---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA6"
dategiven: "03 September 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #3"
chaptertitle: "The Shadow of Religion"
acode: "7509030"
shorttitle: "YOGA603"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "73mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6: Chapter #3"
---

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<p class="sutra">40. WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED THERE ARISES IN THE YOGI A DISGUST FOR HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH OTHERS.</p>
<p class="sutra">41. FROM MENTAL PURITY THERE ARISES CHEERFULNESS, POWER OF CONCENTRATION, CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF-REALIZATION.
42. CONTENTMENT BRINGS SUPREME HAPPINESS.</p>


Nonviolence, nonpossessiveness, no-theft, and authenticity in being give purity. These are not moralistic concepts for Patanjali; this has to be always kept in mind. In the West they have been taught as morals; in the East as inner hygiene, not as morals.In the West they have been taught as altruistic goals; in the East there is nothing of altruism in them -- it is absolutely selfish. It is your inner hygiene. They give purity to you, and through purity the impossible becomes possible, the unattainable is attained. Through purity your grossness of being is lost. You become delicate, subtle, and soft. Through purity you become a temple of the divine. Through purity an invitation is sent to the whole to come, and drop in you... and the ocean comes one day, and drops into the drop.


When they are taught as moralistic concepts, as in the West -- or in India also, as Mahatma Gandhi has been teaching -- their total quality changes. When you say, "You have to be nonviolent because violence hurts others. Don't hurt anybody. Humanity is one family, and to hurt is to sin," you have diverted the whole thing to a totally different dimension. Patanjali says, "Be nonviolent: it purifies you. Don't hurt anybody -- don't even think of hurting anybody, because the moment you start thinking that way you are falling into impurity inside." The question is not the other, the question is you. Of course, when one is nonviolent others are benefited, but that is not the goal of being nonviolent. That is just a by product, just a shadow.


If you are nonviolent because others should not be hurt, then you are not really nonviolent. Then, you are a good social citizen, civilized, but nothing of religion has happened within your being. Your nonviolence will work as a lubricant between you and others. Your life will be smoother, but not purer, because the goal changes the whole quality. The goal is not to protect the other -- the other is protected, that's another thing -- the goal is to become pure so that you can know the ultimate purity.


Eastern religions remain selfish because they know there is no other way to be; and when somebody is selfish others are benefited immensely. In fact all altruism, real authentic altruism, flowers out of deep selfishness. They are not contraries, they are not opposites: the flowers of altruism bloom only in a being who has been deeply selfish. To be selfish is just natural. To force people to be otherwise is to make them unnatural, and whatsoever is unnatural is not the way of God. Whatsoever is unnatural is going to be a suppression; it will not bring purity to you.


So this has to be remembered: these are not moralistic goals. In fact in the East morality has never been taught as a goal; it is a shadow of religion. When religion happens, morality happens automatically -- one need not bother about it. One need not be concerned; it comes on its own accord. In the West morality has been taught as the goal -- in fact, as the religion. There exists nothing in the Eastern scriptures like the Ten Commandments, nothing like it.


A life should not be a life following commandments, otherwise you will become a slave. And even if you reach paradise through slavery, your paradise is not going to be enough of a paradise -- slavery will remain a part of it. Independence, freedom, should be an intrinsic part of your growth.


So these are hygienic measures. They purify you; they give you inner health.
<p class="sutra">WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED, SAYS PATANJALI, THERE ARISES IN THE YOGI A DISGUST FOR HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH OTHERS.</p>


There is some difficulty with the word jugupsa. It has been translated in all the translations as "disgust" because no equivalent word exists in English. It is not disgust, not at all; the very word is wrong. The very word "disgust" is disgusting. And to think of a yogi, that disgust arises in him for his own body, is simply unbelievable because yogis have cared for their bodies as nobody else has ever cared. They look after their bodies as nobody looks after their bodies; they have beautiful bodies. Look at Mahavir or Buddha -- beautiful bodies, very proportionate, like symphonies in matter. No, it is not possible. "Disgust" is a wrong word; first, it has to be understood.


