Berkeley 2002 Seven Vital Principles
Berkeley 2002 Seven Vital Principles
THE EIGHT VITAL PRINCIPLES OF PRACTICE Udated 21/11/2020
The Dona Holleman Method of yoga consists of the Eight Vital Principles:
- The meditative state of mind or the ‘not-doing’ of meditation
- Intent or the ‘not-doing’ of visualization
- Relaxation or the un-doing or not-doing of the body
- Rooting or the use of gravity and its inherent rebounding force
- Centering or the knowledge and use of the core and hara
- Bodyscape or the anatomical understanding of the body
- Breathing or the total and intelligent use of the inner breathing space
- Elongating or using breathing to ‘open’ the body.
The Eight Vital Principles are like the map of the earth, the round ball of the earth, without beginning and without end, but if you want to see them more clearly you have to flatten the ball out on a map.
To describe the Eight Vital Principles I have to ‘flatten’ them out in order to make a map, like when you want to make the map of the earth you have to ‘flatten’ the round earth out.
So it looks like the Principles are a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight situation. But in reality they are not. In their beginning is the end, and in their end it is the beginning. The end is already the beginning. It’s a closed situation. It’s a ball situation.
So even though from one to the next you can think about them, plan them, but in reality they are simultaneous.
The first three Principles (The meditative state of mind or the ‘not-doing’ of meditation, intent or the ‘not-doing’ of visualization, relaxation or the un-doing or not-doing of the body) are the heart, the beginning and the end. They are the spiritual part. The other five (rooting or the use of gravity and its inherent rebounding force, centering or the knowledge and use of the core and hara, bodyscape or the anatomical understanding of the body, breathing or the total and intelligent use of the inner breathing space and elongating or using breathing to ‘open’ the body) are more to put the body in the right place.
Suppose you go in a pizza shop, you get the menu and you look at the menu. You do not eat the menu. You order from the menu, then you get the real pizza and you eat the pizza.
So again these principles are only words, like the menu in the restaurant. They are not real. You have to make them real – real-alize. Which means that they should become something that you produce in your body, not something that you repeat verbally.
People are very clever and repeat a lot of words, and then they think that that is the real thing.. But the words are only penthouse level. They do not go down into the body.
Therefore the only way to learn is by practicing. Just practice and practice and practice. There is no other way of learning. That is the same for music, dance: the only way to learn is by practice.
The teacher can only give you the description, but he cannot give you the real thing. After having learned the description, you practice, and then later you go again over the words of the teacher, kind of checking
I gave you the example sometimes you teach – pretend you should say do this and the person doesn’t do it. Ten years later the person comes back and say “You know darn why didn’t you never tell me – if I do this that is what happens.” I say listen I have told you for ten years but unless the fish is in the body by practice, you cannot recognize what I am saying. There is no connection. So this whole business of the rooting again. As I say it’s the snake biting it’s own tail. It’s everything is simultaneous. In order to understand rooting, you have to also get rid of the notion of a body. Of objects. You have to change your mind. Because people usually say “press this or press that” now if you are pressing it and it is too hard object that press into each other. That press against each other. That press against each other. So you see. This is why I like to come to physics things because it gives you an idea of how to change your viewpoint. How to change your vision. So if they say we are made out of atoms that don’t exist practically nothing, you know, then how come do I experience my body and the floor as two separate objects. And two separate objects that can hurt each other. That can press against each other. You see. So what I was saying that is when you then it is a mental thing that we separate the body from the floor and so even though there is the touch, even though I am touching but I am not really touching because the floor is hard and I am hard. So there is a separation. It is not one thing. But if you can understand that – that in reality both the floor and I are made of cloudy material than I can understand better the idea of rooting. You know for instance – when you are in the airplane, when I was young and went in the airplane I thought wouldn’t it be lovely to sort of jump out of the plane, onto the wonderful pillows below the plane. You know those cushions. Because those cushions would pick you up and carry you. You know. But then of course you realize that the airplane slides through those cushions and your body would slide through them also. They are clouds and they don’t hold you up. You know what I mean.
So if you can see things in that way that they are more like clouds and less like pillows you know then you get the feeling of the airplane slicing through those clouds. Or the body slicing through the floor. Understand? And so the energy of the body is then going as it were through the floor. Even though on one level you still maintain your sanity and know that you have a boarding that the floor is a hard object, which we call “sanity” and insanity would be that your are both a cloud. The floor is a cloud and you are a cloud. You know what I mean. So I am just throwing out a lot of stuff. Then we can go into it. But that is why I said we have both the wild part in us and the domesticated part. The domesticated part would be the same part which says I am different from the soil therefore when I fell on the floor I break my head. While the wild part would say “listen that is not true at all – that is only your idea.” So for the wild part my sane part would be insanity. You know what I mean? Because the wild part says “listen everything is only atoms.” If you are getting hurt because you bang your knee against the chair it is because you are insane. It is a funny thought. Insanity is the hypnosis that we live in. So somehow we have been hypnotized into believing that if I bang my knee against a chair I get hurt. You know. But it is in fact a form of insanity.
