Yoga is not for one who overeats, nor for one who fasts entirely।
nor for one much given to sleep, nor for the ever wakeful, O Arjuna।। 16।।
For one whose food and recreations are measured, whose exertion in works is balanced।
whose sleep and waking are in harmony, Yoga becomes the dispeller of sorrow।। 17।। This yoga which destroys suffering is accomplished only by one who eats and moves in the right measure, who makes right effort in action, and who sleeps and keeps awake in the right measure.
Geeta Darshan #8
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Sutra (Original)
नात्यश्नतस्तु योगोऽस्ति न चैकान्तमनश्नतः।
न चाति स्वप्नशीलस्य जाग्रतो नैव चार्जुन।। 16।।
युक्ताहारविहारस्य युक्तचेष्टस्य कर्मसु।
युक्तस्वप्नावबोधस्य योगो भवति दुःखहा।। 17।।
न चाति स्वप्नशीलस्य जाग्रतो नैव चार्जुन।। 16।।
युक्ताहारविहारस्य युक्तचेष्टस्य कर्मसु।
युक्तस्वप्नावबोधस्य योगो भवति दुःखहा।। 17।।
Transliteration:
nātyaśnatastu yogo'sti na caikāntamanaśnataḥ|
na cāti svapnaśīlasya jāgrato naiva cārjuna|| 16||
yuktāhāravihārasya yuktaceṣṭasya karmasu|
yuktasvapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkhahā|| 17||
nātyaśnatastu yogo'sti na caikāntamanaśnataḥ|
na cāti svapnaśīlasya jāgrato naiva cārjuna|| 16||
yuktāhāravihārasya yuktaceṣṭasya karmasu|
yuktasvapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkhahā|| 17||
Translation (Meaning)
Questions in this Discourse
Osho, in this verse, at the end, it says: “right effort in actions.” Please also clarify the meaning of right effort in actions.
Right effort in actions—the same principle, applied to karma. If you can grasp what misdirected effort in action means, the sense of right effort will become clear.
Go into any school during an examination. Watch the children. They are holding the pen and writing; naturally, a certain pressure falls on the fingers. But look at their feet—stiff and rigid. Look at their necks—taut. Their eyes—full of strain. The hand is writing, but it’s as if the whole body is gripping the pen! This is misdirected effort—more effort than necessary. The work could be done by the fingers alone; dragging the entire body into it is pointless. It’s like using a sword where a needle is needed. And remember, what a needle can do, a sword cannot. A child that tense will write the wrong answers. The effort is misdirected—extra labor, needless tension.
Notice yourself when you write: only the finger should carry the load; anything more is misdirected. A man is riding a bicycle: the toes are enough to turn the pedals. But his chest is involved; his eyes are tight; his hands are clenched. Everything is rigid. Misdirected effort—unnecessary self-torment born of habit.
Almost all our efforts are misdirected. Either we do too little, or we overdo. What is needed is attention: for which action, how much labor? For which act, how much energy?
Otherwise what happens is like a man at dusk, in a village street, frantically searching for something. People gather and offer help: “What are you looking for?” He’s exhausted and, with folded hands, prays to God, “If I find my lost thing, I’ll offer a coconut.” The people ask, “But what have you lost?” He says, “A one-paisa coin.” A coconut costs five annas! It’s an old story. A five-anna coconut for a lost paisa—he’s ready to offer it! They say, “You’re mad. You lose one paisa and you’ll offer a five-anna coconut?” He replies, “First let me find the paisa; then I’ll decide whether to offer it or not. If I don’t find it, my decision stands firm! If I do find it, who is stopping me from reconsidering?”
Our entire life is arranged like this—we never look at how much we are staking for what we seek. Is it worth putting in that much? Even if we succeed, is the gain worth the effort? Is it worth it? No one asks. No one checks whether, even on success, the result will justify the input. Are we not offering a five-anna coconut for a one-paisa gain?
And when this habit grows, its opposite reaction sets in: at the very moment when one truly needs to stake everything, one finds no strength left to stake at all.
Disciplined labor—right effort in actions. Life needs thoughtfulness; not a life lived in unthinking drift.
A man sets out to earn wealth. Before he rushes, he should consider: when wealth comes, is it worth losing so much for it? Is it necessary to sell even one’s soul? To lose everything for wealth? That is misdirected effort.
Krishna does not forbid earning. He says: make right effort. Think a little about what you will lose and what you will gain. Keep accounts. Use a little practical intelligence.
We don’t have that disciplined intelligence because we have never thought in that way.
Start thinking. In each action, ask: how much energy am I investing? Is it appropriate? You will immediately find you’re wasting effort; it can be done with less, and with still less.
I have heard that once Akbar punished four men for the same crime: they had embezzled the royal treasury together, and shared the gold equally. Akbar summoned them. To the first he said, “I did not expect this of you! Go.” The man left. To the second he said, “Your punishment is to bow down and touch the feet of all the courtiers—then go.” To the third he said, “I banish you from the kingdom for one year.” To the fourth, “You are sentenced to life imprisonment.”
After they left, the courtiers protested: “What strange justice! Such different punishments for the same offense? One man you merely chided—‘I didn’t expect this of you’—and another you sent to prison for life!”
Akbar laughed: “I know them. If you doubt me, go and see what each is doing.” They went first to the man who heard, “I didn’t expect this of you.” At his house they found he had hanged himself. Astonished, they reported back. Akbar said, “You see? For him, even a needle would have sufficed; even that much was too much. That single sentence was more than enough punishment for a person with some sense of his own dignity. Now go see the one given life imprisonment.” They went. The jailer told them the man was already laying a bribery network and planning his escape. They met him—he was not at all sad. “Don’t worry!” he said. “Life sentence? In a world where everything is possible, you think I’ll remain in jail forever? You’ll see me out in a few days. In fifteen-twenty days, you’ll see me in court again. Don’t fret—I’ll be back soon. Besides, I was very tired; this is a fifteen-day rest!” They were amazed: the one given life imprisonment was cheerful, while the one merely told, “I didn’t expect this of you,” had hanged himself!
Akbar measured it exactly—that is right effort in action: only as much as necessary, not a grain more.
A yogi must be mindful that his effort in action is right. Buddha laid a great framework on “right”: the entire Noble Eightfold Path rests on “samyak”—right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Nothing should go unbalanced. Krishna points to the same “samyak”: be restrained in your actions—only as much effort as needed, neither less nor more. Then you will find that action cannot bind you.
The one who acts with right effort stands outside karma. The one who does too much repents, because the fruit is meager. The one who does too little also repents, because there is no fruit. But the one who does rightly never repents—whether the fruit comes or not. He knows: what was necessary has been done; what was to be received, was received; what was not to be, did not come. From my side, what was needed is complete—end of story.
A friend came to me. His wife had died. He was weeping, terribly disturbed. I told him, “I never saw you so happy with your wife that I would expect you to weep so much at her death. You are making misdirected effort. If you had been a little more joyful then, you would need to weep a little less now.”
He was startled: “What do you mean?” I said, “Balance. Tell me honestly: are you crying because your wife died—or is it something else? Often the reasons are different, and the pretexts are different. Human dishonesty has no end.” He said, “What do you mean? My wife died, and you speak of pretexts and dishonesty?” I said, “I accept that you are sad. But think and tell me in two-four days if the real reason for your weeping is only that she died.”
