The infrarational, that which is below reason, also has an appearance of the suprarational. It looks like it, but it is not like it: it is a counterfeit coin. Both are illogical, but in a tremendously different way. Profound is the difference, vast is the difference. The infrarational is one who lives below reason in the darkness of a blind faith, lives in borrowed knowledge, has not been daring enough to experiment, has not been courageous enough to move into the unknown on his own. His whole life is a borrowed life, inauthentic – dull, drab, insensitive. The man who has moved to the suprarational is also illogical, irrational, but in a totally different sense his irrationality has absorbed reason and gone higher than it. He has transcended reason.
The man of infrarationality will always be afraid of reason because reason will always create a defensiveness. It will always create a fear. There is the danger if reason succeeds then the faith, then the belief, will have to die – one clings to it against reason. The man of suprareason is not afraid of rationality. He can delight in it. The higher plane can always accept the lower – not only accept: it can absorb it: it can nourish on it. It can stand on its shoulders. It can use it. The lower is always afraid of the higher.
The infrarational is a minus thing – minus reason. The suprarational is a plus thing – plus reason. The infrarational is faith. The suprarational is trust – trust through experience. It is not borrowed: but the man of the suprarational has come to understand that life is more than reason, The reason is accepted: there is no denial of it. The reason is good as far as it goes, it has to be used, but life is not finished there. This is not the boundary of life: life is a bigger thing. Reason is part of it – beautiful if it remains in the organic unity of the whole: ugly if it becomes a separate phenomenon and starts functioning on its own. If it becomes an island, then ugly. If it remains part of the vast continent of being, then beautiful: it has its uses.
The man of suprareason is not against the rational: he is beyond the rational. He sees that the rational and the irrational both are part of life like day and night, like life and death. To him opposites have disappeared and they have become complementaries.
Zen is a transcendental attitude. Patanjali is a very logical attitude. If you move with Patanjali by and by in the ultimate peaks you will reach to the suprarational. In fact just as ordinary religious people are afraid of science and reason and logic; people who cling to the scientific attitude, they are afraid of Zen. You can read Arthur Koestler’s books, a very logical man, but he seems to be in the same plight as are ordinary religious people. Now logic has become religion to him: he is afraid of Zen. Whatsoever he writes about Zen has a trembling in it, a fear, an apprehension – because Zen destroys all categories.
Ordinary Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, they are below reason. Extraordinary Christians – Eckhart, Bohme – Sufis, Kabir, they are beyond reason.
Patanjali can be a bridge for an ordinary human being, ordinarily religious, to move towards Zen. He is the bridge; there exists no other bridge. Patanjali is the scientist of the inner. Man can live two types of lives a life which is exterior, a life of exteriority: and man can live another type of life a life which is interior, a life of interiority. Patanjali is the bridge. What he calls sanyama is a balance between the exterior and the interior to come to such a balance that you just stand in between; you can move out, you can come in; nothing is blocking your way; you are available to both the worlds.