Jugupsa does not mean disgust. The meaning is very difficult; I will have to explain to you. There are three types of people. One, who are madly in love with their bodies; in fact obsessed. Particularly women -- absolutely body-oriented. Look at a woman: she is never happier than when she is facing a mirror. Narcissistic -- hours and hours they can devote before the mirror... obsessed. Nothing is wrong in being in front of a mirror, but just being there, for hours, looks like an obsession. This is the first type, who is continuously obsessed with the body -- so much so that he forgets that he exists beyond the body. The transcendental is forgotten; he becomes only the body. He does not possess the body; the body possesses him. This is the first type of man.


The second type of man is just the opposite of the first: he is also obsessed -- in the reverse direction. He is against the body, disgusted with it: he has broken the mirror. He goes on hurting his own body in millions of ways; he hates it. The first loves it as an obsession; the other moves to the other extreme -- he hates it. He wants to commit suicide.


You can find the second type; they may be pretending to be yogis, but they are not. The yogi cannot hate. It is not a question of any object: the yogi simply cannot hate because hate creates impurity. It is not a question of hating somebody else or something or one's own body: whatsoever the object of hate, hate brings impurity. The yogi cannot hate his own body. But you can find this type of perverted yogi in the streets of Benares Lying on thorns or pointed steel nails, torturing his own body. This is just the opposite of a woman enjoying a narcissistic indulgence before a mirror.


Fasting: fasting in itself can be good, can be bad. It depends. Fasting can be just a way of torturing the body; then it is bad, then it is violence. And this is my observation: people who are not violent towards others, who have suppressed their violence towards others and have become nonviolent -- their violence starts a new way: as a release they start becoming violent towards their own bodies. There are stories of perverted people who destroyed their own eyes so that they could not see a beautiful woman. Stories of people -- and not exceptional, in thousands.


In Russia there existed a sect before the revolution, thousands of followers, who had cut off their genital organs -- just to be in deep hate with the body. They could not produce children. But then how to increase the number of the followers -- because every organization is interested? So they were in a difficulty. They would adopt children and cut off their genital organs -- a criminal act against one's own body.


In Christianity there have been sects whose only prayer was to flog their own body every morning. And the greatest saint was thought to be one who flogged his body so much that it became blue -- all over the body, skin broken and blood flowing. It used to be written in the biographies of great saints how many times he hits his body in the morning with a whip -- one hundred times, two hundred times, three hundred times; just as in India Jain monks go on counting their days, how many days they have fasted in the year -- one hundred days, fifty days, how many days. The greater one is who has been fasting, almost starving, his own body.


In Christianity there have been monks who had nails in their shoes intruding in their bodies; and they would walk on those shoes and they would carry continuous wounds in their feet. Blood flowing, puss accumulating -- they were great saints.


If one looks at religion scientifically then ninety per cent of it will prove to be pathological. These people needed mental treatment. These people were not religious, not at all. To call them religious is simply foolish: they were not even normal; they were mad.


These are the two types, and then between these two -- just exactly in the middle -- is the third, for whom Patanjali uses the word jugupsa: he is not disgusted with his own body, he is not obsessed either. He is in a deep balance. He takes care of the body because the body is a vehicle. He even treats the body as a holy thing. It is -- God created it; and whatsoever God creates, how can it be unholy? It is a temple. It has not to be condemned. It has not to be indulged so madly that you are lost in it.


The temple should not become the image; the temple should not become the shrine. The shrine is the innermost core for which the temple exists. You should not start worshipping the walls of the temple, but there is no need to move to the opposite -- that you start destroying the temple.


Just a deep nonidentification is needed. One has to know: "I am in the body, but transcendental to the body. I am in the body, but not the body. I am in the body, but not confined to it. I am in the body, but also beyond it." The body should not be a limitation -- a shelter, of course, and a beautiful shelter at that. One has to be grateful to it; there is no need to fight with it. It is simply foolish and childish to fight with it. It has to be used -- and used rightly.


Jugupsa says... if I have to translate it somehow then I will say: the yogi is disillusioned with the body. Not disgusted -- simply disillusioned. He does not think that through the body the bliss that the soul is seeking is possible, no. But he does not think the contrary also: that through destroying the body that bliss can be attained. No, he drops the duality. He lives in the body as a guest, and he treats the body as a temple.
<p class="sutra">"WHEN PURITY IS ATTAINED THERE ARISES IN THE YOGI JUGUPSA FOR HIS OWN BODY AND A DISINCLINATION TO COME IN PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH OTHERS."</p>


When you are in the body too much you are always hankering for contact with other bodies, a lust to be in contact with other bodies -- which you call love, which is not love, which is just a lust -- because the body cannot exist alone. It exists in a network of other bodies.


