Athayoganushasanam: Now the discipline of Yoga.

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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 aand 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.

 

Osho: The Path of Yoga

 

 

 

 

 

 

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