I was saying also all these saints. Last month Father Peo got sanctified. He is now a saint. Right. He did everything. He did the whole works. He copied the works of Jesus Christ. But there is a snag to it. Those guys made a mistake. They all get stigmata right there. That is not where they were. It is the wrong spot. Because the nails of the Romans they went through here. Because there are lots of little bones and the nails would just rip through them. And the body would fall off. So in between those two bones here and the wrist there is a passage where they could put the nail through and that is why they hang on the cross. So if all those Christians saints get this thing there – there is some kind of mistake in their communication system. In other words those guys got them there because they hypnotized – it is a form of hypnosis – to copy the suffering of Jesus Christ. But that was a mistake. Do you understand? So it is not a true thing. You understand? We do it all the time. So when they make a stigmata we make the chair hard. It is the same hypnosis. It is the same mistake. It is the same insanity. We don’t become saints. We don’t become saints for our insanity. You know what I mean?
Everybody has the same problems. Acting that this problem was given to us as part and parcel of the DNA. You know of our DNA. Now there is something I forgot what it was. Except the name. But I watched the program of the beginnings of human beings. For a human being to be a human being you need a certain DNA package. Gene package. There is one in particular I think it is called *meto kondro leno ahundro* whatever something like that. This is the one that makes you particularly human. That particular substance actually only is transmitted from woman to daughter. It cannot go through the man. It can make a man. But the man cannot be transmitted. It is transmitted through female. That is what makes human race human. I think that part and parcel of this whole thing is the inbuild and program of how we are supposed to function. So we have the ears, we have the eyes, we have the tongue we have the nose. We have the skin and we have a certain brain to put all the information together and make into a package. You understand? But again it’s a very very local thing, very local package. Which belongs only to human beings. So what we see as a human world is only literally made by a human brain. I like to see animal movies now with Discovery. Now they have this incredible technique that they can put eyes into animals brains so you look at the world from the animal brain point of view. It’s incredible. For instance, if you see a snake you see through a snake’s perceptive system. Snakes don’t see things, they see heat. So what they do – you can see – on the film it is really incredible – you can see how a snake sees a mouse. It sees a blur but it sees a hot blur. That is why it can follow the hot blur. But it poisons it, and strikes it – it poisons it and then the mouse runs off. All the snake has to do is follow the hot blur. To finally catch up with the dead mouse. You see? On the other hand the eagle has a sight which is six times as sharp as ours. So it can go all the way up there to half a kilometer high and see a mouse on the ground. No way – with binoculars you would have to squint to see a mouse half a kilometer away.
I have my little doggie. My little fellow. She was a good little doggie. She died four years ago. I was living in a house that was totally isolated from everything else. In Italy. The nearest house was three hundred four meter away. The village was about eight nine kilometers away. Every year when Stella went into heat there was one particular dog who really liked Stella. The day she went into heat he came all the way to my house to court Stella. That was nine kilometers. He could smell that she was in heat. Every year the same thing. So these dogs have an incredible range of smell. Our senses are purely human senses. What we hear and see and smell is only human. And nothing else. And every animal has a different – has literally a different world. The world of a snake is completely different than the world of human beings. The world of a fly is totally than the world of a human being. You see. So this is why I said in the book also these are reality tunnels. Each animals had it’s own reality tunnel. Only we are stupid enough to think that our reality tunnel is the real one. But if you have to choose between a fly and a snake and a human being I am not so sure human being is the real one and they are living in fantasy land. I don’t want to go that far. You see. That is why I say everybody lives in fantasy land. Including us. That is why they call it hypnosis. The hypnosis is fantasy land. So you are making a world which has been literally pre programmed in your brain, you are forced to see the things in a way you see them. Because of this program. It makes you little bit less sort of uppidity uppity about animals and trees and clouds and things like that. Because each one has been pre programmed to see the world in their way.
