Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9
Chapter #1
Chapter title: Mastery over the five elements
21 April 1976 am in Buddha Hall THE POWER OF CONTACTING THE STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH IS OUTSIDE THE MENTAL BODY AND THEREFORE INCONCEIVABLE IS CALLED MAHAVIDEHA. THROUGH THIS POWER THE COVERING OF THE LIGHT IS DESTROYED. PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THEIR GROSS, CONSTANT, SUBTLE, ALL-PERVADING, AND FUNCTIONAL STATE BRINGS MASTERY OVER THE PANCHABHUTAS -- THE FIVE ELEMENTS. FROM THIS FOLLOWS THE ATTAINMENT OF ANIMA, ETC., PERFECTION OF THE BODY, AND THE REMOVAL OF THE ELEMENTS' POWER TO OBSTRUCT THE BODY. BEAUTY, GRACE, STRENGTH, AND ADAMANTINE HARDNESS CONSTITUTE THE PERFECT BODY. THE yoga system of Patanjali is not a philosophical system. It is empirical. It is a tool to work with. But still it has a philosophy. That too is just to give an intellectual understanding where you are moving, what you are seeking. The philosophy is arbitrary, utilitarian, just to give a comprehensive picture of the territory you are going to discover; but the philosophy has to be understood. The first thing about the philosophy of Patanjali. He divides human personality into five seeds, five bodies. He says you don't have one body; you have layers upon layers of bodies; and they are five. The first body he calls annamaya kosha -- the food body, the earth body, which is made of earth and is constantly to be nourished by food. Food comes from earth. If you stop taking food, your annamaya kosha will wither away. So one has to be very alert about what one is eating because that makes you and it will affect you in
From the very beginning every child has been misinformed, and misinformed, has been misdirected, misguided. Not knowingly, because the parents are also in the same trap; they have been misguided. For example, if a child is too energetic, the family feels uncomfortable, because a too energetic child is a revolution in the home. Nothing is safe, nothing at all is safe. The energetic child will destroy everything. He has to be stopped. His energy has to be blocked, his life has to be diminished. He has to be condemned, punished, and only rewarded when he behaves. And what do you expect? You expect him to be almost an old man -- not doing any harm to anything that you think is very precious.
Just to save a clock you destroy the child. Or to save your crockery you destroy the child. Or to save your furniture; otherwise it will be scratched from this end to that.
You destroy a newly arrived being, a gift from God. You go on scratching the being of the child just to save the furniture from being scratched.
By and by the child is forced to follow you because he is helpless. He depends on you; his survival depends on you. Just to survive, he accepts to be dead. Just to survive, because you give him food and milk and care. Where will he go if you are so much against him? By and by he goes on selling his being to you. Whatsoever you say, by and by he accepts. Your rewards and your punishments are the way you misguide him.
By and by he trusts you more than his own inner voice because he knows his inner voice always leads him into trouble. His inner voice has always proved to bring punishment, so punishment and his inner voice become associated. And whenever he does not listen to the inner voice and simply follows you blindly, he is rewarded. Whenever he is himself he is punished; whenever he is not himself he is rewarded. The logic is clear.
By and by you distract him from his own life. By and by he forgets what his inner voice is. If you don't hear it for a long time, you cannot hear it.
Close your eyes any moment: you will hear the voice of your father, your mother, your peers, teachers, and you will never hear your voice. Many people come to me and they say, "You talk about the inner voice; we never hear it." There is a crowd.
When Jesus says, "Hate your father and mother," he is not actually saying to hate your father and mother. He is saying hate the father and the mother which have become consciences within you.
Hate, because that is the most ugly agreement you have made -- a suicidal contract. Hate, destroy those voices, so that your voice can be freed and liberated, so that
you can feel who you are and what you want to be.
Many people come to me and they say, "We had come to find a path. On the contrary, meditations have made it feel completely lost." It's a good indication. It shows
that the grip of others is loosening. That's why you feel lost, because those voices of the others were giving you guidance, and you had started to believe in them. You have believed in them for so long that they have become your guides. Now, when you meditate, those voices are destructured. You are freed from the trap.
Again you become a child, and you don't know where to go. Because all the guides have disappeared. The voice of the father is not there,the voice of the mother is not there, the teacher is not there, the school is not there;suddenly you are alone. One starts feeling scared -- "Where are my guides? Where are people who were always leading me to the right path?"
In fact nobody can lead you to the right path, because all leading is going to be wrong. No leader can be the right leader, because leading as such is wrong. Whomsoever you allow to lead will do some harm to you because he will start doing something, forcing something, giving you a structure; and you have to live an unstructured life, a life free of all structure and character, free of all frames, references, contacts -- free in this moment from the past.
So all guides are misguides, and when they disappear, and you have believed in them for so long, suddenly you feel empty, surrounded by emptiness and all paths gone. Where to go?
This period is a revolutionary period in the life of a being. One has to pass through it with courage. If you can remain in it, unafraid, soon you will start hearing your own voice which has been repressed so long. Soon you will start learning its language, because you have
forgotten the very language. You know only the language that has been taught to you.
