How do you explain this? What happens is the severe agony that is felt when this severance takes place. The very birth of individuality is the original agony, we may say, of individuality. What is agony? It is the feeling that the soul of one's own self is cut off from the real soul to which it belongs. Here I am reminded of Plato's imagery that we are actually in heaven, and we are shadows imagining that we are originals here. This is the nature of topsy-turvy perception. Immediately - to repeat what the Upanishad says - you are caught by the anguish of self-supporting effort, as you have lost contact with that which is supporting you, which has been supporting you, which was your very soul.

The individual soul severs itself from the cosmic soul by an agonising assertion of itself. Then sorrow, which is life itself, is bred, and a seed of it is sown in this very act of creation of the individual. Hunger and thirst, and a feeling of insecurity certainly advance themselves at the very birth of individuality. Every individual is conscious of the insecure type of life that it leads - always insecure in every way. There is no security for any individual anywhere in this world. There is fear and dread from all sides, opening its jaws as if death is yawning. Hunger and thirst immediately rise in this individual because the original cosmic soul, which was the sustenance of this individual, has been severed in its contact during the coming down of the process of evolution, and as the central government is not going to support this alienated individual, it feels difficulty in finding resources to maintain itself. There is a feeling of cold and heat, hunger and thirst, to mention the least. But, it cannot go on in this condition. It is in hell. It wants to create a heaven in hell itself. Unless a heaven is created in hell, you cannot survive there. You may perish instantaneously.

Hence, an artificial kingdom is created by that which has fallen into this hell of experience. What is this kingdom? It is the kingdom of the joy that it imagines to be there by coming in contact with that which it regards as an object while it was the subject for the Virat. The individual thinks that the world is an object, while the Virat - cosmic mind, metaphysical mind - knows it is the subject. Can you feel that the whole world is you? That is the Virat thinking. But if you think that you are sitting somewhere and the world is outside you, you are thinking like a severed individual. Then hunger and thirst, heat and cold are felt because of this isolation - the severance of the individual from the cosmic sustenance. It tries to grab several media from what it considers as the objective of its perception - food, water, air, light and many other appurtenances to guard itself from attack from external sources.

When it artificially creates a kingdom of objective sustenance and feels for a moment that it has got what it wants - wrongly, though - immediately there is satisfaction. This is what is called sensory satisfaction. It is really not satisfaction. It is only an imagination that it has got what it wants which is created in the mind that is craving for security from outside. But, in this appeasement of hunger - the appetition of the soul - it has not really appeased its hunger. Perpetually you are hungry; perpetually you are thirsty; perpetually you are insecure from birth to death, however much you may try to appease your appetite by coming in contact with objects that you think are outside you, while they are really not outside you.

A tremendous mistake has taken place in the very beginning itself when the individual has fallen down from this great universal force. To free yourself from this tragedy, engage yourself in deep meditation on that very condition in which you were prior to your fall. It is impossible to think it. The mind cannot think that state which was there prior to its coming down as an individual. So, great effort is necessary. Yoga is not a simple thing; it is a tremendous job. It is wrenching yourself from yourself and placing yourself in that context of the cosmic mind. You are struggling to think as the cosmic mind thinks, which is the real way of thinking, and to free yourself from this disease of thinking through the body-consciousness.

This is the significance deeply buried in this interesting sutra of Patanjali, akalpita vrittih bahih. The word bahih, or outside, suggests that when you are meditating as if you are outside your body, away somewhere, you appear to be outside yourself. Therefore, bahih akalpita vrittih means a non-psychological, metaphysical way of feeling that you are away from your own self, in another location of that mind which feels the whole cosmos as identical with itself. This little sutra is not understood by people. Even commentators bypass it because unless a person has practised yoga, he cannot understand the meaning of this sutra. It is not a professorial dictation or a lecture that Patanjali gives. It is a medicine for the illness of man.

Thus, here is a great task before you - to think as the mind of the cosmos thinks, and not think as your body thinks. Go on asserting this, again and again: how was the cosmic mind thinking before it fell as a bodily individual? A little study of Vedantic cosmology is very helpful here. It is necessary to know the cosmological process of creation so that you may know how to retrace your steps back, as it were, from the fallen state of this individuality to the earlier state, by a recession of consciousness from effect to cause. It is a difficult thing - very difficult. But once you taste this joy of being able to think as the cosmic mind thinks, that joy knows no bounds. It is actually the borderland of God Himself thinking.