So coming back to the root if I experience the floor is hard it is not my fault. If somewhere I have been hypnotized or pre programmed or insensitized or whatever to believe that this is the way it is. But I also have to have been given the capacity to kind of suffer a little bit the edge somewhere. To sort of make it a little bit loose. And to say maybe I am wrong. Maybe I can go through the floor. You know. And at least make a try. You know. I think that some people have gone through floors and walls – things like that. I do think it is possible. I can’t do it. I am sorry. I am not that intelligent. I am pretty stupid. At least I know that part of my energy can do it. And that is that sinking feeling, that then is the rooting feeling. That you really feel that part of you is really sinking down and catches at the rebound for going back upwards. I have this book by this dancer Taking Root To Fly. Again that feeling that something has to go down for something else to go up. When you see fast forward movies for instance of plants, planting plants you see the seed, and then on one end of the seed you see the root coming out, and the other end you see the stem coming out, and so it goes away from the center. That would be the rooting thing and the rebound thing. One part goes down therefore the other part goes up. You see? So and then what I was saying then you got to do something with that. You can’t just have a rebound in force and just sitting there watching somewhere in a corner. You want to do something with it.
Then you are going to do a posture or sit or stand or walk whatever. And you are going to align the body in such a way that this energy can then go easily through the body. With a river sometimes you have very deep bends in the river, so things get stuck in the corner. They sort of sit there and rot. But if the river is more smooth you know then you throw a leaf in the beginning and it will just sort of go through the river and go out. That will be the alignment or the connecting bit of the body. The connecting is of course in the first place done through the joints. You see that is why I always say it is good to first open the joints, and then you can bend them. That is why for instance I don’t like to do the pushing up from the floor because your shoulders are bent and then you go to get the length in there and it doesn’t feel good at all. I don’t think it really works. It is much nicer to start from standing. Let the arm and the irrigation and then start to bend once the joint is open. Right? So you open and then you bend. So the energy then can flow through the joint and not get trapped in the joint. That is why I always say it is much better to go from up down with the gravity so you have time to get the length before you go into the curve. Instead of starting here and putting it in a curve, and then pushing yourself up against gravity while in a curve. It doesn’t make much sense. That is why we have to look at it that way. So the alignment will be in the first place, through the joints, making the joints available for the energy to go through. Then also so those chains of muscles, and we have talked about those for years, remember the foot ? then you go to ? going to the back into the ? from there you go up. So there are certain chains of muscles where the ending of muscles are close together and therefore the spark can jump easily over. Therefore those chains of muscles are like a river with a beginning and an ending. And you throw the leaf in the beginning and it comes out in the ending. It doesn’t sit in a pond. While if you teach in a race sort of local leave it here leave it there the whole rest of the body is put in a cover for a moment and forgotten. There are billion points of like that in the body where you be sort of sitting in your grave before you finish and even then you won’t have finished at all. So it is much better to find no local action where you touch one point in the body and the whole thing comes out. That is why I compare it to the I had the old computer you know. When you have this sort of 10 memory of them or whatever it is called. Well now you have hit the start button and everything just comes rolling out. So in that way it is the same way you hit the start button and the whole program should come rolling out. And not go here and there and go there. So this is no local action. While this would local action. Right? So and then of course you have the meridians you have the nerve lines, the ligament. There are so many lines through which you can collect and align the body. You see so the energy can then flow through.
Then of course what we are saying is that that we come back to the famous question what about five hours ? before you can breathe. Come on for what sake. You know. On the contrary. If you really teach that breathing where you bring the whole body together through the bandha and that is another connecting series – the bandha. If you can rebreath through the bandha starting from the foot into the lower abdomen, into the diaphragm, into the upper diaphragm you know through the hands. If you can get that alignment then the breathing serves as a real hot iron to pull all the fibers of the body and lengthen them in such a way that that becomes the elongation? So I always compare the breathing with you know when you do wind surfing. Are you wind surfing or surfing? Wind surfing. Through wind surfing you need wing. For the surf to go somewhere unless you want to sit in the water and get whacked and look at the clouds. But if you want to go somewhere you need wind. The wind can push the surfboard along. So if the wind which pushes the surfboard of the energy through the body and therefore it elongates the body. Wind is the breathing.
Apart from that I think there is another reason. The breathing has an affect on the nervous system. Now don’t ask me exactly what because I am not a doctor. I know there is a very close connection between breathing and the nervous system. Right? If you do an asana in a way you are shaking the body. In a way it’s disturbing the body. The body is sitting nicely and doing nothing. And suddenly you doing ? So there is a disturbance. That would affect the nervous system in a slightly negative way – let’s say. So I would say that you really need the breathing in order to counter balance the disturbance you are creating in the body. You see. So the breathing helps the nervous system to smoothen the movement sufficiently for the body to feel the movement as a flow and not as a jerk. Know what I mean? That is the way I feel it when I move my body without the breathing it is really jerky, it loko it’s bmm bmm like that like a car in the morning – sometimes it starts like aaaaaaa – trying to get on the road again. But the breathing would make the passage very smooth and easy and for the body to feel as a flow and not as a jerk like a car in the morning.