And this language, the inner language, is not verbal. It is of feelings. And all societies are against feelings; because a feeling is such an alive thing, it is dangerous. A thought is dead; it is not dangerous. So every society has forced you into the head, pushed you from all over your body into the head.
You live only in the head. If your head is cut off and suddenly you come across your body without a head, you will not be able to recognize it. Only faces are recognized.
Your whole body has shrunken, has lost luster, softness, fluidity. It is almost a dead thing, like a wooden leg. You use it, functionally it goes on, but no life exists in it. Your whole life has gone into the head. Hung up there, you are afraid of death because the only place that you can live, the only space in which you can live, has to be all over your body. Your life has to spread and stream all over your body. It has to become a river, a flow.
A small child starts playing with his genital organs. Immediately the parents are worried -- "Stop it!" The worry comes from their own repressions -- because they were stopped. Suddenly they become anxious, an anxiety arises in them, because they have been taught
certain things, that this is bad. They were never allowed to touch their genital organs. How can the child be allowed? They force the child, they punish the child, not to touch the genital organs.
What can the child do? He cannot understand why the genital organs are bad. They are as much a part of him as are his hands, his nose, his toes; he can touch every place in the body, but not the genital organs. And if he is punished again and again, of course he starts forcing his energy back from the genital organs. It should not stream there because if it streams there he wants to play with them. And it is pleasant, and nothing is wrong, the child cannot see what is wrong in it. In fact that is the most pleasant part in the body.
But the parents are afraid, and the child can see their faces and their eyes: suddenly -- they were normal human beings -- the moment he touches his genital organs, they have become abnormal, almost mad. Something changes in them so drastically that the child
also becomes afraid -- "There must be something wrong." The something wrong is in the mind of the parents, not in the body of the child, but what can the child do?
Just to avoid this situation, this embarrassing situation, one of the most beautiful phenomena has been repressed so deeply that women have not felt orgasm.
In India still women don't know what orgasm is. They have never heard about it; in fact they know that sexual pleasure is of the man, not of the woman. This is absurd because God is not a male chauvinist and he is not in favor of men and against women. He has given to all,
equally? but girls have been prohibited more than boys because the society is male dominated.
So they say, "Boys are boys; even if you prevent them they are going to do something or other." But girls, they have to be paradigms of culture, morality, purity, virginity. They are not allowed to touch their genital organs at all. So how is it possible later on to achieve orgasm, because the energy does not move that way? And because the energy does not move that way, a thousand and one problems arise.
Women become hysterical. Men become too obsessed with sex. Women become almost sad and depressed because they cannot enjoy the sexual experience; they become almost anti. And man becomes too interested in sex because all experiences leave something out.
Man goes on feeling he is missing something, missing something, so have more sexual experience -- have it with many more women. That is not the problem. You will go on missing with one, you will go on missing with many.
The problem is within you: your energy is not flowing through the genital organs. And this way, the whole energy by and by is forced into the head, because head is appreciated. We have the expression "the head clerk," "the head superintendent," "the headmaster" -- all "heads."
"Hands" is used for laborers. "Heads" are superior beings -- "heads" of states. "Hands?" -- just a manual worker, worthless. In India "heads" are brahmins, and the poor sudras are not even hands, legs, feet. In Hindu scriptures it is said that God created brahmins as heads and sudrasas feet and kshatriyas, warriors, as hands,
arms, strength, and businessmen, vaishyas, as the belly. But brahmins are heads. The whole world has become brahmin. That is the problem -- everybody living in the head, and the whole body has shrunken.
Just stand before a mirror some time and see what has happened to your whole body. Your face looks very alive,red with life, but your chest? -- shrunken. Your belly? -- almost mechanical, goes on functioning in a mechanical way. Your whole body....
If people stand naked, just watching their-bodies you can see what types of work they are doing in their life. If they are workers, their hands will be alive, muscular. If they are just head people -- eggheads, professors, vice-chancellors, and that sort of rubbish -- then you will see their heads, very shiny, red. If they are postmen and policemen their legs will be very strong. But you wi]l never find a fun body, a whole body, because nobody is
living as a total organic unity.
One should live as a total organic unity. The whole body should be reclaimed. Because through the feet you are in touch with the earth -- you are grounded -- if you lose your legs and their strength and they become dead limbs, you are no longer rooted in the earth.
You are like a tree whose roots have become dead or rotten, weak; then the tree cannot live long, and cannot live healthy, fully, wholly. Your feet need to be rooted in the earth; they are your roots.
Sometime try a small experiment. Just naked, stand somewhere -- on the beach, near the river, just naked in the sun -- and start jumping jogging, and feel your energies flowing through your feet, through your legs to the earth. Jog and feel your energies going through your legs into the earth. Then after a few minutes of jogging, just stand silently, rooted to the earth, and just feel a communion of your feet with the earth. Suddenly you
will feel very, very rooted, grounded, solid. You will see the earth communicates, you will see your feet communicate -- a dialogue arises between the earth and you.
This grounding has been lost. People have become uprooted; they are no longer grounded. And then they cannot live. Because life belongs to the whole organism, not only to the head.