To understand yoga you need to get hold of a good translation of Patanjali, the Yoga
 Sutra. I don't know which is the best translation, there are so many of them. It says it starts
 out "Now yoga is explained." First verse. And the commentators say "Now" has a special
 meaning because it follows from something else that you're supposed to know beforehand.
 That you're supposed to be, in other words, a civilized human being before you start out
 on yoga. We don't teach yoga to baboons. And so you're supposed to have been disciplined
 in artha, karma, and dharma. In politics, sensuality, and dharma, justice. And then you can start
 yoga. Then the next verse is "Yogas citta-bhritti-nirodha," which means "Yoga is the cessation of revolutions
 of the mind." In other words, you can interpret that at many levels. Citta, meaning consciousness,
 like a pool, like water, like a reflecting pool. If there are waves on that, it doesn't
 reflect, it breaks up all the reflections. So stop the waves on the mind, and it will
 reflect reality clearly. Get a perfectly calm mind. That's one meaning of it. Or another
 meaning of it is stop thinking. Eliminate all contents from the mind, all thoughts,
 all feelings, all sensations, everything. How will you do that? Well, it goes on to
 say you do it by certain steps. First of all, pranayama, which means the control of the
 breath. Pratyahara, which means preliminary concentration. Tarana, a more intense form
 of concentration. Dhyana, which is the same dhyana is Sanskrit for Zen, and that means
 profound union between subject and object. And finally, samadhi, which is way out. Now
 what's happening here? Control your mind, first of all, by breathing. Breathing is a
 very strange thing, because breathing can be viewed both as an involuntary and as a
 voluntary action. You can feel I breathe, and yet you can feel it breathes me. And they
 have all sorts of fancy breathing ways in yoga. They are very amusing to practice, because
 you can get very high on them. So they set you up these tricks. And of course, if you
 are bright, you may begin to realize some things at that point. If you are not very
 bright, then you'll have to go on. And so next they really get to work on concentration.
 Concentrate the mind on one point. Now this can be an absolutely fascinating undertaking.
 I suggest that you try it this way if you want to make experiments. Select a highlight
 on some bright, some polished surface, copper or glass or something, where there's a little
 tiny reflection, say of a candle or an electric light bulb. Look at it and put your eyes out
 of focus, so that the bright spot appears to be fuzzy, a fuzzy circle. Now look very
 carefully at the design in the fuzzy circle and see if you can make it out. There is a
 definite pattern of blur, and you can have a wonderful time looking at that. Then go
 back, get your eyes into focus, and look at intense light. And you can go into it and
 into it and into it, like you know you're falling down a funnel, and at the end of that
 funnel is this intense light. And go down, go in, in, in, in, in, in, it's the most thrilling
 experience. Then suddenly the guru wakes you up and says, "What are you doing that for?"
 "Well, because I want realization." "Why?" "Because we live in a world of, if we identify
 ourselves with the ego, we get into trouble, we suffer, we're in a mess." He says, "You
 afraid of that?" "Yes." "So then all that you're doing to practice yoga is based on
 fear. You're just escaping, you're running away. How do you think you can get realization
 through fear?" There's one to think about. So you think, "Well, now I've got to go on
 with my yoga practice, my concentrations, my exercises, but not for a fearful motive."
 And you know that guru, you know, he's watching you, and he's a very, very sensitive man,
 and he knows when you're doing, he always knows what your motive is. So he puts you
 onto the kick of getting a pure motive. And that means very deep control of the emotions.
 I mustn't have impure thoughts. All right, so you go along and you manage to repress
 as many impure thoughts as possible, and then one day he asks you, "Why are you repressing
 these thoughts? What's your motive for trying to have a pure mind?" And you find out that
 you had an impure motive for trying to have a pure mind, that you did it for the same
 old reason you started out the thing in the beginning, because you were afraid, because
 you wanted to play, get one up on the universe. And so, eventually, you find out, you see,
 that your mind is what is called in Sanskrit, "mudha," which means "crazy," because it can
 only go in vicious circles. Everything it does to get out of a trap puts it more securely
 in the trap. Every step in the direction of liberation is a new tie-up. So that you started,
 you know, with molasses in one hand and feathers in the other. That was the original situation
 of man. The guru made you put them together, see, like that, and said, "Now pick the feathers
 off." And the more it is, the more of a mess the whole thing gets. So you get involved
 and involved and involved by this process. And he, in the meantime, you see, has been
 telling you, "Yes, you made a little attainment today, but it was only the eighth stage, and
 there are sixty-four altogether. And you've got to get to that sixty-fourth stage." And
 he knows how to spin it out and drag it all out, because you are ever hopeful that you
 will get that thing, just as you might win a prize or win a special job or a great distinction
 and be somebody. That's the motivation all along, only it's very spiritual here. It's
 not for worldly recognition. You want to be recognized by the gods and the angels. But
 it's the same story on a higher level. So he keeps holding out these baits. And as long
 as the pupil falls for them, he holds out more baits, until after a while the pupil
 gets the realization that what he's doing is running faster and faster in a squirrel
 cage, that he's making an enormous amount of progress and getting nowhere, like in Alice
 Through the Looking Glass when the Queen says, "Here you have to run faster and faster to
 stay where you are." And so he impresses this upon you by these methods very thoroughly.
 And at last you find out that you, as an ego, as what you ordinarily call your mind, are
 a mess, that you just can't do this thing. You can't do it by any of the means that have
 been held out to you. You can concentrate, yes, you've acquired a considerable power
 of concentration by doing all this. But you find you're doing it for the wrong reason.
 And there's no way of doing it for the right reason. See, Krishnamurti does this. He's
 a very, very clever guru.
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