The child is borne in the mother's womb; for nine months the mother's body feeds the child's body. The child's body grows out of the mother's body, just like branches grow out of a tree. When the child is ready, of course, he moves out of the womb, but still remains deeply in contact: on mother's breast the child goes on -- not only taking milk -- goes on taking the warmth of the body, which is a physical need.


And if a child misses the warmth of the mother, he can never be healthy; the body will always suffer. He may be given every thing that is needed -- food, milk, vitamins -- but if the warmth of the woman is not given to him.... And that too in a very loving way because if you are not loving towards a person then heat is possible, may pass from your body to the other person, but not warmth. Heat becomes warmth through love. It has a qualitatively different dimension. It is not just heat; otherwise you can give the heat to the child. Now many experiments have been done: the child is in a centrally heated room -- that doesn't help. The mother's body is giving some subtle vibration of love: of being accepted, of being loved, of being needed. That gives roots.


That's why, continuously, the man will be after -- seeking, searching -- a woman's body the whole life; and the woman will be seeking a man's body the whole life. The opposite sex is attractive because the polarity of the bodies helps; it gives energy. The very polarity gives a tension and energy. You feed through it; you become strong through it.


This is natural, nothing is wrong in it, but when one becomes pure -- through nonviolence, nonpossessiveness, authenticity -- when one becomes more and more pure, the focus of consciousness shifts from the body to the being. The being can remain absolutely alone.


That's why a man deeply attached to the body can never become free. The very attachment will lead him into many types of bondages, imprisonments. You may love a woman, you may love a man, but deep down you resist also -- because the lover is also the bondage. It cripples you, the relationship: feeds you also, imprisons you also. You cannot live without it, and you cannot live with it. This is the problem of all the lovers. They cannot live separately and they cannot live together. When separate they think of each other; when together they fight each other.


Why this happens? The mechanism is simple. When you are not with a woman whom you can love and who loves you, you start feeling starved of the warmth that flows from a woman's body. When you are with the woman you are no longer starved, you are no longer hungry, you are well fed. And soon you be come fed up. Soon you have taken too much: now you would like to separate and be aloof and alone. All lovers, when together, think, "How beautiful it will be to be alone." And when they are alone, then sooner or later they start feeling the need of the other and they start imagining and dreaming, "How beautiful it will be to be together."


The body needs togetherness; and your innermost soul needs aloneness. That is the problem. Your innermost soul can remain alone -- it is a Himalayan peak standing alone against the sky. Your innermost soul grows when it is alone, but your body needs relatedness. The body needs crowds, warmth, clubs, societies, organizations; wherever you are with many people the body feels good. In a crowd your soul may feel starved because it feeds on aloneness, but your body feels good. In aloneness your soul feels perfect, but the body starts feeling hungry for relationship.


And in life, if you don't understand this, you become very, very miserable, unnecessarily. If you understand it you create a rhythm: you fulfill the bodily need and you fulfill the soul need also. Sometimes you move in relationship, sometimes you move out of it. Sometimes you live together, sometimes you live alone. Sometimes you become peaks -- so absolutely alone that even the idea of the other is absent. This is the rhythm.


But when somebody has attained to aloneness and the focus of consciousness has changed.... That's what yoga is all about: how to change the focus from the body to the soul, from matter to nonmatter, from the visible to the invisible, from the known to the unknown -- from the world to God. Howsoever you phrase it is immaterial. It is a change of focus. When the focus has completely changed, the yogi is so happy in his aloneness, so blissful, that that ordinary hankering of the body to be with others by and by disappears.


When the purity is attained there arises in the yogi a disillusionment for his own body: now he knows that the paradise that he has been seeking cannot be attained through the body, the bliss that he has been dreaming about is not possible through the body. It is impossible for the body: through the limited you are trying to reach the unlimited. Through matter you are trying to reach the eternal, the immortal. Nothing is wrong in the body: your effort is absurd. Don't be angry with the body; the body has not done anything to you. It is just as if someone is trying to listen through the eyes -- now nothing is wrong with the eyes: eyes are made to see, not to listen. The body is made of matter; it is not made of the immaterial. It is made of death. It cannot be immortal. You are asking the impossible. Don't ask that.


