Osho Quotes on Patanjali Yoga Teachings
- Patanjali is rare. Он просветленный человек, как Будда, как Кришна, как Христос, как Махавира, Мохаммед, Заратустра, но он отличается в одном отношении. Будда, Кришна, Махавира, Заратустра, Mohammed no one has a scientific attitude. They are great founders of religions. They have changed the whole pattern of human mind and its structure, but their approach is not scientific. Patanjali is like an Einstein in the word of Buddhas. He is a phenomenon. He could have easily been a Nobel Prize winner like an Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck, Heisenberg. He has the same attitude, the same approach of a rigorous scientific mind. He is not a poet; Krishna is a poet. He is not a moralist; Mahavira is a moralist. He is basically a scientist, thinking in terms of laws. And he has come to deduce absolute laws of human being, the ultimate working structure of human mind and reality. And if you follow Patanjali, you will come to know that he is as exact as any mathematical formula. Simply do what he says and the result will happen. The result is bound to happen; it is just like two plus two, they become four. It is just like you heat water up to one hundred degrees and it evaporates. No belief is needed: you simply do it and know. It is something to be done and known. That’s why I say there is no comparison. On this earth, never a man has existed like Patanjali.
- Patanjali is logical and rational, mathematical, научный. He does not ask any faith. He asks only courage to experiment, courage to move, courage to take a jump into the unknown. He does not say, “Believe, and then you will experience.” Он говорит, “Опыт, and then you will believe.” And he has made a structure how to proceed step by step. His path is not haphazard; it is not like a labyrinth, it is like a super-highway. Everything is clear and the shortest possible route. But you have to follow it in every detail; otherwise you will move out of the path and in the wilderness.
- All the yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why you move? You cannot sit without moving even for few seconds. Your body starts moving. Somewhere you feel itching; the legs go dead; many things start happening. These are just excuses for you to move.
- The deepest pattern of the mind is desire. You are whatsoever you are because you have certain desires, a group of desires. Патанджали говорит, “First thing is non-attachment.” Drop all desires; don’t be attached. А потом, abhyasa (persistent inner practice).
- Когда Патанджали говорит “непривязанность”, он не против любви. Действительно, он для любви. Непривязанность означает быть естественным, любящий, текущий, но не зацикливайтесь и не увлекайтесь. Зависимость это проблема. Тогда это как болезнь. Вы не можете любить никого, кроме своего ребенка — это зависимость. Тогда вы будете в страдании. Ваш ребенок может умереть; тогда у твоей любви нет возможности течь. Даже если ваш ребенок не умрет, он вырастет. И чем больше он растет, тем больше он станет самостоятельным. И тогда будет боль. Каждая мать страдает, каждый отец страдает. And the child will become adult, he will fall in love with some woman. And then the mother suffers: a competitor has entered. But this is because of attachment. If a mother really loved the child, she will help him to be independent. She will help him to move in the world and to make as many love contacts as possible, because she would know that the more you love, the more you are fulfilled. And when her child falls in love with a woman, she will be happy; she will dance with joy. Love never gives you misery because if you love someone you love his happiness. If you are attached to someone, you don’t love his happiness, you love only your selfishness; you are concerned only with your own egocentric demands.
- Когда Патанджали говорит “непривязанность, he is not saying to kill your love. Скорее, Напротив, he is saying that “Kill all that poisons your love, kill all the obstacles, destroy all the obstacles that kill your love.” Only a yogi can be loving. The worldly person cannot be loving, he can be attached. Помните это: attachment means fixation — and you cannot accept anything new in it, only the past. You don’t allow the present, you don’t allow the future to change anything. And life is change. Only death is unchanging.
- Патанджали говорит быть непривязанным. Это означает быть текущим, принятие, все, что жизнь приносит. Не требуйте и не заставляйте. Жизнь не пойдет за тобой. Вы не можете заставить жизнь быть в соответствии с вами. Лучше плыть по течению, чем толкать его. Просто течь с ним! Большое счастье становится возможным. Вокруг тебя уже много счастья, но вы не можете видеть это из-за ваших неправильных фиксаций.
