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oshothe vigyana bhairava tantra vol one | ||
the book of the secrets : a new commentary : talks given from 01/10/1972 pm to 01/03/1973 pm | ||
the vigyana bhairava tantra vol one chapter seven | ||
techniques to put you at ease 07 october 1972 pm in woodlands bombay | ||
10. WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESS AS EVERLASTING LIFE 11. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN 12. WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND Man has a center,
but he lives off of it -- off the center. That creates an inner tension, a constant
turmoil, anguish. You are not where you should be; you are not at your right balance. You
are off balance, and this being off balance, off center, is the base of all mental
tensions. If it becomes too much, you go mad. A madman is one who has gone out of himself
completely. The enlightened man is just the reverse of the madman. He is centered in
himself. You are in between.
You have not gone completely out of yourself, and you are not at your center either. You
just move in the gap. Sometimes you move very, very far away, so you have moments when you
are temporarily mad. In anger, in sex, in anything in which you have moved too far away
from yourself, you are temporarily mad. Then there is no difference between you and the
madman. The difference is only that he is permanently there and you are temporarily there.
You will come back. When you are in
anger it is madness, but it is not permanent. Qualitatively there is no difference;
quantitatively there is a difference. The quality is the same, so sometimes you touch
madness and sometimes, when you are relaxed, totally at ease, you touch your center also.
Those are the blissful moments. They happen. Then you are just like a Buddha or like a
Krishna, but only temporarily, momentarily. You will not stay there. Really, the moment
you realize that you are blissful you have moved. It is so momentary that by the time you
have recognized the bliss it is finished. We go on moving
between these two, but this movement is dangerous. This movement is dangerous because then
you cannot create a self-image, a fixed self-image. You do not know who you are. If you
constantly move from madness to being centered in yourself, if this movement is constant,
you cannot have a solid image of yourself. You will have a liquid image. Then you do not
know who you are. It is very difficult. That is why you even become afraid if you are
expecting blissful moments, so you try to fix yourself somewhere in between. This is what we
mean by a normal human being: he never touches his madness in anger and he never touches
that total freedom, that ecstasy, either. He never moves from a solid image. The normal
man is really a dead man, living between these two points. That is why all those who are
exceptional -- great artists, painters, poets -- they are not normal. They are very
liquid. Sometimes they touch the center, sometimes they go mad. They move fast between
these two. Of course, their anguish is great, their tension is much. They have to live
between two worlds, constantly changing themselves. That is why they feel that they have
no identity. They feel, in the words of Colin Wilson, that they are outsiders. In your
world of normality, they are outsiders. It will be helpful
to define these four types. First is the normal man who has a fixed, solid identity, who
knows who he is -- a doctor, an engineer, a professor, a saint -- who knows who he is and
never moves from there. He constantly clings to the identity, to the image. Second are those
who have liquid images -- poets, artists, painters, singers. They do not know who they
are. Sometimes they become just normal, sometimes they go mad, sometimes they touch the
ecstasy that a buddha touches. Third are those who
are permanently mad. They have gone outside themselves; they never come back into their
home. They do not even remember that they have a home. And fourth are
those who have reached their home... Buddha, Christ, Krishna. This fourth
category -- those who have reached their home -- is totally relaxed. In their
consciousness there is no tension, no effort, no desire. In one word, there is no
becoming. They do not want to become anything. They are, they have been. No becoming! And
they are at ease with their being. Whatsoever they are, they are at ease with it. They do
not want to change it, do not want to go anywhere. They have no future. This very moment
is eternity for them... no longing, no desire. That does not mean that a buddha will not
eat or a buddha will not sleep. He will eat, he will sleep, but these are not desires. A
buddha will not project these desires: he will not eat tomorrow, he will eat today. Remember this. You
go on eating in the tomorrow, you go on eating in the future; you go on eating in the
past, in the yesterday. It rarely happens that you eat today. While you are eating today,
your mind will be moving somewhere else. While you will be trying to go to sleep, you will
start eating tomorrow, or else the memory of the past will come. A buddha eats
today. This very moment he lives. He does not project his life into the future; there is
no future for him. Whenever future comes, it comes as the present. It is always today, it
is always now. So a buddha eats, but he never eats in the mind -- remember this. There is
no cerebral eating. You go on eating in the mind. It is absurd because the mind is not
meant for eating. All your centers are confused; your entire body-mind arrangement is
mixed up, it is mad. A buddha eats, but
he never thinks of eating. And that applies to everything. So a buddha is as ordinary as
you while he is eating. Do not think that a buddha is not going to eat, or that when the
hot sun is there he is not going to perspire, or when cold winds come he will not feel
cold. He will feel it, but he will feel always in the present, never in the future. There
is no becoming. If there is no becoming there is no tension. Understand this very clearly.
