---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 8"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA8"
dategiven: "19 April 1976 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #9"
chaptertitle: "Loosening the cause of bondage"
acode: "7604190"
shorttitle: "YOGA809"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "92mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 8: Chapter #9"
---

```style
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  font-style: italic;
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<p class="sutra">39. LOOSENING THE CAUSE OF BONDAGE AND KNOWING THE CHANNELS ALLOWS THE MIND TO ENTER ANOTHER'S BODY.</p>
<p class="sutra">40. BY MASTERING THE CURRENT UDANA, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO LEVITATE AND PASS WITHOUT CONTACT OVER WATER, MIRE, THORSN, ETC.
41. BY MASTERING THE CURRENT SAMANA, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO CAUSE HIS GASTRIC FIRE TO BLAZE.</p>
<p class="sutra">42. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ETHER AND THE EAR, SUPERPHYSICAL HEARING BECOMES AVAILABLE.
43. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE ETHER AND AT THE SAME TIME IDENTIFYING HIMSELF WITH LIGHT THINGS, LIKE COTTON DOWN, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO PASS THROUGH SPACE.</p>


A HUNDRED years before, one of the greatest thinkers of the world, Friedrich Nietzsche, declared that God is dead. He was declaring something which was becoming clearer to everybody. He simply declared the feeling of all the thinkers of the world, particularly the science oriented people. Science was winning every day against religion, superstition; and science was conquering so much that it was almost certain that in the future God cannot exist, religion cannot exist. It was felt all over the world that God has become part of history and God will exist in the museums, in the libraries, in the books, but not in human consciousness. It was felt as if matter has won the last, final war with God.


When Nietzsche declared God is dead, he meant that now life will not in any way be a destiny. It has become accidental, because God is nothing but the coordinating principle of life. God is the organic unity of life. God is that energy which has glued everything together. God is that law which has made a cosmos out of a chaos. Once God is not there, the coordinating principle is not there, the world again becomes a chaos, just an accident. With God disappears all order. With God disappears all principle. With God disappears all possibility to understand life. And with God man also disappears.


Nietzsche himself declared that God is dead and man is free now, but in fact once God is dead, man is not there. Then man is just matter, nothing more -- explainable, is a mystery no more, has depth no more, has infinity no more, and has meaning no more, significance no more, is just an accident -- has appeared accidentally, will disappear accidentally.


But Nietzsche proved wrong. It appears that it was something like the age of scientific youth; the nineteenth century was the age of science's coming of age. And as every youth is too full of confidence, too optimistic, in fact foolishly optimistic, the same was the case with science also. In Tibet they have a saying that every young man thinks old people to be fools, but every old man knows that all young people are fools. Young people only think, but old people know. Science was the youngest growth in human consciousness, and science was much too confident. It even declared God is dead and religion is no longer relevant, it is "out of context." Religion was part of humanity's childhood, they declared. Freud wrote a book, THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION -- about religion, that it is just an illusion and there is no future really.


But God survived, and a miracle has happened within these hundred years. If Nietzsche comes back he will not be able to believe what has happened. The more the scientific mind penetrated into matter, the more it came to know that matter does not exist. God survived, matter died. Matter has almost disappeared from scientific vocabulary. It exists in ordinary language, but it is just because of old habit; otherwise there is no matter now. The deeper the scientific penetration became, the deeper they came to understand that it is energy not matter. Matter was a misunderstanding. Energy is moving so fast, with such tremendous speed, that it gives an illusion of something solid. The solidity is just an illusion.


God is not illusory. The solidity of the world is illusory. The solidity of these walls is illusory; they appear solid because the energy particles, electrons, are moving at such a speed that you cannot see the movement.


Have you watched sometimes the electric fan going very fast? Then you cannot see the wings, the blades. And if the electric fan is really moving with such speed, as electrons, you can sit upon it and you will not fall down, and you will not feel the movement. You can hit it with a bullet and the bullet will not pass between the gaps, because the speed of the bullet w ill not be so much as the speed of the blades.


This is what is happening. Matter has disappeared, has no more validity.


But what science has discovered is not really a discovery; it is a rediscovery. Yoga has been talking about it for five thousand years -- at least. Yoga calls that energy prana. This word prana is very significant, very meaningful, pregnant with meaning. It is made out of two Sanskrit roots. One is pra; pra means the basic unit of energy, the most fundamental unit of energy. And na means energy. Prana means: the most fundamental unit is energy. Matter is just the surface. Prana is the real thing there is -- and it is not a thing at all. It is more like a no-thing, or you can call it almost nothing. Nothing means no-thing. Nothing does not mean nothing; nothing simply means that it is not a thing. It is not solid, it is not static, it is not visible, it is not tangible. It is there, but you cannot touch it. It is there, but you cannot see it. It is there, beyond and beneath every phenomenon. But it is the most fundamental unit; you cannot go beyond it.