Then you come back to those first three – that is why you get that sticky water what I was saying the ending was the beginning. The beginning is the ending. But you are saying downstairs in the other room that to have – the body – you can divide the body and the mind. I begin to flatten out the map. I had to divide body and mind. But in fact it is only one thing. Body, mind system. The body needs to come to a real stand still in a sense that you know this what was the story again some Zen story some Buddhist story – some master you have some master and somebody came and wanted – Professor went to him and wanted to learn something and so the guy the master took a tea cup and started pouring tea and then the tea cup was full he kept on pouring and pouring and the tea all went out and out and out. Remember famous story. So the guy says “what are you doing I mean it is full?” and so the teacher says “that is exactly it – I mean you are full so how can I pour more in there because you are already overflowing. So what is the problem I can’t put anything in there.” So again most bodies are completely full. They are full of tension, aggression, full of nervous activity, full of no how. So then to put in something new and innocent like pouring tea in a cup that is already full. You see? So the body needs to come back to a state of complete innocence. That means that those tensions. The I know it all, the aggression, the holding it all has to go out of the way. Because you want to put a new pristine posture in this body. And it is full of chunky stuff and all kinds of. You can’t get a smooth picture in. So the body needs to be emptied up of all the old garbage. And this is where relaxation comes in. Relaxation is of course breathing. Because it is the exhalation which carries the toxins out of the body. The exhalation is nature’s provision. Exhalation, sweating, crying, those are all nature’s mechanisms to get toxins out of the body. That is when you are running, and producing toxins you are sweating. All the stuff gets out. When your nervous or agitated you cry, stuff gets out. These are all mechanisms of the body to do that. Get the toxins out of the way.
It is possible this is just a slight side track just a curiosity for you to sort of when people say “oh human beings are carnivorous, and whatever it is, that may be so in the head, but the human brain is a carnivorous brain. Human brain is a predator brain. Human body is a vegetarian body. And the reason why it is so – it’s a vegetarian leaf and fruit eating body,. Because human beings cry. O.K. You know how to cry. Horses don’t cry. Dogs cannot cry. Sweating. Human beings sweat. Horses sweat. Dogs will breathe hhhhhhhh. Drinking water he has to go all the way down with his face in the water. What does he do? He sucks the water. Human beings suck the chocolate. I don’t go hhhhhhhhh like that. Vegetarian animals suck they sweat they cry. There are a lot of things that non vegetarian animals don’t do. This is why you can see there is a difference between the brain and the body. The body is a vegetarian. The brain is a T Rex body. T Rex brain. You have two different systems. We go back to the body and how does the vegetarian body needs to get all its stuff out of the way. And being a vegetarian body one of the things, one of the biggest obstacles is fear. You have a big noise and everybody jumps. Because a big noise means tiger is coming. The body remembers that. Our brain does not remember the past that a body does. Any big sound, any sudden movement will shake the body. The body remembers that is predator coming after me. You see? So therefore in your own practice and also in teaching, it is extremely bad psychology and very bad paleontology to approach the body in a blocked way. Because all you do is set immediately into motion the defense and fear mechanism. So you always have to sneak around the body both in your own practice and in your teaching. You should never go directly. Never say do this. You know. Because the body will go into a state of the tiger and it gets afraid. And then it stiffens up and then it cries. And it sweats. And your stuck. You know what I mean? Always when the lion stalls the animal it’s stalking, he goes very slow through the grass, very slow, very slow, you know. Till he is close by and then he goes hop. But as he goes running in on top speed then everybody goes right away.
And this is why – I watch a couple of times in Scotland the world championship sheep herding. It is just incredible. Those dogs that’s again DNA. Those dogs have it in their DNA. Some dogs don’t need human beings at all. They know exactly how to do it. So usually they have this sort of field and they have this gate here and a pen there. So the dog has to get the sheep through the gate into the pen, out of the pen through another gate. He has to guide the sheep. Now of course the dog is a predator. And the sheep a prey. So the sheep are deathly afraid of the dog. So any sudden movement he makes will send them scattering in all directions. You see? And the dog knows that. So you see those dogs and they are always on the belly – they go on the belly and they sort of go and they line themselves – if the gate is here and the sheep are here he will sort of go around and brings the sheep back to where they can then go into the gate. He has always got to be in an exact line between the sheep and the gate to get them through. He will go very slowly into the sheep until he has them in the exact position he needs to have them to run into a straight line through the gate. Once he has got them then he gets up. And of course the sheep then see him and run through the gate.
So this is where is shows you know how to approach the vegetarian body you have to do it like that. You see? This is why I always say in the practice never be in a hurry. Take it step by step. Because each time you make a move the body goes into this field mechanism and they have to wait. You whistle and look at the birds and the flowers. I am not a predator – I am not a predator till the body can relax sufficiently to then take it to the next stage, and then the next stage, and then the next stage. So each time you need to take your time. Especially in a difficult posture. To relax the body so the body can then sort of take a deep breath and go to the next one. You can never chase the sheep through the gate in one – you have to always guide it. Understand? Right?
