Find Your Original Face

Just be what you are and don't care a bit about the world. Then you will feel a tremendous relaxation and a deep peace within your heart. This is what Zen people call your 'original face' – relaxed, without tensions, without pretensions, without hypocrisies, without the so called discipline of how you should behave.
And remember, the original face is a beautiful poetic expression, but it does not mean that you will have a different face. This same face will lose all its tensions, this same face will be relaxed, this same face will not think of others as inferior. This same face under these new values will be your original face.
There is an ancient proverb: Many a hero is a man who did not have the courage to be a coward.
If you are a coward, what is wrong in it? You are a coward – it is perfectly good. Cowards are also needed, otherwise from where will you get heroes? They are an absolute necessity to give the background to create heroes.
Just be yourself, whatever it is.
The problem is that never before has anybody told you just to be yourself. Everybody is poking his nose in, saying that you should be this way, you should be that way – even in ordinary matters.

(Osho, Courage)

FREEDOM FROM, FREEDOM FOR

Never think in terms of being free from; always think in terms of being free for. And the difference is vast, tremendously vast. Don't think in terms of from – think for. Be for God, be free for truth, but don't think that you want to be free from the crowd, free from the church, free from this and that. You may be able to go far away one day, but you will never be free, never. It is going to be some sort of suppression.
Why are you so afraid of the crowd?... If the pull is there, then your fear simply shows your pull, your attraction. Whenever you go you will remain dominated by the crowd.
What I am saying is just look at the facts of it – that there is no need to think in terms of the crowd. Just think in terms of your being. It can be dropped right now. You cannot be free if you struggle. You can drop it because there is no point in struggling. The crowd is not the problem – you are the problem. The crowd is not pulling you – you are being pulled, not by somebody else but by your own unconscious conditioning.
Always remember not to throw the responsibility somewhere on somebody else, because then you will never be free of it. Deep down it is your responsibility. Why should one be so much against the crowd? Poor crowd! Why should you be so much against it? Why do you carry such a wound? The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate. So the question is of your cooperation. You can drop the cooperation just now, just like that. If you put any effort into it, then you will be in trouble. So do it instantly. It is just on the spur of the moment, of spontaneous understanding, if you can see the point that if you fight, you will be fighting a losing battle. In the very fighting you are emphasizing the crowd.
That's what happened to millions of people. Somebody wants to escape from women – in India they have done that for centuries. Then they become more and more engrossed in it. They want to get rid of sex and their whole mind then becomes sexual; they think only for sex and nothing else. They fast, and they will not go to sleep; they will do this and that pranayama and yoga and a thousand and one things – all nonsense. The more they fight with sex the more they are enforcing it, the more they are concentrating on it. It becomes so significant, out of all proportion.
That is what has happened to Christian Monasteries. They became so repressed, just afraid. The same can happen to you if you become afraid to much of the crowd. The crowd cannot do anything unless you cooperate, so it is a question of your alertness. Don't cooperate!
This is my observation: that whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. Nobody else is doing it to you. You wanted if to be done, so it has been done. Somebody exploits you because you wanted to be exploited. Somebody has put you into a prison because you wanted to be imprisoned. There must have been a certain search for it. Maybe you used to call it security. Your name may have been different, but you were hankering to be imprisoned because in a prison one is safe and there is no insecurity.
But don't fight with the prison walls. Look inside. Find that hankering for security and how the crowd can manipulate you. You must be asking for something from the crowd – recognition, honor, respect, respectability. If you ask them, you have to repay them. Then the crowd says, “Okay, we give you respect, and you give us your freedom.” It is a simple bargain. But the crowd has never done anything to you – it is basically you. So get out of your own way!

(Osho)

Imagination

The faculty of intuition and the faculty of creating your own reality are absolutely not only different, but diametrically opposite things. Intuition is only a mirror. It does not create anything, it only reflects. It reflects that which is. It is pure, silent, crystal clear water reflecting the stars and the moon. It does not create anything. It is the clarity that in the East has been called the third eye. Eyes don't create anything, they simply inform you what is there.
Creating one's own reality is called imagination – that is the faculty of dreaming. In the night, you create so many things in your dreams. And the most amazing thing is that your whole life you have been dreaming every night, and you know every morning that was a dream – not real. But when the night comes again, and you fall asleep and your imagination starts spreading its wings, no doubts arises in you – without any doubt you accept its reality.
This faculty of imagination can function in other ways also. It creates your dreams – which you know are not real. But when they come, and you are surrounded by them, they appear absolutely real – more real than the real world. Because in the real world once in a while you can suspect, you can doubt. For example, this very moment you are capable of doubting whether what you are seeing here or hearing here is real, or if you have fallen asleep and you are seeing a dream. It can be a dream. You will know only when you wake up.
This is the only distinction: in reality, you can doubt -- “it could be a dream” -- but in a dream you cannot wonder if it is a dream. That's the only distinction between dream and reality. Reality allows your reason; imagination does not allow your reason.
The same faculty can create daydreams: you are just sitting silently, not doing anything, and a dream starts floating in your eyes; you are awake but you start thinking about being the president of the country. Because you are awake, an undercurrent knows that you are having stupid ideas; but still they are so sweet that one goes on dreaming that one has become a world conqueror, or the richest man in the world. He's awake, but he's creating a dream. If this becomes too much, you loose your sanity. You can go into any madhouse, any psychiatric hospital, and you will be suprised how people are living in their imaginations: talking to people who are not there – not only talking, but even answering from their side – and there is no doubt, no skepticism.
Imagination can create a kind of insanity if it starts believing in its own daydreams – it can create hallucinations. As far as I'm concerned, your so called saints, great religious leaders who have seen God, who have met God, who have talked with God, are in that category. Their God is just their imagination.
There is a certain method if you want to check it. The time needed is at least three weeks, and you have to do two things to prepare the ground to create a hallucination. Then you can see Jesus Christ standing before you, or Gautam Buddha, and you can have a good chitchat. You can ask questions and you will be answered – although nobody else will see that somebody is there, but that is their fault. They don't have the spiritual height to see the invisible. Two basic things are needed: One is a three-week fast. The more hungry you are, the less your intelligence functions, because intelligence needs a certain amount of vitamins continuously – if they are not supplied, it starts getting dim. In three weeks' time it stop functioning. So the first thing is to put the intelligence to sleep. That's why the religions prescribe fasting as a great religious discipline. But the psychology behind it is that within three weeks your intelligence starts to go sleep. And the imagination can function perfectly well – there is nobody to doubt.
The second requirement is aloneness – move to a place in a mountain, in a forest, in a cave, where you are absolutely alone. Because man is brought up in a society, he has always lived with people. He's talking the whole day – yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak. At night he's talking in his dreams, and from the morning he starts and goes on till he goes to sleep. If there is nobody to talk to, he starts praying to God. That is talking to God, that is a respectable way of being crazy.
Within three weeks' time.... after the second week, he starts talking aloud. After the first week, he starts talking to himself, but he knows that nobody should hear it; otherwise, they will think him mad. But by the end of the second week that fear is gone, because intelligence is getting dull. By the second week he starts talking aloud. By the third week, he starts seeing the person he wanted to meet: Jesus Christ, Krishna, Mahavir, Gautam Buddha, a dead friend, or anybody else. After three weeks, he's capable of visualizing the person so clearly that our ordinary reality look pale. Hence, religions have supported both these strategies: fasting, and going into isolation. That is the way, the scientific way, to go into a hallucinatory experience.

(Osho)