- Patanjali says that energy should remain and the desire disappears. Only when desire disappears and you are filled with energy you can achieve that blissful state that yoga aims at. A dead person cannot reach to the divine. The divine can be attained only through overflowing energy, abundant energy, an ocean of energy. So this is the second thing to remember continuously — don’t destroy energy, destroy desire. It will be difficult. It is going to be hard, arduous, because it needs a total transformation of your being. But Patanjali is for it.
- Patanjali says there is a third possibility: don’t fight and don’t escape. Просто будь начеку. Just be conscious. Whatsoever is the case, просто будь свидетелем. Conscious effort means, один: searching for the inner source of happiness, и, second: witnessing the old pattern of habits — not fighting it, just witnessing it.
- Патанджали говорит, “Accept everything, use it, be creative about it; don’t negate.” Negation is not his way, but affirmation. That’s why Patanjali has worked so much on the body, on food, on yoga asanas, on pranayam. These are all efforts to create the harmony: right food for the body, right posture for the body; rhythmic breathing for the vital body. More prana, more vitality has to be absorbed. Ways and means have to be found so that you are not always lacking in energy, but overflowing.
- Mastery of the mind is yoga. And when Patanjali says “cessation of the mind”, this is meant: cessation as a master. Mind ceases as a master. Then it is not active. Then it is a passive instrument. Вы заказываете, it works; you don’t order, it remains still. It is just waiting. It cannot assert by itself. The assertion is lost; the violence is lost. It will not try to control you. Now just the reverse is the case. How to become masters? And how to put mind to its place, where you can use it; куда, if you don’t want to use it, you can put it aside and remain silent? So the whole mechanism of the mind will have to be understood. Now we should enter the sutra.
- Patanjali says natural sleep is good for the body health, and if you can become alert in sleep it can become samadhi, it can become a spiritual phenomenon.
- Patanjali says there is not much difference between sushupti, а осознание есть чистейшее пламя разума, и самадхи, the ultimate state of buddhahood — not much difference, although there is a difference. The difference is that of consciousness. In dreamless sleep you are unconscious, в самадхи вы сознательны, but the state is the same. You move into God, you move into the universal center. You disappear from the circumference and you go to the center. And just that contact with the center so rejuvenates you. People who cannot sleep are really miserable people, very miserable people. They have lost a natural source of being in contact with God. They have lost a natural passage into the universal; a door has closed.
- Патанджали говорит, что сон находится рядом с самадхи.. Хороший сон, глубокий сон, и самадхи, отличаются только в одном смысле: самадхи имеет осознание, сон не имеет сознания.
- Whether God exists or not is irrelevant. Patanjali has said God is only a device for the love type, the person who cannot find himself without creating a mirror; then God is just the greatest mirror you can create. Whether God exists or not is not the point at all. Patanjali says it is a device: a device for prayer. The real thing is prayer, not God, Запомни: the real thing is prayer, not God. The real thing is love, not the beloved. If you can love, if you can pray, it doesn’t matter whether God exists or not, whether your prayer is heard or not. Praying itself is transforming; heard, not heard, is beside the point. In deep prayer you dissolve your ego. But for prayer you need an excuse: whom to pray to? You need an excuse; hence God, the hypothesis of God. It is a hypothesis, помнить; it is not really there.
- All over the world it is thought that meditation is a means to God; God is the end. Patanjali reverses the whole situation: he says meditation is the goal, God is only a hypothesis. If your mind is very childish and you need the support of a God to meditate, okay, you can take the support. Но помни, the moment you have learned how to meditate, drop that support. It was just to help you in the beginning.
- На востоке, man has been working on the mind for at least five thousand years. In the West psychoanalysis is not even one hundred years old. It is just childish. Patanjali is five thousand years old, but he does not bother about psychoanalysis. He simply says that there is no need to be bothered about it; you simply become aware of the content of your mind: the thoughts, the dreams or whatever is passing through. And just remain a witness, without any judgement that this is good, это плохо. You have nothing to do with it; it is just a traffic that is moving and you are standing by the side of the road, just watching without any judgement. Slowly the traffic becomes thinner and a moment comes, the traffic simply disappears. When the traffic completely disappears, a new experience of no-mind, a new experience of simple awareness — awareness aware of itself, because there is nothing else to be aware of. Once this awareness — Вы можете назвать это просветлением, you can call it total consciousness — once this is realized, you are beyond all mental problems, because you are beyond mind. Now the mind cannot affect you at all.