If there is no becoming, how can there be any tension? Tension means you want to be
something else which you are not. You are A and you
want to be B; you are poor and you want to be a rich man; you are ugly and you want to be
beautiful; or you are stupid and you want to be a wise man. Whatsoever the wanting,
whatsoever the desire, the form is always this: A wants to become B. Whatsoever you are,
you are not content with it. For contentment something else is needed -- that is the
constant structure of a mind that is desiring. When you get it, again the mind will say
that "This is not enough, something else is needed." The mind always
moves on and on. Whatsoever you get becomes useless. The moment you get it, it is useless.
This is desire. Buddha has called it TRISHNA: this is becoming. You move from one
life to another, from one world to another, and this goes on. It can continue ad
infinitum. There is no end to it, there is no end to desire, desiring. But if there is no becoming, if you accept totally whatsoever you are
-- ugly or beautiful, wise or stupid, rich or poor -- whatsoever you are, if you accept it
in its totality, becoming ceases. Then there is no tension; then the tension cannot exist.
Then there is no anguish. You are at ease, you are not worried. This non-becoming mind is
a mind that is centered in the self. On quite the
opposite pole is the madman. He has no being, he is only a becoming. He has forgotten what
he is. The A is forgotten completely and he is trying to be B. He no longer knows who he
is; he only knows his desired goal. He doesn't live here and now, he lives somewhere else.
That is why he looks crazy to us, mad, because you live in this world and he lives in the
world of his dreams. He is not part of your world, he is living somewhere else. He has
completely forgotten his reality here and now. And with himself he has forgotten the world
around him, which is real. He lives in an unreal world -- for him, that is the only
reality. A buddha lives this
very moment in the being and the madman is just the opposite. He never lives in the here
and now, in the being, but always in the becoming -- somewhere on the horizon. These are
the two polar opposites. So remember, the
madman is not against you, he is against the buddha. And remember also, the buddha is not
against you, he is against the madman. You are in between. You are both, mixed; you have
madnesses, you have moments of enlightenment, but both are mixed. Sometimes a glimpse
into the center suddenly happens, if you are relaxed. There are moments when you are
relaxed. You are in love: for a few moments, for a single moment, your lover, your beloved
is with you. It has been a long desire, a long effort, and at last your beloved is with
you. For a moment the mind goes off. There has been a long effort to be with the beloved.
The mind has been hankering and hankering and hankering, and the mind has always been
thinking, thinking about the beloved. Now the beloved is there and suddenly the mind
cannot think. The old process cannot be continued. You were asking for the beloved; now
the beloved is there, so the mind simply stops. In that moment when
the beloved is there, there is no desire. You are relaxed; suddenly you are thrown back to
yourself. Unless a lover can throw you to yourself it is not love. Unless you become
yourself in the presence of the beloved, it is not love. Unless mind completely ceases to
function in the presence of the lover or the beloved, it is not love. Sometimes it
happens that mind ceases and for a moment there is no desire. Love is desireless. Try to
understand this: you may desire love, but love is desireless. When love happens there is
no desire; mind is quiet, calm, relaxed. No more becoming, nowhere to go. But this happens
only for a few moments, if it happens at all. If you have really loved someone, then it
will happen for a few moments. It is a shock. The mind cannot work because its whole
function has become useless, absurd. The one for whom you were longing is there, and the
mind cannot think what to do now. For a few moments
the whole mechanism stops. You are relaxed in yourself. You have touched your being, your
center, and you feel you are at the source of well-being. A bliss fills you, a fragrance
surrounds you. Suddenly you are not the same man you were. For example, the
mind may start thinking you have attained your goal, you have attained your love, so now
what? What are you going to do? Then the prophesying starts, the arguments start. You
begin thinking, "Today I have reached my beloved, but will it be the same tomorrow
also?" The mind has started working. And the moment mind is working you have moved
again into becoming. Sometimes even
without love, just through fatigue, tiredness, one stops desiring. Then too one is thrown
to oneself. When you are not away from yourself you are bound to be at your self, no
matter what may be the cause of it. When one is tired totally, fatigued, when one does not
even feel like thinking or desiring, when one is frustrated completely, without any hope,
then suddenly one feels at home. Now he cannot go anywhere. All the doors are closed; hope
has disappeared -- and with it desire, with it becoming. It will not be for
long because your mind has a mechanism. It can go off for a few moments, but suddenly it
will come alive again because you cannot exist hopelessly, you will have to find some
hope. You cannot exist without desire. Because you do not know how to exist without
