THE PATH OF YOGA
This book is an excellent commentary of Pantajali's yoga sutras by Osho. In its original form its very difficult for ordinary people to understand its subtle science. With his inherent lucid presentation, thorough logical analysis and lots of anecdotes, he made it wonderful.
Sutras in its original form is given and its inner meanings. In his words its an exact science and as precise as mathematics; also it is completely stripped of all redundant words. Let's give in to its wisdom...
This mind cannot enter on the path of yoga because Yoga means a methodology to reveal the truth. Yoga is method to come to a non-dreaming mind. Yoga is the science of being here and now. Yoga means you are ready to 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 reality as it is.
Mind can be either the source of bondage or the source of freedom. Mind becomes the gate for this world, the entry; it can also become the exit. Mind leads you to hell; mind can lead you also to heaven. So is depends how the mind is used. Right use of the mind becomes meditation, wrong use of the mind becomes madness.
With this brief introduction, let's begin.
Now the discipline of yoga. Yoga is the cessation of mind. Then the witness is established in itself. In other states there is identification with the modifications of mind.
He says "We live in 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 need lies to exist. These initial statements was shocking to me, but later upon contemplation and reflecting on the facts I had to accept the truth.
The modifications of the mind are five. They can be either a source of misery or of non-misery. They are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory.
See the use of words here, He says it can be a source of misery or of non-misery ; not happiness, that is why its called an exact science. He uses exact words. Mind cannot give us eternal happiness, what at best we can do is to make it a source of non-misery, the source of happiness is already present in dormant form. We only need to awaken it. Then he gives the definition of these five states.
Right knowledge has three sources: direct cognition, inference and the words of the awakened ones. Wrong-knowledge is a false conception not corresponding to the things as it is. An image conjured by words without any substance behind it is vikalpa, imagination. The modification of the mind which is based on the absence of nay content in it, is sleep. Memory is the calling up of past experiences.
Here the word direct cognition requires some explanation. It doesn't means the knowledge from senses, because the senses can be deceptive. Direct cognition can only be when there is no mediator, not even the senses. You transcend the senses only in deep meditation. Then direct cognition is possible. How everything is brought out?
Their cessation is brought about by persistent inner effort and non-attachment. Of these two, abhyasa, the inner practice, is the effort to be firmly established in oneself. It becomes firmly grounded when continued for a long time, without interruption and with reverent devotion.
When we know we reached or not ?
The first state of vairagya, desirelessness: cessation from self-indulgence in the thirst for sensuous pleasures, with conscious effort.
The last state of vairagya, desirelessness: cessation of all desiring by knowing the innermost nature of purush, the supreme self.
If one starts reading this book with already formed believes, I'm sure that one gets off the track from his/her belief systems. It is powerful enough to smoothen any dogmatic inflexibilities in us. One gets a new direction to his thoughts, and it has numerous ideas to reflect upon.