- Patanjali says also that there are four states of consciousness: the waking, JAGRAT; the dreaming, SWAPNA; the sleeping, SUSHUPTI; AND the fourth… for the fourth he gives no name — he simply calls it TURIYA; TURIYA means the fourth. TURIYA is exactly the meaning of Tetrad — Тогда человек как маленький ребенок. And the fourth means absolute awakening, pure awakening. What we know as awakening is not much of an awakening. In the morning you wake up, but you simply wake up from one dream into another dream; you wake up from the private dream into the collective dream, вот и все. You get out from a small prison into a bigger prison, вот и все. It is not much of an awakening — because the same desires persist and the same illusions persist and the same state of mind remains. Your awakening is not real awakening; это псевдо. The real awakening happens only in the fourth — where all dreams have disappeared, the whole world that you had known in your waking has disappeared, is no more known, that which you had known in your dreams is no more known. That which you had known even in your deep sleep, that joy of deep sleep, эта тишина, that rejuvenating energy of deep sleep, даже этого нет. Now you have arrived at the very source, but that source is unmanifest, it is invisible. That invisible source is God.
- It is always God who takes, who gives. Sometimes he takes from my side, sometimes he gives from my side. Sometimes he becomes a giver and sometimes he becomes a taker but it is always he. So who is there to thank and to be thanked? Никто. It is one reality. That is the meaning of Patanjali when he says: Don’t take, don’t give. He is saying: Let God be the giver, let God to be taker — you don’t come in. It is difficult to give because of the holding mind — but not as difficult as to take. Because when you take, это больно. It hurts very much. You have to take something from somebody. It makes you sad. You are on an ego trip.
- Когда Патанджали говорит, не-ум, cessation of mind, he means complete cessation. He will not allow you to make a japa, “Ram-Ram-Ram.” He will say that this is not cessation; you are using the mind. Он скажет, “Simply stop!” but you will ask, “How? How to simply stop?” The mind continues. Even if you sit, the mind continues. Even if you don’t do, it goes on doing. Patanjali says just look. Let mind go, let mind do whatsoever it is doing. You just look. You don’t interfere. You just be a witness, you just be an onlooker not concerned, as if the mind doesn’t belong to you, as if it is not your business, not your concern. Don’t be concerned! Just look and let the mind flow. It is flowing because of past momentum, because you have always helped it to flow. The activity has taken its own momentum, so it is flowing. You just don’t cooperate Look, and let the mind flow. For many, много жизней, million lives maybe, you have cooperated with it, you have helped it, you have given your energy to it. The river will flow awhile. Если вы не будете сотрудничать, если ты просто выглядишь равнодушным — Слово Будды равнодушие, упекша: смотреть без забот, просто смотрю, ничего не делать никак — ум будет течь некоторое время, и он остановится сам по себе, когда потеряется импульс, когда энергия текла, разум остановится. Когда ум останавливается, ты занимаешься йогой: ты достиг дисциплины. This is the definition: YOGA IS THE CESSATION OF MIND. THEN THE WITNESS IS ESTABLISHED IN ITSELF.
- Patanjali is concerned with the beyond, not with the content. Он говорит, “Throw this whole mind. Whatsoever it contains, it is useless.” You may be carrying beautiful philosophies, Patanjali will say, “Throw them. All is rubbish.” Это трудно. If someone says “Your Bible is rubbish, your Gita is rubbish, your scriptures all rubbish, rot, throw them,” you will be shocked. But this is what is going to happen. Patanjali is not going to make any compromise with you. He is uncompromising. And that’s the beauty. And that is his uniqueness.