Four days later he returned: “Perhaps you are right. I looked within and saw: the service I should have done, I didn’t; the attention I should have paid, I didn’t; the love that should have flowed naturally from me, even that I didn’t give. The pain now is that there is no way left to ask forgiveness.”
Remember, if you have loved someone fully—as much as was possible, as was right; served fully, as was right; given full attention, as was right—then the sorrow after death is of a different quality. That pain will not break you; it will refine you. It will leave you tempered and wiser, not destroyed. It will leave insight, not rust—because what was possible and right was done. What was in my hands is complete; the rest is always in God’s hands.
But none of us ever does what is right in measure: neither husband for wife nor wife for husband, neither son for father nor father for son. Everything is out of balance. When someone departs, a thunderbolt of pain strikes: now there is no remedy.
That is why sons who, in secret, have often wished their aged father would pass away, still beat their chests and wail when he dies. The mind does such things; you scold it, but it keeps thinking. Then the same son weeps. This is life’s imbalance. If he had rendered right service to his father—who, after all, must go; no one escapes death—if he had kept this in mind, served a little, loved a little, honored him a little, then this wound would not fester so. This is the pain of what was left undone and can never be done now—a thorn that will prick for life.
Right action in all deeds means: in every act, do what ought to be done. Put in the energy that is appropriate—neither less nor more.
Who will decide how much is appropriate? None but you can decide. You must think. And you will be amazed at the experience: when you apply restrained, right effort in a task, you come away weightless, free. The work is done; it is finished.
If at the office you truly labor for five hours—rightly—then the office won’t come home and take up residence in your head. Otherwise it will—suspended—dangling there. At the office you sat and rested! I heard of a manager whose boss dropped in unannounced. The manager, unprepared, was sprawled on his chair, asleep. He startled awake, apologized, “Forgive me; last night I couldn’t sleep at home.” The boss said, “Oh! So you also sleep at home? We never imagined that. Since you sleep here all day, it never occurred to us you might sleep at home too!”
Cheat a task, and the task will take its revenge. It will follow you home. Cheat home, and home will follow you to the office.
Any action you don’t complete—don’t do rightly—gets stuck inside you and haunts you. Hence our strange condition: while eating in the kitchen you’re at the office; sitting in the office you’re eating lunch. This confusion in the mind arises because, when you eat, you don’t eat rightly. Drop everything else then. Give the meal the attention it requires. Chew as much as needed; taste as it should be tasted. Complete the act of eating with right effort. Then the meal will not pursue you—and you will feel satisfied.
Whatever the work, complete it. What is completed with restraint does not remain suspended, and the person stays ever outside each action—moment to moment. Such a person never feels weight on the mind—he is weightless, light. Everything is complete.
When Socrates was dying, a friend asked, “Is any work left unfinished?” Socrates said, “I have never had the habit of leaving anything unfinished. I was always ready to die. Whenever death came, my affairs were clear. I did what was to be done and left what was not. My accounts have always been in order. Should Death’s inspector arrive at any time to audit my ledgers, I will not tremble as shopkeepers do at the sight of the income-tax inspector.” And then he added, “Only one small thing remains: I didn’t know it, or I would have told the man in the morning. A man named Echiliyas lent me a chicken; six annas are due to him. That alone is suspended. I would pay him myself, but being in jail I have no way to earn six annas. They brought me here suddenly; otherwise I would have paid. After I die, you, my friends, gather a few coins among you and give them to him, so I do not carry too much burden. Six annas will be too much for me to carry; if each of you contributes a paisa or two, the rest will remain with you. And if, somewhere on the infinite road, we meet again, I will repay you.” Other than that, all is settled.
With how many annas of burden will you be filled at death? Hard to calculate. So much will remain stuck on all sides! You abused someone and never asked forgiveness. You were angry and never forgave. You promised love and never gave it. You promised service and never rendered it. Everything will remain incomplete.
This stuck, unfinished residue drags you into new births. These misdirected actions keep pulling you into further actions. The past isn’t completed; this life isn’t completed; addition upon addition, the burden grows. You never become light.
The core of the doctrine of karma is this: the one who becomes free of action is the one who performs every action with restraint and stands outside it. For him there is no death—there is liberation—because there is no reason to return.
Yada viniyatam chittam atmanyeva avatisthate.
Nihsprihah sarva-kamebhyo yukta ityucyate tada. 18.
Through the practice of yoga, when the well-disciplined mind becomes firmly established in the Self alone, then, free of craving for all desires, one is said to be yoked to yoga.
Understand this rightly: through the practice of yoga. Our practice of impurity is deep; our skill at entanglement is extraordinary. We are expert artisans at creating our own prison—each brick strengthened, each shackle forged of solid steel. We have arranged life so that joy cannot enter—doors and windows shut so that, by no mistake, light might sneak in. We have organized our hell. To cut this arrangement, an equal counter-arrangement is needed in the opposite direction. That is what “yoga-practice” means.
If, as Krishnamurti says, you have not traveled toward hell at all, then no practice is needed. As the Zen masters in Japan say, no practice is needed. But if you have practiced hard on the road to hell and, after hearing Krishnamurti, think that no practice is needed to go toward heaven, you are sealing your hell.
Do you know how much rehearsal goes into being disturbed? To hurl an insult, how much preparation you do! How many times you fling it in the mind first! From how many angles you taste it, season it with poison, then finally deliver it. Without prior rehearsal even an insult won’t come out.
How much labor do you put into being unpeaceful? From morning to night, how many strategies you invent to get upset! If none present themselves, you devise them.
A friend’s son told me, “I’m in trouble. I can’t find a way to avoid upsetting my father.” I said, “Don’t do the things that upset him.” He replied, “That’s the fun—if I dress properly for the office, he says, ‘So you’ve become a film star?’ If I don’t, he says, ‘What—am I dead? Dress like this when I’m gone; while I’m alive, enjoy yourself!’” He asked, “What can I do so my father won’t be upset? Whatever I do, he finds a way. I try the opposite, and he still finds a way.” I said, “Try going once as a Digambara—naked! There’s no third route left.” He said, “What are you saying! He’ll cut my head off!”
We hunt for pegs to hang our disturbances on. If we don’t find them, we hammer in our own nails. We practice hard at being unpeaceful, angry, troubled. It seems if we don’t get upset today, the day was wasted. Many do just that: trouble proves to them that they exist. The greater the person, the greater the troubles—so every little person magnifies little troubles and stands among them.
So, when Krishna tells Arjuna: by yoga-practice the mind becomes peaceful, he means practice in the opposite direction. What does that mean? Till now, we’ve searched twenty-four hours a day for reasons to entertain negative emotions. Yoga-practice means spending twenty-four hours searching for reasons to invoke positive emotions.
Both are present in life. Stand by a rose. The one trained in unrest says, “Useless—only thorns everywhere; rarely, by accident, a flower.” The one practicing yoga says, “Thank you, Lord! What a marvel—that where there are so many thorns, such a tender flower can blossom!” The difference is in the way of seeing.
When you meet someone, if you instantly look for what is bad, you have trained yourself in unrest. Yet even the worst person must have some good, or living would be impossible. A thief is honest with someone; a bandit keeps his word to someone. A dishonest man cannot be dishonest twenty-four hours; with someone he lives honestly. Your enemy is someone else’s friend; he knows friendship. The one ready to stab your chest may, for someone, be ready to take the blade into his own.