desire, you will have to create some desire. In any situation
where it happens that suddenly the mind ceases functioning, you are at your center. You
are on a holiday, in a forest or at a hill station, or on a beach: suddenly your routine
mind will not work. The office is not there, the wife is not there, or the husband is not
there. Suddenly there is a very new situation, and the mind will need some time to
function in it, to be adjusted to it. The mind feels unadjusted. The situation is so new
that you relax, and you are at your center. In these moments
you become a buddha, but these will only be moments. Then they will haunt you, and then
you would like to reproduce them again and again and repeat them. But remember, they
happened spontaneously, so you cannot repeat them. And the more you try to repeat them,
the more it will be impossible for them to come to you. That is happening
to everyone. You loved someone, and in the first meeting your mind ceased for a few
moments. Then you got married. Why did you get married? To repeat those beautiful moments
again and again. But when they happened you were not married, and they cannot happen in
marriage because the whole situation is different. When two people meet for the first
time, the whole situation is new. Their minds cannot function in it. They are so
overwhelmed by it -- so filled by the new experience, by the new life, the new flowering!
Then the mind starts functioning and they think. "This is such a beautiful moment! I
want to go on repeating it every day, so I should get married." Mind will destroy
everything. Marriage means mind. Love is spontaneous; marriage is calculating. Getting
married is a mathematical thing. Then you wait for those moments, but they will never come
again. That is why every married man and woman is frustrated -- because they are waiting
for certain things that happened in the past. Why are they not happening again? They
cannot happen because you are missing the whole situation. Now you are not new; now there
is no spontaneity; now love is a routine. Now everything is expected and demanded. Now
love has become a duty, not a fun. It was fun in the beginning; now it is a duty. And duty
cannot give you the same bliss that fun can give. It is impossible! Your mind has created
the whole thing. Now you go on expecting, and the more you expect the less is the
possibility of its happening. This happens
everywhere, not only in marriage. You go to a master and the experience is new. His
presence, his words, his way of life are new. Suddenly your mind stops functioning. Then
you think, "This is the man for me, so I must go every day." Then you get
married to him. By and by frustration sets in because you have made it a duty, a routine.
Now those same experiences will not be coming. Then you think this man has deceived you or
that you were fooled somehow. Then you think, "The first experience was
hallucinatory. I must have been hypnotized or something. It was not real." It was real. Your
routine mind makes it unreal. And then the mind tries to expect, but the first time it
happened you were not expecting. You had come without any expectations, you were just open
to receive whatsoever was happening. Now you come every
day with expectations, with a closed mind. It cannot happen. It always happens in an open
mind; it always happens in a new situation. That doesn't mean that you have to change your
situation daily, it only means: do not allow your mind to create a pattern. Then your wife
will be new every day, your husband will be new every day. But do not allow the mind to
create a pattern of expectations; do not allow the mind to move in the future. Then your
master will be every day new, your friend will be every day new. And everything is new in
the world except the mind. Mind is the only thing which is old. It is always old. The sun is rising
anew every day. It is not the old sun. The moon is new; the day, the night, the flowers,
the trees... everything is new except your mind. Your mind is always old -- remember,
always -- because mind needs the past, the accumulated experience, the projected
experience. Mind needs the past and life needs the present. Life is always blissful --
mind never is. Whenever you allow your mind to come in, misery sets in. These spontaneous
moments will not be repeated again, so what to do? How to be in a relaxed state
continuously? These three sutras are for this. These are three techniques concerning the
feeling of ease, techniques to relax the nerves. How to remain in
the being? How not to move into the becoming? It is difficult, arduous, but these
techniques can help. These techniques will throw you upon yourself. The first technique: 10 10 WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. Shiva starts with love. The first technique is concerned with love,
because love is the nearest thing in your experience in which you are relaxed. If you
cannot love, it is impossible for you to relax. If you can relax, your life will become a
loving life. A tense man cannot
love. Why? A tense man always lives with purposes. He can earn money, but he cannot love
because love is purposeless. Love is not a commodity. You cannot accumulate it; you cannot
make a bank balance of it; you cannot strengthen your ego out of it. Really, love is the
most absurd act, with no meaning beyond it, no purpose beyond it. It exists in itself, not
for anything else. You earn money FOR
something -- it is a means. You build a house for someone to live in -- it is a means.