Prana is the basic unit of the whole of life. Rocks, trees, birds, man, God, everything is a manifestation of prana, on different levels, on different understandings, on different integrations. The same prana moves and manifests as millions, as many, but the basic unit is one.


Unless you come to know prana within yourself, you will not be able to know what God is. And if you cannot know it within yourself, you cannot know it without, because within you it is so close. That's why Patanjali could know it five thousand years before Albert Einstein and company. Five thousand years is a long time for science to come to understand it, but they were trying from the outside. Patanjali dived deep into his own being; it was a subjective experience. And science has been trying to know it objectively. If you want to know something objectively, you have taken a very long route. That's why so much delay. If you go within, you have found the shortest route to know what it is.


Ordinarily you don't know who you are, where you are. What are you doing here? People come to me and they say, "What are we doing here? Why are we? For what?" I can understand their confusion, but wherever you are and whatsoever you are doing the problem will remain the same -- unless you understand the source from where you come, unless you understand the basic structure of your being, unless you come to know your prana, your energy.
I have heard, it happened:


Mulla Nasruddin visited a field and filled his bag full of melons. He was about to leave when the owner showed up.
"I was passing by," Mulla began to explain, "when suddenly a strong wind blew me over to the fence and into the field."
"What about the melons?" the owner asked.
"The wind was so strong, sir, that I clutched at anything I could get my hands on. And that's how the melons came loose."
"But who put them into your bag?"
"To tell the truth," Mulla replied, "I was wondering about that myself."


This is the situation. How are you here? Why are you here? Who has put you into the bag? Everybody is wondering.


Philosophy, they say, comes out of wonder; but don't go on continuously simply wondering and wondering. Otherwise wondering becomes a sort of wandering. Then you never reach. Rather than simply wondering, try to do something. You are here, that much is certain. You are alert that you are here, that much is also certain. Now these two ingredients are enough for yoga experimentation. You are: the being is there. You are aware that you are: the consciousness is there. These two are enough to make a lab out of your being for yoga experimentation.


Yoga does not need sophisticated, complicated things for its work. It is the simplest. Two things: you and your awareness that you are. Enough. These two you have; everybody has them. Nobody is lacking in these two things. You have a certain feel that you are, and of course you are aware of that certain feel. These two things are enough. That's why yogis had no laboratories, no sophisticated instrumentation -- and they never needed any grant from Rockefeller or Ford. They needed only just a little bread, water, and they will come and beg in the town and will disappear for days. After a week or two they will come again and beg again and they will disappear again.


They did the greatest experiment: the experiment in human reality. And only with two small things, but those small things are not small. Once you know them they are the biggest phenomenon ever.


So the first thing about today's sutras is the discovery of prana. That became the very foundation of the temple of yoga. You are breathing. Yoga says you are not only breathing air; you are also breathing prana. In fact air is just a vehicle for prana, just a medium. You are not alive by breath. Breath is just like a horse, and you have not looked at the rider yet. The rider is prana.


Now many psychoanalysts have come across this mysterious thing -- the rider who is coming on the breath, going on the breath, continuously moving in and out. But yet in the West it is not a recognized scientific fact. It should be because now science says matter is no longer there and everything is energy. The stone, the rock, is energy; you are energy. So there must be happening many energy games within you, tides and ebbs of energy.


Freud stumbled upon this fact. I say "stumbled upon it" because his eyes were not open; he was very blindfolded. He was not a yogi. He was again caught in the scientific attitude of making everything objective. He called it "libido." If you ask the yogis they will say libido is prana ill. When prana is not vital, when somehow the energy of prana has become dammed up, blocked; that's what Freud has come to know. And that's explainable because he was working only with ill people, neurotics, mad people, mentals. And working on ill, mentally disturbed people he came to know that their bodies are carrying some blocked energy and unless that energy is released, they will not be healthy again. Yogis say libido is prana gone wrong. It is just a diseased prana. But still Freud stumbled upon something which later on can become very, very significant.


And one of his disciples, Wilhelm Reich, went deeper into it, but he was caught by the American government because he could not prove very scientifically, that is very objectively, what he was saying. He died in jail as a madman, certified as mad. He was one of the greatest men ever born in the West. But again he was working blindfolded. He was not yet working as a yogi has to work. The scientific attitude was his undoing.


Reich tried to make contact with this energy the yogis call prana, and he called it "orgone." "Orgone" is better than "libido" because "libido" gives a feeling as if all is sexual energy. "Orgone" is a better word, more inclusive, more comprehensive, bigger than "libido," and gives a possibility for the energy to move beyond sex or to touch higher realms of being which are not sexual. But he got into trouble because he felt it so much and he observed so much that he started to accumulate the prana energy, the orgone, in boxes. He made orgone boxes. Nothing is wrong in them; yogis have been working on that for centuries. That's why yogis try to live in almost boxlike caves, with only one small door.