In this existence, no one is absolutely bad; no one absolutely good. Your choice decides what you see. Your practice determines your selection. Decide to choose the bad, and you will find bad in abundance. Choose darkness, close your eyes all day and go out at night—darkness will be there. What you seek, that you will find. Seek sorrow—you’ll find sorrow. Seek pain—you’ll find pain. Seek the devil—you’ll find him. Seek God—He is right around the corner, where the devil stands; perhaps not even that far. Perhaps the devil is God’s face seen wrongly.
The one who can see the flower among thorns will soon not even notice the thorns. See the flower amid thorns, and in time you will see the thorns as the flower’s friends—guarding it. Eventually you will see that without thorns there would be no flower; and finally, the thorniness of thorns will vanish, and even thorns will seem like flowers.
Conversely, the one who sees only thorns will soon see thorns even in the flower.
Gradually, our vision can become inclusive. But existence is dual—both are present.
A yoga-practitioner is one who seeks pegs for peace, joy, beauty, dance, celebration—who does not contract to gather gloom, who does not go place to place collecting thorns and pebbles to heap upon his chest and shout, “Life is futile!”
Yoga is a legislative vision of life—a positive chemistry. And it requires practice because you have practiced the opposite. If you can drop the old habit without any new practice, drop it. Then no new practice is needed.
But the old habit is heavy, gripping; it won’t drop. You must undo it inch by inch, as you constructed it. Even a house of cards must be taken down card by card. False as it may be, untruth has its own structure; it must be dismantled.
Yoga-practice is the practice of cutting wrong practices. You must make the opposite journey. The person in whom you saw the bad must now be seen for his good. Where you saw an enemy, seek the friend. Where you saw poison, search for nectar. That is the outer discipline.
Then do the same within. In yourself, where you saw the bad, seek the auspicious. In lust, where you saw the path to hell, learn to see the path to heaven—for when you see it, the energy of desire turns upward. In anger, see the same power that becomes forgiveness. The energy of lust is what becomes celibacy. The energy of greed becomes charity.
You will have to see it; you will have to search. Till now you have seen life one way; now you must see it in the opposite way. What are the methods of this opposite seeing? I will speak on them in the evening. This very aphorism we will complete in the evening. For now, just grasp this much: if you have practiced the wrong, you will need practice to cut it.
In one sense, Krishnamurti or the Zen masters are right: to attain the Good, no practice is needed; the Good is your nature. But to cut the Unwholesome, practice is needed; in that sense, they are completely wrong.
Understand the difference. To attain the auspicious, no practice is needed; the auspicious is your nature. But to cut the inauspicious…
Consider it like this: if you put chains on my hands, should I say that to attain freedom I need to break chains? Freedom itself bears no chains. Yet the chains must be broken to end bondage. When bondage breaks, what remains is freedom.
You don’t break chains for freedom; you break chains for bondage to end. Freedom is your nature. Truth is your nature. Dharma is your nature. God is your nature. There is no need to attain God. But to undo what you have done to lose Him, you must practice. That practice is yoga-practice.
We will speak of that tonight. For now, let us do five minutes of yoga-practice— a little kirtan, a little immersion in song.
But even in kirtan, someone will say, “What’s the point of shouting and dancing?” You are seeing thorns. Try to see the flower, and flowers will begin to appear. And not only appear—if you participate a little, they will blossom quickly.
So clap; lend your voice to the song. Sway where you sit. For five minutes, forget yourself—get lost.
Go into any school during an examination. Watch the children. They are holding the pen and writing; naturally, a certain pressure falls on the fingers. But look at their feet—stiff and rigid. Look at their necks—taut. Their eyes—full of strain. The hand is writing, but it’s as if the whole body is gripping the pen! This is misdirected effort—more effort than necessary. The work could be done by the fingers alone; dragging the entire body into it is pointless. It’s like using a sword where a needle is needed. And remember, what a needle can do, a sword cannot. A child that tense will write the wrong answers. The effort is misdirected—extra labor, needless tension.
Notice yourself when you write: only the finger should carry the load; anything more is misdirected. A man is riding a bicycle: the toes are enough to turn the pedals. But his chest is involved; his eyes are tight; his hands are clenched. Everything is rigid. Misdirected effort—unnecessary self-torment born of habit.
Almost all our efforts are misdirected. Either we do too little, or we overdo. What is needed is attention: for which action, how much labor? For which act, how much energy?
Otherwise what happens is like a man at dusk, in a village street, frantically searching for something. People gather and offer help: “What are you looking for?” He’s exhausted and, with folded hands, prays to God, “If I find my lost thing, I’ll offer a coconut.” The people ask, “But what have you lost?” He says, “A one-paisa coin.” A coconut costs five annas! It’s an old story. A five-anna coconut for a lost paisa—he’s ready to offer it! They say, “You’re mad. You lose one paisa and you’ll offer a five-anna coconut?” He replies, “First let me find the paisa; then I’ll decide whether to offer it or not. If I don’t find it, my decision stands firm! If I do find it, who is stopping me from reconsidering?”
Our entire life is arranged like this—we never look at how much we are staking for what we seek. Is it worth putting in that much? Even if we succeed, is the gain worth the effort? Is it worth it? No one asks. No one checks whether, even on success, the result will justify the input. Are we not offering a five-anna coconut for a one-paisa gain?
And when this habit grows, its opposite reaction sets in: at the very moment when one truly needs to stake everything, one finds no strength left to stake at all.
Disciplined labor—right effort in actions. Life needs thoughtfulness; not a life lived in unthinking drift.
A man sets out to earn wealth. Before he rushes, he should consider: when wealth comes, is it worth losing so much for it? Is it necessary to sell even one’s soul? To lose everything for wealth? That is misdirected effort.
Krishna does not forbid earning. He says: make right effort. Think a little about what you will lose and what you will gain. Keep accounts. Use a little practical intelligence.
We don’t have that disciplined intelligence because we have never thought in that way.
Start thinking. In each action, ask: how much energy am I investing? Is it appropriate? You will immediately find you’re wasting effort; it can be done with less, and with still less.
I have heard that once Akbar punished four men for the same crime: they had embezzled the royal treasury together, and shared the gold equally. Akbar summoned them. To the first he said, “I did not expect this of you! Go.” The man left. To the second he said, “Your punishment is to bow down and touch the feet of all the courtiers—then go.” To the third he said, “I banish you from the kingdom for one year.” To the fourth, “You are sentenced to life imprisonment.”
After they left, the courtiers protested: “What strange justice! Such different punishments for the same offense? One man you merely chided—‘I didn’t expect this of you’—and another you sent to prison for life!”
Akbar laughed: “I know them. If you doubt me, go and see what each is doing.” They went first to the man who heard, “I didn’t expect this of you.” At his house they found he had hanged himself. Astonished, they reported back. Akbar said, “You see? For him, even a needle would have sufficed; even that much was too much. That single sentence was more than enough punishment for a person with some sense of his own dignity. Now go see the one given life imprisonment.” They went. The jailer told them the man was already laying a bribery network and planning his escape. They met him—he was not at all sad. “Don’t worry!” he said. “Life sentence? In a world where everything is possible, you think I’ll remain in jail forever? You’ll see me out in a few days. In fifteen-twenty days, you’ll see me in court again. Don’t fret—I’ll be back soon. Besides, I was very tired; this is a fifteen-day rest!” They were amazed: the one given life imprisonment was cheerful, while the one merely told, “I didn’t expect this of you,” had hanged himself!