yoga by osho

OSHO : The Path of Yoga, Chapter 1
We livein a deep illusion -- the illusion of hope, of future, of tomorrow. As man is, man cannot exist without self-deception.
Nietzsche says somewhere that man cannot live with the true: he needs dreams, he needs illusions, he needs lies to exist. And Nietzsche is true. As man is he cannot exist with the truth. This has to be understood very deeply, because without understanding it there can be no entry into the inquiry which is called Yoga.
The mind has to be understood deeply -- the mind which needs lies, the mind which needs illusions, the mind which cannot exist with the real, the mind which needs dreams. You are not only dreaming in the night; even while awake you are continuously dreaming. You may be looking at me, you may be listening to me, but a dream current goes on within you. The mind is continuously creating dreams, images, fantasies.
Now scientists say that a man can live without sleep but he cannot live without dreams. In the old days it was understood that sleep was a necessity, but now modern research says sleep is not really a necessity; sleep is needed only so that you can dream. Dreaming is the necessity. If you are allowed to sleep but not allowed to dream, you will not feel fresh, alive, in the morning. You will feel tired, as if you have not been able to sleep at all.
In the night there are periods -- periods for deep sleep and periods for dreaming. There is a rhythm, just like day and night. There is a rhythm: in the beginning you fall into deep sleep for near about forty, forty-five minutes, then the dream phase comes in; then you dream; then again dreamless sleep, then again dreaming. This goes on the whole night. If your sleep is disturbed while you are deeply asleep without dreaming, in the morning you will not feel that you have missed anything. But while you are dreaming if your dream is disturbed then in the morning you will feel completely tired, exhausted.
Now this can be known from the outside. If someone is sleeping you can judge whether he is dreaming or asleep. If he is dreaming his eyes will be continuously moving, as if he is seeing something with closed eyes. When he is fast asleep the eyes will not move; they will remain steady. So if your sleep is disturbed while your eyes are moving, in the morning you will feel tired. While your eyes are not moving sleep can be disturbed; in the morning you will not feel anything is missing.
Many researchers have proved that the human mind feeds on dreams; dreaming is a necessity, and dreaming is total auto-deception. And this is so not only in the night: while awake also the same pattern follows. Even in the day you can notice -- sometimes there will be dreams floating in the mind, sometimes there will be no dreams.
When there are dreams you will be doing something but you will be absent. Inside you are occupied. For example, you are here. If your mind is passing through a dream-state you will listen to me without listening at all, because your mind will be occupied within. If you are not in a dreaming state, only then can you listen to me.
Day and night, mind goes on moving from no-dream to dream, then from dream to no-dream again. This is an inner rhythm.
Not only do we continuously dream, in life also we project hopes into the future.
The present is almost always a hell: you can prolong this hell only because of the hope that you have projected into the future. You can live today because of the tomorrow. You are hoping something is going to happen tomorrow -- some doors of paradise will open tomorrow. They never open today, and when tomorrow will come it will not come as tomorrow, it will come as today, but by that time your mind has moved again. You go on moving ahead of you: this is what dreaming means. You are not one with the real, that which is nearby, that which is here and now, you are somewhere else -- moving ahead, jumping ahead.
And that tomorrow, that future, you have named it in so many ways. People call it heaven, some people call it moksha, but it is always in the future. Somebody is thinking in terms of wealth, but that wealth is going to be in the future. And somebody is thinking in terms of paradise, and that paradise is going to be after you are dead -- far away in the future. You waste your present for that which is not: this is what dreaming means. You cannot be here and now. To be just in the moment seems to be arduous.
You can be in the past, because again that is dreaming -- memories, remembrance of things which are no more -- or you can be in the future, which is projection, which again is creating something out of the past. The future is nothing but the past projected again -- more colorful, more beautiful, more pleasant, but it is the past refined.
You cannot think anything other than the past: the future is nothing but the past projected again -- and both are not. The present is, but you are never in the present. This is what dreaming means. And Nietzsche is right when he says that man cannot live with the truth. He needs lies, he lives through lies. Nietzsche says that we go on saying that we want the truth, but no one wants it. Our so-called truths are nothing but lies, beautiful lies. No one is ready to see the naked reality.
This mind cannot enter on the path of Yoga because Yoga means a methodology to reveal the truth. Yoga is a method to come to a non-dreaming mind. Yoga is the science to be in the here and now. Yoga means now you are ready not to move into the future. Yoga means now you are ready not to hope, not to jump ahead of your being.
Yoga means to encounter the reality as it is.
So one can enter Yoga, or the path of Yoga, only when he is totally frustrated with his own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, Yoga is not for you. A total frustration is needed -- the revelation that this mind which projects is futile, the mind that hopes is nonsense, it leads nowhere. It simply closes your eyes, it intoxicates you, it never allows reality to be revealed to you. It protects you against reality.
Your mind is a drug. It is against that which is. So unless you are totally frustrated with your mind, with your way of being, with the way you have existed up to now...if you can drop it unconditionally, then you can enter on the path.
So many become interested but very few enter, because your interest may be just because of your mind. You may be hoping that now, through Yoga, you may gain something, but the achieving motive is there -- that you may become perfect through Yoga, you may reach to the blissful state of perfect being, you may become one with the Brahman, you may achieve the satchitananda.... This may be the cause of why you are interested in Yoga. If this is the cause then there can be no meeting between you and the path which is Yoga. Then you are totally against it, moving in a totally opposite dimension.
Yoga means: "Now no hope, now no future, now no desires. But I am ready to know what is. I am not interested in what can be, what should be, what ought to be. I am not interested! I am interested only in that which is" -- because only the real can free you, only the reality can become liberation.
Total despair is needed. That despair is called dukkha by Buddha. If you are really in misery don't hope, because your hope will only prolong the misery. Your hope is a drug. It can help you to continue, but where are you moving? It will help you to reach only death and nowhere else. All your hopes can lead you only to death -- they are leading.
Become totally hopeless -- no future, no hope. Difficult...it needs courage to face the real. But such a moment comes to everyone, sometime or other. A moment comes to every human being when he feels total hopelessness. Absolute meaninglessness happens to him. When he becomes aware that whatsoever he is doing is useless, wheresoever he is going he is going to nowhere, all life is meaningless -- suddenly hopes drop. Future drops, and for the first time you are in tune with the present, for the first time you are face to face with reality.
Unless this moment comes to you...you can go on doing asanas, postures; that is not Yoga. Yoga is an inward turning. It is a total about-turn. When you are not moving into the future, not moving towards the past, then you start moving within yourself -- because your being is here and now, it is not in the future. You are present here and now, you can enter this reality. But then mind has to be here.
This moment is indicated by the first sutra of Patanjali. Before we talk about the first sutra, a few other things have to be understood.
Yoga is not a religion, remember that. Yoga is not Hindu, it is not Mohammedan. Yoga is a pure science just like mathematics, physics or chemistry. Physics is not Christian, physics is not Buddhist. If Christians have discovered the laws of physics, then too physics is not Christian. It is just accidental that Christians have come to discover the laws of physics. But physics remains just a science. Yoga is a science -- it is just an accident that Hindus discovered it. It is not Hindu. It is a pure mathematics of the inner being. So a Mohammedan can be a yogi, a Christian can be a yogi, a Jaina, a Buddhist can be a yogi.
Yoga is pure science.
And Patanjali is the greatest name as far as the world of Yoga is concerned. This man is rare -- there is no other name comparable to Patanjali. For the first time in the history of humanity this man brought religion to the status of a science. He made religion a science: pure laws, no belief is needed.
So-called religions need beliefs. There is no other difference between one religion and another; the difference is only of beliefs. A Mohammedan has certain beliefs, a Hindu certain others, a Christian certain others. The difference is of beliefs. Yoga has nothing as far as belief is concerned; Yoga doesn't say to believe in anything. Yoga says "Experience." Just as science says "Experiment," Yoga says "Experience." Experiment and experience are both the same; their directions are different. Experiment means there is something you can do outside; experience means there is something you can do inside. Experience is an inner experiment.
Science says, "Don't believe, doubt as much as you can," but also, "Don't disbelieve" -- because disbelief is again a sort of belief. You can believe in God, you can believe in the concept of no-God. You can say, "God is" with a fanatic attitude; you can say quite the reverse, that "God is not," with the same fanaticism. Atheists, theists, are all believers, and belief is not the realm for science. Science means to experience something, that which is; no belief is needed.
So the second thing to remember is that Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed -- only courage to experience -- and that's what is lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed, you are not passing through some mutation. You may be a Hindu -- you can become a Christian the next day. You simply change, you change the Gita for a Bible. You can change it for a Koran, but the man who was holding the Gita and is now holding the Bible remains the same. He has changed his beliefs.
Beliefs are like clothes. Nothing substantial is transformed, you remain the same. Dissect a Hindu, dissect a Mohammedan -- inside they are the same. The Hindu goes to a temple, the Mohammedan hates the temple. The Mohammedan goes to the mosque and the Hindu hates the mosque but inside they are the same human beings.
Belief is easy because you are not really required to do anything, just a superficial dressing, a decoration, something which you can put aside any moment you like. Yoga is not belief; that's why it is difficult, arduous -- and sometimes it seems impossible. It is an existential approach. You will come to the truth not through belief but through your own experience, through your own realization. That means you will have to be totally changed -- your viewpoints, your way of life, your mind; your psyche as it is has to be shattered completely. Something new has to be created. Only with that new will you come in contact with the reality.
So Yoga is both a death and a new life. As you are you will have to die, and unless you die the new cannot be born. The new is hidden in you. You are just a seed for it and the seed must fall down, be absorbed by the earth. The seed must die, only then will the new arise out of you. Your death will become your new life. Yoga is both a death and a new birth. Unless you are ready to die you cannot be reborn. So it is not a question of changing beliefs.
Yoga is not a philosophy.
I say it is not a religion and I say it is not a philosophy. It is not something you can think about. It is something you will have to be; thinking won't do. Thinking goes on in your head. It is not really deep into the roots of your being, it is not your totality. It is just a part, a functional part. It can be trained and you can argue logically, you can think rationally, but your heart will remain the same. Your heart is your deepest center, your head is just a branch. You can be without the head but you cannot be without the heart. Your head is not basic.
Yoga is concerned with your total being, with your roots. It is not philosophical. So with Patanjali we will not be thinking, speculating. With Patanjali we will be trying to know the ultimate laws of being, the laws for its transformation, the laws of how to die and how to be reborn again, the laws for a new order of being. That is why I call it a science.
Patanjali is rare. He is an enlightened person like Buddha, like Krishna, like Christ, like Mahavira, Mohammed, Zarathustra, but he is different in one way. Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Mohammed -- none of them has a scientific attitude. They are great founders of religions. They have changed the whole pattern of the human mind and its structure, but their approach is not scientific.
Patanjali is like an Einstein in the world of buddhas. He is a phenomenon. He could easily have been a Nobel Prize winner like an Einstein or Bohr or Max Planck or Heisenberg. He has the same attitude, the same approach as 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 who is thinking in terms of laws. And he has come to deduce absolute laws of the human being, the ultimate working structure of the human mind and of 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 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: never again has a man existed on this Earth like Patanjali.
You can find poetry in Buddha's utterances; it is bound to be there. Many times while Buddha is expressing himself he becomes poetic. The realm of ecstasy, the realm of ultimate knowing is so beautiful, the temptation is so strong to become poetic...the beauty is such, the benediction is such, the bliss is such that one starts talking in poetic language.