Love is not a means. Why do you love? For what do you love? Love is the end in itself.
That is why a mind that is calculative, logical, a mind that thinks in terms of purpose,
cannot love. And the mind that always thinks in terms of purpose will be tense, because
purpose can only be fulfilled in the future, never here and now. You are building a
house -- you cannot live in it just now, you will have to build it first. You can live in
it in the future, not now. You earn money -- the bank balance will be created in the
future, not now. Means you will have to use now, and ends will come in the future. Love is always
here; there is no future to it. That is why love is so near to meditation. That is why
death is also so near to meditation -- because death is also always here and now, it can
never happen in the future. Can you die in the future? You can die only in the present. No
one has ever died in the future. How can you die in the future? Or how can you die in the
past? The past has gone, it is no more, so you cannot die in it. The future has not yet
come, so how can you die in it? Death always occurs
in the present. Death, love, meditation -- they all occur in the present. So if you are
afraid of death, you cannot love. If you are afraid of love, you cannot meditate. If you
are afraid of meditation, your life will be useless. Useless not in the sense of any
purpose, but useless in the sense that you will never be able to feel any bliss in it. It
will be futile. It may seem strange
to connect these three: love, meditation, death. It is not! They are similar experiences.
So if you can enter in one, you can enter in the remaining two. Shiva starts with
love. He says, That is why the
so-called wise men say that lovers are blind, mindless, mad. In essence what they say is
right. Lovers ARE blind because they have no eyes for the future, to calculate what they
are going to do. They are blind; they cannot see the past. What has happened to lovers?
They just move here and now without any consideration of past or future, without any
consideration of consequences. That is why they are called blind. They are! They are blind
for those who are calculating, and they are seers for those who are not calculating. Those
who are not calculating will see love as the real eye, the real vision. So the first thing:
in the moment of love, past and future are no more. Then, one delicate point is to be
understood. When there is no past and no future, can you call this moment the present? It
is the present only between the two -- between the past and the future. It is relative. If
there is no past and no future, what does it mean to call it the present? It is
meaningless. That is why Shiva doesn't use the word `present'. He says, EVERLASTING LIFE.
He means eternity... enter eternity. We divide time into
three parts -- past, present, future. That division is false, absolutely false. Time is
really past and future. The present is not part of time. The present is part of eternity.
That which has passed is time; that which is to come is time. That which is, is not time
because it never passes -- it is always here. The now is always here. It is ALWAYS here!
This now is eternal. If you move from
the past, you never move into the present. From the past you always move into the future;
there comes no moment which is present. From the past you always move into the future.
From the present you can never move into the future. From the present you go deeper and
deeper, into more present and more present. This is everlasting life. We may say it in
this way: from past to future is time. Time means you move on a plane, on a straight line.
Or we may call it horizontal. The moment you are in the present the dimension changes: you
move vertically -- up or down, toward the height or toward the depth. But then you never
move horizontally. A Buddha, a Shiva, live in eternity, not in time. Jesus was asked,
"What will happen in your kingdom of God?" The man who asked him was not asking
about time. He was asking about what is going to happen to his desires, about how they
will be fulfilled. He was asking whether there will be life everlasting or whether there
will be death; whether there be any misery, whether there will be inferior and superior
men. He was asking things of this world when he asked, "What is going to happen in
your kingdom of God?" And Jesus replied -- the reply is like that of a Zen monk --
"There shall be time no longer." The man who was
replied to in this way may not have understood at all: "There shall be time no
longer." Only this one thing Jesus said -- "There shall be time no longer,"
because time is horizontal and the kingdom of God is vertical... it is eternal. It is
always here! You have only to move away from time to enter into it. So love is the
first door. Through it, you can move away from time. That is why everyone wants to be
loved, everyone wants to love. And no one knows why so much significance is given to love,
why there is such a deep longing for love. And unless you know it rightly, you can neither
love nor be loved, because love is one of the deepest phenomena upon this earth. We go on thinking
that everyone is capable of love as he is. This is not the case -- it is not so. That is
why you are frustrated. Love is a different dimension, and if you try to love someone in
time you will be defeated in your effort. In time, love is not possible. I remember one
anecdote. Meera was in love with Krishna. She was a housewife -- the
wife of a prince. The prince became jealous of Krishna. Krishna was no more; Krishna was
not present, Krishna was not a physical body. There was a gap of five thousand years
between Krishna's physical existence and Meera's physical existence. So really, how can
Meera be in love with Krishna? The time gap was so great. One day the prince,
her husband, asked Meera, "You go on talking about your love, you go on dancing and
singing around Krishna, but where is he? With whom are you so much in love? With whom are
you talking continuously?" Meera was talking with Krishna, singing, laughing,
fighting. She looked mad -- she was, in our eyes. The prince said, "Have you gone
mad? Where is your Krishna? Whom are you loving? With whom are you conversing? I am here,
and you have completely forgotten me." Meera said,
"Krishna is here -- you are not here -- because Krishna is eternal; you are not. He
will always be here, he was always here, he is here. You will not be here; you were not
here. You were not here one day, you will not be here another day, so how can I believe
that between these two non-existences you are here? How is an existence possible between
two non-existences?" The prince is in
time, but Krishna is in eternity. So you can be near the prince, but the distance cannot