Akbar measured it exactly—that is right effort in action: only as much as necessary, not a grain more.
A yogi must be mindful that his effort in action is right. Buddha laid a great framework on “right”: the entire Noble Eightfold Path rests on “samyak”—right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Nothing should go unbalanced. Krishna points to the same “samyak”: be restrained in your actions—only as much effort as needed, neither less nor more. Then you will find that action cannot bind you.
The one who acts with right effort stands outside karma. The one who does too much repents, because the fruit is meager. The one who does too little also repents, because there is no fruit. But the one who does rightly never repents—whether the fruit comes or not. He knows: what was necessary has been done; what was to be received, was received; what was not to be, did not come. From my side, what was needed is complete—end of story.
A friend came to me. His wife had died. He was weeping, terribly disturbed. I told him, “I never saw you so happy with your wife that I would expect you to weep so much at her death. You are making misdirected effort. If you had been a little more joyful then, you would need to weep a little less now.”
He was startled: “What do you mean?” I said, “Balance. Tell me honestly: are you crying because your wife died—or is it something else? Often the reasons are different, and the pretexts are different. Human dishonesty has no end.” He said, “What do you mean? My wife died, and you speak of pretexts and dishonesty?” I said, “I accept that you are sad. But think and tell me in two-four days if the real reason for your weeping is only that she died.”
Four days later he returned: “Perhaps you are right. I looked within and saw: the service I should have done, I didn’t; the attention I should have paid, I didn’t; the love that should have flowed naturally from me, even that I didn’t give. The pain now is that there is no way left to ask forgiveness.”
Remember, if you have loved someone fully—as much as was possible, as was right; served fully, as was right; given full attention, as was right—then the sorrow after death is of a different quality. That pain will not break you; it will refine you. It will leave you tempered and wiser, not destroyed. It will leave insight, not rust—because what was possible and right was done. What was in my hands is complete; the rest is always in God’s hands.
But none of us ever does what is right in measure: neither husband for wife nor wife for husband, neither son for father nor father for son. Everything is out of balance. When someone departs, a thunderbolt of pain strikes: now there is no remedy.
That is why sons who, in secret, have often wished their aged father would pass away, still beat their chests and wail when he dies. The mind does such things; you scold it, but it keeps thinking. Then the same son weeps. This is life’s imbalance. If he had rendered right service to his father—who, after all, must go; no one escapes death—if he had kept this in mind, served a little, loved a little, honored him a little, then this wound would not fester so. This is the pain of what was left undone and can never be done now—a thorn that will prick for life.
Right action in all deeds means: in every act, do what ought to be done. Put in the energy that is appropriate—neither less nor more.
Who will decide how much is appropriate? None but you can decide. You must think. And you will be amazed at the experience: when you apply restrained, right effort in a task, you come away weightless, free. The work is done; it is finished.
If at the office you truly labor for five hours—rightly—then the office won’t come home and take up residence in your head. Otherwise it will—suspended—dangling there. At the office you sat and rested! I heard of a manager whose boss dropped in unannounced. The manager, unprepared, was sprawled on his chair, asleep. He startled awake, apologized, “Forgive me; last night I couldn’t sleep at home.” The boss said, “Oh! So you also sleep at home? We never imagined that. Since you sleep here all day, it never occurred to us you might sleep at home too!”
Cheat a task, and the task will take its revenge. It will follow you home. Cheat home, and home will follow you to the office.
Any action you don’t complete—don’t do rightly—gets stuck inside you and haunts you. Hence our strange condition: while eating in the kitchen you’re at the office; sitting in the office you’re eating lunch. This confusion in the mind arises because, when you eat, you don’t eat rightly. Drop everything else then. Give the meal the attention it requires. Chew as much as needed; taste as it should be tasted. Complete the act of eating with right effort. Then the meal will not pursue you—and you will feel satisfied.
Whatever the work, complete it. What is completed with restraint does not remain suspended, and the person stays ever outside each action—moment to moment. Such a person never feels weight on the mind—he is weightless, light. Everything is complete.
When Socrates was dying, a friend asked, “Is any work left unfinished?” Socrates said, “I have never had the habit of leaving anything unfinished. I was always ready to die. Whenever death came, my affairs were clear. I did what was to be done and left what was not. My accounts have always been in order. Should Death’s inspector arrive at any time to audit my ledgers, I will not tremble as shopkeepers do at the sight of the income-tax inspector.” And then he added, “Only one small thing remains: I didn’t know it, or I would have told the man in the morning. A man named Echiliyas lent me a chicken; six annas are due to him. That alone is suspended. I would pay him myself, but being in jail I have no way to earn six annas. They brought me here suddenly; otherwise I would have paid. After I die, you, my friends, gather a few coins among you and give them to him, so I do not carry too much burden. Six annas will be too much for me to carry; if each of you contributes a paisa or two, the rest will remain with you. And if, somewhere on the infinite road, we meet again, I will repay you.” Other than that, all is settled.
With how many annas of burden will you be filled at death? Hard to calculate. So much will remain stuck on all sides! You abused someone and never asked forgiveness. You were angry and never forgave. You promised love and never gave it. You promised service and never rendered it. Everything will remain incomplete.
This stuck, unfinished residue drags you into new births. These misdirected actions keep pulling you into further actions. The past isn’t completed; this life isn’t completed; addition upon addition, the burden grows. You never become light.
The core of the doctrine of karma is this: the one who becomes free of action is the one who performs every action with restraint and stands outside it. For him there is no death—there is liberation—because there is no reason to return.
Yada viniyatam chittam atmanyeva avatisthate.
Nihsprihah sarva-kamebhyo yukta ityucyate tada. 18.
Through the practice of yoga, when the well-disciplined mind becomes firmly established in the Self alone, then, free of craving for all desires, one is said to be yoked to yoga.
Understand this rightly: through the practice of yoga. Our practice of impurity is deep; our skill at entanglement is extraordinary. We are expert artisans at creating our own prison—each brick strengthened, each shackle forged of solid steel. We have arranged life so that joy cannot enter—doors and windows shut so that, by no mistake, light might sneak in. We have organized our hell. To cut this arrangement, an equal counter-arrangement is needed in the opposite direction. That is what “yoga-practice” means.
If, as Krishnamurti says, you have not traveled toward hell at all, then no practice is needed. As the Zen masters in Japan say, no practice is needed. But if you have practiced hard on the road to hell and, after hearing Krishnamurti, think that no practice is needed to go toward heaven, you are sealing your hell.
Do you know how much rehearsal goes into being disturbed? To hurl an insult, how much preparation you do! How many times you fling it in the mind first! From how many angles you taste it, season it with poison, then finally deliver it. Without prior rehearsal even an insult won’t come out.
How much labor do you put into being unpeaceful? From morning to night, how many strategies you invent to get upset! If none present themselves, you devise them.