- Patanjali is absolutely scientific. He says we are not related with means; there are a thousand and one meanS. The goal is the truth. Some have achieved it through God, so it is okay — believe in God and achieve the goal, because when the goal is achieved you will throw your belief. So belief is just instrumental. If you don’t believe, это нормально; don’t believe, and travel the path of belieflessness, and reach the goal. He is neither theist nor atheist. He is not creating a religion, he is simply showing you all the paths that are possible and all the laws that work in your transformation. God is one of those paths; it is not a must. If you are godless, there is no need to be non-religious. Patanjali says you can also reach — be godless; don’t bother about God. These are the laws and these are the experiments; this is the meditation — pass through it.
- Patanjali is scientific. He is not a poet. If he says, “Don’t eat meat,” he is not saying because eating meat is violence, нет. He is saying it because eating meat is self-destructive. There are poets who say to be non-violent is beautiful; Patanjali says to be non-violent is to be healthy, to be non-violent is to be selfish. You are not having compassion on somebody else, you are having compassion on yourself.
- Just by knowing the innermost core of yourself, the purusha, the dweller within. Just by knowing it! Патанджали говорит, Будда говорит, Лао Цзы говорит, just by knowing it all desires disappear.
- Патанджали говорит “intense and sincere”. Religion is really like sex — deeper than sex, выше секса, holier than sex, but like sex. It is one individual meeting with the whole: it is a deep orgasm. You melt into the whole, you completely disappear. Prayer is like love. Yoga — по факту, the very word “yoga” means meeting, communion, meeting of the two — and such a deep and intense and sincere meeting that the two disappear. The boundaries become blurred and one exists. It cannot be in any other way. If you are not sincere and intense, bring your total being. Only then the ultimate is possible. You have to risk yourself completely; less than that won’t do.
- Says Patanjali: when one becomes centered into oneself, one becomes a player; he plays. Life is a game and it is beautiful; no need to worry about the result. Result doesn’t matter, it is simply irrelevant. The thing which you are doing in itself has value. я с тобой разговариваю; ты меня слушаешь. But you are listening with a purpose, and I am talking purposelessly. You are listening with a purpose, because through listening you are going to attain something — some knowledge, some clues, some techniques, methods, some understanding, and then you are going to work them out. You are after a result. I am talking to you purposelessly; I simply enjoy.
- You can become a god right now because you are already that — just the thing has to be realized. You are already the case. It is not that you have to grow into a god. Действительно, you have to realize that you are already that. This happens through surrender. Patanjali says you believe in a God, you trust in a God there, где-то, high in the universe, at the top, and you surrender. That God is just a prop to help surrender. When the surrender happens you become a god, because surrender means, “Now I am not concerned with the result, I am not concerned with the future, I am not concerned with myself at all. I surrender.” Когда ты говоришь, “I surrender”, what is surrender? я — the ego And without the ego how can you think about purpose, result? Who will think about it? Then you are in a let-go. Then you go wherever it leads. Now the whole will decide; you have surrendered your decision. Patanjali says there are two ways. Make effort total. If you don’t accumulate ego, then that total effort will become a surrender in itself. If you accumulate ego, then there is a way: surrender to God.
- A yogi tries to remain with closed eyes as much as possible, with hands and legs crossing each other, so the energy moves into each other. He sits with the spine straight. If the spine is straight while you are sitting, you will preserve more energy than any other way — because when the spine is straight, the gravitation of the earth cannot force much energy out of you, because it touches only one point of the spine. That’s why when you are sitting in such a leaning posture, slanting, you think you are resting. But Patanjali says you are leaking energy, because more of your body is under the influence of gravitation. This won’t help. Straight spine, with closed hands and legs, with closed eyes, you have become a circle: that circle is represented by Shivalinga. You must have seen the Shivalinga — the phallic symbol, as it is known in the West. По факту, it is the inner bio-energy circle, just egg shaped. When your body energy flows rightly, it becomes like an egg: the shape is like an egg, exactly like an egg. And that is symbolized in the Shivalinga. You become a Shiva. When the energy is flowing into yourself again and again, not moving out, then languor disappears. It will not disappear by talking; it will not disappear by reading scriptures; it will not disappear by philosophizing. It will disappear only when your energy is not leaking. Try to preserve it. The more you preserve, лучше. But in the West, something just the opposite is being taught — that it is good to release energy through sex, это и то — release energy. It is good if you are not using it in any other way; otherwise you will get mad. And whenever there is too much energy, it is better to release it through sex. Sex is the simplest method to release it.