So as a teacher never say do this or else I am going to hit you on the head. That is not going to work. You have to sort of make it playful, easy, sort of and then you can get – sometimes in class you get people to do things that they never dreamt that they would be able to do. Because you take it in that way. Like the lion sort of stalking. You want a stalking way. Then you can get people to do the most incredible things. Because the body loses its fear. So as a teacher it is very important to learn to be a stalker. It is one of the key things. That you learn to approach the student in such a way that you can push the student through something that the student never thought it could do. The same thing with your own body. So your own body also you approach it nicely so that the body has all the time to relax and get the fear out of the way, and the tension out of the way, and the panic out of the way. Then you can really go very far and very easy without trauma. Anytime you approach the body in a direct way. It has the fear reaction. That fear reaction creates another tension in the body. It accumulates. You have to get it out of the way. Not create more tension spots in the body. So therefore you have to take it in the easy way. Both your own body as well as the student’s body.
Then the same thing with the mind. Now the mind of course, is then we have to get into the ? thing of the wild mind and the tame mind. But for the moment we can do the same thing with the mind as with the body. That there also the mind is so full. That then it is difficult to bring in something new. This is why I like to complain. It is one of my favorite hobbies. I don’t want to go to places, where I don’t know the people. There is a reason. Because so many times that I go to a class, there are Jana yoga and Ashtanga yoga and I say something and somebody always comes and says “Why do you say it this way and my teacher say it is that way?” and I say “go to your teacher, why are you with me, if you don’t listen to me.” It is stupid. It means that that person is so full that what I am saying is compared. Compared, criticized, catalogued, classified, and most of the time thrown out of the window. So it means that at the moment that little effort of mine is totally wasted. It’s like the cup again, and me trying to fill the cup with some tea. But nothing can go in so my tea is just falling out of the edge. So You get what I mean? So the mind also has to be innocent, be empty, be completely free and soft and open. So that then it can conceive of something new. It can see something new. Then afterwards you can decide this I like this – I don’t like. But that is afterwards. First you have to be able to receive. Then you can decide afterwards what you want to do with it. But if you are so full, if the mind is so full it can’t even receive. “Oh God no that kind of thing.” That is the full mind. So again to be able to conceive of a posture where there was rooting and elongation in built you need to have a mind that is soft and open and new. Very innocent. Right? So in a way it is like the computer. The Desktop is full of icons. Completely full. You have to put one more icon – there is no place in it. You can’t put anymore in it is too full. If your mind and body are completely full, you know, and then you want to do ? it does not fit in because there is no room. That is why I say mind and body the screen should be completely empty. Then you can put that icon because there is nothing else on the screen. The icon is very big. And that icon becomes the carrot to pull the body in through the posture. That is the intent. So the intent is the picture that you give to the body after it has taken all other pictures out of the way. That is when a picture has a self fulfilling force. It is self fulfilling. The body has that capacity. Very easy and we do it all the time anyway. As I say when you go into a discotheque for instance and you see people dancing. It is not possible to sit still. It is not possible. The body wants to dance. The body wants to follow. So there is self fulfilling thing that the body has to follow, has to obey. So a picture that is projected on the body and the mind where there is no competition either physical or mental competition. That picture has the power of self fulfillment. That’s what intent. It is force. It is a visualization. But it is not just the visualization. Its a force and the force is like you have a donkey and you hang the carrot in front of the nose of the donkey. He has to follow the carrot. There is no way it cannot follow it. So that is intent. So it is a force which is a result – let’s say it this way also. You are talking about the force and energy. If you have a lot of pictures in your head and you have a lot of tensions in your body. You have 100% energy in that. So maybe 80% is in your head and 28% in your body. Then what is left is practically nothing. It has no power. But if you liberate all your energy out of your body by taking attention over it. And if you liberate all the energy out of your brain by taking all your brain ? away. Then there is enormous amount of energy. And that becomes a force. That energy is a force. Understand? It’s a force that you can use it in yoga.