Can you imagine the joy if you can think as God thinks, and as the universal mind thinks, as Virat thinks? "Look at me!" says the Virat to Arjuna. Stunned is this ego of the individual. What will you look at? "Lo, it is terrible! You want me to think in a way other than the way in which I am thinking." The Virat is compelling the individual to think as it thinks, and as it is in itself. He is flabbergasted. "Come down!" The individual mind tells the cosmic mind: "Come down! I shall think as my mind only. I want to see the cosmic mind as my mind." This is what Arjuna prays for. "Come down! It is not for me. My body shakes. The mind is torn and I feel as if I am in flames when you are asking me to see you. What am I seeing? I am seeing only my stupid body; that is all. I cannot see anything more."

Great effort is necessary. Nobody can see this vision. This is what Bhagavan Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavadgita. Nobody can see this. Impossible! Sudurdarsam idam rupam (B.G. 11.52). Very terrible is this form. It is terrible because the ego feels it is terrible. Justice, law, operating perfectly, is a terror to the mischievous individual, who always goes against rules and regulations of any kind. So, the Great Justice is before you as a cosmic vision, and the ego is terrified because it is a thief before the great Cosmic Policeman. It says, "No! No, I cannot look at you! Go!" Though it is there, promising all the satisfaction of the whole universe, the ego says, "No, no, no, no, no, no! I want to see you as me! I want to see you as me! I want to see God also as I am!" This is what Arjuna says, finally.

But beware! You do not lose anything by thinking as God thinks. Let not the ego assert itself as if it is in joy. It is in hell. "Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven," is a line from Milton's poetry. "Why should I be a subservient meditator on the cosmic, which is my master? I shall be a master of myself, here itself in this world. I have a large kingdom. I have a profession. I have money. I have a bank balance. I have great strength of army and police." Does not the mind think like that? This is what is called creating heaven in hell. But if you are asked to think as the cosmic mind itself, it terrifies you. "No! I don't want." There is fear, fear, fear. Nobody, even a sick man, likes to take a bitter medicine. "Oh, I don't want this bitter medicine. Let me be a sick man only. Don't give bitter medicine." "Don't give me an injection," the child cries.

This is what you are doing, actually. You have to transform yourself completely into a divine context in order that you may be really able to meditate. Do not think meditation is just closing the eyes and chanting something. It is not like that. It is a complete burnishing of your whole personality, because who can think like the cosmic mind? This itself is the very secret of meditation. Virtually you are thinking like God Himself, the metaphysical mind - that which is thinking through you in terms of yourself as well as the object, on account of which it is possible for you to know that there is a world outside. Great difficulty, but great joy! Would you like to be transformed into the emperor of the whole world? Can you contain such a situation? You will be torn even to think such a thing. And still greater is the joy to think that you are emperor of the whole cosmos - of all the stars, sun, moon and everything, everything that is created. You are thinking like the Virat; you are thinking like the source from where you have fallen down. Think this again and again. Strike it in your head, catch hold of your ears and chant the mantra of this analysis in your mind.

Here I have given a large commentary before you, which is not found any book, on this little sutra of Patanjali, bahih akalpita vrittih maha-videha (Y.S.3.43). It is maha-videha meditation, meditation on the non-physical, cosmic, Virat-body consciousness. It is non-physical - videha means non-body - yet, it is a body for the cosmic form. The moment you are able to visualise and think like this, even for a few minutes, that dark veil, the iron curtain that is before you, preventing you from being conscious of this cosmic whole, is immediately lifted up and torn: prakasha avarana ksayah. The hard iron curtain will melt into liquid and air and gas before the hot light, as it were, emanating from this Cosmic Being.

Is it not happiness? All your problems, all your suffering, will be solved in an instant. All that you want, whatever it be - gold and silver, rice and wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, whatever you want - everything is instantaneously poured into you the moment you become the Soul of this cosmos.

This is the highest type of meditation, for which many other techniques are prescribed - to which reference may be made at some other occasion.