A friend’s son told me, “I’m in trouble. I can’t find a way to avoid upsetting my father.” I said, “Don’t do the things that upset him.” He replied, “That’s the fun—if I dress properly for the office, he says, ‘So you’ve become a film star?’ If I don’t, he says, ‘What—am I dead? Dress like this when I’m gone; while I’m alive, enjoy yourself!’” He asked, “What can I do so my father won’t be upset? Whatever I do, he finds a way. I try the opposite, and he still finds a way.” I said, “Try going once as a Digambara—naked! There’s no third route left.” He said, “What are you saying! He’ll cut my head off!”
We hunt for pegs to hang our disturbances on. If we don’t find them, we hammer in our own nails. We practice hard at being unpeaceful, angry, troubled. It seems if we don’t get upset today, the day was wasted. Many do just that: trouble proves to them that they exist. The greater the person, the greater the troubles—so every little person magnifies little troubles and stands among them.
So, when Krishna tells Arjuna: by yoga-practice the mind becomes peaceful, he means practice in the opposite direction. What does that mean? Till now, we’ve searched twenty-four hours a day for reasons to entertain negative emotions. Yoga-practice means spending twenty-four hours searching for reasons to invoke positive emotions.
Both are present in life. Stand by a rose. The one trained in unrest says, “Useless—only thorns everywhere; rarely, by accident, a flower.” The one practicing yoga says, “Thank you, Lord! What a marvel—that where there are so many thorns, such a tender flower can blossom!” The difference is in the way of seeing.
When you meet someone, if you instantly look for what is bad, you have trained yourself in unrest. Yet even the worst person must have some good, or living would be impossible. A thief is honest with someone; a bandit keeps his word to someone. A dishonest man cannot be dishonest twenty-four hours; with someone he lives honestly. Your enemy is someone else’s friend; he knows friendship. The one ready to stab your chest may, for someone, be ready to take the blade into his own.
In this existence, no one is absolutely bad; no one absolutely good. Your choice decides what you see. Your practice determines your selection. Decide to choose the bad, and you will find bad in abundance. Choose darkness, close your eyes all day and go out at night—darkness will be there. What you seek, that you will find. Seek sorrow—you’ll find sorrow. Seek pain—you’ll find pain. Seek the devil—you’ll find him. Seek God—He is right around the corner, where the devil stands; perhaps not even that far. Perhaps the devil is God’s face seen wrongly.
The one who can see the flower among thorns will soon not even notice the thorns. See the flower amid thorns, and in time you will see the thorns as the flower’s friends—guarding it. Eventually you will see that without thorns there would be no flower; and finally, the thorniness of thorns will vanish, and even thorns will seem like flowers.
Conversely, the one who sees only thorns will soon see thorns even in the flower.
Gradually, our vision can become inclusive. But existence is dual—both are present.
A yoga-practitioner is one who seeks pegs for peace, joy, beauty, dance, celebration—who does not contract to gather gloom, who does not go place to place collecting thorns and pebbles to heap upon his chest and shout, “Life is futile!”
Yoga is a legislative vision of life—a positive chemistry. And it requires practice because you have practiced the opposite. If you can drop the old habit without any new practice, drop it. Then no new practice is needed.
But the old habit is heavy, gripping; it won’t drop. You must undo it inch by inch, as you constructed it. Even a house of cards must be taken down card by card. False as it may be, untruth has its own structure; it must be dismantled.
Yoga-practice is the practice of cutting wrong practices. You must make the opposite journey. The person in whom you saw the bad must now be seen for his good. Where you saw an enemy, seek the friend. Where you saw poison, search for nectar. That is the outer discipline.
Then do the same within. In yourself, where you saw the bad, seek the auspicious. In lust, where you saw the path to hell, learn to see the path to heaven—for when you see it, the energy of desire turns upward. In anger, see the same power that becomes forgiveness. The energy of lust is what becomes celibacy. The energy of greed becomes charity.
You will have to see it; you will have to search. Till now you have seen life one way; now you must see it in the opposite way. What are the methods of this opposite seeing? I will speak on them in the evening. This very aphorism we will complete in the evening. For now, just grasp this much: if you have practiced the wrong, you will need practice to cut it.
In one sense, Krishnamurti or the Zen masters are right: to attain the Good, no practice is needed; the Good is your nature. But to cut the Unwholesome, practice is needed; in that sense, they are completely wrong.
Understand the difference. To attain the auspicious, no practice is needed; the auspicious is your nature. But to cut the inauspicious…
Consider it like this: if you put chains on my hands, should I say that to attain freedom I need to break chains? Freedom itself bears no chains. Yet the chains must be broken to end bondage. When bondage breaks, what remains is freedom.
You don’t break chains for freedom; you break chains for bondage to end. Freedom is your nature. Truth is your nature. Dharma is your nature. God is your nature. There is no need to attain God. But to undo what you have done to lose Him, you must practice. That practice is yoga-practice.
We will speak of that tonight. For now, let us do five minutes of yoga-practice— a little kirtan, a little immersion in song.
But even in kirtan, someone will say, “What’s the point of shouting and dancing?” You are seeing thorns. Try to see the flower, and flowers will begin to appear. And not only appear—if you participate a little, they will blossom quickly.
So clap; lend your voice to the song. Sway where you sit. For five minutes, forget yourself—get lost.
Osho's Commentary
Everything has a proportion; if we fall below or above that proportion, harm begins to happen to us. A few fundamental points need to be kept in mind.
First, foundational. A person is a very intricate organism, a very complex unity. We have no idea how complex the human personality is. Nature too does not let us know, for to live while knowing that much complexity would become difficult.
A small individual is as complex as this whole universe. There is no deficiency in his complexity. And in one sense, he becomes even more complex than the universe—because his expanse is very small, yet the complexity is like the universe. In an ordinary body there are seventy million living cells. You are a vast city—larger than any city on earth. Tokyo’s population is ten million. If Tokyo were to become seven times larger, then as many people as there would be in Tokyo, that many cells are within each person.
You are a great city of seventy million cells. Hence Sankhya and Yoga have given you the name Purusha. Purusha means: you live in the midst of a great puri, a vast city. You yourself are a great city, a vast pur. And that which you are in the midst of this city has been called Purusha. It is to say: you are not a small incident; a metropolis is living within you.
In a tiny brain there are some three billion nerve fibers. Even a single cell is no simple occurrence; it is supremely complex. Of the seventy million cells in the body, even one cell is an exceedingly difficult phenomenon. Until now—until very recently—scientists were not able to understand it. Only now have they begun to comprehend its basic structure. Only now has it become clear what the chemical process is in that tiny cell from whose seventy million relatives you are composed.
This entire web of your organism is vast; if there is no music in it, no rhythm, no oneness, no harmony, you will not be able to enter within. If your whole city—this metropolis of body and mind—is disordered, chaotic, anarchic, if the entire city is deranged, you will not be able to enter within.
For your inner entry it is necessary that this whole city be musical, rhythmic, peaceful, silent, rejoicing, delighted—then you will be able to pass within it easily. Otherwise some very small thing will hold you at the periphery—very small. And it holds you also because this is the very nature of consciousness: it keeps informing you where in your body any accident is happening.
So if anywhere in your body any mishap is occurring, consciousness will remain entangled there. That is its emergency, its immediate need, its crisis-response: it will forget the whole body and where there is pain, where there is anarchy, where the rhythm has broken, there attention will get stuck.
