become aware of it, nothing else is needed. That very awareness becomes a revolution.


Quizzing a bunch of recruits, the Marine sergeant asked. "Jones, when you clean a rifle what is the first thing you do?"
"Look at the number," the man replied promptly.


"Now, what on earth has that got to do with cleaning a rifle?" the sergeant demanded.


"Just want to make sure," replied Jones, "that I am cleaning my own."


That is the point where everybody goes on missing. You don't know who you are; you don't know what is your number; you don't know what you have been doing all along. You have become very clever in forgetting things. Now psychoanalysts say that whatsoever is painful, man tends to forget it. Not that you really forget -- it remains part of your unconscious. In deep hypnosis it comes up, bubbles up. In deep hypnosis everything comes back.


For example, if I ask you what you did on the first of January. 1961, you cannot remember. You were, of course, there. The first of January, 1961, you were alive, all of you were there, but what you did from the morning till the evening you don't remember. Then go to a hypnotist and allow yourself to be hypnotized. In deep hypnosis he will ask, "What did you do on the first of January, 1961?" And you will relate everything, even the minute details -- that you went for a walk in the morning and it was beautiful, and there was dew on the grass, and you can still remember the coldness of the morning, and the hedges were being cut in the garden and you can still remember, you can almost smell again, the fragrance of the new hedges being cut, and the sun rising.... And small details, minute details, and the whole day as if you again live it. When you are brought out of hypnosis you have forgotten again.


It seems that to remember all will be too much for you, it will become too much of a burden, so you go on throwing it in the basement of the consciousness. The basement has to be searched because there are hidden treasures also, and the basements have to be searched because only searching through it will you become aware of your foolishness that you have been repeating continuously. You can go beyond it only when you have understood it. A basement understood becomes the passage for a higher story of your being.


Modern psychology says there are two divisions of consciousness the conscious and the unconscious. Yoga psychology says there is one more division: the superconscious. You live on the ground floor, that is consciousness. Beneath it is a great basement, the unconscious -- the whole accumulated past. And when I say the whole accumulated past I mean all your lives as man, all your lives as animals, all your lives as birds, all your lives as trees, plants, all your lives as rocks, metals -- from the very beginning, if there was any beginning, or from the very beginningless beginning. All that has happened to you, all transformations, they are all accumulated in the basement. One has to go through it.


The very understanding will give you the key of the staircase from where you can go to the superconscious.


Patanjali says it happens according to a simple law. All miracles happen according to a simple law the law when you become one-pointed. There is only one miracle, and that is the miracle of becoming one-pointed.


These sutras are the very base for a future science to develop, one day or other. Now the basic work has started in the West. Much is being done as far as the supersensible is concerned; much is being done for the paranormal. But still everything is in the dark; people are groping. When things become more clear, Patanjali is going to take his right place in the history of human consciousness. He is incomparable -- the first scientist who does not believe in any superstition, in any miracle, and who reduces everything to a scientific law.


"By observing past impressions, knowledge of previous birth is obtained." In Primal Therapy you do a little work on these lines; you go a little backward, up to your birth in this life. That is just spadework. If you succeed in that then you can be helped more deeply you can be helped to remember the days in the womb. I am going to start a new therapy, Hypnotherapy. Soon, when you have done Primal and you have succeeded in it, then Hypnotherapy can help you to go deeper, to remember the days in the womb; then go still deeper and to remember your last life, when you died; then go still deeper into your last life's details.


If you can go in one life's detail then you have the key, then you can open all the past doors.


But why open the past doors? Because in the past is hidden the future. If you know your past you will not repeat it in the future. If you don't know it you will go on repeating it again and again and again. The very knowledge of the past becomes a guarantee that now you will not repeat it in the future; in the future you are going to be a totally new man; The yoga is the science of the new man.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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