KIND DEVI, ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM.

Once it happened in a church that after a very long dry sermon, the minister announced that there would be a meeting, a brief meeting of the board, right after the benediction. After the services a stranger approached the minister; he was the first man. The minister thought, `There has been some misunderstanding,' because the man was absolutely a stranger. He didn't even look like a Christian; his appearance was that of a Mohammedan, so the minister said, `It seems you have misunderstood the announcement. There is going to be a meeting of the board.'

The stranger said, `So I have also heard -- and if there was someone here more bored than me then I would like to meet him.'

But this seems to be the situation of everyone. Look at people's faces, or at your own face in a mirror, and you will feel you are the most bored, and it seems impossible that there can be someone else who is more bored than you. The whole life seems to be a long boredom -- dry, dreary, meaningless; somehow you are carrying it as a burden.

Why has this happened? Life is not meant to be a boredom. Life is not meant to be a suffering. Life is a festival, a celebration, a peak of joy -- but that is only in poetry, in dreams, in philosophies. Sometimes a Buddha, a Krishna, appears to be in a deep celebration, but they look like exceptions. Really, unbelievable; not real, just ideal. It seems they never happen. They are our wish-fulfillments, myths, dreams and hopes, but not realities. The reality seems to be our face -- bored, in anguish, and with suffering impressed on it -- and the whole life is just a `carrying on anyhow'.

Why has this happened? And this must not be the basic reality of life, this cannot be, because this happens only to man. The trees, the stars, the animals, the birds... nowhere else does it happen. Except for man, no one is bored. And even if sometimes pain happens, it is momentary; it never becomes an anguish. It never becomes a constant obsession; it is not always on the mind. It is a momentary thing, an accident; it is not carried over.

Animals can be in pain, but they are not in suffering. Pain looks like an accident; they get over it. They don't carry it. It doesn't become a wound. It is forgotten and forgiven. It goes into the past; it never becomes a part of the future. When pain becomes a constant thing, a wound, not an accident but a reality, essential, as if you cannot exist without it, then it becomes a problem -- and that problem has arisen only for the human mind.

Trees are not in suffering. There seems to be no anguish. Not that death doesn't occur to them; death occurs, but it is not a problem. Not that painful experiences are not there; they are there, but they don't become life itself. Just on the periphery they happen and disappear. Deep down in the inner core, life remains celebrating.

A tree goes on celebrating. Death will happen, but it happens only once. It is not carried over constantly. Except for man, everything is in a festive mood. Only man is bored -- boredom is a human phenomenon. What has gone wrong? Something must have gone wrong.

In a way this can be a good sign also. Boredom is human. You can define the human being through boredom. Aristotle has defined the human being as rational. That may not be exactly true; it is not a hundred percent true, because the difference is only of degree. Animals are also rational -- less rational, but not absolutely irrational. There are animals which are just below the human mind. They too are rational in their own way; not as much as man, but not completely devoid of reason. The difference is only of degrees, and man cannot be defined by reason alone. But through boredom you can define him: he's the only bored animal.

And this boredom can come to such a climax that man can commit suicide. Only man can commit suicide; no animal commits suicide. That is an absolutely human phenomenon. When boredom comes to such a point that even hope becomes impossible, then you drop dead by yourself, because then there is no sense in carrying all this. You can carry this boredom, this pain, because somewhere the tomorrow is yet hopeful. This is bad today, but tomorrow something will happen. Because of that hope you go on carrying.

I have heard, once it happened one Chinese emperor sentenced his prime minister to death. The day the prime minister was to be hanged, the emperor came to see him to say a good-bye. He had been his devoted servant for many many years, but he had done something which irritated the emperor so much that he had sentenced him to death. But remembering that this was going be the last day, the emperor came to meet him.

When the emperor came, he saw the prime minister weeping, and tears were rolling down from his eyes. He couldn't imagine that death could be the cause, because he was a brave man, so he asked, `It is impossible to imagine that you are weeping because you are going to die this evening. It is impossible to conceive. You are a brave man, and I have known your bravery so many times, so it must be something else. What is it? If I can do something I will do it.'