Now those caves look very unhygienic, and how did they live there for years? No air goes in because there is no cross ventilation. So dark, dingy, and yogis have lived so perfectly and so healthily that it is almost a miracle. What were they doing there and how were they living there? According to the modern Scientific ideology they should have died, or at the most they should have lived as very ill people, depressed; but yogis have never been depressed. They are one of the most vital people to come across, very alive. What were they doing? What was happening? They were creating orgone, and for orgone to stay in a particular place, cross ventilation is not needed; in fact cross ventilation wi]l not allow the orgone to accumulate because once the air comes there the orgone energy is a rider -- it jumps on the air and moves out. No air passage is needed; then layers upon layers of orgone go on accumulating, and one can thrive on it and live on it.


Wilhelm Reich created small orgone boxes, and he he]ped many ill people. He will tell them just to lie down in the orgone box, and he will close the box and tell them to rest; and within an hour the person is out, feeling very vital, alive, tingling all over with energy. And many people have reported that their diseases disappeared after a few experimentations with the orgone.


The orgone box was so effective that without knowing the laws of the country and without bothering about them, Wilhelm Reich started to produce them on a mass basis and he started selling them. Then he was caught by the Food and Drug Administration and he was asked to prove it. Now it is difficult to prove because the energy is not tangible. You cannot show it to anybody. It is an experience; and a very inner experience.


You don't ask Albert Einstein to show electrons, but you can believe in him because you can go and see Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You can see the effect; you cannot see the cause, Nobody has yet seen the atom, but the atom is, because it can produce effects.


Buddha has defined truth as that which can produce effects. Buddha's very definition of truth is very beautiful. Never again and never before has there been such a beautiful definition of truth: that which can produce effects. If it can produce effects it is true.


Nobody has seen the atom, but we have to believe it because of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But nobody listened to Wilhelm Reich and his patients. There were many who were ready to certify, "We have been cured," but this is how -- once some attitude becomes generally accepted -- people become blind. They said, "All these people are hypnotized. In the first place they must not have been ill -- or they have imagined themselves cured -- or it is nothing but suggestibility." Now you cannot go and tell people who have died in Hiroshima, "You have imagined that you are dead"; they have simply disappeared.


Just see the thing: death is more believable than life.


And the whole modern world is more death-oriented than life-oriented. If you kill a person you will be reported by all the newspapers; you will become a headline. But if you revive a person, nobody will ever come to know about it. If you murder, your name becomes a famous name, but if you give life to people, nobody is going to believe in you. They will say you are a charlatan or a deceiver.


That has always been so. Nobody believed Jesus; they killed him. Nobody believed Socrates; they killed him. They have killed even a very innocent man like Aesop, the famous story teller. He never did anything, he never created a religion or a philosophy, and he was not saying anything against anybody. He was just creating a few beautiful parables. But those parables offended people because he was saying such great truths in those parables and in such a simple way that he was murdered.


You go on killing people who have been affirmative, life enhancing. You ask for proofs.


If somebody comes to me and asks what I am doing here, it will be difficult. If you certify, they will say you have gone mad. This is something. If somebody is against me, they will believe him; if somebody is for me, they will not believe him. If somebody is against -- howsoever foolish -- they will not argue with him; they will say, "Right." And if somebody is with me and for me -- howsoever intelligent -- they will laugh; knowingly they will say, "I know, you are hypnotized." Ask Dr. Phadnis; people say that he is hypnotized.


This is a vicious circle of argumentation. If I convince you, you are hypnotized; if I cannot convince you, I am wrong. So either way I am wrong. If somebody is convinced....


It happened. Swabhav is here. A few years before, he came with his two brothers; all the three had come to argue with me. And Swabhav was the most argumentative of all the three; but he is a sincere man, and simple. He became by and by convinced. He had come as a leader with the other two brothers; then he became convinced. Then the other two became against him. Now they say he is hypnotized. They have stopped coming; they won't listen to me. Now they are afraid: if Swabhav can be hypnotized, they can also be hypnotized. They avoid, and they have created a protective defense mechanism around them. If I can convince another brother -- because I know one can be convinced still -- then the remaining one will become more defensive; and then he will say, "Two brothers gone." And the remaining one is also very good-hearted; there is a possibility for him also. Then the whole family will think all the three have gone mad.


This is how things go. If you cannot convince, you are wrong; if you can convince, then too you are wrong.


Many people, very intelligent people, PhD's, professors, psychoanalysts -- certified -- but the court wouldn't listen. They said they are all conspirators in the same game. "Show us where orgone energy is! Open the box and let us see where it is. It is an ordinary box, there is nothing. And you are selling it, deceiving people, cheating."


Wilhelm Reich died in a prison. It seems humanity is not going to learn anything from history; it goes on repeating the same, again and again.