That is the point of disillusionment: the yogi simply understands what is possible and what is not possible with the body. That which is possible is okay; that which is not possible he does not ask. He is not angry. He doesn't hate the body. He takes every care of it because the body can become a ladder; it can become a door, It cannot become the goal, but it can become the door.


A disillusionment for his own body -- and when this disillusionment happens: "... a disinclination to come in physical contact with others." Then the need to be in physical contact with others, by and by, withers away. In fact this is the right moment when you can say the man has come out of the womb, not before it.


Some people never come out of the womb. Even when they are dying, their need for others' presence, their need for contact, relationship, continues. They have not come out of the womb. Physically they have come out many, many years before -- the man may be eighty, ninety. Ninety years before, he had come out of the womb, but all these ninety years also he has been living in contact -- seeking, always greedy for body contact. He has lived in a lost womb again and again in his dreams.


It is said that whenever a man falls in love with a woman -- whatsoever he thinks, that is not the point -- he is again falling in the womb. And maybe, it is almost certain -- I say "maybe" because it is not yet a scientifically proved hypothesis -- that the urge to enter the woman's body, the sexual urge, may be nothing but a substitute for entering the womb again. All sexuality may be a search how to enter the womb again. And in all the ways that man has invented to make his body comfortable, psychologists say he is trying to create a womb outside. Look at a comfortable room: if it is really comfortable it must have something in common with the womb -- the warmth, the coziness, the silk, the velvet -- the inner touch of the mother's skin. The pillows, the bed -- everything gives you a feeling of comfort only when somehow it is related with the womb.


Now in the West they have made small tanks, womblike. In those tanks lukewarm water is filled, exactly of the same temperature as the mother's womb. In deep darkness the man floats in the tank, absolutely comfortable -- in darkness, just as in the womb. They call them meditation tanks. It helps: one feels very, very silent, an inner happiness arising -- you have again become a child. A child in the womb floats on liquid of a certain temperature. The liquid has all the ingredients of the sea, the same salty water with the same ingredients. Because of that scientists have come to realize that man must have evolved from fishes -- because still in the womb the atmosphere of the sea has to be maintained.


All comfort is, deep down, womblike. And whenever you are Lying with a woman, curled up, you feel good. Every man, howsoever old, becomes a child again; and every woman, howsoever young, becomes a mother again. Whenever they are in love the woman starts playing the role of the mother and the man starts playing the role of the baby. Even a young woman becomes a mother and an old man becomes a child.


In a yogi this urge disappears -- and with this urge, he is really born. We in India have called him "twice-born," dwij. This is his second birth, the real birth. Now he is no longer in need of anybody; he has become a transcendental light. Now he can float above the earth; now he can fly in the sky. He is not earth-rooted now. He has become a flower -- not a flower, because even a flower is earth-rooted... he has become the fragrance of the flower. Completely free. Moves into the sky with no roots in the earth. His desire to come in contact with others' bodies disappears.
<p class="sutra">FROM MENTAL PURITY THERE ARISES CHEERFULNESS, POWER OF CONCENTRATION, CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF REALIZATION.</p>


This man is so blissful, this man who has now no need to be in contact with others is so blissful in his freedom, so cheerful, celebrating -- his every moment is an intense delight. The more you are rooted in the body, the more sad you will be, because body is gross. It is matter, heavy. The more you go beyond body, you become lighter. Jesus has said to his followers, "Come, follow me. My burden is light. All those who are heavily loaded, come, follow me. My burden is light, weightless."


"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness.... " If you are sad, if you are always depressed, if you are always miserable, nothing can be done directly to your misery. And whatsoever should be done will prove to be in vain. The East has come to know that if you are sad, miserable, depressed, always moving heavily burdened -- this is not the disease; this is just the symptom of the disease. The disease is that you must be deep down bodily oriented. So the question is not how to dispel your darkness and how to make you happy; that is not the question. The question is how to help you to become unengaged with the body; how to help you so that your entanglement with the body is less and less and less.


People come to me every day. They say, "We are sad, miserable. Every day in the morning it seems again a hopeless day is going to be faced. Somehow we carry ourselves out of the bed -- with no hope. We know, we have lived long... the same repetition of sad days. So what to do? Can you give us something so that we can pull ourselves out, out of sadness?" Directly, nothing can be done; only indirectly can something be done. This is symptomatic; this is not the cause. And if you treat the symptom, the disease will not disappear.


The Western psychology has been treating the symptoms, and yoga is the psychology which treats the cause. Western psychology goes on: whatsoever you say is your symptom, they take it for granted and they start removing it. They have not been successful. Western psychology has proved to be a hoax, a complete failure, but now it is such a great establishment that psychologists cannot say it. Their whole life depends on it -- their big salaries... and they are one of the most highly paid professions. They cannot accept the fact: now they have become aware that they have not been helping anybody. At the most they prolong, at the most they give hope, at the most they help you to adjust with your miseries, but no transformation happens through it. As time passes one becomes attuned to the misery, one becomes accepting of the fact that it is there. One is not much worried about it, but nothing has changed.


Now they know, but now psychology is such a growing profession, and thousands of people live on it -- and really live luxurious lives; much is invented in it -- that who will say it, that this whole thing is just a hoax, a fraud, nobody's helped? It has to be so, because symptoms cannot be changed. You can paint them, but deep down they remain the same. You can give them new names, new labels; that makes no difference.


The cause has to be changed, and the cause is: you will be sad in the same proportion in which you are rooted in the body. You will be cheerful in the same proportion as you are not rooted in the body. Freer from the body... cheerfulness, more cheerfulness. When you are completely free from the body you become a fragrance floating in the sky. You become blissful -- the blessedness that Jesus talks of, the benediction that Jesus goes on talking about; the nirvana of Buddha. Mahavir has given it the exactly right word; he calls it kaivalya, aloneness. You have become totally independent and alone. Now nothing is needed; you are enough unto yourself. This is the goal, but the goal can be reached only if you move very cautiously and you don't get entangled with symptoms.


Somebody has a fever, the body is hot, the temperature has gone high -- this is a symptom. The temperature may be a hundred three, a hundred four, five. This is a symptom; don't start curing the body of the temperature. You can cure it: you can put the man under a cold shower, ice cold. In the beginning it may even appear that things are being helped, but remember, you will not be able to cure him of the disease -- you may cure him of life itself. He will die -- because the fever is a symptom. The fever simply shows that inside the body there is a great war, an elemental war. Elements of the body are in conflict, that's why heat is created. That's why there is a fever. The body is not at ease. A civil war has broken out inside the body. Some elements of the body are fighting other elements, maybe foreign elements. They are in a conflict; because of the conflict the heat has come out.


The heat is just an indication that the war has broken out. The war has to be treated, not the temperature. The temperature is just to give you a message: "Now you should do something; things have gone beyond me." The body is giving you an indication: "Things are now beyond me; I cannot do anything. Do something. Go to the doctor, to the physician. Take help; now it is beyond me. Whatsoever could be done I have done, but now no more can be done. The war has broken out."


Never treat the symptom, and don't waste time in treating the symptom; always go to the cause.


And this is not a hypothesis, and this is not a theory -- yoga does not believe in theories and Patanjali is not a philosopher. He is absolutely a scientist of the inner world, and whatsoever he is saying he is saying because millions of yogis have experienced it. Without any exception this is so. In ordinary life also have you watched? When you feel cheerful: in ordinary life also if you remain watchful you will become aware that whenever you feel cheerful you forget the body. Whenever somebody is cheerful he forgets his body, and whenever somebody is sad he cannot forget the body.


In fact in ayurveda the definition of health is one of the most significant; no other medical science anywhere in the world has given such a definition. In fact Western medicine has no definition of health. At the most they can say: When there are no diseases, then you are healthy. But this is not a definition of health. What type of definition, when you bring diseases in to define health? You say, "When there are no diseases you are healthy." It is a negative definition, not positive. Ayurveda says that when you are bodiless you are healthy. This is really tremendously beautiful. Videha: when you don't feel the body -- you are almost no body.


