Myswizard

The hot new frontier of neuroscience: meditation!

Richard Davidson, 54, is at once a distinguished scientist and an avid spiritual seeker. He became fascinated with meditation in the ’60s. As a graduate student at Harvard, he channeled that interest into the study of psychology and neuroscience. In his spare time, he hung out with Ram Dass, Timothy Leary’s former LSD research partner turned mystic. Davidson traveled to India for a meditation retreat, then finished his doctorate in biological psychology and headed to the University of Wisconsin, where he now directs the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior.

The Dalai Lama learned of Davidson’s work from other scientists and in 1992 invited him to Dharamsala, India, to interview monks with extensive meditation experience about their mental and emotional lives. Davidson recalls the “extraordinary power of compassion” he experienced in the Dalai Lama’s presence.

A decade later, he got a chance to examine Tibetan Buddhists in his own lab. In June 2002, Davidson’s associate Antoine Lutz positioned 128 electrodes o­n the head of Mattieu Ricard. A French-born monk from the Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Ricard had racked up more than of 10,000 hours of meditation.

Lutz asked Ricard to meditate o­n “unconditional loving-kindness and compassion.” He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second - indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see. Those emanating from Ricard were easily visible, even in the raw EEG output. Moreover, oscillations from various parts of the cortex were synchronized - a phenomenon that sometimes occurs in patients under anesthesia.

The researchers had never seen anything like it. Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation. The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students’. In addition, larger areas of the meditators’ brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.

Davidson realized that the results had important implications for o­ngoing research into the ability to change brain function through training. In the traditional view, the brain becomes frozen with the o­nset of adulthood, after which few new connections form. In the past 20 years, though, scientists have discovered that intensive training can make a difference. For instance, the portion of the brain that corresponds to a string musician’s fingering hand grows larger than the part that governs the bow hand - even in musicians who start playing as adults. Davidson’s work suggested this potential might extend to emotional centers.

But Davidson saw something more. The monks had responded to the request to meditate o­n compassion by generating remarkable brain waves. Perhaps these signals indicated that the meditators had attained an intensely compassionate state of mind. If so, then maybe compassion could be exercised like a muscle; with the right training, people could bulk up their empathy. And if meditation could enhance the brain’s ability to produce “attention and affective processes” - emotions, in the technical language of Davidson’s study - it might also be used to modify maladaptive emotional responses like depression.

Davidson and his team published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in November 2004.

WIRED Magazine

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Osho: The Path of Yoga - Part 1

We live in 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.