The prime minister said, `Now nothing can be done and it is of no use to say to you, but if you insist, then I am still your servant -- I will obey you and tell you.'

The emperor insisted, so the prime minister said, `It is not my death, because that is not of much importance -- man has to die one day; any day death will be -- but I am weeping because I have seen your horse standing outside.'

The emperor asked, `Because of the horse? Why?'

The prime minister said, `I was looking for my whole life for this type of horse, because I have learned one ancient secret -- that I can teach horses to fly -- but only of a particular type. This is the type, and this is my last day. I am not worried about my death, but just that one ancient art will be lost with me. That's why I am weeping.'

The emperor was thrilled, excited -- if the horse could fly, this would be something -- so he said, `How many days will it take?'

The prime minister said, `At least one year -- and then this horse will start flying.'

So the emperor said, `Okay, for one year I will make you free, but remember, if in one year the horse is not flying, you will be again sentenced and hanged. But if the horse is flying, you will be forgiven. And not only forgiven, I will give you half of my kingdom, because I will be the first emperor in history who has a flying horse. So come out of the jail and don't weep.'

The prime minister rode, happy and laughing, on the horse to his house. But the wife was still weeping and crying and she said, `I have heard, the news has reached before you -- but one year only? And I know you know no art, and this horse cannot fly. This is just a trick, a deception, so if you could ask for one year why couldn't you ask for ten years?'

The prime minister said, `That would be too much. As it is, it is already too much. The horse flying is already too much. Then asking for ten years would have been obviously a trick. But don't weep.'

But the wife said, `It makes me still more sad that now I will be living with you and after one year you will be hanged. This one year is going to be a suffering.'

The prime minister said, `Now I will tell you one ancient secret you don't know. In this one year the king can die, the horse can die, I can die. Or, who knows? -- the horse can learn to fly! One year!'

Just hope -- and man lives through hope because he is so bored. When boredom comes to a point where you cannot hope, when hopelessness is absolute, you commit suicide. Boredom and suicide are both human. No animal can commit suicide, no tree can commit suicide.

Why has this happened? What is the reason behind it? Has man forgotten completely how to live, how to celebrate, how to be festive? While the whole existence is festive, how has man retreated out of it and created a sad milieu around him?

It has happened. Animals live through instinct; they don't live through awareness. They live through instinct, mechanically. Nothing has to be learned. They are born with whatsoever they need to know. Their life runs on a smooth instinctive plane; there is no learning. They have an inbuilt program, a blueprint in their cells, for all that they need to live and be happy, so they go on living mechanically.

Man has lost instinct; now there is no blueprint to live. You are born without any blueprint, without any inbuilt program. No mechanical lines are available for you to move on. You have to create your own path. You have to substitute instinct with something which is not instinct, because instinct has dropped. You have to substitute your instinct with intelligence, with awareness. You cannot live mechanically. You have gone beyond that stage where mechanical life is possible -- it is not possible for you. You cannot live like animals and you don't know how t live in some other way -- this is the problem.

You don't have a natural inbuilt program to follow. Without a program you have to face existence. And boredom, suffering, is bound to be your destiny if you cannot create such awareness that you can live through awareness rather than living through instinct. You have to learn everything. This is the problem. No animal needs to learn anything. You have to learn everything, and unless you learn it, you cannot live it. You have to learn how to live. No animal needs it.

This learning is the problem. You learn many things: you learn how to earn money, you learn mathematics, you learn history, you learn science, but you never learn how to live. That is creating the boredom. The whole of humanity is bored because a basic thing remains untouched. And it cannot be left to instinct, because there are now no instincts to live. For man, instinct has dropped; that door is closed. You have to build your own program. You are born without a map.

This is good, because existence thinks you are so responsible you will create your own map. This is a glory. This is magnificent. This makes man the highest, the peak of existence, because existence leaves you free. No animal is free: he has to live and follow a particular program that existence gives to him. When he is born, he is born with a program -- he has to follow it. He cannot go astray, he cannot choose. There are no alternatives given to him. For man, all alternatives are open, and with no map to move with.

If you don't learn how to live, your life will become a dreary affair. This has happened. