INTENSE AND SINCERE

SUCCESS IS NEAREST TO THOSE WHOSE EFFORTS ARE
INTENSE AND SINCERE. - PATANJALI

THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF seekers. The first type comes onto the path because of curiosity: Patanjali calls it kutuhal. He is not really interested. He has drifted into it as if by accident. He may have read something. He may have heard somebody talk about God,  the truth, the ultimate liberation, and he became interested.  

 

The interest is intellectual, just like a child who becomes interested in everything and each thing and then, after a time, drifts away because more and more curiosities are always opening their doors. Such a man will never attain. Out of curiosity you cannot attain the truth.

The second type of man who comes to the inner search is the man of jigyasa -- inquiry. He has not come out of curiosity. He has come with an intense inquiry. He means it, but he is also not enough because his meaning is basically intellectual. He may become a  philosopher, but he cannot become a religious man. He will inquire deeply, but his inquiry is intellectual. It remains head-oriented; it is a problem to be solved. It has to be solved, you will feel very good if you can solve it. But this is intellectual, and deep down ego is  involved.  

 

This man will become a philosopher. He will try hard. He will think, con-template, but he will never meditate. He will reflect logically, rationally; he will find many clues. He will create a system, but the whole thing will be his own projection.

Truth needs you totally. Even ninety-nine percent won't do: exactly hundred percent of you is needed, and head is only one percent.

Then there is the third man whom Patanjali calls the man of mumuksha.

This word Mumuksha is difficult to translate. Mumuksha means the desire to be desireless, the desire to be completely liberated, the desire to get out of the wheel of existence, the desire not to be born again, not to die again, the feeling -- that it is enough -- born millions of times, dying again and again and moving in the same vicious circle. Mumuksha means to become the ultimate drop-out from the very wheel of existence.

SUCCESS IS NEAREST TO THOSE WHOSE EFFORTS ARE INTENSE AND SINCERE. Your totality is needed. Remember, sincerity is a quality that happens whenever you are totally in something, but people are almost wrong in their idea of sincerity. They think to be serious is sincere. To be serious is not to be sincere. Sincerity is a quality which happens whenever you are totally in something.

Of course, there is no need to say intense and sincere. Sincerity is always intense. But why does Patanjali say intense and sincere? For a certain reason. Sincerity is always intense, but intensity is not necessarily always sincere. You can be intense in something but not sincere, may not be sincere. Hence, he adds the qualification, intense and sincere, because you can be intense even in your seriousness. You can be intense even with your part being, you can be intense in a certain mood, you can be intense in your anger, you can be intense in your lust, you can be intense in millions of things and may not be sincere, because sincerity belongs when you are totally in it.