A tiny thorn pierces the foot—and all consciousness rushes toward the thorn. A small thorn! It has no great power, and yet the tiny tip of that thorn puts hundreds of cells into suffering, and consciousness runs in that direction. If any part of the body is even slightly sick, the inward journey of consciousness becomes difficult. Consciousness will get stuck at that sick part.
If we understand rightly, we can say that health means precisely this: that your consciousness need not get stuck anywhere in the body.
You come to know of your head only when there is heaviness, pain, ache. Otherwise there is no sense of it. You live as if headless until pain comes. Strictly speaking, headache is the head—for without it you would not even know there is a head. Only when the head aches do you know it is there. If there is trouble in the stomach, then you become aware of the stomach. If there is pain in the hand, then the hand is known.
If your body is perfectly healthy, you do not feel the body; you become videha. There is no need to keep the body in remembrance. Remembrance is needed only when the body is passing through some emergency, when it is in trouble—then attention must be kept there. And at that time, leaving aside attention to the whole body and to the soul, all consciousness rushes to that small organ where there is pain!
This yoga of equanimity gives you this indication in relation to the body. Krishna tells Arjuna: if you eat too much, entry into yoga will not happen. Because the moment you eat too much, the whole consciousness starts flowing toward the belly.
Therefore you’ll notice—after food drowsiness starts coming on. There is no other scientific cause of that. The scientific reason is just this: the moment you eat, consciousness begins to flow toward the stomach, and the brain begins to be emptied of consciousness. Hence the brain becomes hazy, somnolent, filled with torpor. If you overeat, you will feel even more sleepy, because the stomach needs so much consciousness that now the brain cannot function. After a meal, therefore, it is difficult to do any work that needs the brain. And if you force it, digestion will be troubled—because the stomach will not receive the amount of consciousness needed for digestion.
If you eat excessively, consciousness goes to the stomach—and if you eat too little or remain hungry, consciousness also goes to the stomach. In both conditions consciousness runs to the belly. If you eat less than needed, the stomach keeps sending the report: more, more—there is need. And if you eat too much, the stomach says: too much—this much wasn’t needed. The stomach becomes a site of pain—and then your consciousness gets stuck there. It cannot go deep.
Krishna says: food that is neither less nor more.
There is a point in food where it is neither less nor more. The day you learn to eat in that proportion, that day the stomach has no need to ask for consciousness. Then consciousness can travel anywhere.
If you sleep too little, every fiber of the body, every atom, will keep calling: no rest was given, fatigue has set in. All day long every atom of the body will say to you: go to sleep, go to sleep; there is tiredness; yawning will persist. Your consciousness will remain eager for the body’s rest.
And if you cultivate the habit of sleeping too much—if the body sleeps beyond its need, or you make it sleep beyond its need—it will become sluggish, filled with laziness and negligence. And consciousness will remain pained all day by that sloth. Sleep too has a proportion, a mathematics. And only that amount of sleep is helpful for the meditator where the body says neither “I slept too little” nor “I slept too much.”
So Krishna is speaking of a very scientific fact. A proportionate personality is needed, not a disproportionate one. A disproportionate personality will become chaotic. Its inner rhythm will be disordered, broken. And in a broken, disordered state, entering meditation will not be easy. You will have created disturbances with your own hands—and because of those disturbances you will not be able to go in. All of us create such disturbances for many reasons; those reasons should be considered.
First, we create disturbance because we have not yet rightly understood that proportion will be different for each individual. The father wakes at four in the morning and then wakes all the children: it is Brahmamuhurta, get up! If you don’t get up, you are lazy.
But the father should know that as age increases, the body’s need for sleep each day keeps diminishing. When the father is showing so much wisdom to the son, he does not realize how great the distance is between his age and the boy’s. The boy needs more sleep.
For nine months in the mother’s womb the child sleeps twenty-four hours a day—doesn’t wake even a little. Because the body is being formed, the child’s waking would be dangerous. The child remains anesthetized for twenty-four hours. So much work nature is doing within that the child’s consciousness would become an obstruction; nature keeps him absolutely unconscious. Doctors discovered anesthesia much later for operations; nature has always been using anesthesia. Whenever some big operation is on, some great event is happening, nature keeps you unconscious.
For twenty-four hours the child sleeps. Flesh is forming, marrow is forming, fibers are forming. If he became conscious, it could hinder. Then after birth the child sleeps twenty-three hours, twenty-two hours, twenty hours, eighteen hours. As age increases, sleep keeps diminishing.
Therefore elders should never, even by mistake, instruct children according to their own sleep. Otherwise they will harm them, they will break their proportion. But the elderly have a special hobby—giving instruction—without understanding.
Thus we begin to disturb the children’s proportion from the very outset. And when proportion gets disturbed, what is the danger?
If you make the child sleep less and force him to get up, in reaction one day he will take his revenge by sleeping too much. And then all his proportions will become unbalanced. If you win, he will become one who sleeps too little; and if he wins, he will become one who sleeps too much. But the proportion will be lost.
If the parents are strong, if they belong to the old mold and framework, they will make him sleep less. And if the child is of the new kind, of the new generation, rebellious, he will begin to sleep more. But one thing is certain—whichever side wins, nature loses; and that middle proportion is disturbed for good.
When death begins to draw near for an old person, there is no need for more than three or four hours of sleep. The reason is: now no new construction is happening in the body; the body is no longer being built. The body is getting ready to be dissolved. Sleep is a constructive element. It is needed only so long as something new is being formed in the body. When all new construction stops, then, strictly speaking, the old person does not sleep; he only rests—he is fatigued. It is children who truly sleep; the old merely rest out of tiredness. Because now death is approaching. The body has no new building to do.
But all the teachers of the world—by nature, the old are the teachers—keep sending out notices: get up at four, get up at three. A difficulty arises. The old are the teachers; children have to comply. Proportions get broken.
The same happens with food. From childhood we do not allow the child’s own nature to decide how much food is needed. The mother, out of her insistence, decides how much food. Children are often seen refusing in every house—“I don’t want to eat”—and the parents, out of attachment, are engaged in making them eat more! And once nature leaves its balance, it can go to the opposite extreme, but it is difficult to return to balance.
We ruin the children’s habits of sleeping and eating. And then we remain troubled throughout life. It becomes a lifelong trouble.
In Israel a physician has conducted a very unique experiment. While treating children it occurred to him that most childhood illnesses are created by the insistent feeding behavior of the parents. Being a pediatrician, he began to experiment with some children. He simply laid all kinds of food on a table and left the children alone. Whatever they wished to eat, let them eat. If they didn’t wish to, let them not. However much they wished, let them. If they didn’t want any, let them leave it altogether. If they wished to throw it, let them. If they wished to play, let them. Whatever they wished—and then depart.
From this he reached a surprising conclusion. It was this: if a child has a certain illness, he will leave untouched exactly those foods that should not be eaten in that illness—even if they have been made very delicious. In that illness the child will not eat what he should not. And this was not on one child; after experimenting on hundreds he drew this conclusion. And whatever food the child needs at that time, from that table he will choose it. He calls this instinctive; it is part of the child’s very nature.
It is part of every animal’s nature. Only man has distorted his nature. In the name of culture we get only distortion; nature seems to be lost. No animal consents to wrong food unless man forces it. Each animal eats only its natural food.