You can watch it: the head comes in only when the headache comes. Otherwise who knows about the head? You are never aware of the head. Headache brings awareness; otherwise you are headless. And if you continuously remember your head, there must be something wrong. When breathing is healthy you are not aware at all, but when something goes wrong -- asthma, bronchitis, something goes wrong -- then you are aware. The breathing is there with much sound, noise and everything, and you cannot forget it. When your legs are tired then you know they are. When something goes wrong, only then you become conscious. If everything is functioning perfectly, you forget it.


This is the definition of health: when you forget the body completely you are healthy. And who can forget the body completely? Only a yogi.


We have three words: rogi, bhogi, yogi. The rogi: one who is ill; the bhogi: one who is indulging in the body; and the yogi: one who has gone beyond the body. The bhogi rarely will attain to some moments of yoga, some moments when he will forget the body. Ninety-nine percent of his life he will belong to the world of the rogi, the ill; only one percent of his life will be moments, rare moments, when he will become a yogi. Sometimes everything is functioning well, humming -- just like a beautiful, perfectly functioning car hums, sings; your whole mechanism is humming beautifully, well: rarely with a bhogi, never with a rogi, always with a yogi. The rogi is the ill person; the bhogi is one who is indulging in the body too much and falling towards the rogi, will sooner or later become ill and die; and the yogi: the yogi is one who has transcended the body, lives beyond -- then he is cheerful.


The rogi is never cheerful, the bhogi rarely, the yogi always. Cheerfulness is his nature. For no visible cause he remains happy.


With you the case is just the opposite: for no visible cause you remain unhappy. If somebody asks you, "Why are you so miserable?" you shrug your shoulders. You don't know why. You have taken it for granted as your way of life, to be miserable. In fact if you see a miserable man you never ask, "Why are you miserable?" You accept it. When you see somebody happy, very happy, you ask, "What is the matter? Why are you so happy? What has happened?" Misery has been taken for granted, accepted. Happiness has become so rare, so exceptional, that it is almost too good to be true.


It happens, people come to me: when they start meditating, and if they really move in it, things start changing. When they had come they were miserable, sad; then something bursts open -- a cheerfulness starts. They cannot believe it. They come running to me and they say, "What has happened? Suddenly I am feeling very happy. Am I imagining?" They cannot believe that this can be true. The mind says, "You must be imagining. You, such a miserable man, and you can be happy? Impossible." They come to me and they say, "Are we imagining, or have you hypnotized us?"


They never thought when they were miserable that somebody may have hypnotized them. They never thought when they were miserable that maybe they are imagining it, but when they feel happiness, happiness has become so rare a thing, so unbelievably rare that they ask, "Is it true?"


In English you have the phrase "too good to be true"; you don't have the phrase "too bad to be true." The other should be more prevalent, more common, but "good" cannot be believed; that's why the phrase "too good to be true." That phrase should be destroyed, completely forgotten. When somebody says something bad you should say, "Too bad to be true, cannot be believed. You must have imagined." But no, it is not so. Misery seems to be the natural thing; happiness, something unnatural.


"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness, POWER OF CONCENTRATION...." People try to concentrate remaining rooted in the body; then concentration is very difficult, almost impossible. You cannot concentrate for a single minute. The mind wavers, a thousand and one thoughts arise, and before you know, you have moved somewhere else: a daydream starts. Whenever you want to concentrate on something... almost impossible. But the reason is that you are much too rooted in the body. If you look through the body, concentration is not possible. If you look beyond the body, concentration is so easy....


It happened, Vivekanand was staying with a great scholar. His name was Deussen, one of the great scholars, who translated Sanskrit scriptures into Western languages. Particularly, Deussen was working on the Upanishads, and he was one of the most penetrating translators. A new book had arrived. Vivekanand asked, "Can I go through it? Can I have it to read?" Deussen said, "Yes, you can have it. I have not read it at all." After half an hour Vivekanand returned the book. Deussen could not believe it; such a big book will need at least one week to read, and if you want to digest it, then even more. If you really want to understand it, it is a difficult book, then even more. He said, "Have you gone through it? Have you really read it, or just looked here and there?" Vivekanand said, "I have studied it." Deussen said, "Then I cannot believe it. Then you will have to do me a favor. Let me read the book, and I will ask you a few questions about the book."