But Patanjali resists that. It is very difficult, no one else has been able to resist. Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, they all became poetic. When the splendor, the beauty explode within you, you will start dancing, you will start singing. In that state you are just like a lover who has fallen in love with the whole universe.
Patanjali resists that. He will not use poetry; he will not even use a single poetic symbol. He will not do anything with poetry. He will not talk in terms of beauty: he will talk in terms of mathematics, he will be exact. And he will give you maxims -- those maxims are just indications of what is to be done. He will not explode into ecstasy, he will not say things that cannot be said, he will not try the impossible. He will just put down the foundation and if you follow the foundation you will reach the peak which is beyond. He is a rigorous mathematician, remember this.
The first sutra: Now the discipline of Yoga.
Athayoganushasanam: Now the discipline of Yoga.
Each single word has to be understood, because Patanjali will not use a single superfluous word.
Now the discipline of Yoga.... First try to understand the word "now." This "now" is an indication to the state of mind I was just talking to you about.
If you are disillusioned, if you are hopeless, if you have completely become aware of the futility of all desires; if you see your life as meaningless; whatsoever you have been doing up to now has simply fallen dead…. Nothing remains in the future, you are in absolute despair -- what Kierkegaard calls anguish -- you are in anguish, suffering…. Not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, not knowing to whom to turn, just on the verge of madness or suicide or death, your whole pattern of life has suddenly become futile…. If this moment has come, Patanjali says, "Now the discipline of Yoga" -- only now can you understand the science of Yoga, the discipline of Yoga.
If that moment has not come you can go on studying Yoga: you can become a great scholar but you will not be a yogi. You can write theses on it, you can give discourses on it, but you will not be a yogi. The moment has not come for you. Intellectually you can become interested, through your mind you can be related to Yoga, but Yoga is nothing if it is not a discipline. Yoga is not a shastra; it is not a scripture. It is a discipline, it is something you have to do. It is not curiosity, it is not philosophical speculation. It is deeper than that -- it is a question of life and death.
If the moment has come when you feel that all directions have become confused, all roads have disappeared, the future is dark and every desire has become bitter and through every desire you have known only disappointment, all movement into hopes and dreams has ceased: Now the discipline of Yoga.
This "now" may not have come. Then I may go on talking about Yoga but you will not listen. You can listen only if the moment is present in you. Are you really dissatisfied? Everybody will say yes, but that dissatisfaction is not real. You are dissatisfied with this, you may be dissatisfied with that, but you are not totally dissatisfied. You are still hoping. You are dissatisfied because of your past hopes but you are still hoping for the future. Your dissatisfaction is not total: you are still hankering for some satisfaction somewhere, for some gratification somewhere.
Sometimes you feel hopeless but that hopelessness is not true. You feel hopeless because certain hopes have not been achieved, certain hopes have fallen away -- but hoping is still there, hoping has not fallen away. You will still hope. You are dissatisfied with this hope, that hope, but you are not dissatisfied with hope as such. If you are disappointed with hope as such the moment has come, and then you can enter Yoga. And then this entry will not be an entering into a mental, speculative phenomenon. This entry will be an entry into a discipline.
What is discipline?
Discipline means what creates an order within you. As you are you are a chaos. As you are you are totally disorderly. Gurdjieff used to say -- and Gurdjieff is in many ways like Patanjali, he was again trying to make the core of religion a science…. Gurdjieff said that you are not one, you are a crowd; not even when you say "I," is there any I. There are many I's in you, many egos. In the morning one I, in the afternoon another I, in the evening a third I, but you never become aware of this mess -- because who will become aware of it? There is not a center that can become aware.
The discipline of Yoga means Yoga wants to create a crystallized center in you. As you are you are a crowd and a crowd has many phenomena. One is that you cannot believe a crowd. Gurdjieff used to say that man cannot promise. Who will promise? You are not there. If you promise who will fulfill the promise? Next morning the one who promised is no more.
People come to me and they say, "Now I will take the vow. I promise to do this," and I tell them, "Think twice before you promise something. Are you confident that the next moment the one who promised it will be there?" You decide from tomorrow to get up early in the morning at four o'clock, and at four o'clock somebody in you says, "Don't bother. It is so cold outside. And why are you in such a hurry? We can do it tomorrow" -- and you fall asleep again. When you get up you repent and you think, "This is not good. I should have done it." You decide again, "Tomorrow I will do it"; and the same is going to happen tomorrow because at four in the morning the one who promised is no more there, somebody else is in the chair. You are a Rotary Club: the chairman goes on changing and every member becomes a Rotary chairman. There is rotation: every moment someone else is the master.
Gurdjieff used to say, "This is the chief characteristic of man -- that he cannot promise." You cannot fulfill a promise. You go on giving promises, and you know well that you cannot fulfill them because you are not one; you are a disorder, a chaos. Hence Patanjali says, "Now the discipline of Yoga." If your life has become an absolute misery, if you have realized that whatsoever you do creates hell, then the moment has come. This moment can change your dimension, your direction of being.
Up until now you have lived as a chaos, a crowd. Yoga means now you will have to be a harmony, you will have to become one. A crystallization is needed, a centering is needed. And unless you attain a center all that you do is useless; it is wasting life and time. A center is the first necessity, and only a person who has a center can be blissful. Everybody asks for it. But you cannot ask -- you have to earn it! Everybody hankers for a blissful state of being. But only a center can be blissful, a crowd cannot be blissful. A crowd has got no self, there is no atman. Who is going to be blissful?
Bliss means absolute silence, and silence is possible only when there is harmony -- when all the discordant fragments have become one, when there is no crowd, but one. When you are alone in the house and nobody else is there, you will be blissful. Right now everybody else is in your house, you are not there. Only the guests are there, the host is always absent -- and only the host can be blissful.
This centering Patanjali calls discipline, anushasanam. The word "discipline" is beautiful. It comes from the same root as the word "disciple." "Discipline" means the capacity to learn, the capacity to know. But you cannot know, you cannot learn unless you have attained the capacity to be.
One man once went to Buddha and he said....
He must have been a social reformer, a revolutionary...he said to Buddha, "The world is in misery. I agree with you."
Buddha has never said that the world is in misery. Buddha says you are the misery, not the world; life is misery, not the world; man is misery, not the world; mind is misery, not the world. But that revolutionary said, "The world is in misery, I agree with you. Now tell me, what can I do? I have a deep compassion and I want to serve humanity."
Service must have been his motto! Buddha looked at him and remained silent. Buddha's disciple, Ananda, said, "This man seems to be sincere. Guide him. Why are you silent?"
Then Buddha said to that revolutionary, "You want to serve the world, but where are you? I don't see anyone inside. I look in you -- there is no one. You don't have any center, and unless you are centered whatsoever you do will create more mischief."
All your social reformers, your revolutionaries, your leaders, they are the great mischief creators, mischief-mongers. The world would be better if there were no leaders. But they can not help: they must do something because the world is in misery and they are not centered, so whatsoever they do will create more misery. Compassion alone will not help, service alone will not help. Compassion through a centered being is something totally different. Compassion through a crowd is mischief; that compassion is poison.
Now the discipline of Yoga.
"Discipline" means the capacity to be, the capacity to know, the capacity to learn. We must understand these three things.
The capacity to be....
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 a few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why do you move? You cannot sit without moving even for a 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.
You are not a master. You cannot say to the body, "Now I will not move for one hour." The body will revolt immediately! Immediately it will force you to move, to do something. And it will give reasons: "You have to move because an insect is biting." You may not find the insect when you look. You are not a being, you are a trembling -- a continuous hectic activity. Patanjali's asanas, postures, are not really concerned with any kind of physiological training but with an inner training of being: just to be, without doing anything, without any movement, without any activity. Just remain -- that remaining will help centering.
If you can remain in one posture the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And the more the body follows you the more you will have a greater being within you, a stronger being within you. And remember, if the body is not moving your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are bodymind. Your personality is psychosomatic, bodymind, both. The mind is the most subtle part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the most gross part of the mind. So whatsoever happens in the body happens in the mind and vice versa, whatsoever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving and you can attain a posture, if you can say to the body, "Keep quiet," the mind will remain silent. Really, the mind starts moving and tries to move the body, because if the body moves then the mind can move. In a non-moving body the mind cannot move; it needs a moving body.
If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving -- you are centered. This non-moving posture is not only a physiological training, it is just to create a situation in which centering can happen, in which you can become disciplined. When you are, when you have become centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn because then you will be humble. Then you can surrender. Then no false ego will cling to you because once centered you know all egos are false. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born.
To become a disciple is a great achievement. Only through discipline will you become a disciple. Only through being centered will you become humble, will you become receptive, will you become empty and the guru, the master, can pour himself into you. In your emptiness, in your silence, he can come and reach to you. Communication becomes possible.
A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open, ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. In Yoga the master is very, very important, absolutely important, because only when you are in the close proximity of a being who is centered will your own centering happen.
That is the meaning of satsang. You have heard the word satsang; it is totally wrongly used. Satsang means, in close proximity to the truth; it means, near the truth, it means near a master who has become one with the truth -- just being near him, open, receptive and waiting.
If your waiting has become deep, intense, a deep communion will happen.
The master is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. If you are open he will flow within you. This flowing is called satsang. With a master you need not learn anything else. If you can learn satsang, that's enough -- if you can just be near him without asking, without thinking, without arguing; just present there, available, so the being of the master can flow in you.... And being can flow. It is already flowing. Whenever a person achieves integrity his being becomes a radiation. He is flowing. Whether you are there to receive or not, that is not the point. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.
A disciple means one who is ready to receive, who has become a womb...the master can penetrate into him. This is the meaning of the word satsang. It is not basically a discourse; satsang is not a discourse. There may be a discourse but the discourse is just an excuse. You are here and I will talk on Patanjali's sutras -- that is just an excuse. If you are really here then the discourse, the talk, becomes just an excuse for your being here, for you to be here. And if you are really here, satsang starts. I can flow, and that flow is deeper than any talk, any communication through language, than any intellectual meeting with you.
While your mind is engaged...if you are a disciple, if you are a disciplined being, if your mind is engaged in listening to me, then your being can be in satsang. Then your head is occupied. If your heart is open then on a deeper level a meeting happens. That meeting is satsang, and everything else is just an excuse just to find ways to be close to the master.
Closeness is all -- but only a disciple can be close. Anybody and everybody cannot be close. Closeness means a loving trust. Why are we not close? -- because there is fear. Too close may be dangerous, too open may be dangerous, because you become vulnerable and then it will be difficult for you to defend. So just as a security measure we keep everybody, we never allow anyone to enter a certain distance.
Everybody has a territory around him. Whenever somebody enters your territory you become afraid. Everybody has a space to protect. You are sitting alone in your room, a stranger enters into the room: just watch when you become really scared. There is a point...if he enters that point, beyond that point you will become scared, you will be afraid. A sudden trembling will be felt. He can move beyond a certain territory.
To be close means that now you have no territory of your own. To be close means to be vulnerable; to be close means that whatsoever happens, you are not thinking in terms of security.