be destroyed. You will be distant. You may be very, very distant in time from Krishna, but
you can be near. It is a different dimension, however. I look in front of
me and there is a wall; I move my eyes and there is a sky. When you look in time there is
always a wall. When you look beyond time there is the open sky... infinite. Love opens the
infinity, the everlastingness of existence. So really, if you have ever loved, love can be
made a technique of meditation. This is the technique: WHILE BEING LOVED, SWEET PRINCESS,
ENTER LOVING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. Do not be a lover
standing aloof, outside. Become loving and move into eternity. When you are loving
someone, are you there as the lover? If you are there, then you are in time and love is
just false, just pseudo. If you are still there and you can say, "I am," then
you can be physically near but spiritually you are poles apart. While in love, YOU
must not be -- only love, only loving. Become loving. While caressing your lover or
beloved become the caress. While kissing, do not be the kisser or the kissed -- be the
kiss. Forget the ego completely, dissolve it into the act. Move into the act so deeply
that the actor is no more. And if you cannot move into love, it is difficult to move into
eating or walking -- very difficult, because love is the easiest approach for dissolving
the ego. That is why those who are egoists cannot love. They may talk about it, they may
sing about it, they may write about it, but they cannot love. The ego cannot love! Shiva says, become
loving. When you are in the embrace, become the embrace, become the kiss. Forget yourself
so totally that you can say, "I am no more. Only love exists." Then the heart is
not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is circulating.
And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, love is
moving to touch. Become love and
enter everlasting life. Love suddenly changes your dimension. You are thrown out of time
and you are facing eternity. Love can become a deep meditation -- the deepest possible.
Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known. And lovers have touched that
center which many yogis have missed. But it will be just a glimpse unless you transform
your love into meditation. Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation.
And now you can understand why tantra talks so much about love and sex. Why? Because love
is the easiest natural door from where you can transcend this world, this horizontal
dimension. Look at Shiva with
his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don't seem to be two -- they are one. The oneness is
so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the Shivalinga. It is a
phallic symbol -- Shiva's sex organ -- but it is not alone, it is based in Devi's vagina.
The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a Shivalinga you never
remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have tried to forget it
completely. Jung remembers in
his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny incident. He came to India
and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are many, many Shivalingas, many
phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around explained everything to him except
the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was difficult to escape this. Jung was well
aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on asking, "But what are these?" So
the pundit at last said into his ear, in Jung's ear, "Do not ask me here, I will tell
you afterwards. This is a private thing." Jung must have
laughed inside -- these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple the pundit came
near and said, "It was not good of you to ask before others. I will tell you now. It
is a secret." And then again in Jung's ear he said, "They are our private
parts." When Jung went
back, he met one great scholar -- a scholar of oriental thought, mythology, philosophy --
Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer was one of the most gifted
minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a lover of India and of its
ways of thinking -- of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach toward life. When he
heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, "This is good for a change. I have always
heard about great Indians -- Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you relate says something not
about any great Indians, but about Indians." Love for Shiva is
the great gate. And for him sex is not something
to be condemned. For him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you
condemn the seed you condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love
then it is crippled. Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must
become love. If it is not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault. Sex must not remain
sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not
remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last,
ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While
loving, be love -- simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else's --
it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate
source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has
engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy. D. H. Lawrence, one
of the most creative minds of this age, was knowingly or unknowingly a tantra adept. He
was condemned in the West completely, his books were banned. There were many cases in the
courts only because he had said, "Sex energy is the only energy, and if you condemn
it and suppress it you are against the universe. Then you will never be capable of knowing
the higher flowering of this energy. And when it is suppressed it becomes ugly -- this is
the vicious circle." Priests, moralists,
so-called religious people -- popes, shankaracharyas and others -- they go on condemning
sex. They say that this is an ugly thing. And when you suppress it, it becomes ugly. So
they say, "Look! What we said is true. It is proved by you. Look! Whatsoever you are
doing is ugly and you know it is ugly." But it is not sex
which is ugly, it is these priests who have made it ugly. Once they have made it ugly they
are proved right. And when they are proved right you go on making it more and more ugly. Sex is innocent
energy -- life flowing in you, existence alive in you. Do not cripple it! Allow it to move
toward the heights. That is, sex must become love. What is the difference? When your mind
is sexual you are exploiting the other; the other is just an instrument to be used and
thrown away. When sex becomes love the other is not an instrument, the other is not to be
exploited; the other is not really the other. When you love, it is not self-centered.
Rather, the other becomes significant, unique. It is not that you
are exploiting him -- no! On the contrary, you both are joined in a deep experience. You
are partners of a deep experience, not the exploiter and the exploited. You are helping
each other to move into a different world of love. Sex is exploitation. Love is moving
together into a different world. If this moving is
not momentary and if this moving becomes meditative -- that is, if you can forget yourself
completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only love flowing --
then, says Shiva, everlasting life is yours. The second
technique: 11 11 STOP THE DOORS
OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This looks very
simple, but it is not so simple. I will read it again: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN
FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This is only an example; anything will do. STOP THE
DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT, and then -- THEN -- the thing
will happen. What is Shiva saying? You have a thorn in
your foot -- it is painful, you are suffering. Or one ant is there creeping on your leg.
You feel the creeping and suddenly you want it to be thrown away. Take any experience! You
have a wound -- it is painful. You have a headache, or any pain in the body. Anything will
do as an object. It is only an example -- the CREEPING OF AN ANT. Shiva says: STOP THE
DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. Whatsoever you are feeling, stop
all the doors of the senses. What is to be done?
Close your eyes and think that you are just blind and you cannot see. Close your ears and
think that you cannot hear. With all of the five senses, you just close them. How can you
close them? It is easy. Stop breathing for a single moment: all your senses will be
closed. When the breath has stopped and all the senses are closed, where is this creeping?
Where is the ant? Suddenly you are removed -- far away. One of my friends,
an old friend, very aged, fell down the staircase, and doctors said that now he would not
be able to move from his bed for three months, he would have to rest for three months. And
he was a very restless man; it was difficult for him. I went to see him, so he said,
"Pray for me and bless me so that I may die, because these three months are more than
death. I cannot remain stone-like. And others are saying, `Don't move.'" I told him,
"This is a good opportunity. Just close your eyes and think that you are only a
stone, you cannot move. How can you move? You are a stone -- just a stone, a statue. Close
your eyes. Feel that you are now a stone, a statue." He asked me what will happen. I
told him, "Just try. I am sitting here, and nothing can be done. Nothing can be done!
You will have to be here for three months anyhow, so try." He would have never
tried, but the situation was so impossible that he said, "Okay! I will try because
something may happen. But I don't believe it," he said. "I don't believe that
something can happen just by thinking that I am stone-like, dead like a statue, but I will
try." So he tried. I was also not
thinking that something was going to happen, because the man was such. But sometimes when
you are in an impossible situation, hopeless, things begin to happen. He closed his eyes.
