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      Preface

      Patanjali – I call him the scientist of the religious world, the mathematician of mysticism, the logician of the illogical. Two opposites meet in him. If a scientist reads Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras he will understand immediately. A Wittgenstein, a logical mind, will immediately feel an affinity with Patanjali. He’s absolutely logical. And if he leads you toward the illogical, he leads you in such logical steps you never know when he has left the logic and taken you beyond it.

      He moves like a philosopher, a thinker, and makes such subtle distinctions that the moment he takes you into nirvichara, into no-contemplation, you will not be able to see when the jump has been taken. He has cut the jump into many small steps.

      With Patanjali you will never feel fear, because he knows where you will feel fear. He cuts the steps smaller and smaller, almost as if you move on the plain ground. He takes you so slowly that you cannot observe when the jump has happened, when you have crossed the boundary. And he is also a poet, a mystic – a very rare combination.

      There are mystics like Tilopa, there are great poets like the rishis of the Upanishads, there are great logicians like Aristotle, but you cannot find a Patanjali. He is such a combination that since him there has been no one who can be compared to him. It is very easy to be a poet because you are out of one piece. It is very easy to be a logician – you are made of one piece. It is almost impossible to be a Patanjali because you comprehend so many opposites – and he combines them all in such a beautiful harmony. That’s why he has become the alpha and the omega of the whole tradition of Yoga.

      In fact, it was not he who invented Yoga; Yoga is far more ancient. Yoga had been there for many centuries before Patanjali. He is not the discoverer, but he almost became the discoverer and founder just because of this rare combination of his personality. Many people had worked before him and almost everything was known, but Yoga was waiting for a Patanjali. And suddenly, when Patanjali spoke about it, everything fell in line and he became the founder. He was not the founder, but his personality is such a combination of opposites, he comprehends in himself such incomprehensible elements, he became the founder – almost the founder. Now Yoga will always be associated with Patanjali.

      Osho

      Yoga: The Science of the Soul, Vol. 3

      Chapter: 1

       The Meaning of Samadhi

      Sampragyata samadhi is the samadhi that is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss, and a sense of pure being.

       In asampragyata samadhi there is a cessation of all mental activity, and the mind only retains unmanifested impressions.

       Videhas and prakriti-layas attain asampragyata samadhi because they ceased to identify themselves with their bodies in their previous life.

       They take rebirth because seeds of desire remained.

       Others who attain asampragyata samadhi

       attain through faith, effort, recollection, concentration, and discrimination.

      Patanjali is the greatest scientist of the inner; his approach is that of a scientific mind. He is not a poet. In that way he is very rare because those who enter the inner world are almost always poets; those who enter the outer world are almost always scientists.

      He is a rare flower with a scientific mind, but his journey is inner. That’s why he became the first and the last word: he is the alpha and the omega. In five thousand years nobody could improve upon him. And it seems he cannot be improved upon. He will remain the last word – because the very combination is impossible. It is almost impossible to have a scientific attitude and to enter the inner. He talks like a mathematician, a logician. He talks like Aristotle, and he is a Heraclitus.

      Try to understand his every word. It will be difficult because his terms will be those of logic and reasoning, but his indication is toward love, ecstasy, godliness. His terminology is that of the man who works in a scientific lab, but his lab is one of the inner being. So don’t be misguided by his terminology, just retain the feeling that he is a mathematician of the ultimate poetry. He is a paradox, but he never uses paradoxical language – he cannot. He retains a very firm logical background. He analyzes, dissects, but his aim is synthesis. He analyzes only to synthesize.

      So always remember the goal: to reach to the ultimate through a scientific approach. And don’t be misguided by the path. That’s why Patanjali has impressed the Western mind so much. He has always been an influence. He has been an influence wherever his name has been heard because you can understand him easily – but to understand him is not enough. To understand him is as easy as to understand an Einstein. He talks to the intellect, but you have to remember this: his aim, his target, is the heart.

      We will be moving on a dangerous terrain. If you forget that he is also a poet, you will be misguided. You will then become too attached to his terminology, language, reasoning, and forget his goal. He wants you to go through reasoning to go beyond it. That is a possibility. You can exhaust reasoning so deeply that you transcend it. You go through reasoning, you don’t avoid it. You use reason as a step to go beyond. Now listen to his words. Each word has to be analyzed.

      Sampragyata samadhi is the samadhi that is accompanied by reasoning, reflection, bliss, and a sense of pure being.

      He divides samadhi, the ultimate, into two steps. The ultimate cannot be divided. It is indivisible, in fact there are no steps. But just to help the mind, the seeker, he divides it first into two. The first step he calls sampragyata samadhi – a samadhi in