Why are you so much against love, because orgone energy is love energy? Why are you so much against life and why are you so much in favor of death? Something has not evolved in you. You are so unalive that you cannot believe that life has more and higher possibilities. And if somebody reaches to a higher peak, you cannot believe that that is possible. You have to deny. It becomes almost an offense to you.


If I say I am God, it becomes an offense. I am simply saying that you can also become gods, never settle for less. But you feel offended. And you are living only two percent of your possibilities; ninety eight percent of your possibilities are being wasted. As if you were given a hundred days to live and you lived only two days and died. Even your great thinkers, painters, musicians, geniuses, they live only fifteen percent of their potentiality.
If you can blaze to your utmost, you become a god.


The situation is such that I would like to tell you one anecdote to explain it.


Cohen bumped into Levy Isaacs who was looking terribly dejected.
"What is the matter?" he asked.


"I am bankrupt," said a quiet Isaacs. "My business failed."


"Oh, well," said Cohen, "what about the property in your wife's name?"
"There is no property in my wife's name."


"Well, then, what about the property in your children's names?"
"There is no property in my children's names?"


Cohen put his hand on Levy's shoulder, "Levy, you are very mistaken. You are not bankrupt -- you are ruined."


This is the situation where you are: not only bankrupt, ruined. If you don't become alive, if you don't revitalize your prana and energy, you are ruined -- and you will live with the false idea that you lived. And you are supported by the whole mass of people around you because they are almost as dead as you are, so you think this is the rule. This is not the rule.


The effort towards religion starts only when you catch hold of this -- -this sutra, this thread -- that whatsoever you are doing is almost nothing. You are wasting a great opportunity. Unless you start feeling God within you, never settle for anything. It is okay if you stop for a night's rest, okay, but by the morning start going. Remember it as a criterion that your fulfillment is your godhood.


When your prana flowers you are God. Right now your prana is just crawling on the earth -- not even standing and walking.


I have heard about one beggar who knocked at a big house. The lady of the house opened the door. The man immediately did a shashtang, he bowed down with his whole body on the earth. He crawled at her feet. A very strong man, healthy, perfectly healthy and young. The lady said, "What are you doing? Why are you wasting your energy and crawling at people's feet? Why don't you work! Why do you go on asking, begging, crawling!"


The man looked up and said, "Lady, I am a very scientific man. I am moving alphabetically."
The lady said, "What do you mean, alphabetically?"


He said, "Asking -- A. Begging -- B. Crawling C. Work is very, very far away...."
Alphabetically! Don't be so alphabetical.


If you are using your prana only for sex purposes, you arecrawling. Unless the energy moves to the sahasrar, unless the prana comes to your crown of the head, to your very peak, you will not be able to fly in the sky. You will remain imprisoned and you will remain miserable. Happiness is when you are flying. Happiness is when the sky is vast, unlimited. Happiness is when you have learned the pinnacle, the crescendo of your being, when you have touched the highest peak.


Now the sutras.
<p class="sutra">LOOSENING THE CAUSE OF BONDAGE AND KNOWING THE CHANNELS ALLOWS THE MIND TO ENTER ANOTHER'S BODY.</p>


"BANDHA KARANA SHAITHILYAT" -- "Loosening the cause of bondage." What is the cause of bondage? Identification. If you are identified with the body, you cannot move beyond it. Wherever your identification is, there is your imprisonment. If you think you are the body, your very thinking will not allow you to do something which can be done only when you know that you are not the body. If you think you are the mind, then the mind is your only world; you cannot go beyond it.


You have learned a particular language, and you go on interpreting all the experiences through that language. Even if you come across a man who has gone beyond body identity, you will reduce his experiences also to your own experiences. You will interpret. If you come across a Buddha, you will not see his Buddhahood; you will see only his body. Because you can see only that which you are. You cannot see anything more. You are your confinement.
Remember not to get identified with lower things.


There are people who are simply living to eat. They don't eat to live; they live to eat. And they go on eating and stuffing. They become just food, nothing else. They are like a refrigerator -- stuffed, nothing else in them. And they go on doing it continuously; and they never think for a single moment, "What are you doing? Is this the whole of life? -- then you are vegetating."


Mulla Nasruddin fell ill. The wife said, "Should I call the doctor?"
He said, "No. Call the vet."


She said, "What do you mean? Have you gone mad, or the fever has gone too high? Why the vet? Why the veterinary doctor?"


He said, "I live like a vegetable, I work like a mule, I think like a donkey, and I sleep with a cow. You call the vet; I am not a man. Only the vet can understand me."


Just watch, observe what you are doing with yourself. Vegetating? Just stuffing with food? Or just hankering for more and more sex indulgence, just chasing women or men?