Deussen had to read the book for seven days, study it; and then he asked a few questions, and Vivekanand replied so exactly, as if he had been reading that book for the whole of his life. Deussen has written in his memoirs: "It was impossible for me, and I asked,'How is it possible?' Vivekanand said,'When you study through the body, concentration is not possible. When you are not rooted in the body, you hover on the book directly -- -your consciousness directly in touch. No body between the book and you standing like a barrier: then even half an hour is enough. You imbibe the spirit of it.' "


It is just like: a small child reads -- he cannot read a big word; he has to cut words into small pieces. He cannot read the whole sentence. When you read you read the whole sentence. If you are really a good reader you can read the whole paragraph -- just a glimpse, it passes. There is a possibility, if the body is not interfering, you can read the whole book just by passing. And if you read with the body you may forget. If you read without the body there is no need to memorize it; you will not forget it -- because you have understood it.


Power of concentration arises in a man of pure body, of pure consciousness, of purity.


"... CONTROL OF THE SENSES...." These are consequences, remember. They cannot be practiced; if you practice you will never attain to them. They just happen. If the basic cause has been removed, if you are no longer identified with the body, then, "control of the senses." Then it is within your control. Then if you want to think you think; if you don't want to think you just say to the mind, "Stop." It is a mechanism you can put on and off, but mastery is needed; and if you are not a master and you try to become a master, you will create more confusion and trouble for yourself and you will be defeated again and again, and the senses will remain the boss. That's not the way to win over them. The way to win over them is to disidentify yourself with the body. You have to come to know that you are not the body; and then you have to come to know that you are not the mind.


You have to become the witness to all that is around you. The body is there, the first circle; then the mind is there, the second circle; then the heart is there, the third circle. And then just behind these three circles is the center -- you. If you are centered in yourself, all these three layers will follow you. If you are not centered there then you will have to follow them.
<p class="sutra">"... CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF-REALIZATION."</p>


And this is how one becomes fit, capable of realizing oneself. Everybody wants to realize oneself, but nobody wants to pass through the discipline -- nobody wants to mature. Everybody wants it as a magic thing. People come to me and they say, "Can't you bless us so that we can become self-realized?" If it were just that easy, that my blessing will do, then I would have blessed the whole world. Why bother to bless each individual? Bless wholesale, and let the whole world be enlightened. Then Buddha would have done so already, Mahavir would have done so -- finished. All would have become enlightened.


It cannot be done that way. Nobody can bless you; you have to earn that blessing. You have to pass through a deep discipline, you have to change your focus of being, you have to become capable, you have to become a right vehicle; otherwise sometimes it has happened that accidentally someone has stumbled upon the self, but that has been a shock and that has not helped anybody. That has cracked down your whole personality -- you may go mad. It is just like: a strong current passes through you for which you are not ready -- everything will go wrong. Even, the fuse may blow -- you may die.


You have to attain purity, attain nonidentification with the body, with the mind; you have to attain a certain quantity of witnessing. Only then, in that proportion only, self knowledge becomes possible. You cannot get it free. You have to pay for it -- and pay in terms of being. Not that you can pay for it with money, nothing else will be helpful: you have to pay for it in terms of being. "... and a fitness for self-realization."
<p class="sutra">CONTENTMENT BRINGS SUPREME HAPPINESS</p>


And this purity, finally, brings contentment. This word is one of the most profound; you have to understand it, feel it, imbibe it. "Contentment" means whatsoever the situation is, you accept it without any complaint. In fact you not only accept it without complaint, you rejoice in it with deep gratefulness. This moment is perfect. When your mind doesn't move from it, when you don't ask for any other time, when you don't ask for any other space, when you don't ask for any other way of being, when you don't ask anything, when the asking has dropped, you are simply here-now, rejoicing, like birds singing in the trees, flowers blooming on the trees, stars moving, everything is taken as "this is the all, the whole, the perfect, no improvement is possible in it" -- when the future is dropped, when the tomorrow disappears... there is contentment. When now is the only time, the eternity, there is contentment, and in that contentment, says Patanjali, "... supreme happiness."


"Contentment brings supreme happiness." So contentment is the discipline of the yogi; he has to be contented. If nothing can create discontent in you, if nothing can create restlessness in you -- if nothing can push you off your center -- there arises supreme happiness.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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