I always had that force for some reason I always had that. In sense that my body confines it. I have had the most weird experiences. One experience which I remember now is somebody had lost a knife and before I start looking, I always stand still and I think O.K. and my body says which direction do I have to go. So – the man had looked for the knife everywhere. All over the land, all over the house, all over the barn, everywhere no luck. So I just wait and in waiting I relax, and I get everything out of the way. And I just see the knife. And then I begin to walk and the next thing I knew I was standing in the barn with my foot on the knife. You understand? My body found the knife. Because I was able to completely get everything out of the way. I always found things that way. And my body just goes to where it is. So that is the force. That is the power. Which is there. Everything else is you know out of the way. So if you posture in that way then it is very harmonious. Because it comes from inside the body itself. It is not imposed from outside. And most people impose the body from outside. This is why I say they have a rule. It has to be done this way. Whatever your body is never mind. It has to be done this way. You see? If you take the general structure of the posture and then you go inside, you relax the body, you relax the mind, you have that sort of picture of that ? in your intent – then your body will do that – but of course it filters it through its old structure. So what comes out of your body ? This is what I always say. People do not think deep. So everybody say – ask somebody “How many people do Jana yoga in the world?” Ah maybe one million, maybe two million people. Oh it’s only one person in the world who does Jana yoga and that’s ? He’s the only one in the world who does Jana yoga. Everybody else does some kind of a vague very vague facsimile of what he does filtered through their body. You cannot possibly qualify Jana yoga. Understand? You can do a facsimile of what I do. But it is in your body. Turns out completely different from what I do. Do you understand? You see? That is the package you need for yourself. That is why I am against teachers and all those things. Because they want you to be like them. You cannot be like me. No way unless you really put yourself in a tiger cage. Like in Vietnam. You know. Your force is out into a tiger cage. That is not the idea. You have to find your way of expressing the beauty of a certain posture. I cannot do what you do. You cannot do what I do. Each one of us has to express it in their own unique way. This is what I was saying in the film. Remember everybody is unique. So please don’t go for all that bull shit. ?? She do her yoga, she do her yoga, she do her yoga. That is all you do. Anybody want to say anymore about this? Are you all falling asleep or what? Do you need coffee? Then we can dive into something even more sticky.
The moment you call yourself a master – – the moment you say this is this yoga that’s yoga, you are back in the territorial world. To be a master is to be territorial. To be a teacher is to be territorial. To ? is to be territorial. This is my territory. You better butt off. Number one. Number two you indirectly saying this “My yoga better than your – my guru better than your guru – because I am not so stupid I choose the best one.” So if I choose this guru he must be the best – because I choose the best one. This is what you are saying. So really what you are saying “I am really an arrogant bastard because I know what is right and what is wrong. You don’t know. Your guru is wrong.” So you don’t know what is right and wrong. My guru is the best one. It’s funny yeah. There are kilograms of books about becoming humble. Then they say my guru is the only guru who knows what is going on in the world. Then they write books about being humble. It’s really a lot of fun you know. Whichever direction you take you always come back to the ? – there is no way around it. You know. That is our heritage. One that makes the biggest noise. ? Is right everyone else is wrong. Be very simple. And as Shakespeare says “be true to yourself.” You are the only friend you will ever have in your life. All your other friends either they will die, or they will marry somebody else and walk out on you. You are the one that has to live with yourself from the moment you are born until the moment you die. Right. You know all about that no. You are the only one that has to live with yourself from birth to death so you might as well get on with the job and learn about yourself and be true to what you are and find out what you are and how what you are can be – get out in the best possible way. That is what I was saying in the film also. A chipmunk is a chipmunk. In nature no animal is humble. Humble animals do not exist. You see the deer has this thing on the head, and you see the mouse going around. You see the chipmunk. You see the squirrel on the deck. Yesterday I had this big conversation with the chipmunk He was sitting in the tree and looking at me and going hahaha. This squirrel. I was sitting peacefully. I said listen “this is a democratic country, I got much right as you to be here.” I shut him up. I told him this was a democratic country. I had much right as he had to be on the deck. You know. He shut up afterwards. Not at all humble. He wanted to be on the deck and I was in the way. You know. So it is a typical human distortion you know to be somebody else’s telephone. And be somebody else’s slave. Be yourself and be proud to be yourself and bring that out in the world. That is your unique thing. Happy to be where you are and bring it out. In the yoga and everything else. O.K. A rose is a rose is a rose. Right? Because a rose is only a name it is not a thing. That is what you have to learn. You have to learn how to do that without creating fear in that person.