And it is quite interesting—if an animal becomes even slightly sick, it stops eating. In fact, many animals not only stop eating when ill, they have their own arrangement for vomiting. They throw out even the food that is in the stomach. If your dog feels some belly trouble, he will go and chew grass and vomit to empty the stomach completely. And he will not take food until the stomach is again well arranged.
Only man is such an animal who does not listen to any voice of nature. But we begin the distortion from childhood. Hence this doctor says: instinctively all children do what is right. But grown-ups are so busy ruining them that there is no measure to it! When the child is not hungry, the mother keeps feeding milk! When the child is hungry, the mother is busy in her adornment; she cannot feed him! All becomes disordered.
Thus our food, sleep, wakefulness—our whole conduct—goes swinging between extremes, losing coordination.
Second point: the need of each individual is different. Not only of age—even the needs of ten children of the same age differ; the needs of ten old people of the same age differ; the needs of ten youths of the same age differ. Whatever rules are made are made on the basis of the average—whatever rules are made.
It is said, for example, that every person needs at least seven hours of sleep. But which person? This is said about no particular person. If we count the number of all the people in the world and tally the hours they sleep and divide, seven emerges—this is the average. Nothing is more untrue than the average.
Suppose we ask: what is the average height of people in Ahmedabad? Then measure the height of everyone—there will be small children, youth, old, women, men. Measure everyone’s height and then divide by the total number. The height that comes out—perhaps you will hardly find a single person in Ahmedabad of that average height. That is the average height. Don’t go searching for a person of that height. You won’t find one.
All rules are made from the average. The average is a makeshift device, not truth. Someone needs five hours of sleep, someone six, someone seven. No one else can decide how much is necessary. You must decide for yourself. Only by experimentation can it be decided. And it is not difficult.
If you experiment honestly you will determine how much sleep you need. That much sleep after which the thought of sleep does not arise again, and after which no laziness possesses you, freshness comes—that point is your point of sleep.
Nor can time be fixed—sleep at six in the evening, or at eight, or at midnight; rise at six in the morning, or at four, or at seven! That too cannot be fixed. The body’s inner needs differ from person to person. Each one should decide according to his unique need.
But our arrangement is muddled. Our arrangement is such that everyone must eat at the same time; everyone must go to the office at the same time; everyone must reach school at the same time; everyone must return home at the same time. Our whole system is not devised with individuals in mind; it is devised with rules in mind. There is no benefit in this; the harm is immense. If we reckon gains and losses, the loss is heavy.
An American thinker, Buck Miller, after a lifetime of thought and research, has given a very valuable suggestion. It is that all schools should not open at the same time. Enrollment should depend on what time the children naturally wake; according to that they should be enrolled. There should be many kinds of schools in a town. It is not appropriate that all hotels receive people at the same meal hours. People’s eating time should be determined by their inner need.
The benefits would be many.
There is no necessity that all offices open at one time. Nor that all shops open at a single hour. The big advantages would be these: right now on a single road at eleven o’clock we jam the traffic—that jam would not occur. Compared to now, we would need one-third the number of buses. At present in one building one office runs for six hours and the rest of the time the whole building lies idle; then in the same building four offices could run through the day. The world’s fourfold population could be managed in the same arrangement—the present population multiplied by four. This very road of Ahmedabad could carry four times as many people.
But the muddle is—at eleven all are going to the office! Thus the road feels strained. The road is in trouble and you are in trouble, because if all must go at eleven, all must also eat at eleven. Then all must also get up at a fixed time. It seems man exists for the rule, not the rule for man.
We say to a child: get up, it’s time to go to school. The school should say: our child does not wake then; that is not his time to come—open the school a little later! The day we think scientifically, this will be the case. And the result will not be harm, but immeasurable benefit.
What Krishna is saying is that each person should discover for himself how much sleep is necessary. And this will change daily. What you find today will not work forever. After five years it will change—your need will have changed.
All troubles begin after thirty-five in the human body—diseases, troubles, disturbances. If a person is ordinarily healthy, disturbances begin after thirty-five. The total reason for disturbance is this—not that you are getting old—rather, that all your habits are those of the pre-thirty-five person and you want to continue those habits after thirty-five though all the needs have changed.
You eat as much as you did before thirty-five. It cannot be eaten now—the body does not need that much food. You try to sleep as much as you did before thirty-five. If sleep does not come you become disturbed—my sleep is spoiled, insomnia is coming, something is wrong. Then we want tranquilizers, medicines, a little alcohol—what shall we do! But we forget that our need has changed. Now you will not be able to sleep that much.
Needs change daily; therefore each day, with awareness, one should determine what is delightful for me today.
And remember: pain informs you that you are doing something wrong. Suffering is only an indicator. And joy informs you that you are doing something right. When you are adjusted, balanced, an inner sense of well-being persists. This joy is of a very different kind. It is not the pleasure that comes from overeating—for from overeating only misery can come. It is not the pleasure that comes from staying up late at night to watch a movie—for from oversleep loss only misery can come. This joy is the joy of balance.
Food at the right time, in accord with your need; sleep at the right time, in accord with your need; bathing at the right time, in accord with your need. From right conduct, from a harmonious routine, an inner mood of well-being arises.
It is something very different; it is joy in another sense. It is not a state of excitement; it is simply a state of inner peace. In that peace one can enter meditation with ease. And for yoga it is indispensable.
Therefore your conduct should be examined from all sides. Not according to some rulebook, but according to the rule of your need. Not according to any scripture, but according to your own nature. And whatever the world says, do not bother. Only one thing should concern you: if your body reports joy, you are living rightly; if your body reports sorrow, you are living wrongly. Make joy and sorrow your measure.
If someone exerts excessively, harm results. If someone does no exertion at all, harm also results. And needs change with age. A child needs as much labor as an old person does not. The needs of one working with the intellect and one working with the body will differ. The one who works with the intellect does not need much food. The one who works with the body will need a little more—what is more for the intellectual will be just right for him.
The one working with the body needs no additional exercise that in the evening he must go and play tennis—he is mad. But the one working with the intellect needs some physical exertion. He will have to find some way—some sport, swimming, running—something.
Nature demands balance.
Henry Ford writes in his memoirs: I too was mad. When air-conditioning came, I air-conditioned all my buildings. My car too became air-conditioned. From my air-conditioned building I would get into my air-conditioned car in the porch. Later I even had my porch air-conditioned. When the car pulled out, the door would open automatically; when it left, the door would close. Then I would reach my air-conditioned office through my air-conditioned porch. I got down and went into an air-conditioned office.
Then trouble began. He asked doctors: what should I do? They said: every morning for an hour and every evening for an hour lie in a very hot water tub.
By lying in a hot bath, Henry Ford writes, my health became perfectly fine. Because in an hour in the morning I would perspire profusely, and in the evening too. But then I realized what I was doing! All day I save myself from sweating—then in two hours I must intensely force the sweat out—only then balance happens.
Nature will demand balance all the time. Those who are always at rest must work. Those who are always at work must rest. And whoever misses this balance—meditation is far away—he will miss even the ordinary happiness of life. The bliss of meditation is far off; he will be deprived of life’s simple joys as well.
For entry into meditation and yoga a balanced body is needed—supremely balanced. Only one excess can be forgiven: the excess of balance, that’s all. No other extreme can be forgiven. Supremely balanced! Only this one word, excess of balance, can be allowed—no other excess, no other extreme, no other excess. The extreme middle can be allowed, nothing else.