One very lovely woman asked me, "Osho, should I remain alone, or should I chase men?" She has passed her prime, her age. Now it is time to be alone and be happy; now it is almost foolish to chase. So I told her, "Now there is no need." But in the West there is a problem; even old women have to pretend that they are young. And they go on chasing because that's their only life. If sex disappears, they think life disappears, because then for what to live? That was their whole meaning.


The woman understood. It is very easy when you are near me to understand something, but when you go away the problems come back because that understanding was because of me. I had almost possessed you; in that lightning you can see many things very easily. Next day she wrote a letter, "Osho, right, you are right. I should not chase. But what about casual affairs?" Here you go again.


Don't crawl; stand up. Upanishads say: "UTTISHTHA JAGRAT PRAPYA VARANNI BODHAYAT" -- "Stand up; become aware." Because to become aware is the only way to stand up, to rise and soar high.


The cause of bondage is identification. The sutra says, "Loosening the cause of bondage...." If you can loosen it a little, relax it a little, if you can uproot yourself from your body and mind, you will attain to a very great experience; and that experience is: you can enter into another's body.


But why is this a great experience? Once you can enter into another's body, the body identification drops forever. Then you know that you have entered in many bodies before; you have entered millions of bodies, remained, loved, suffered, and thought that you are this body or that. When you are not too identified with the body and the bondage is loose, you can try it.


You can enter into a dead man's body. Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery. Sufis have worked very much on this method; they will live in the cemeteries where dead people are, and when a fresh body is buried they will try to enter into the buried body. Once you can enter into another's body, suddenly your vision becomes absolutely clear that the body is just a house you are in. If you have lived in your own house, confined for ever and ever, by and by you become identified with the house, you start thinking as if "I am the house"; but if you can go and visit a friend's house, suddenly you see that you are not the house: the house is left behind, you are in another house. Then the vision becomes clear.


And this loosening of identification can be of much help also. You can help somebody very deeply if you can loosen your bondage. This is one of the methods of shaktipath. Whenever a Master wants to help you, to cleanse you, your energy channel, your passage, if it is blocked, he simply possesses you. He simply descends in you, and his energy, of a higher quality, purer, unbounded, moves in your energy channels. They become open. Then your own energy can move in them easily. This is the whole art of shaktipath. If a disciple is really surrendered, the Master can possess him immediately.


And once you are possessed by the energy of the Master once his prana surrounds you, enters in you, much is done very easily which you cannot do in years. It will take years for you because you will be working, working... hard is the work, blocks are very, very rocky, you have accumulated them in many, many lives, and your energy is very tiny, just a trickling, a few drops of energy. They are lost again and again in the desert. They are lost again and again against the rock. But if a Master can enter in you like a waterfall, many things are simply washed away. And when the Master has gone out of you, suddenly you start to be a totally different person -- cleaner, younger, vital... and all energy passages open. Just knock a little and you move.


When a Master enters the body of a disciple, he leaves behind him for a few moments such a great opportunity that if the disciple wants to use it, he can attain -- so easily, so simply that there will be almost no effort.


There are certain schools, those schools are called schools of siddhas, they don't allow their disciples to work on any technique. The siddha guru simply tells them to sit by his side and wait. They believe in satsang, and it is a tremendously powerful method, but for it a great devotion is needed. A single doubt and it cannot happen, a little resistance and it cannot happen. One has to be completely open. One has to be completely a moon, only then can the Master possess you.


"Loosening the cause of bondage and knowing the channels allows the mind to enter another's body." Two things are needed. First, loosening of the bondage; and another, the awareness, the knowledge of the channels from where to leave the body and how to reenter it -- how to enter another's body. Because if you don't know from where to leave your body, you may not be able to reenter again. So just loosening of the bondage won't help; you will have to be very, very aware of the inside world of your body.


Ordinarily we know only the outside, just the skin part. That's why people go on powdering, deodorizing their skin. Hmm?... that's their whole body. They don't know what great mechanism is hidden inside. You are not aware. Just the skin part, just the surface, which is nothing but the outer shell. As if you go to see the Taj Mahal and you just go round and round and see the outer walls and come back. You look into the mirror, the mirror simply reflects your skin, the outer shell, and you get identified with it. You think, "I am this man." You are not. You are very, very great -- but you never look from the within.


Get disidentified with the body, then close your eyes and try to feel the body from within. Try to touch the body from within, how it feels from within. Get centered and from there look around -- and mysteries upon mysteries open their secrets to you. That's how yogis came to know about the channels, the centers, the nadhis, the energy fields, the working of the energy fields -- from where you can get out of the body and how you can reenter and how you can enter into another's body.


A great knowledge, the whole topography of the inner body is needed. One has to know it; otherwise you will miss it. Many times it has happened.