A disciple can be close for two reasons. One: he is a centered one, he is trying to be centered. A person who is even trying to be centered becomes unafraid; he becomes fearless. He has something which cannot be killed. You don't have anything, hence the fear. You are a crowd. The crowd can disperse at any moment. You don't have something like a rock which will be there whatsoever happens. You are existing without a rock, without a foundation -- a house of cards, bound to be always in fear. Any wind, even any breeze can destroy you, so you have to protect yourself.
Because of this constant protection you cannot love, you cannot trust, you cannot be friendly. You may have many friends but there is no friendship, because friendship needs closeness. You may have wives and husbands and so-called lovers but there is no love, because love needs closeness, love needs trust. You may have gurus, masters but there is no disciplehood, because you cannot allow yourself to be totally given to somebody's being; nearness to his being, closeness to his being, so he can overpower you, flood over you.
A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized -- at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master. The whole discipline of Yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just a slave of many, many desires.
Many, many masters are there and you are just a slave -- and pulled in many directions.
Now the discipline of Yoga.
Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are now prevalent, and many Western psychologists think that Yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, only when you are healthy can a discipline then help. It is not for pathological cases.
Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic, they are not mad, they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed.
Therapies are for ill people. Therapies can help you to come to Yoga, but Yoga is not a therapy. Yoga is for a higher order of health, a different order of health -- a different type of being and wholeness. Therapy can, at the most, make you adjusted. Freud says we cannot do more. We can make you an adjusted, normal member of the society -- but if the society itself is pathological, then? And it is! The society itself is ill. A therapy can make you normal in the sense that you are adjusted to the society, but the society itself is ill.
So sometimes it happens that in an ill society a healthy person is thought to be ill. A Jesus is thought to be ill and every effort is done to make him adjusted. And when it is found that he is a hopeless case then he is crucified. When it is found that nothing can be done, that this man is incurable, then he is crucified. The society is itself ill because society is nothing but your collective. If all the members are ill the society is ill, and every member has to be adjusted to it.
Yoga is not therapy, Yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define Yoga in terms of adjustment then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine.
So it may happen that a perfect yogi may appear mad to you. He may look out of his senses, out of his mind, because now he is in touch with the greater, with a higher mind, a higher order of things. He is in touch with the universal mind. It has always happened so: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, they always look somehow eccentric. They don't belong to us, they seem to be outsiders.
That's why they call them avatars, outsiders. They have come as if from some other planet, they don't belong to us. They may be higher, they may be good, they may be divine, but they don't belong to us. They come from somewhere else. They are not part and parcel of our being, mankind. The feeling has persisted that they are outsiders. They are not -- they are the real insiders because they have touched the innermost core of existence. But to us they appear so.
Now the discipline of Yoga.
If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best, then the path of discipline opens before you. What is that path? The basic definition is:
Yoga is the cessation of mind -- chittavrittinirodha.
I told you that Patanjali is just mathematical. In a single sentence, "Now the discipline of Yoga," he is finished with you. This is the only sentence that has been used for you. Now he takes it for granted that you are interested in Yoga not as a hope but as a discipline, as a transformation right here and now. He proceeds to define:
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
This is the definition of Yoga, the best. Yoga has been defined in many ways; there are many definitions. Some say Yoga is the meeting of the mind with the divine; hence, it is called Yoga -- Yoga means meeting, joining together. Some say that Yoga means dropping the ego, ego is the barrier: the moment you drop the ego you are joined to the divine. You were already joined; only because of the ego it appeared that you were not joined. And there are many definitions, but Patanjali's is the most scientific. He says, "Yoga is the cessation of mind."
Yoga is the state of no-mind. The word "mind" covers all -- your egos, your desires, your hopes, your philosophies, your religions, your scriptures. "Mind" covers all. Whatsoever you can think is mind. All that is known, all that can be known, all that is knowable, is within mind. Cessation of the mind means cessation of the known, cessation of the knowable. It is a jump into the unknown. When there is no-mind you are in the unknown. Yoga is a jump into the unknown. It will not be right to say "unknown"; rather, "unknowable."
What is the mind? What is the mind doing there? What is it? Ordinarily we think that mind is something substantial there, inside the head. Patanjali doesn't agree -- and no one who has ever known the insides of the mind will agree. Modern science also doesn't agree. Mind is not something substantial inside the head. Mind is just a function, just an activity.
You walk, and I say you are walking. What is walking? If you stop, where is walking? If you sit down, where has the walking gone? Walking is nothing substantial; it is an activity. So while you are sitting no one can ask, "Where have you put your walking? Just now you were walking, so where has the walking gone?" You will laugh. You will say, "Walking is not something substantial, it is just an activity. I can walk. I can again walk and I can stop. It is activity."
Mind is also activity, but because of the word "mind" it appears as if something substantial is there. It is better to call it "minding" -- just like walking. Mind means "minding," mind means thinking. It is an activity.
Again and again I have been quoting Bodhidharma....
He went to China and the emperor of China went to see him. And the emperor said, "My mind is very uneasy, very disturbed. You are a great sage and I have been waiting for you. Tell me what I should do to put my mind at peace."
Bodhidharma said, "Don't do anything. First, you bring your mind to me."
The emperor could not follow. He said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Come in the morning at four o'clock, when nobody is here. Come alone -- and remember to bring your mind with you."
The emperor couldn't sleep the whole night. Many times he canceled the whole idea: "This man seems to be mad. What does he mean, 'Come with your mind, don't forget?'" But the man was so enchanting, so charismatic that he couldn't cancel the appointment. As if a magnet were pulling him, at four o'clock he jumped out of the bed and said, "Whatsoever happens, I must go. This man may have something, his eyes say that he has something. Looks a little crazy...but still I must go and see what can happen."
So he arrived, and Bodhidharma was sitting with his big staff. And he said, "So you have come? Where is your mind? Have you brought it or not?"
The emperor said, "You talk nonsense. When I am here my mind is here, and it is not something which I can forget somewhere. It is in me."
So Bodhidharma said, "Okay. So the first thing is decided -- that the mind is within you."
The emperor said, "Okay, the mind is within me."
Bodhidharma said, "Now close your eyes and find out where it is. And if you can find out where it is, immediately indicate to me. I will put it at peace."
So the emperor closed his eyes, tried and tried, looked and looked. The more he looked the more he became aware that there is no mind, that mind is an activity. It is not something there so you can pinpoint it. But the moment he realized that it is not something, then the absurdity of his quest became exposed to him: "If it is not something, nothing can be done about it. If it is an activity, then don't do the activity; that's all. If it is like walking, don't walk."
He opened his eyes. He bowed down to Bodhidharma and said, "There is no mind to be found."
Bodhidharma said, "Then I have put it at peace. And whenever you feel that you are uneasy, just look within for where that uneasiness is."
The very looking is anti-mind, because a look is not a thinking. And if you look intensely your whole energy becomes a look, and the same energy becomes movement and thinking.
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
This is Patanjali's definition: when there is no mind you are in Yoga, when there is mind you are not in Yoga. So you may do all the postures but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in Yoga.
Yoga is the state of no-mind. If you can be without the mind without doing any posture, you have become a perfect yogi. It has happened to many without doing any postures, and it has not happened to many who have been doing postures for many lives. Because the basic thing to be understood is: when the activity of thinking is not there...you are there when the activity of the mind is not there. When thoughts have disappeared -- they are just like clouds -- when they have disappeared your being, just like the sky, is uncovered. It is always there -- only covered with the clouds, only covered with thoughts.
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
Now in the West there is much appeal for Zen -- a Japanese method of Yoga.
The word "Zen" comes from dhyana. Bodhidharma introduced this word dhyana into China. The word dhyana became jhan, and then in China ch'an, and then the word traveled to Japan and became "Zen."
The root is dhyana. Dhyana means no-mind, so the whole training of Zen in Japan is nothing but how to stop "minding," how to be a no-mind, how to be simply without thinking. Try it! When I say try it, it will look contradictory, because there is no other way to say it. Because if you try, the very trying, the effort, is coming from the mind. You can sit in a posture and you can try some japa, chanting, a mantra, or you can just try to sit silently, not to think. But then "not to think" becomes the thinking. Then you go on saying, "I am not to think, don't think, stop thinking," but this is all thinking.
Try to understand. When Patanjali says no-mind, ...cessation of mind, he means complete cessation. He will not allow you to make a mantra, "Ram-Ram-Ram." He will say that this is not cessation, you are using the mind. He will say, "Simply stop!" But you will ask, "How? How can you simply stop?" The mind continues. Even if you sit the mind continues. Even if you don't do it goes on doing.
Patanjali says, "Then 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, many lives, million lives maybe, you have cooperated with it, you have helped it, you have given your energy to it. The river will flow awhile. If you don't cooperate, if you just look, unconcerned -- Buddha's word is indifference, upeksha: looking without any concern, just looking, not doing anything in any way -- the mind will flow for a while and it will stop by itself. When the momentum is lost, when the energy has flowed, the mind will stop. When the mind stops you are in Yoga: you have attained the discipline. This is the definition:
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
Then the witness is established in itself.
When the mind ceases, the witness is established in itself.
When you can simply look without being identified with the mind, without judging, without appreciating, condemning, without choosing; you simply look and the mind flows, a time comes when by itself, of itself, the mind stops.
When there is no-mind you are established in your witnessing.
Then you have become a witness, just a seer, a drashta, a sakshi. Then you are not a doer, then you are not a thinker. Then you are simply being, pure being, purest of being. Then the witness is established in itself.
In the other states there is identification with the modifications of the mind.
Except witnessing, in all states you are identified with the mind. You become one with the flow of thoughts, you become one with the clouds: sometimes with the white cloud, sometimes with the black cloud, sometimes with a rain-filled cloud, sometimes with a vacant, empty cloud. But whatsoever, you become one with the thought, you become one with the cloud, and you miss the purity of your sky, the purity of space. You become clouded and this clouding happens because you get identified, you become one.
A thought comes. You are hungry and the thought flashes in the mind. The thought is simply that there is hunger, the stomach is feeling hunger. Immediately you get identified; you say, "I am hungry." The mind was just filled with a thought that hunger is there, you have become identified and you say, "I am hungry." This is identification.
Buddha also feels hunger, Patanjali also feels hunger, but Patanjali will never say that, "I am hungry." He will say, "The body is hungry." He will say, "My stomach is feeling hungry." He will say, "There is hunger. I am a witness. I have come to witness this thought which has been flashed by the belly into the brain that 'I am hungry, the belly is hungry.'" Patanjali will remain a witness. You become identified, you become one with the thought.
Then the witness is established in itself.
In the other states there is identification with the modifications of the mind.
This is the definition:
Yoga is the cessation of mind.
When mind ceases you are established in your witnessing self. In other states except this there are identifications. And all identifications constitute the sansar; they are the world. If you are in the identifications you are in the world, in the misery. If you have transcended the identifications you are liberated. You have become a siddha, you are in nirvana. You have transcended this world of misery and entered the world of bliss.
And that world is here and now -- right now, this very moment! You need not wait for even a single moment. Just become a witness of the mind and you have entered. Get identified with the mind and you have missed. This is the basic definition.
Remember everything, because later on, in other sutras, we will go into details about what is to be done, how it is to be done.
But always keep in mind that this is the foundation: one has to achieve a state of no-mind, that is the goal.
Enough for today?