You have to dissect what you are doing and teach step by step to the people. You know. Dissect what you are doing and turn it into a logical thing. Logical sequence. But basically every human body when you present something new to it they say “Oh God no.” That is the first reaction of every human body. So you have to get past that. You have to get around that. Unless you have an exceptional person. Like I remember the first time I did ? in her house she said “What are you doing?” I said I am doing Philamba. She said “Oh it doesn’t look like this – she did it straight away on the wall.” She had never done it before. I said oh yes. She was about seventy by then. She didn’t think about it she just did it. Because she saw me do it. You know what I mean? That is a different type of mind. But usually the mind says “Oh God no.” So you’ve got to get passed that kind of mind and say you know. And then you can teach very easily. Lot of care, lot of intelligence, lot of affection. Lot of everything. Lot of hard work. Otherwise you end up like teacher say “Don’t do that pose – it’s very dangerous.” Instead of creating confidence and happiness – it creates all these fear problems. I want to come back to a rose is a rose is a rose. That is why I put it out there. It’s a beautiful rose. It even smells like a rose. Which does not happen very often these days. It even smells like a rose. Thing is still working, I guess it is. I could look at this rose, you can look at this rose. It is very very soft. It is pink, it’s yellow, it feels very soft, it smells nice. I can use a lot of words to describe a rose, but if I have somebody who can’t see then no way I can describe this rose to that person. That makes any sense. No way. The description is extremely – you have a wonderful intricate picture beautiful picture – you put it in a fax machine where all the ink has run out practically – what comes out of this is a few miserable dots – the picture does not come out at all. This is a real picture. The description of the picture is a few miserable pictures on the fax paper that comes out on the machine when the ink has run out.
END OF SIDE A
SIDE B
So the description is a very very poor replica of something that is very complex and simple at the same time. Even though our senses are very limited, our eyes our ears our nose, as I said before, are very limited. They still are the openings that we have, the wings that we have to the outside world. They are still our windows. However dirty, however miserable they are. They still are our windows. You see? And so those windows are like the tubes which connect something on the inside to what is out there. What I was saying the other day – when a child is born it is a little wild not – you don’t hear much about it any more but there was a period that it kept finding these wolf children in India for instance. These small children that had been lost by parents and reared by the wolves. Those children become apart from the physical form they become wolves. They talk wolf language. They eat the way the wolves do, they drink in the way the wolves drink. I read a story about the Frenchman who traveled all over Africa. They told him about a boy that was kidnapped by the Ostrich’s. And so he went and he looked for this boy and finally after years of searching he found him. This boy could run with the ostrich’s and he ate what the ostrich’s ate – which was stones – rock and stone. Another one found a gazelle boy and he wrote a book about that. Also a Frenchman. Also somewhere in those deserts. When he found the boy he was ten years old. He had ankles this size. He was very skinny. He ate all the grass like the gazelle. He could run on hands and feet. He could jump with the gazelle. They chased him in the Jeep at fifty kilometers per hour. Making leaps off – three, four meters at a time. This boy had turned out to be a gazelle. So when something is born it is totally wild. Now ? did a lot of experiments also. The famous duck experiment. Same goes for the animal. For instance, he had a little giraffe being born and somehow the mother wasn’t there or whatever. When the giraffe was born there was a Jeep standing nearby. So for this giraffe the Jeep was the mother. And so wherever the Jeep went the giraffe just happily went after it. So the giraffe became a Jeep in a way. Do you know what I mean. So it is not sense that a giraffe would automatically look for a Jeep mother. Anything that is presented in the beginning is taken for granted. You see? So if the giraffe is lucky enough and is born with a mother close by who then begins to lick it and clean it, then the structure of I am a giraffe is printed. You are like me we are both giraffe. Let’s imprint it on the little giraffe. So he learns to eat like a giraffe. He learns to walk like a giraffe. He learns to sleep like a giraffe. So the mother will turn this little thing which otherwise will become a jeep or whatever, but he turns little thing into responsible giraffe. Understand? We do the same thing. So the baby – if you have a baby and you took it to the wolves it will go with the wolves. But if you dump it in the middle of the house with people it will become a human being. It will learn the rules of being a human being. You see that is why I say the structure the human structure is man made. Human Beings are man made. Human beings are human beings because they are man made. And so that is why I say from that you can deduct that we live in two different worlds. The wild world, and the structured world. The wild world is when you still have a choice. We can become a wolf, we can become a Jeep, we can become a human being. We have still a choice. But the moment society sets in and pressurizes you into being a human being then you lose track of that wildness. That wildness recedes. So in a way you can compare it to you know you had this beautiful big jungle you know and then you begin to make a house in the jungle. You sort of put up the wall, then you make some windows – but then when the house is ready then one by one you begin to ? the windows open. So finally you are letting in the house in this vast jungle and then you forget that the jungle is out there and you begin to think that this world this house is the entire universe. And so the walls, the chairs, and the tables, and you know that’s the world. Out there the jungle is forgotten. You know what I mean. So in a way also we do the same thing the structure that people put on us. Society puts on us is that house that was being gradually erected in the middle of this vast jungle and then they forget that the jungle. And we also forget that we belong to the jungle. We immediately belong to the jungle. And only part of us belongs to the structure. You understand?