That's why Patanjali simply gives the sutra and does not go in detail because if the detail is described there are foolish people who will try. No detail is given. You cannot do anything just reading this sutra. In fact all the practical details have not been opened to you. Patanjali keeps them secret. They are only for those who are working with a Master. They cannot be said publicly, because curious people are there and they will try, and sometimes they can get out of the body but then they will not be able to get in. Sometimes they can get into another's body and may not be able to get out. Then they will create trouble for themselves and for others.


So details are not being given; details have always been handed over in personal intimacy. These sutras simply give you the framework.
<p class="sutra">BY MASTERING THE CURRENT UDANA, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO LEVITATE AND PASS WITHOUT CONTACT OVER WATER, MIRE, THORNS, ETC.</p>


When for the first time Eskimos were discovered, the discoverers were simply amazed to know that they have almost one dozen words for snow -- one dozen. They could not believe for what one dozen words are needed. "Snow" is enough. Or you can have one more word, "ice," but that will do. But Eskimos have almost one dozen, and even more words, for snow. They live in snow; they have seen all the moods of snow. They have known snow in different ways. A man living in a tropical country cannot simply imagine why one dozen words are needed for it.


Yogis say that the prana has five different shapes, workings, energy fields in you. You will say simply "breathing" is enough. We know only two things -- exhalation, inhalation -- that's all. But yogis live in the world of prana and they have come to know subtle differences, so they have made five divisions. Those divisions have to be understood. They are very significant. First is prana, second is apana, third is samana, fourth is udana, fifth is vyana. These are five prana manifestations in you, and each has a different work to do inside.


Prana, the first, is respiration. Apana, the second, is a help to excretion; it helps to cleanse the body of all excreta. The bowel movement comes from apana, and if you know how to work on it, you can cleanse your bowels as nobody else can. Yogis have the cleanest bowels. And that is very, very meaningful because once the bowel is totally clean, once your intestines are perfectly clean, your whole being feels light, as if you can fly. The burden disappears.


Ordinarily your intestines carry much rotten excreta -- your whole life's, layers upon layers. Inside, the inner walls of the intestine, excreta goes on accumulating dry and hard. It creates many poisons; it makes you heavy. It makes you more available to gravitation. Much emphasis is given in yoga to cleanse the whole stomach so that no toxins remain in it because otherwise they go on circulating in your blood, they go on circulating in your brain, and they create a particular energy field around you which is heavy, dark, black.


When the intestines are perfectly clean and clear, the aura arises around your head; and people who have perceptive eyes can see it very easily. And you feel as if you are like a feather.


The second, apana, is excretion. The third, samana, is digestion and providing body heat. If you know the function of the third and if you become aware where it is, your digestion will become absolutely perfect. Ordinarily you eat much but you don't digest it. You go on eating and you never feel satisfied. You go on stuffing the body without digesting it. If one knows how to use samana, a small quantity of food will give him more energy than a big quantity of food ever gives to you. That's why yogis can fast for many days without any harm to their body. Once in a while they will take a little quantity of food, and they will digest it totally. Your food is not totally digested. That's why your excreta can become food for some other animal and he can digest it. Much food value is still left in it.


And the third provides the body heat also. In Tibet they have developed the whole system of body heat, creating body heat, on samana. They breathe in a certain way, in a certain rhythm, so that the samana vibe functions efficiently within their body. They create much heat. They can create so much heat that snow is falling, and a Tibetan lama will stand naked -- perspiring -- under the open sky. All over is snow; and you will be freezing. You will not be able to come out of the house, and he is standing in the falling snow -- perspiring.


This is one of the examinations. When in Tibet somebody becomes a physician, first he has to go through an examination in which he has to create his body heat. If he cannot create that, he is not given a certificate to practice medicine. It is very difficult. No other medicine in the whole world asks so much of the physician. It is not just a viva voce; it is not just that you cram something and vomit it in the examination papers. You have to show that really you have become master of your body heat because the whole life you will be working on the heat energy of your patients. If you are not a master, how can you work upon others? So the whole night the examinee has to stand outside in falling snow. Nine times in the whole night the examiner will come and touch your body to see whether you are still perspiring. If you can create that much body heat, you are a master of samana. Now you can become a healer; your very touch will become a healing miracle.


In Tibet they teach that when you touch the hand or the pulse of your patient, you have to breathe in a certain way; only then will you know his system of breathing. And once you know his system of breathing, you have known everything about him and you know what is to be done. Ordinarily doctors try to watch symptoms in the patient not moving them selves in a particular space of perceptivity, but in Tibet -- and their whole method is based on Patanjali's yoga -- first the doctor has to move in a certain space from where he can feel, see, where the problem of the patient is -- where the patient's prana is entangled, where the prana of the patient is blocked, where to hit.