attractive

Why do I find attractive people frightening?

Attractive people are frightening for many reasons. First, the more attractive a person is to you, the more there is the possibility of falling into her or his bondage – that is the fear. You will be possessed, you will be reduced to a slave by the charm, the magnetism, the magic.
Attractive people are attracting and yet frightening. They are beautiful; you would like to relate with them, but to relate with them means to loose your freedom. To relate with them means not to be yourself anymore. And because they are attractive, you will not be able to leave them; you will cling. You know your tendency – that the more attractive a person is, the more clinging will arise in you; you will become more and more dependent. That is the fear.
Nobody wants to become dependent. Freedom is the ultimate value. Even love is not higher than freedom. Freedom is the ultimate value; next to it is love. And there is a constant conflict between love and freedom. Love tries to become the ultimate value. It is not. And love tries to destroy freedom; only then can it be the ultimate value. And those who love freedom become afraid of love.
And love means to be attracted to an attractive person. And the more beautiful the person is, the more you feel attracted, the more fear will arise because now you are going into something from where escape will not be easy. You can escape from an ordinary person, a homely person, more easily. And if the person is ugly, you are free; you need not become too dependent.

Mulla Nasruddin married the ugliest woman in the tomwn. Nobody could believe it. People asked him, “Nasruddin, what has happened to you?”
He said, “There is a logic in it. This is the only woman from whom I can escape any time. In fact, it will be difficult not to escape. This is the only woman in the town whom I can trust. Beautiful people are not trustworthy. They can fall in love easily because so many people are attracted to them. I can trust this woman; she will always be sincere toward me. I need not be worried about her; I can go out of town for months; I will not have any fear. My woman will remain mine.”