I waited, because I was thinking that within two or three minutes he would open them and
he would say, "Nothing happened." But he would not open his eyes, and thirty
minutes passed. I could feel and see that he had become a statue. All the tension on his
forehead disappeared. His face was changed. I had to leave, but
he would not open his eyes. And he was so silent, as if dead. His breathing calmed down,
and because I had to leave, I had to tell him, "I want to go now, so please open your
eyes and tell me what has happened." He opened his eyes
a different man. And he said, "This is a miracle. What have you done to me?" I told him, "I
have not done anything at all." He said, "You
must have done something because this is a miracle. When I began to think that I am just
like a stone, like a statue, suddenly the feeling came to me that even if I wanted to move
my hands it was impossible to do so. I wanted so many times to open my eyes, but they were
like stone so I couldn't open them." He said, "I
even became worried about what you will be thinking, as it was so long, but what could I
do? I couldn't move myself for these thirty minutes. And when every movement ceased,
suddenly the world disappeared and I was alone, deep down in me, myself. Then the pain
disappeared." There was severe
pain; he could not sleep in the night without a tranquilizer. But the pain disappeared. I
asked him how he felt when the pain was disappearing. He said, "First I began to feel
that it was somewhere distant. The pain was there, but very far away as if happening to
someone else. And then by and by, by and by, as if someone is going away and away and you
cannot see him, it disappeared. The pain disappeared! For at least ten minutes, the pain
was no more. How can a stone body have pain?" This sutra says,
STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES. Become stone-like, closed to the world. When you are closed
to the world, really, you are closed to your own body also, because your body is not part
of you; it is part of the world. When you are closed completely to the world, you are
closed to your own body also. Then, Shiva says, then the thing will happen. So try it with the
body. Anything will do, you will not need some ant creeping on you. Otherwise you will
think, "When the ant will creep, I will meditate." And such helpful ants are
difficult to find, so anything will do. You are lying on your bed, you feel the cold
sheets -- become dead. Suddenly the sheets will go away, away, away, and they will
disappear. Your bed will disappear; your bedroom will disappear; the whole world will
disappear. You are closed, dead, a stone, like a Leibnitzian monad with no window outside
-- no window! You cannot move! And then, when you
cannot move, you are thrown back to yourself, you are centered in yourself. Then, for the
first time you can look from your center. And once you can look from your center, you can
never be the same man again. The third technique: 12 12 WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND You are sitting here. Just feel that you have become weightless, there is
no weight. You will feel that somewhere or other there is weight, but go on feeling the
weightlessness. It comes. A moment comes when you feel that you are weightless, that there
is no weight. When there is no weight you are no more a body, because the weight is of the
body -- not of you. You are weightless. That is why there
were so many experiments done. Someone is dying... many scientists all over the world have
tried to weigh the person. If there is a slight difference, if when a man is alive the
weight is more and when a man is dead the weight is less, then scientists can say that
something has moved from the body, that a soul or the self or something that was there is
no more -- because for science nothing can be weightless, nothing! Weight is basic to
all matter. Even sunrays have weight. It is very, very slight, minute, and they are
difficult to weigh, but scientists have weighed them. If you can collect all the sunrays
on a five-square-mile plot of ground, their weight will be similar to that of a hair. But
sunrays do have weight; they have been weighed. Nothing can be weightless for science. And
if something can be weightless then it is immaterial, it cannot be matter. And science has
believed for these twenty or twenty-five years that there is nothing except matter. So when a man dies,
if something leaves the body the weight must differ. But it never differs; the weight
remains the same. Sometimes it even becomes more -- that is the problem. The alive man
weighs less; the dead man becomes more weighty. That created new problems, because they
were really trying to find out if some weight is lost; then they can say something has
left. But it seems that, on the contrary, something has come in. What has happened? Weight
is material, but you are not a weight. You are immaterial. If you try this
technique of weightlessness, you just have to conceive of yourself as weightless -- and
not only conceive, but feel that your body has become weightless. If you go on feeling,
feeling, feeling, a moment comes when suddenly you realize that you are weightless. You
are already, so you can realize it anytime. You have only to create a situation in which
you can feel again that you are weightless. You have to
dehypnotize yourself. This is the hypnosis, the belief that "I am a body and that is
why I feel weight." If you can dehypnotize yourself into realizing that you are not a
body, you will not feel weight. And when you do not feel weight you are beyond mind, says
Shiva: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. Then the
thing can happen. The mind also has weight; everyone's mind has a different weight. At one time there
were some proposals that the weightier the mind, the more intelligent. And generally it is
true, but not absolutely, because sometimes very great men had very small minds, and
sometimes some stupid idiot's mind weighed very much. But generally it is true, because
when you have a bigger mechanism of the mind it weighs more. The mind is also a weight,
but your consciousness is weightless. To feel this consciousness, you have to feel
weightlessness. So try it: walking, sitting, sleeping, you can try it. Some
observations.... Why does the dead body become more weighty sometimes? Because the moment
the consciousness leaves the body, the body becomes unprotected. Many things can enter it
immediately. They were not entering because of you. Many vibrations can enter into a dead
body -- they cannot enter into you. You are there, the body is alive, resistant to many
things. That is why once you are ill, it begins to be a long sequence; one illness, then
another, and then another -- because once you are ill you become unprotected, vulnerable,
non-resistant. Then anything can enter into you. Your presence protects the body. So
sometimes a dead body can gain weight. The moment you leave it, anything can enter into
the body. Secondly, when you
are happy you always feel weightless; when you are sad you always feel more weight, as if
something is pulling you down. The gravitation becomes much more. When you are sad, you
are more weighty. When you are happy, you are light. You feel it. Why? Because when you
are happy, whenever you feel a blissful moment, you forget the body completely. When you
are sad, suffering, you cannot forget the body, you feel the weight of it. It pulls you
down -- down to the earth, as if you are rooted. Then you cannot move; you have roots in
the earth. In happiness you are weightless. In sorrow, sadness, you become weighty. In deep meditation,
when you forget your body completely, you can levitate. Even the body can go up with you.