The same is true about acupuncture. That developed out of Taoist yoga. Seeing inside the functioning of energy, prana, they became aware that there are seven hundred points in the body which are energy points, and just by pressing those points the whole energy field of the body can be changed and transformed. When you have a headache, the acupuncturist may not touch your head; there is no need. He will touch somewhere else because the energy in the body exists in a polarity, negative and positive. If you have a headache, then somewhere else -- at the opposite pole -- he will find a point and he will just push his needle a little. Even that is not needed. Even acupressure -- just a little pressure with his thumb -- and suddenly the headache is gone. And it is miraculous; how it happens? He has changed your energy field. By pushing it somewhere, he has changed the whole field; you now have another energy field, different energy field.


Acupuncture is becoming more and more scientific in the West, particularly in Soviet Russia, because a man has developed a new sort of photography -- Kirlian photography. And through that photography those seven hundred points can be seen through photographs -- and exactly those seven hundred points were known by Taoist yogis, without any medium, without any photography, without any camera. They came to know it from the within.


Fourth is udana, speech and communication. When you speak, the fourth type of prana is used. And the same type of prana can be trained; if that prana can be trained you become a hypnotic speaker, or you can become a hypnotic singer. Your voice can have a hypnotic quality. Just listening to it, and people can be magnetized.


And the same is used for communication. People who are in a difficulty of how to communicate -- and many people, millions of people, are in that difficulty how to communicate, how to relate to others, how to love, how to be friendly, how to be open, how not to be closed -- they all have some difficulty of udana. They don't know how to use the prana energy which makes you flowing and makes your energy become open and you can easily reach the other and there is no block.


And fifth is vyana, coordination and integration. The fifth keeps you integrated. When the fifth leaves the body, you die. Then the body starts disintegrating, deteriorating. If the fifth is there, even if your whole breathing stops, you will remain alive. That's what yogis are doing. When yogis exhibit that they can stop their heart, they stop four -- the first four pranas -- they keep on the fifth. But the fifth is so subtle that there exists no instrument yet which can detect it. So for ten minutes you can observe in every possible way and you will see that the yogi is completely dead and your doctors will certify that he is dead, and he will come back. The fifth is the most subtle, the very thread which keeps you as an organic unity.


If you can know the fifth, you will be able to know God, not before that. Because the function of the fifth within you is the same as God's function in the totality. God is vyana; he is keeping the whole together -- the stars, millions of stars, the infinity of space, all together. If you know your body, your body is a small microcosm, representative of the whole macrocosm. In Sanskrit they call the body pind, microcosm; and the whole brahmand, the macrocosm. And your whole body is a miniature. It has everything that the whole has, nothing is lacking. If you can understand your totality, you will have understood the totality of all.


Our understanding remains at the level where we stand. If somebody says that there is no God, he is simply saying that he has not come to know something integrative in his own being, that's all. Don't fight with him, don't argue with him, because argument cannot give him an experience of vyana. Proofs cannot give him an experience of vyana. Yogis never argue; they say, "Come, experiment with us -- hypothetically. There is no need to believe what we say. Just try; just to try to see what it is. Once you come to feel your vyana, suddenly God appears, then God is spread all over."
Let me tell you one anecdote:


The lodger was asked by his landlady to solve a problem for her. She said to him, "I have got these two parrots in a cage; one is a boy parrot and the other is a girl parrot, but I don't know which is which. Can you help me?"


The lodger said, "Well, missus, I don't know anything about parrots, but I tell you what -- you put a black cloth over their cage, leave them for half an hour, then take the black cloth off and see which of the birds is a bit ruffed up -- that will be the male."


So she did just that -- -she put a black cloth over the cage, left it for half an hour, then took it off. Sure enough one of the parrots was a bit ruffed up.
"There you are," he said, "that is the male."


"Oh, yes," she said, "but how am I going to tell in future?"


So he said, "Tie a bit of ribbon around his neck now, then you will know."
And this the landlady did.


That afternoon the vicar came to tea. The parrot took one look at his dog tie and said, "Blimey -- they caught you at it as well, did they!"


Whatsoever is our experience becomes the interpretation for the whole. We are confined to our experience; we live through it, we see through it. So when a man says there is no God, feel compassion for him. Don't feel angry. He is simply saying that he has not come across anything in him which can cor respond to God, which can give an indication. He has not found even a ray of light within his being. How can he believe that there exists the source, the sun, the source of life and light? No, he cannot believe. He is completely blind, utterly blind; not even a ray of light has passed through his eyes. Feel compassion for him. Help him; don't argue, because argument is not going to help him.


Nobody can convince anybody about God. It has nothing to do with conviction; it is a conversion.


"By mastering the current udana, the yogi is able to levitate and pass without contact over water, mire, thorns, etc." If you have become tuned and you have mastered the prana known as udana, you can levitate because it is udana that connects you with gravitation.


You see so many birds, such big birds, flying. It has yet remained a mystery for scientists how they fly with such weight. Those birds by nature know something about udana; it is spontaneous for them. They breathe in a certain way. If you can also breathe in that way, you will feel suddenly you are cut from gravitation. With gravitation you have a certain connection from within your being. This can be disconnected.