Just see the point: If the person is ugly, you can possess the person. The ugly person will depend on you. If the person is beautiful, the beautiful person will possess you. Beauty is power, it is tremendous power.
The ugly person will become a slave, a servant. The ugly person will in every way substitute for the beauty that is missing in him or her. The ugly woman will be a better wife than a beautiful woman – she will have to be. She will take more care of you, she will be a better nurse – because she knows that beauty is missing and something has to be provided instead. She will be very good to you; she will never nag you, she will never fight with you, she will not be in a constant quarrel with you – she cannot afford it.
Beautiful persons are dangerous. They can afford to fight. So these are the reasons.
You ask me, “Why do i find attractive people frightening?”
They are. Unless you understand and become aware, this fear remains. Attraction/fear are two aspects of the same phenomenon. You area always attracted to the same person with whom you feel a great fear. Fear means you will be secondary.
In fact, people want the impossible. A woman wants a man, the most beautiful, the most powerful man in the world – but also wants him to remain interested only in her. Now, this is an impossible demand. The most beautiful and the most powerful person is bound to be interested in many more people. And many more people will be interested in him. The man would like to have the most beautiful woman in the world, but also would like her to remain very faithful to him, devoted to him. That will be difficult; that is asking the impossible.
And remember: If some woman looks very beautiful to you, that simply shows you are not very beautiful. And you are afraid also – if the woman looks so beautiful to you, what is happening from the other side? You will not be looking so beautiful to her. There is fear – she may leave you. All these problems are there. But these problems arise only because your love is not really love but a game. If it is really love, then it never thinks of the future. Then there is no problem of the future. Tomorrow does not exist for real love; time does not exist for real love.
If you love a person, you love a person. What will happen tomorrow – who cares? Today is so much, this moment is an eternity. What will happen tomorrow, we will see... when tomorrow comes. And tomorrow never comes. Real love is of the present.
Always remember: Anything real has to be part of awareness, has to be part of the present, has to be part of meditation. Then there is no problem! And there is no question of attraction, and there is no question of fear.
Real love shares; it is not to exploit to the other, it is not to possess the other. When you want to possess the other, then the problem arises: The other may possess you. And if the other is more powerful, more magnetic, naturally you will be a slave. If you want to become the master of the other, then the fear arises that “I may be reduced to a slave.” If you don't want to possess the other, then the fear never arises that the other may possess you. Love never possess.
Love never possess and love can never be possessed. True love leads you into freedom. Freedom is the highest peak, the ultimate value. And love is closest to freedom; the next step after love is freedom. Love is not against freedom; love is a stepping-stone toward freedom. That's what awareness will make clear to you: that love has to be used as a stepping-stone for freedom. If you love, you make the other free. And when you make the other free, you are made free by the other.
Love is a sharing, not an exploitation. And in fact love never thinks in terms of ugliness and beauty, either. You will be surprised: Love never thinks in terms of ugliness and beauty. Love only acts, reflects, meditates – it never thinks at all. Yes, sometimes it happens that you fit with somebody – suddenly, everything falls in harmony. It is not a question of beauty or ugliness. It is a question of harmony, a rhythm.
Somebody has asked a question about what George Gurdjieff used to say, that for every man there is a corresponding woman somewhere on the earth, and for every woman there is a corresponding man somewhere on the earth. Each one is born with the polar opposite. If you can fins the other, everything will fall in harmony immediately. All their centers function harmoniously – that is love. It is a very rare phenomenon. It is very rare to find a couple who really fit together. Our society exists with such taboos, such inhibitions, that it is almost impossible to find the real mate, the real friend.
In Eastern mythology we have a story, a beautiful myth, that in the beginning when the world was created, each child was born not alone but as a couple: one boy, one girl, together, from the same mother. Twins, fitting with each other totally – that was the couple. They were in tune in every way with each other. Then the man fell from grace – just like the idea of the original sin – and as a punishment couples were no longer born from the same mother. Still, they are born! Gurdjieff is right – that's my own observation, too. Each person has a divine mate somewhere. But to find them is very difficult because you may be white and your opposite polarity may be black; you may be a Hindu and your opposite polarity may be a Mohammedan; you may be a Chinese and the opposite polarity may be a German.
In a better world, people will search and seek – and unless you can find the real person who can fit with you, you will remain in a kind of tension, anguish. If you are alone you are in anguish; if you meet the other person, you are in anguish if the other person does not fit with you or only fits so far. Now, through scientific investigation this has also been found: that there are people who fit, and there are people who don't fit. Scientific arrangements can made now; each person can declare his centers, his birth chart, his rhythm. Now there is every possibility to find the other person who fits exactly. The world has become very small, and once you have found the other person... it is not a question of beauty and ugliness at all.
In fact, there is nobody who ugly and nobody who is beautiful. The ugly person may fit with somebody – then the ugly person is beautiful for that person. Beauty is a shadow of harmony. It is not that you fall in love with a beautiful person; the process is just the opposite. When you fall in love with some person, the person looks beautiful. It is love that brings the idea of beauty in, not vice versa.
But it is rare to find a person who totally fits with you. Whenever somebody is fortunate enough, life is lived with a melody; then there are two bodies and one one soul. That is the real couple. And whenever you can find that kind of couple, there will be great grace and great music around them, a great aura, beautiful light, a silence. And love then naturally leads into meditation.
People should be allowed to meet and mix to find each other. People should not be in a hurry to get married. The hurry is dangerous; it only brings divorces, or it brings a life of long, long misery. Children should be allowed to meet with each other, and we should drop all pretechnological taboos, inhibitions; they are no longer relevant.
We are living in a post-technological age; man has become mature, and he has to change many things because many things are wrong. They were developed in the old days; it was a necessity then – it is no longer a necessity. For example, now people can live together, men and women, there is no need to be in a hurry to get married. And if you have known many men and many women, only then will you know who fits with you and who does not fit. It is not a question of a long nose or a beautiful face; somebody may have a beautiful face and you feel attracted, and may have beautiful eyes and big eyes and you feel attracted, and the color of the hair... but these things don't matter! When you live together, after two days you will not note the color of the hair, and after three days you will note the length of the nose; and after three weeks you will have completely forgotten about the physiology of the other. Now the reality impinges upon you. Now the real thing will be spiritual harmony.
Marriage up to now has been a very ugly affair. And priests were happy to allow it – not only happy to allow it, they were the ones who invented it. And there was some reason why priests all over the world have been in favor of this ugly marriage that has been on the earth for five thousand years. The reason was that if people are miserable, only then do they go to the churches, to the temples; if people are miserable, only then they ready to renounce life. If people are miserable, only then are they in the hands of the priests! A happy humanity will have nothing to do with the priests. Obviously. If you are healthy, you have nothing to do with the doctor. If you are psychologically whole, you have nothing to do with psychoanalyst. If you are spiritually whole, you will have nothing to do with the priest.
And the greatest spiritual disharmony is created by marriage. Priests have created hell on the earth. That is their trade secret – then people are bound to come to ask them what to do. Life is so miserable! And then they can tell them how to go get free of life. Then they can give you rituals for how never to be born again, how to get out of the wheel of birth and death. They have made life such a hell, and then they teach you how to get rid of it.
My effort is just the opposite: I want to create heaven here now so that there is no need to get rid of anything. There is no need to think of getting rid of birth and death, and there is no need for the old so-called religions. More music is needed, more poetry is needed, more art is needed. Certainly more mysticism is needed. More science is needed. And then there will be a totally different kind of religion born, a new religion. A religion that will not teach you antilife ideologies but help you to live your life in more harmony, more artistically, more sensitively, more centered, rooted in the earth. A religion that will teach you the art of life, the philosophy of life, and will teach you how to be more festive.
You ask, “Why do I find attractive people frightening?”
Because deep down in you there is a search, as there is in everybody, for the other pole, and you don't want to get involved with somebody who may not be the other pole. But there is no other way to find the other pole except by getting involved in many, many friendships, in many, many love affairs. If you really want to find your beloved, you will have to go through many love affairs. That is the only way to learn. Drop your fear...
And if you start associating with ugly people out of your fear of beautiful people, that is not going to be satisfying to you.

The Cohens were renting a furnished apartment. Mr. Cohen had found the place, which met with all his requirements, but Mrs. Cohen demurred: “I don't like this flat.”
“What's the matter, Rachel? Ain't it a fine flat? Why, it has all the latest improvements: washstands, decent lights, good plumbing, and hot and cold water. Why not?”
“I know all what you say, but there are no curtains in the bathroom. Every time I take a bath, the neighbors can see me.”
“That's all right, Rachel. If the neighbors see you, they will buy the curtains.”

Ugliness can have its uses, but it will not give you contentment. And if you are afraid of beautiful people, then remember that you are really afraid of getting involved in a deep, intimate relationship – that you want to keep a distance, that you want to keep a distance so you can escape any time if the need arises. But this is not the way to go into it; this is not the way to know the secrets of love. One has to go in absolute vulnerability. One has to drop all armor and defense.
If it is frightening, let it be frightening, but go into it. The fear will disappear. The only way to drop any fear is to go into the very thing of which you are afraid. If somebody comes to me and says, “I am afraid of darkness,” then I always suggest to them, “The only way is to go into the dark night, sit somewhere alone outside the town under a tree. Tremble! Perspire, be nervous, but sit there! How long can you tremble? Slowly, slowly things will settle. The heart will start beating normally... and suddenly you will see that darkness is not that frightening, either. And slowly, slowly you will become aware of the beauties of darkness, which only darkness can have – the depth, the silence, the velvety touch of it, the stillness, the music of the dark night, the insects, the harmony. And slowly, as the fear disappears, you will be surprised that darkness is not that dark, it has its own luminosity. You will be able to start seeing something – vague, not clear. But clarity gives shallowness to things; vagueness gives depth and mystery. Light can never be so mysterious as darkness. Light is prose; darkness is poetry. Light is naked; hence, how long can you remain interested in it? But darkness is veiled; it provokes great interest, great curiosity, to unveil it.
If you are afraid of darkness, go into darkness. If you are afraid of love, go into love. If you are afraid of being alone, then go into the Himalaya and be alone. That is the only way to drop it. And sometimes if you can deliberately do something, it brings great awareness.

(Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other, Osho, St.Martin's Griffin, New York, 2001)

confucian

Question to Confucius(A Chinese Philosopher)

Woman asks:
If I sleep with three men, everyone calls me a slut. But when a man sleeps with ten women, Every one calls him a real man. How come . . . ?!?
Confucius replies:
It's very simple. "When one lock can be opened by three different keys, it's a bad lock. But when one key can open ten different locks, we call it a MASTER KEY ...."
(ZX)
Joke di atas bisa saja dinikmati sebagai joke biasa. Tapi menurutku pembuat joke ini ingin menyampaikan suatu pesan. Ini joke sindiran bagi para Filosof Confusian yang munafik, bermuka dua, mempunyai standar ganda berdasarkan gender.