- Patanjali says delusion will disappear if you chant Aum with mindfulness. How it will happen? — because delusion means a dreaming state, when you are lost. Тебя больше нет: just the dream is there. If you meditate on Aum, you have created the sound of Aum and you are a witness, you are there Your presence cannot allow any dream to happen Whenever you are, there is no dream. Whenever there is a dream, ты не. You both cannot be together. If you are there, the dream will disappear. Или, you will have to disappear. Both together cannot be. Dream and awareness never meet. That’s why delusion disappears by witnessing the sound of Aum.
- Says Patanjali, when somebody is happy, feel happy, feel friendly. Then you also open a door towards happiness. In a subtle way, if you can feel friendly with someone who is happy, you immediately start sharing his happiness; it has become yours also — немедленно ! And happiness is not someTHING; it is not material. It is not something that somebody can cling to. Вы можете поделиться им. When a flower blooms, you can share it; when a bird sings, you can share it; when somebody is happy, you can share it. And the beauty is that it does not depend on his sharing. It depends on your partaking.
- Don’t even condemn evil. The temptation is there; you would like to condemn even virtue. And Patanjali says don’t condemn evil. Почему? He knows the inner dynamics of the mind: because if you too much condemn evil, you pay too much attention to evil, and by and by, you become attuned to it. If you say that “This is wrong, that is wrong,” you are paying too much attention to the wrong. You will become addicted with the wrong. If you pay too much attention to anything, you become hypnotized. And whatsoever you are condemning you will commit, because it will become an attraction, a deep-down attraction. В противном случае, why bother? They are sinners, but who are you to bother about them?
- Иисус говорит, “Judge ye not…” That’s what Patanjali means — равнодушие; don’t judge this way or that — be indifferent. Don’t say yes or no; don’t condemn, don’t appreciate. Simply leave it to the divine; это не твое дело. A man is a thief: it is his business. It is his and God’s. Let them settle themselves; you don’t come in. Who is asking you to come in? Иисус говорит, “Judge ye not…” Патанджали говорит, “Be indifferent.”
- Patanjali gives other alternatives also. If you can do this — being happy with happy people, friendly; compassion with the miserable, joy with the virtuous, indifference with the evil ones — if you can do this, then you enter from the transformation of the mind towards the supermind. If you cannot do — because it is difficult, not easy — then there are other ways. Don’t feel depressed.
- When you change your breathing and your attitudes, your body chemistry changes its pattern; you are going through a chemical transformation, and then your eyes become clear, a new perceptivity happens. The old same tree becomes absolutely new. You never knew the shade of its green: it becomes radiant. The whole world all around you takes a new shape. It is a paradise now — not the ordinary old rotten earth. People around you are no more the same. Your ordinary wife becomes a most beautiful woman. Everything changes with your clarity of perception. When your eyes change, everything changes. Says Patanjali,
- When Patanjali says ‘austerity’, he means, ‘Be simple, don’t cultivate it.’ Because cultivated simplicity is not simplicity. How can a cultivated simplicity be simple? It is very complex; you have been trying, calculating, cultivating.
- Says Patanjali, ‘What is avidya? — lack of awareness. And what is lack of awareness? How do you know it? What are the symptoms? These are the symptoms: taking the transient for the eternal.’ Look around — life is a flux, everything is moving. Everything is moving continuously, changing continuously. Revolution is the nature of things all around. Change seems to be the only permanent thing. Accept change and everything changes. It is just like the waves in an ocean: they are born, for a little while they exist, and then they dissolve and die. It is just like waves.
