Where did yoga originate

Yoga is the science of freeing yourself from subject and object boundaries, and unless you are free from these boundaries, you will fall into either the unbalance of the East or the unbalance of the West.

Buddha used to say that when you are in meditation there is no self, no atman, because the very awareness of one's self isolates you from everything else. If you are still there, objects are still there. "I am," but "I" cannot exist in total loneliness; "I" exists in relationship with the outside world. "I" is a relata. Then the self, the "I am," is just something inside you that exists in relationship to something outside. But if the outside is not there this inside dissolves; then there is simple, spontaneous consciousness.

If you want contentment, peace of mind, silence, sleep, then it is good to remain with the same objects continuously. I am yoga. For centuries and centuries there should be no visible change. Then you are at ease, you can sleep better, but this is nothing spiritual; you lose much. The very urge to grow is lost, the very urge for adventure is lost, the very urge to inquire and to find is lost. Really, you begin to vegetate, you become stagnant.

If you change this, then you become dynamic but also diseased: you become dynamic but tense, dynamic but mad. You begin to find the new, to inquire for the new, but you are in a whirlwind. The new begins to happen, but you are lost.

If you lose your objectivity, you become too subjective and dreamy, but if you become too obsessed with objects, you lose the subjective. Both situations are unbalanced. The East has tried one; the West has tried the other.

Where did yoga originate? And now the East is turning Western and the West is turning Eastern. In the East the attraction is for Western technology, Western science, Western rationalism. Einstein, Aristotle, and Russell have taken hold of the Eastern mind, while in the West quite the opposite is happening: Buddha, zen and yoga have become more significant. This is a miracle. The East is turning communist, Marxist, materialist, and the West is beginning to think in terms of expanding consciousness -- meditation, spirituality, ecstasy. The wheel can turn and we can change our burdens. It will be illuminating for a moment, but then the whole nonsense will begin again.

The East has failed in one way and the West has failed in another way, because they both tried denying one part of the mind. You have to transcend both parts and not be concerned with one while denying the other. Mind is a totality; you can either transcend it totally or you cannot transcend it. If you go on denying one part, the denied part will take its revenge. And, really, the denied part in the East is taking its revenge in
the East, and the denied part in the West is taking its revenge in the West.

You can never go beyond the denied; it is there, and it goes on gathering more and more strength. The very moment when the part you have accepted succeeds is the moment of failure. Nothing fails like success.

With any partial success -- with the success of one part of you -- you are bound to go into deeper failure.

That which you have gained becomes unconscious and that which you have lost comes into awareness.

Absence is felt more. If you lose a tooth, your tongue becomes aware of the absence and goes to the absent tooth. It has never gone there before -- never -- but now you can't stop it; it continually moves to the vacant place to feel the tooth that is not there.

In the same way, when one part of the mind succeeds, you become aware of the failure of the other part -- the part that could have been and is not. Now the East has become conscious of the foolishness of not being scientific: it is the reason why we are poor, it is the reason why we are "no one." This absence is being felt now and the East has begun to turn Western, while the West is feeling its own foolishness, its lack of
integration.

The dilemma is this: either you are conscious of some object or you are unconscious. If there are no outside objects, you fall into a sleep; objects are needed in order for you to be conscious. When you are totally unoccupied you feel sleepy -- you need some object to be conscious of -- but when you have too many objects to be conscious of, you may feel a certain sleeplessness. That is why a person who is too obsessed with thoughts cannot go into sleep. Objects continue to be there, thoughts continue to be there.

He cannot become unconscious; thoughts go on demanding his attention. And this is how we exist.

With new objects you become more conscious. That is why there is a lust for the new, a longing for the new. The old becomes boring. The moment you have lived with some object for a while, you become unconscious of it. You have accepted it, now your attention is not needed; you become bored.

For example, you may not have been conscious of your wife for years because you have taken her for granted. You no longer see her face, you can't remember the color of her eyes; for years you have not really been attentive. Only when she dies will you again become aware that she was there. That is why wives and husbands become bored. Any object that is not calling your attention continuously creates boredom.

By embracing your mother wound as your yoga,
you transform what has been a hindrance
in your life into a teacher of the heart.  ~Phillip Moffitt