And it happens to many people without knowing. Sometimes meditating, sitting, suddenly you feel that you are levitating. Open your eyes -- you will find yourself sitting on the ground. Close your eyes -- again you feel you are levitating. Your physical body may not be levitating, but deep inside something has become disconnected and you feel a gap between you and gravitation. That's why you feel that you are levitating. This can go deeper and deeper, and one day it is possible you can levitate.


There is a woman in Bolivia who has been observed by all scientific technology, methods. She levitates. She can go for a few seconds four feet above the ground -- just by meditating. She sits and meditates, and she starts rising up.
<p class="sutra">BY MASTERING THE CURRENT SAMANA, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO CAUSE HIS GASTRIC FIRE TO BLAZE.</p>


Then you can digest very easily, and totally. And not only that, when your gastric fire is blazed, your whole body will have a certain radiance around it, a certain quality of fire, aliveness.


And this fire helps the yogi to purify his whole being because this fire bums all that is rotten and rubbish in you, all that should not be there. It destroys all impurities and toxins within your body.


And this fire, if it can be burned really totally, can burn your mind also. Thoughts can bum in it, desires can bum in it.


And Patanjali says that once you have found this fire, by breathing in a certain way and bringing a certain prana energy and accumulating it inside, you can burn the whole desire to live -- you can bum the very seed of desire. Then there is no more birth for you. This he calls nirbeej samadhi, seedless samadhi, when even the seed has been burnt.
<p class="sutra">BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ETHER AND THE EAR, SUPERPHYSICAL HEARING BECOMES AVAILABLE.</p>


The word in Sanskrit for ether is akash. It is more comprehensive than "ether"; akash means the whole space, the whole emptiness that surrounds everything. Akash means the nothingness out of which everything comes and goes back to, the primordial nothingness which was in the beginning and which will be again in the end. Everything comes out of it and disappears into it. This nothingness is not just nothing. It is not negative; it is absolutely potential and positive, but formless.


By performing samyama on the relationship between this akash, this formlessness that surrounds you, and your ear.... This is a yoga discovery, that your ear is in tune with akash. That's why you can hear sounds: sounds are created in akash, in ether, and your ear corresponds to akash within your body. Your eyes correspond to the sun; your ears correspond to the akash, to the ether. If you can bring your samadhi to the akash and your ear and their relationship, you will be able to hear whatsoever you want to hear.


This is something very miraculous, but not a miracle. It has as scientific laws behind it as television or radio. Just a certain tuning is needed. If your ears are in a certain tuning with the akash, you start hearing that which was not ordinarily available. You can hear others' thoughts. Not only that, you can hear thoughts which were uttered thousands of years before. You can hear Buddha again. You can hear Krishna again giving his message to Arjuna. You can hear Jesus again giving his sermon on the mount. Because whatsoever is created remains in the akash; it never goes away; in a subtle way it is preserved.


In Theosophy they call these records akashic records. Everything is there, recorded, taped, once you can find the key. And that key exists in bringing samyama to the relationship of the ether with your ear.
<p class="sutra">BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE ETHER AND AT THE SAME TIME IDENTIFYING HIMSELF WITH LIGHT THINGS, LIKE COTTON DOWN, THE YOGI IS ABLE TO PASS THROUGH SPACE.</p>


And if you bring samyama to your body and the akash and their relationship.


The akash is formless, nirakar, the infinities around you. Your body is just a wave in the ocean of akash. Before it arose it was in the akash unmanifest; after you will die it will again disappear into akash. Right now the wave is joined with the akash; it is not disjointed. Just bring your awareness to the wave and the relationship of the wave with the ocean and you will be able to disappear or appear, according to your will.


A yogi can manifest himself in many places simultaneously; he can meet one of his disciples in Calcutta and another in Bombay and another in California. Once you know how to be in tune with the ocean, you become infinitely powerful.


But remember that these things are not to be desired. If you desire them, they will become bondages. These things should not become objects for your greed. And when they happen on their own, you should go on offering them to God. Tell him, "What will I do with them?'' Whatsoever you attain, go on renouncing it, giving it back to God. More will be coming; give that too. More will be coming still; give that too. And a point comes when you have renounced all, God himself comes to you.


God comes at the moment of absolute, utter sacrifice.


So please don't start becoming greedy about these things. And I have not given you any details, so even if you become greedy, you cannot do anything. Those details are given in privacy. Those details are given in person to person relationship. And there is no need for you to come to me for those details; whenever you are ready, they will be given to you wherever you are. Your readiness is all. If you are ready they will be given to you, and they will be given only in proportion to your readiness so that you cannot harm yourself, you cannot harm others; otherwise man is a very dangerous animal.
Remember that danger always.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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