It happens many times. Scientists have been observing one woman in Bolivia. While
meditating she goes up four feet, and now it has been observed scientifically; many films
have been taken, many photographs. Before thousands and thousands of observers suddenly
the woman goes up and gravity becomes nil, nullified. As of yet there is no explanation
for what is happening, but that same woman cannot go up while not in meditation. And if
her meditation is disturbed, suddenly she falls down. What happens? Deep
in meditation you forget your body completely, and the identification is broken. The body
is a very small thing; you are very big, you have infinite power. The body has nothing in
comparison to you. It is as if an
emperor has become identified with his slave, so as the slave goes begging, the emperor
goes begging; as the slave weeps, the emperor weeps. When the slave says, "I am no
one," the emperor says, "I am no one." Once the emperor recognizes his own
being, once he recognizes that he is the emperor and this man is just a slave, everything
will change suddenly. You are infinite
power identified with a very finite body. Once you realize your self, then weightlessness
becomes more and the weight of the body less. Then you can levitate, the body can go up. There are many,
many stories which cannot yet be proven scientifically, but they will be proven... because
if one woman can go up four feet, then there is no barrier. Another can go a thousand
feet, another can go completely into the cosmos. Theoretically there is no problem: four
feet or four hundred feet or four thousand feet, it makes no difference. There are stories
about Ram and about many others who have disappeared completely with the body. Their
bodies were never found dead on this earth. Mohammed disappeared completely -- not only
with his body; it is said he disappeared with his horse also. These stories look
impossible, they look mythological, but they are not necessarily so. Once you know the
weightless force, you have become the master of gravity. You can use it; it depends on
you. You can disappear completely with your body. But to us
weightlessness will be a problem. The technique of SIDDHASAN, the way Buddha sits, is the
best way to be weightless. Sit on the earth -- not on any chair or anything, but just on
the floor. And it is good if the floor is not of cement or anything artificial. Just sit
on the ground so that you are the nearest to nature. It is good if you can sit naked. Just
sit naked on the ground in the Buddha posture, siddhasan -- because siddhasan is the best
posture in which to be weightless. Why? Because you feel more weight if your body is
leaning this way or that way. Then your body has more area to be affected by gravity. If I
am sitting on this chair then a greater area of my body is affected by gravity. While you are
standing less area is affected, but you cannot stand for too long. Mahavir always
meditated standing -- always, because then one covers the least area. Just your feet are
touching the ground. When you are standing on your feet, straight, the least amount of
gravity works on you -- and gravity is weight. Sitting in a Buddha
posture, locked -- your legs are locked, your hands are locked -- also helps, because then
your inner electricity becomes a circuit. Let your spine be straight. Now you can
understand why so much emphasis has been given to a straight spine, because with a
straight spine less and less area is covered, so gravity affects you less. With closed
eyes, balance yourself completely, center yourself. Lean to the right and feel the
gravity; lean to the left and feel the gravity; lean forward and feel the gravity; lean
backward and feel the gravity. Then find the center where the least pull of gravity is
felt, the least weight is felt, and remain there. Then forget the body and feel that you
are not weight -- you are weightless. Then go on feeling this weightlessness. Suddenly you
become weightless; suddenly you are not the body; suddenly you are in a different world of
bodilessness. Weightlessness is
bodilessness. Then you transcend mind also. Mind is also part of the body, part of matter.
Matter has weight; you do not have any weight. This is the basis of this technique. Try any technique,
but stick to it for a few days so that you can feel whether it is working or not. Enough for today. |
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