This is very difficult unless you have freed yourself from all external desires, all humdrum activity and distractions, passions and desires, anger, greed, lust. If these are inside you, in the subconscious mind, samadhi is not possible. It will be merely a world of talk, and nothing can come out, because who can think like this? Can you go beyond the idea of space and time? Can you think in a cosmic form? Can you imagine that you are in a transcendental state, in the apex of the universe? Can anybody think like that? If you can think like that, you are in a state of liberation. Who can bind you, when the binding factor has become part of your consciousness? Dacoits cannot harm you because the dacoits have gone inside, in the mind itself, and the mind is controlling them. This is a difficult; a great feat of imagination is necessary, and tremendous will power. You must be totally dispassionate. You want it 100%, and want it only, and "I don't want anything else. It must come. This is so. I have determined." Like Buddha sitting under the tree: let the flesh melt and the bones break, but Buddha would not get up from that place until enlightenment; such a thing he decided. But the world is a hard thing - you must know that. The world is a hard thing. Though you may say it is like this and like that, it is not going to listen to your discourses. "I will tell you," it will say; but you must be stronger than that. You must superimpose yourself and pose yourself above the point from where this trouble arises. In a way you may say that you may have to sit in heaven itself, on the apex of heaven; you are sitting at that very point where the Absolute is sitting. How you can think like that? This is a power of strong imagination. Can any one of you think that you are on the topmost, pre-Big bang condition of eternity, where God is supposed to have existed. Oh! You will shudder; your body will melt; your mind will stop thinking. This is God thinking, if you want to call it so. This is samadhi. In that condition, Patanjali says a great joy that liberates itself. It becomes sananda samapatti.

Do you know what is joy? We have seen the little joys of a cup of tea, and a little drink, and a good meal, and a little rest and a little travel here and there. We are accustomed to these joys. This is a different thing altogether. Other joys that we are thinking of in the world are just titillation or scratching. When you scratch, you feel some satisfaction. Do you call it satisfaction? The sense organs tantalise you, tease you, hang a carrot before your nose which you will never obtain. When you move forward, the carrot also moves forward. There is complete deceptive activity going on in the operation of the sense organs. They deceive us right from the childhood, from birth to death itself.

That ananda is something else. That ananda which we are speaking of as the content of sananda samapatti is not derived from some operation taking place. It is not that you have acquired something and therefore you are happy. You yourself are a substance of bliss. Can you imagine that you are made up of joy? Do not say joy comes from something. It doesn't come from something; it is yourself only. Who can think like that? The mind refuses to think that joy is in myself only. It is not even inside. I myself am that.

The joy is neither inside nor outside, it is you. Your substance is joy. Your being is the same as ananda. Sat is the Consciousness of Pure Existence, and it is itself Bliss. This is why this great state called Sat-chit-ananda - Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. It is not existence, consciousness and bliss. No. It is existence which is conscious of itself as fulfilled plenum perfection. Nobody can think like that. Your mind has to stop there. Such a thing you are; such a thing everything is; such a thing is the transcendental being. Such ananda manifests itself. What a joy. You should not use such words. No language, no word is adequate here. It is not joy; it is the super-abundance of the overflowing of Absolute existence. We cannot know. We have to be very poetic and ecstatic in the description of this condition. Poets go into ecstasy, and they say anything they like when they speak of this marvel. Meister Ekhart, in his great works - you will see how he talks about the One, the experience of the One. He is simply jumping; the whole personality melts and jumps into ecstasy. You do not know what language to use. There are no words for that - no words. How can there be words when you are not there? Such an ecstasy takes place when you are conscious in an integrated cosmic manner that this is your real nature - that samapatti. Patanjali is going on teasing and teasing; he is not going to leave you like that so easily. He says, still it is not sufficient, still it is not sufficient. Even if you get 75% marks it is not sufficient; you must get more marks, why not 100%? A consciousness of one's being, nothing but Pure Bliss, arises in an indescribable manner. That Self-consciousness of a cosmic nature, which is aware of itself as great bliss, is called sasmita samapatti, the universal Self-awareness; I am what I am, or I am that I am.

Here is the penultimate existence. We have broken the boundaries of thought and imagination. There is something beyond that also. We can ask Patanjali, "Why are you troubling us like this, saying there is still more, still more, still more? Where will it end"? It will end where the horizon ends. Do you know where the horizon ends? You see somewhere near Lakshman-jhula that the space seems to be bending, touching the earth. Go to Lakshman-jhula; you will find the horizon is still further away. Like that you will find that you have not reached anything, because again the spatio-temporal idea persists. That thing, indescribable, God as He is in Himself, Absolute Pure Substance - your mouth will close, your words will get hushed-up and you will feel ashamed to say anything. The tongue will consider itself as incapable and unfit to utter a word about this great Being.

That is something which burns the seed of the potentiality of coming back. You will call it by some word, and for us it is only a word - nirbeeja and nirvitarka -what does it matter? You can use any Sanskrit word, or anything.

