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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 8 | Previous Next | |
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that are available only to a very few can become part of the normal life of everybody. Nobody is barring the path, but somehow man does not have that creative understanding.
Yoga has been misused in the same way.
All knowledge brings power, and power can be used positively or negatively.
I have heard an anecdote:
A drunk shuffled up to a rich banker and asked for sixpence for a cup of coffee. Being an extremely generous man, the banker handed him a ten-shilling note.
"Here," he said, "you can buy yourself twenty cups of coffee with that."
Next evening the banker saw the drunken tramp again.
"How are you today?" he asked cheerfully.
The tramp glared at him. "Why don't you get lost," he said rudely. "You and your twenty cups of coffee. They kept me awake all last night."
It depends. A blessing can become a curse. What Patanjali is saying is pure white magic; it is a magical formula. You can make it into a devilish black magic. Then you will be destructive to others -- and destructive to yourself. Remember that. That's why first he says become friendly; then he talks about power.
People like Patanjali are so cautious. They have to be cautious because of you. They watch their every step. First he tells how to attain to samyama; immediately he talks about compassion and friendliness; then he talks about power. Because when you have compassion then power cannot be misused.
BY DIRECTING THE LIGHT OF THE SUPERPHYSICAL FACULTY, KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED OF THE SUBTLE, THE HIDDEN, AND THE DISTANT.
Every dimension becomes available -- "of the subtle, the hidden, the distant" -- once you know how not to be. Once you know how to be without any ego, once you know how to be a pure consciousness with no subject and no object, everything becomes possible. You can know all. By knowing one all is known.
BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE SUN, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS GAINED.
This sutra is a little complicated -- not in itself, but because of the commentators. All the commentators of Patanjali talk about this sutra as if Patanjali is talking about the sun out there. He is not talking about
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