I mean our roots are in the jungle. So we need the structure in order to I want to plant a rose garden – I need to go to the shop and say “I want to have a rose seeds” so I need words to say that I want this and then I can do that. You know. It does not mean that I know what a rose is. I know what my structure of a rose is. What my idea of a rose is. But I don’t know what a rose is. There is no way I know what this is. Because to know what this is I need to know that is my wild mind. I cannot know if it is my structured mind. My structured mind I can say the rose is pink its yellow it smells nice. That is as far as I get. You know what I mean? It has nothing to do with a rose – it is only words. Because to say it is pink I need to know something else that is pink so that I could say this is the same color. I need to sort of have my soup simmering on the stove so I could say it smells like soup. It smells nice. To describe a thing I also have to use some something else. To describe it. I cannot use words that don’t exist to describe the thing. So to describe the thing I need the structure. Therefore my description is the structure. It is not the real thing. So to know the real thing which is the wild rose I need to jump out of my structure into my wild mind and wild mind can know the rose. But it is not knowing with words. It is a different type of knowing. Sticky material this is. So what I am saying is that you need to go to the office and make money, and teach yoga and do all that nonsense, but it can get very boring and monotonous. A little bit limiting. Not such fun sometimes. So the other part which we never use. That is why I say for me Yoga would be that. It would be sort of being able to build one of those Japanese bridges – to build a Japanese bridge from one to the other so you can go from one to the other. If you want to describe the rose you are in the structure. If you want to really be with the rose you have got to jump into your wild mind. I use the word jump because it is a jump. Then we get back to the quantum physics. Because it is a quantum jump. Like I was saying before. I mean to know the earth you need to flatten it out so you go from here to there. But that is not the way it is between these two brains. These two minds. The wild mind and the tame mind. You cannot go from the tamed mind to the wild mind. It’s a jump. It’s a quantum jump. Quantum jump is not making a particle jump from here to there, and you could see it jumping from here to there. That is not the way it is. A quantum jump is that this particle suddenly goes disappear. And you don’t know in the middle where it went. That’s a quantum jump. To know the rose with structure. Go into the shop and say I want to buy a rose plant. You need to be in this structure. But then when I get home and I want to enjoy the rose in a real sense you know I have collapse a jump sort of disappear out of that structured mind and appear in my wild mind and then I know what the rose is.
There is no way for me to know that you see the rose in the same way that I do. No way. To know that you see the rose the same as I do I have to be you. And I am not you. There is no way for me to know what you see. But in that we still have the human ? and all that we know we are in a room. We call it a room. You may be seeing pink elephants I may be seeing human beings. But you still call it the same thing. To know what you are seeing I don’t know. I can’t know. Because each one of us is totally hopelessly and eternally alone in the universe. That’s absolutely no way you can be sure that there is anybody else in the universe apart from you. It is a lonely trip. You know? That is why you have to get back to the universe as fast as you can. Because you don’t know.
So in the old days they had this idea that the ether was the medium for which everything was collected and which everybody was so in a way I feel it still now the ether has been thrown out of the picture. They have something else quantum soup or whatever. I still feel that if you are still sort of looking at it very mundane you know it is like a sort of huge pot of pea soup. Every human being is a bubble in the pea soup. Right. So in that way we are all connected. But each bubble is also completely alone. But it also works in the pea soup. If you are sort of like the Indian silt – you had a piece of Indian silt with little bubbles in it. You know it is not smooth it is bubbles. So each one of us is a bubble. Each one is a single bubble. But we are also in this piece of fabric all together. I feel the same thing is with each individual. It is not that you have two different minds. You have structured mind and you have a quantum mind. It is still all part of the same thing. It is mind which is let’s say a pot of pea soup and usually you make bubbles here in structured mind but then the bubble disappears and the bubble appears in the other part of the pea soup. Which is the wild mind let’s say. But still it is all part of the pea soup. I really feel – I experience that there is nothing vacuum. There is no vacuum. Everything is full. Everything is completely full. And this is what I was saying this morning also when I practiced yoga outside and I weigh myself before and I weigh myself after – I am always two or three grams heavier when I come back. Because that is all that nutriment. That’s all that stuff, that’s everything. There is that filling. Of the void let’s say. You know. And so the quantum mind and the physical mind, or the structural mind, they are maybe the two sides of one whole. Like the ying and the yang. It’s one whole. We must be able to go back and forth at will – that is what I am saying. A lot sort of spent all our life in structured mind, and then completely forgetting that there is beauty outside. That real beauty real wildness real life is somewhere else. You know what I mean. Let the rose be the rose be the rose. So as I said these are all ideas that I am throwing out and for me there may be reality but you know only unless you do it. It can become a reality. Otherwise it is just a nice idea. And then you fall asleep the next time you hear that. O.K. Let’s have a holiday.
END OF TAPE