Buddha used to say so. Buddha said: avoid extremes. Walk in the middle. Always remain in the middle, in between. Find the midpoint of everything—remain there.
One day Sariputta said to Buddha: Bhagwan! You emphasize the middle so much that it seems to me this too has become an excess! In everything the middle, middle! This is an excess.
Buddha said: I forgive one excess—the excess of being in the middle. That I forgive; no other excess will do. Keep one excess going—middle, middle, middle—in all things the middle. Then there will be great ease in meditation.
People come to me and say: there is great difficulty in meditation. There is not great difficulty in meditation. You are in disturbances—and the entire arrangement of your disturbances you yourself are making, no one else! You are eating what you should not! Wearing what you should not! Sitting as you should not! Walking as you should not! Sleeping as you should not! Everything is disordered. Then one day you ask: there is no movement in meditation; much difficulty. Is some karma from past lives becoming an obstacle? There is no movement in meditation. I work hard, but nothing of substance comes to hand.
It will never come—because the one who works hard is not in a state in which entry within is possible. You will have to change your entire state.
Meditation is a great event, a very big happening. It needs preparation. For its preparation this sutra is very precious. That is why Krishna is not giving any straight, direct suggestions. He is only laying down rules: neither overeating nor eating too little; neither oversleeping nor excessive wakefulness; neither overwork nor overrest. He does not say directly how much—that how much is left to you. It is left to Arjuna. Your need and your intelligence must discover it. And each person should become the master of his own life. If you take your norms from another, you will fall into difficulty.
Usually at home the husband gets up earlier. He prepares a little tea and so on. But he feels great embarrassment—may no one see that the wife has not yet risen and he is making tea! But this is perfectly appropriate, scientific.
All research on sleep shows that women are two hours behind men—this is the entire finding. Today in America there are some ten sleep laboratories that study sleep exclusively. They say that between men and women there is a two-hour gap in sleep. If a man can get up healthy at five in the morning, a woman cannot get up healthy before seven. But if she has read the scriptures, then the wife must get up before the husband! If the husband rises at five, the wife should at least get up at four-thirty! Then harm will result.
Scientific study of sleep has revealed that for two hours in the night—within every twenty-four hours—the body temperature of each person drops. The chill you feel in the morning is not because the air outside is cold; the real reason is your body temperature drops by two degrees. Outer cold is not the real cause.
For two hours in twenty-four everyone’s temperature drops by two degrees. Scientists have concluded that those two hours are the hours of deep sleep for that person. If during those two hours he sleeps properly, he will be fresh all day. And if in those two hours he fails to sleep, then even if he has slept eight hours, he will not feel fresh.
And those two hours are slightly different for each person. For some, the temperature drops between two and four at night—such a person will get up at four fully fresh; no hindrance through the day. For another it drops between five and seven in the morning—if he gets up before seven, he will run into trouble.
After many experiments a gap of two hours between men and women has been noted. Thus many men can rise at five, but many women cannot rise at five. These are bodily differences, biological differences.
As understanding grows, one thing becomes clear: the body has its own code of rules. And these are not merely your body’s rules; they are linked to the great cosmos. We have seen that the moon affects the oceans. Have you noticed that the monthly cycle of women is also related to the moon—connected to it? There are twenty-eight days—that is why—four weeks of the moon. Exactly as the tides change with the moon, so changes occur in a woman’s body.
Yet as civilization advances, women’s monthly cycles become more and more disordered along with it. What has happened? Somewhere some balance is breaking. Those fibers of our body that are connected to the vast are being distorted by our own hands. Something has gone wrong.
Today, I believe, more than fifty percent of women on earth are excessively troubled by menstruation. Many kinds of troubles arise from their menses. And menses are in trouble because the attunement that should be there in a woman’s personality with nature, the balance that should be, has been lost. There is no relation left.
We have started living in our own way without bothering that we are a part of the great nature. Other than living in cooperation with that great nature, there is no way to peace.
But man, thinking himself too clever, has committed many follies. Too much cleverness has entered man’s mind, and he is breaking all balance within.
Until we had no artificial light, there was no disease of sleep for anyone on earth. Even now tribals have no sleep disorder. A tribesman cannot even believe what insomnia is! Tell him there are people who cannot sleep and he is astonished—How? What happened? Ask a tribesman: how do you go to sleep? He says: to sleep, must one do something? We just lay the head down and sleep.
You will be surprised to know that tribes who have had still less contact with civilization dream almost not at all—virtually not at all. Therefore the tribesman who dreams becomes special—special; he is not considered ordinary—a visionary, a mystic—some special man; a great event is happening!
Even today there are such tribal peoples—like the Eskimos, who live near the pole—who still cannot believe that everyone dreams. But American scientists say there is no human being who does not dream. About the American they are precisely right. In their experience, everyone dreams. They even say: the man who says, “I don’t dream,” only has a weak memory—nothing else. He doesn’t remember. He does dream.
And now they have instruments that tell whether a dream is occurring or not. You cannot deceive even by saying in the morning, “I don’t remember—so how could it have come?” Now there is an instrument that remains attached to your skull and through the night it records graphs—when the dream is on and when it is not. And slowly the graphs have become so refined that if a sexual dream is going on, the graph will tell that too—the ink will change color. Because when the fibers in your brain are filled with sexual excitation, their vibrations, their waves, change—the graph will catch it.
Now your so-called celibates will be in great difficulty. Because Brahmacharya practice through the day is easy—the question is of the night, of sleep, of dreams. That will be caught too—there is no hindrance there. Because dreams have different qualities, and the vibrational pattern of each dream is different. When a sexually exciting dream goes on within you, the dream becomes utterly frenzied and the graph begins to scrawl lines like a madman. When deep sleep is there within, dreams stop altogether—the graph draws a straight line, the oscillations vanish.
But the great surprise is that the civilized, educated man is, through the whole night, hardly in dreamless deep sleep for ten minutes—only ten minutes. The rest of the night the dream runs on.
Yet there are still tribes who do not dream; whose sleep is profound. Naturally, in the morning the innocence in their eyes cannot be seen in the eyes of one whose night was full of dreams. In the morning a tribesman’s eyes are like those of a cow—just as simple, just as guileless, just as innocent. In the night he has gone so deep that we can say, in unconsciousness he has descended into the Divine.
Sushupti is Samadhi—only Samadhi in unconsciousness; that is the only difference. The Upanishads say: Samadhi is like Sushupti. They give only one example: What is Samadhi like? Like Sushupti. The difference? Only this: in Samadhi you are aware; in Sushupti you are not.
In Sushupti too you reach the lap of the Divine, but you do not know it. In Samadhi too you reach—but you reach awake. Yet the benefit received is the same in both.
But the civilized man has lost even sleep—Sushupti is far away. Dreaming is all that remains in our hands. As if upon the waves we remain only on the surface of the ocean—never able to go deep—so too in sleep we cannot go deep.
For reaching within, at least deep sleep is essential. But deep sleep comes only to one whose labor and rest are balanced; whose food and hunger are balanced; whose speech and silence are balanced. Only he will attain deep sleep. Deep sleep is the fruit and reward of a balanced life.
When going into sleep itself has become difficult, how much more difficult to go into meditation—because meditation is further ahead—going while awake.
Krishna is right: it is necessary to balance your food and your movements—not by some rule, but by your own need.