Anyway, here is a picture before you, which is worthwhile beholding, and a wonder, wonder! That's all I can say - ashcharyam. Ashcharyavat pashyati kashchid enam ashcharyavat vadati tathaiva chanyah (Bhagavadgita). The Upanishad and the Gita tell us that we can describe it in no other word except as a wonder. Oh, wonder! They cry, "Oh, wonder! I am honey! Oh, honey! Oh, I am the cosmic tree." We have seen some of the passages in the Upanishads and in the Panchadasi how the ecstasy of the realised soul is described in imponderable ecstatic style of poetic expression. But, a caution has to be exercised. If you jump too much and climb a tree without knowing how to catch the branch, you can fall down. The higher you go, the greater is the chance of coming down. You should climb provided that you know how to perch on the tree branch, where two birds are sitting, as the Mundaka Upanishad says: Dva suparna sayuja sakhaya samanam vriksham parishasvajate, tayoranyah pippalam swadvattyanashnannanyo abhichakashiti. Two birds are sitting on the branch of this universal tree. One bird is very eagerly eating the sweet berry of this tree, and is so unconscious of even the other bird, which is just looking at it. The other bird is the universal God Himself. The bird that eats the sweet berry is myself, yourself, all this. How? What is the solution? You have nothing to do. You have simply to look back and see that bird. You are liberated immediately.

Arjuna, seated on the chariot, could not look ahead at the huge army, frightening. His heart sank completely. "Can I face this world of the terrible forces of Kauravas?" Look back - that is sufficient for you. Here is the mighty Being behind you, which takes you above the turmoil of this distressing panorama of forces around you. So many drops are standing before you - millions and millions of drops are there as soldiers standing - but here is a sea behind you which says it will inundate you.

The two birds can be said to be Ishvara and jiva, God and the individual, or Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot, which is nothing but a symbol of the tree of the universe. Both should join together and move forward to the abode of that perfection. Jointly you must work; you must have the backing of this Absolute at every moment, and you must put forth effort also. People say, "Let God do everything. Why should I do anything?" It is like Arjuna saying, "You do everything for me, I will keep quiet." The backing power is already there. It will give you the impulse to move forward and charge you with energy, but you must move as an instrument. Like a driver in a motorcar or a vehicle will simply put forth the energy, but the wheels must be there to move. If there are no wheels, if there is only the engine, nothing will take happen.

So, it is difficult to imagine the relationship between the individual and the cosmic; it is a great eternal question. In what way are you connected with the universal, and is your relationship inside or outside? Are you inside the world; are you outside the world; are you yourself the world? Nobody can answer this question. Many times it looks as though you are inside the world. If that is the case, you cannot accept the fact that the world substance is your own substance. As I mentioned to you earlier, the very substance of this individuality is nothing but the building bricks of nature, which is made of earth, water, air, fire and ether. You cannot stand outside it, because there is no house minus the bricks and steel and mortar; and if you pull down the contents, the whole building falls down. So you cannot say you are inside. You are the world itself, but yet the mind says that you are inside. Sometimes you may also feel that you are outside the world. "I can walk on the road. Who can trouble me? The world is not impeding my movement. I can go anywhere on the surface of the earth. I am outside it." Sometimes you feel you are inside it because you are a social entity. Neither of this is a fact. Neither are you inside the world nor are you outside the world. The relationship is very enigmatic, intriguing, and it will continue as long as you feel and think of the world in terms of a big ogre standing before you like vast space and long time. This idea must be removed. That process is the Patanjali Yoga System, for which a great purification of the mind is necessary.

What is purification? It is an honest feeling that you do not want anything else. When you have got what you want in a most abundant manner, in the form of utter perfection, do you want the tinsels of the world? The senses will say, "Yes, they are also good." The glass pieces shine as the diamond shines. Will you go for the glass pieces when the diamond is in your hand? Self-instruction, a self-educative process also should go on. A little bit of vichara, as they call it, is very important. It must be possible for everyone to discriminate between that which really is and that which is only appearance. Yesterday I mentioned to somebody what is the relationship between the snake and the rope. The rope appears to be a snake. Is the rope creating the snake? The snake is the projection of the rope. Does it exist, or does it not exist? If you say the snake does not exist, why you are frightened and you jump over it? If you jumped, it must be a real thing. How can an unreal thing produce a real jumping? If you say it is really there, who created it? It is a very indescribable situation.

The whole world is a mystery, to put it briefly, and nobody can understand how it is made, why it came, from where it came and so on. For this purpose you have to enter into the magician himself. The magical performance is very beautiful, but how have things come? You do not know. Enter into the mind of the magician himself and then see how the things are projected. That entry of consciousness into the magician's heart - it is the cosmic operator, call Him by any name - that is utter Union.

Suffice it to say that the whole issue before you is to what extent you are able to unify yourself with another thing. The so-called another is harassing. There is always something which is another - conceptually, physically or socially. Can this so-called another become you only? There you see the whole sea merges into a confluence of one big mass of experience. This requires a very strong will, real determination and honesty of purpose, dispassion at the core based on proper understanding, intellectual sharpness and poise of reason, and total dedication. If this is there, you will get everything.

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