Intermezzo.....

Intermezzo.....

"I have heard a beautiful story - I don't know how far it is correct, I cannot vouch for it.

In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says, "Life is misery."

Confucius closes his eyes halfway - he is a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean - and asks the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip - but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right - he says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think." He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right - life is misery."

Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, " He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!

Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying - my dance and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.

Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses - the one that was brought for Buddha, the one that was brought for Confucius, and the one that was brought for him. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.

My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be in the middle. Don't try to balance yourself - balance is not something that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out of experiencing all the dimensions o flife. Balance is something that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false, forced. And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, because how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you may start moving to the left or to the right. You are bound to remain uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole gift of life.

Don't be uptight. Don't live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it tastes bitter - so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person's tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.

I don't teach the middle way, I teach the total way. Then a balance comes of its own accord, and then that balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has simply come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes, you know it will pass, and when happiness comes you know that will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes by. The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance. "

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

It is difficult to love real people ....

Yesterday at 19:27
When I am by myself I feel I can let go in some ways and love people, but as soon as I come into their presence, the shutters go up.


It is difficult to love real people because a real person is not going to fulfill your expectations. He is not here to fulfill anybody else's expectations, he has to live his own life. And whenever he moves somewhere that goes against you or is not in tune with your feelings, emotions, your being, it becomes difficult.
It is very easy to think about love. It is very difficult to love. It is very easy to love the whole world. The real difficulty is to love the a single human being. It is very easy to love God or humanity. The real problem arises when you come across a real person and you encounter him. To encounter him is to go through a great change and a great challenge.
He is not going to be your slave and neither are you going to be a slave to him. That's where the real problem arises. If you are going to be a slave or if he is going to be a slave, then there is no problem. The problem arises because nobody is here to play a slave--and nobody can be a slave. Everybody is a free agent... the whole being consists of freedom. Man is freedom.
So remember, the problem is real, it has nothing to do with the whole phenomenon of love. Don't make it a personal problem, otherwise you will be in difficulty.
Everybody has to face the same problem, more or less. I have never come across a person who has no difficulty in love. It has nothing to do with love, the very world of love.
The very relationship brings you to such situations where problems arise, and it is good to pass through them. In the East people have escaped, just seeing the difficulty in it. They started denying their love, rejecting their love. They became deadened. Love almost disappeared from the East and only meditation remained.
Meditation means that you are feeling good in your loneliness. Meditation means that you are related only to yourself. Your circle is complete with yourself; you don't go out of it. Of course ninety-nine percent of your problems are solved--but at a very great cost. You will be less troubled now. The eastern man is less anxious, less tense, almost lives in his own inner cave, protected, with eyes closed. He does not allow his energy to move. He makes a short circuit, a small energy movement inside his being, and he is happy. But his happiness is just a little dead. His happiness is not a jubilation, it is not a joy.
At the most you can say that it is not unhappiness. At the most you can say something of the negative about it, as if you say that you are healthy because you don't have any illness. But that is not much of a health. Health should have something positive, a glow of its own--not just absence of disease. In that way even a dead body is healthy because it has no illness.
So in the East we have tried to live without love, to renounce the world--that means to renounce love--to renounce the woman, the man, and all possibilities where love can flower. Jain monks, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, are not allowed to talk to a woman when they are alone, not allowed to touch a woman, not really allowed to even see face to face. When a woman comes to ask something they have to keep their eyes down. They have to look at the tip of their nose so they don't see the woman even by mistake.Because who kows, something might click... and one is almost helpless in the hands of love.
They don't stay in people's homes and they don't stay long in one place because attachment, love, become possible. So they go on moving, wandering, and avoiding--avoiding all relationships. They have attained a certain quality of stillness. They are undisturbed people, undistracted by the world, but not happy, not celebrating.
In the West just the opposite has happened. People have tried to find happiness through love, and they have created much trouble. They have lost all contact with themselves. They have moved so far away from themselves that they don't know how to come back. They don't know where the path is, where their home is. So they feel meaningless, homeless, and they go on making more and more love efforts with this woman, with that man--heterosexual, homosexual, autosexual. They go on trying every way and again they feel empty, because love alone can give you happiness but there will not be any silence in it. And when there is happiness and no silence, again something is missing.
When you are happy without silence your happiness will be like a fever, excitement... much ado about nothing. That feverish state will create much tension in you and nothing will come out of it, just running, chasing. And one day one comes to realize that the whole effort has been baseless because you have been trying to find the other, and you have not yet found yourself.
Both these ways have failed. The East has failed because it tried meditation without love. The West has failed because it tried love without meditation. My whole effort is to give you a synthesis, the whole--which means meditation plus love. One should be able to be happy alone and one should also be able to be happy with people. One should be happy inside and one should also be happy in relationships. One should make a beautiful house inside and and outside too. You should have a beautiful garden surrounding your house and a beautiful bedroom too. The garden is not against the bedroom; the bedroom is not against the garden.
So meditation should be an inner shelter, an inner shrine. Whenever you feel that the world is too much for you, you can move into your shrine. You can have a bath in your inner being. You can rejuvenate yourself. You can come out resurrected; again alive, fresh, young, renewed... to live, to be. But you should also be capable of loving people and facing problems, because a silence that is impotent and cannot face problems is not much of a silence, is not worth much. Only a silence that can face problems and remain silent is something to be longed for, to be desired.
So these two things I would like to tell you: first start doing meditation, because it is always good to start from the nearest center of your being, and that is meditation. But never get stuck in it. Meditation should move, flower, unfold and become love.
And don't be worried, don't make it a problem--it is not. It is simply human; it's natural. Everybody is afraid--has to be. Life is such that one has to be. And people who become fearless, become fearless not by becoming brave--because a brave man has only repressed his fear; he's not really fearless. A man becomes fearless by accepting his fears. It is not a question of bravery. It is simply seeing into the facts of life and realizing that these fears are natural. One accepts them!
The problem arises because you want to reject them. You have been taught very egotistical ideals : "Be brave." What nonsense! Foolish! How can an intelligent man avoid fears? If you are stupid you will not have any fears. Then the bus driver goes on honking and you stand in the middle of the road, unafraid. Or a bull comes charging at you and you stand there, unafraid. But you are stupid! An intelligent man has to jump out of the way.
If you become an addict and start looking everywhere for the snake in the bushes, then there is a problem. If there is nobody on the road and then too you are afraid and start running, there is a problem; otherwise, fear is natural.
So when I say that you will get rid of your fear, I don't mean that there will be no fears in life. You will come to know that ninety percent of your fears are just imagination. Ten percent are real so one has to accept them. I don't make people brave. I make them more responsive, sensitive, alert, and their alertness is enough. They become aware that they can use their fears also as stepping stones. So don't be worried, mm?

(Osho)