- Patanjali is not in favour of the analysis of dreams. He says meditate on your dreams. Except for you nobody can know the exact meaning. Either go to a Buddha who has no mind of his own, who has no ideology, не догма, to interpret it, to give it a certain colour, to emphasise a certain concept, a certain prejudice, that he is already carrying. Either go to a Buddha or the best way is to meditate over it, silently watch it, and in that watchfulness you will come across the third layer. Just hidden underneath the dreams is a third state of consciousness: а осознание есть чистейшее пламя разума. It happens every night. When you are not dreaming but simply sleeping, there are almost eight cycles every night. You will dream for a time then there is a dreamless pause, a rest, because dreaming is a very tiring process, very exhausting. So you take a little rest, and when you are rested you start dreaming again. If you meditate you will find those small intervals. That will give you the insight into the third state — а осознание есть чистейшее пламя разума — which is even closer to reality than dreams. Modern psychology has yet to discover it. And then Patanjali says now the most difficult task for the seeker is to meditate on dreamless sleep. If one meditates and watches one’s dreamless sleep, those pauses, then one becomes aware of the fourth. Turio simply means the fourth — no name is given to it. And no name is given to it for a significant reason, it is simply called the fourth; so that you don’t start interpreting it a number is given rather than a name. This is the real awakening, this is the state of Buddhahood, of Christ-consciousness.
- Patanjali says that if one can sleep with awareness, then in that awareness one comes to know that the body is absolutely another world. You are a separate reality: you are in the body but you are not the body. The body is your shrine, your abode, but you are not it. It has to be respected, it has to be loved, but one should not get identified with it. If one gets identified with the body one loses the real perspective of being eternal, бессмертный, вечный. Then it is as if you are looking into the sky from a window and you get identified with the window; you start thinking that you are the window. It is exactly the same case with the body. You are looking through the eyes but you are not the eyes; the eyes are only the windows. You are listening through the ears but you are not your ears; your ears are only the windows. And so it is with your hands and all the senses. You are deep somewhere inside. The awareness of that inner core is easiest in deep sleep.
- “One who is able to maintain a constant state of desirelessness even towards the most exalted states of enlightenment…” Patanjali calls it paravairagya: the ultimate renunciation. You have renounced the world: you have renounced greed, you have renounced money, you have renounced power; you have renounced everything of the outside. You have even renounced your body, you have even renounced your mind, but the last renunciation is the kaivalya renunciation of kaivalya itself, of moksha itself, of nirvana itself. Now you renounce even the idea of liberation, because that too is a desire. And desire, whatsoever its object, то же самое. Вы желаете денег, I desire moksha. Конечно, my object is better than your object, but still my desire is the same as yours. Желание говорит, “I am not content as I am. More money is needed; then I will be contented. More liberation is needed; then I will be contented.” The quality of desire is the same, the problem of desire is the same. The problem is that the future is needed: “As I am, it is not enough; something more is needed. Whatsoever has happened to me is not enough. Something still has to happen to me; only then can I be happy.” This is the nature of desire: you need more money, somebody needs a bigger house, somebody thinks of more power, политика, somebody thinks of a better wife or a better husband, somebody thinks of more education, more knowledge, somebody thinks of more miraculous powers, but it makes no difference. Desire is desire, and desirelessness is needed.
- “Kaivalya,” Патанджали говорит, “happens only when the last desire to be has disappeared.” The whole problem is to be or not to be. The whole life we try to be this and that, and the ultimate can happen only when you are not.
- We are clinging to something which is functioning under the law of gravitation: тело, разум. “Once,” Патанджали говорит, “you have become aware that you are neither the body nor the mind, suddenly you start rising upwards.” Some center somewhere high in the sky pulls you up. That law is called ‘grace’. Then God pulls you upwards. And that type of law has to be there, otherwise gravitation could not exist. In nature, if positive electricity exists, then negative electricity has to exist. Man exists, then the woman has to exist. Reason exists, then intuition has to exist. Night exists, then the day has to exist. Life exists, then death has to exist. Everything needs the opposite to balance it. Now science has become aware of one law: gravitation. Science still needs a Patanjali to give it another dimension, the dimension of falling upwards. Then life becomes complete. You are a meeting place of gravitation and grace. In you, grace and gravitation are criss-crossing. You have something of the earth and something of the sky within you. You are the horizon where earth and sky are meeting. If you hold too much to the earth, then you will forget completely that you belong to the sky, to the infinite space, the beyond. Once you are no more attached with the earth part of you, suddenly you start rising high.