cakra

cakra

Sunday, 30 August 2009 at 21:57 | Edit note | Delete
Think more about love, about the heart. We call that chakra 'anahata' in yoga psychology.
There are seven chakras, and the anahata is just in the middle; three below it, three above it. The three below are muladhar, swadhisthan and manipur. Those three belong to an extrovert personality. In the west, the majority lives through those three chakras. And now in the east also, the majority is moving towards the western attitude of life. These three chakras are very easily available. They have a certain given function; you need not work much on them.
Without them, life will become impossible. They are survival measures, so nature has not given you a choice between them. From the moment you are born, those three chakras start functioning. They go on functioning until you die. The whole life is covered by those three chakras, and the extrovert person never comes to know that there is anything higher than these. Sex, money, power, prestige, respectability, name, fame -- they all belong to those three chakras.
And the centre of all those chakras is sex. People seek money in order to seek sex. People seek fame and power and prestige in order to seek sex. Sex remains the centre of the lower three chakras. Sex remains the centre of the extrovert personality. His whole mind revolves around sex.
Above the anahata, the heart, there are three chakras: visudha, the fourth centre, then ajna, between the two eyes, the third eye centre, and sahasrar, the last centre, the centre of samadhi, of ultimate unfoldment.
Between these two is the heart. Between the introvert and the extrovert, the heart functions as a door, it is a bridge. Just as sex is the centre of the extrovert mind, prayer -- or call it meditation -- is the centre of the introvert mind. But to call it prayer is more relevant. Between these two -- when a person is just in the middle, on the fourth chakra, at the door -- love happens. Love is between sex and prayer.
When sex is a little purified, it becomes love. When love is also purified, it becomes prayer. So it is the same energy, the sexual energy, which goes into higher formations. In the east people have tried to live an introvert life; they have tried to live above the heart. But both are lopsided. The western extrovert mind and the eastern introvert mind are both lopsided.
To become a total man, one needs the functioning of all seven. It is not a question of choice. It is a question of being capable of living in all the centres without any conflict. There is none -- we create the conflict.
A person can become an extrovert and can become an introvert very easily -- just as you go out of your house and you come in. But whether you go out or you come in, you will have to pass from the door, and that door is anahata. So my emphasis is always on the anahata, the heart centre, because that is the door and both the dimensions meet there.
If somebody tries to live just below the heart centre, he closes the door. Then he becomes very worldly. He cannot even think that god exists. He cannot even think that religion can mean anything. It is all nonsense, rubbish. He does not even believe in love. He thinks love is just a bait for sex, just a foreplay for sex. Just not to be rude one has to at least pretend love. But the basic thing remains sex. He does not believe in love, he cannot believe in love, because he does not know what love is. He has never functioned at that centre. He has never stood on the door between the two worlds.
The introvert person also becomes very lopsided. He also closes the door of the heart because he becomes afraid. From that door opens the world. So he goes on denying. He becomes a renunciate, a monk, anti-life, condemnatory, repressive, afraid -- continuously afraid of relationship, of moving with people, of creating any sort of love, because who knows? -- love may bring in sex. Once you open the door of love, then the whole three chakras become available -- the chakras of the below.
It is better not to open the doors so you can forget all about the lower world. Then one remains just inside -- but one's life becomes a morbidity. One becomes like an island -- cut off from everything . . . a dry bone. No juice remains. The very shape of life disappears, because if you don't love, life starts disappearing.
Life exists when you love. Love becomes the very foundation for life to exist. It can have its foothold there.
The introvert becomes more and more sad -- silent of course, but not happy. The extrovert is very excited; the introvert is never excited. He remains calm and quiet, but calmness and quietitude are not the goals of life. Ecstasy is the goal of life. Just to be calm and quiet can mean death, can mean suicide. You can dry up all the sources of life in you. You will become calm and quiet, all the fever gone, all the passion gone, all the lust gone -- but then you are also gone. You are just an empty room, a negativity, a sort of absence, not a presence. You are not fulfilled. You cannot dance -- you have nothing to dance about. You cannot sing. No song arises in your life because all songs dry up when love dries up.
The extrovert seems sometimes to be very happy . . . is more happy than the introvert, but never silent. More joyful -- it is a joy to be with an extrovert. You cannot live with an introvert long; that's why saints are so boring. It is good to pay respect to them, but you cannot live with them for twenty-four hours; they are really boring. And just to think about heaven where all the saints have gathered down the centuries.... One cannot believe how boring that place must now have become. It will be sheer boredom.
You can be with an extrovert, happily; you can relate with him. He is an excited being. He sings, he plays around... many games. He enjoys. Of course he is tense. He is never silent; that is his problem. Happiness is at a cost -- that he loses tranquillity, equilibrium, balance. His excitement becomes more and more feverish, and there is every possibility of it turning into a delirium. The extrovert can be mad at any time; the breakdown can come very easily to him. He is so excited and so tense. He has no centre -- just the revolving periphery.
To me, a real man or a real woman has to live in all the seven chakras together. Then you have the tranquillity of the introvert and the excitement of the extrovert. That's what a rich life has to be -- the silence of the introvert and the joy of the extrovert, the centre of the introvert and the periphery of the extrovert.
A centre without a periphery is poor. A periphery without a centre is poor. When the periphery and the centre both exist together and you don't choose -- you simply move from one to another enjoying both, not putting them as opposites to each other but balancing them as complementaries -- your life becomes tremendously rich.
That's what I call life abundant. Then you really live in luxury, because you have all that the extrovert can have and all that the introvert can have; you have both the worlds together. Yes, in this sense, you can have the cake and eat it too. Then you are very affirmative. You don't have any negations, any condemnations. Between samadhi and sex, between the muladhar, the first centre, and the sahasrar, the seventh, the whole sky is available to you, and whatsoever you choose, you can be. And it is good to go on changing. Why get fixed to one centre? Why not remain flexible, flowing, streaming like a river? Why become a pond? Why get stagnant and stale? Be dynamic.
That's why I insist on dynamic meditations. 'Meditation' and 'dynamic' are a contradiction in terms. That means I am trying to make a combination of the extrovert and the introvert. Meditation means passivity, meditation means just to be oneself. And dynamism means to do many things, to be active, to be flowing. Dynamic meditation is a contradiction in terms but it is only apparently so. It is possible to have both.

[Osho said it was good to live at the heart centre, sometimes moving to the centres below and sometimes to those above. He said the terms 'higher' and 'lower' did not denote any moral evaluation but were simply physiological descriptions. He said one should be like a rainbow -- all the colours -- and not obsessed with just one.
As one moved into all the centres, one saw that there was no contradiction in them and that the seven chakras were seven worlds . . .]

Sex opens a door into the world, the sexual world. The heart opens the door into the world of love. The throat centre opens the door into the world of expression, creativity. The ajna, the third eye centre, opens the world into clarity, vision, and makes one a master of one's life. That's why we call it ajna. Ajna means order.
Then you are within your own order. You have your own discipline, and whatsoever you say, goes. Now there is no more conflict in you. It is not that you want something and you have to do something else. It is not that you never wanted to be angry and still you have become angry -- no. When a person lives at the ajna centre, if he wants to be angry, he can be; no problem. If he wants to be angry, he can be even without any situation. He can be abruptly angry for no cause.
Gurdjieff used to play that game. He would be happy and talking and you could not even imagine that he would become angry. Everybody would be shocked at what had happened because there was not even a slight cause. Sometimes he would do the opposite. He would be angry, shouting, and then suddenly he would cool down so suddenly and so abruptly and the change would be so dramatic -- as if he had never been angry.
When you are at the sixth centre, ajna, everything goes as you want it to; there is no conflict. All these centres have to be used. No centre has to be sacrificed for another, because every centre is autonomous, has its own world. It does not exist for another, no. It is not a means for another. It exists for itself. It has intrinsic value.

from : osho (e-book)

Heart

Heart
Hati

(When a sufi talks about "heart", he means "inner heart", the psychic heart. And this heart of ours has got nothing to do with physical heart. Indeed, a sufi goes one step further. A sufi's inner heart is essentially a loving heart, to which these verses are dedicated--a.k.)

(Hati yang dibicarakan oleh seorang sufi bukanlah hati fisik, melainkan hati "batin". Dan bagi seorang sufi, hati batin adalah hati yang mencintai. Ia tak mampu membayangkan sebuah hati yang tidak mencintai--a.k.)

The heart has its head on its own palm,
the face of the heart is veiled:
the heart's hands are bound with iron chains,
the feet of the heart are nailed.

Dengan tangan sendiri,
hati menutupi wajahnya.
Tangan dia pun terikat,
dan kakinya terpaku.

The eyes of the heart are never dry,
the heart speaks only through tears.
The ears of the heart are so keen
that the voice from a distance it hears.

Mata hati tidak pernah kering.
Ia berbicara dalam bahasa airmata.
Pendengarannya begitu tajam
suara dari kejauhan pun terdengar olehnya.

The voice of the heart is silent,
yet far-reaching is heart's cry.
The heart has no question nor answer,
the heart is expressed in a sigh.

Hati tidak bersuara, ia hening
tetapi jeritannya terdengar hingga jauh.
Hati tidak bertanya, dan tidak menjawab.
Ia hanya merintih, menarik nafas panjang.

The ways of the heart are mysterious,
the heart has the mind of the child.
The heart's breath is full of tenderness,
the heart's expression is mild.

Cara kerja hati ini sungguh sangat misterius.
Ia memiliki pikiran seorang anak--polos,lugu.
Lembut napasnya,
sopan pembawaannya.

The ideal alone is heart's deity,
a constant yearning its life.
The heart's not concerned with life or death,
the heart stands firm through all strife.

Apa yang ditujunya, itu pula dipujanya
rasa rindu adalah hidupnya
di luar itu, ia tidak lagi memikirkan hidup dan mati.
"Hati" tak tergoyahkan dan berdiri tegak
menghadapi segala rintangan.

Beauty is heart's only object,
it's inspires, its all.
The heart is all power that there is,
the angels attend its call.

Kekuasaan hati sungguh luar biasa,
malaikat pun hadir bila dipanggilnya.
Akan tetapi, ia sendiri mengejar keindahan.
Itulah sumber inspirasi dan segala-galanya baginya.

The heart is itself its own medicine,
the heart all its own wounds heals.
And none can never imagine
the pain that the loving heart feels.

Penderitaan hati tak terbayangkan.
Luka-luka hati tak terhitungkan.
Untung ia mampu mengobati diri.
Mampu menyembuhkan luka-lukanya sendiri.

The path of the heart is thorny,
but leads in the end to bliss.
Hope is the staff the heart holds in hand,
And the goal heart shall not miss.

"Jalan hati" penuh dengan duri.
Tapi itulah satu-satunya jalan menuju
kebahagiaan sejati.
Hati tak pernah putus asa,
dan pasti mencapai tujuannya.

Nirtan:The Dance of the Soul -- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Tarian Jiwa -- Anand Krishna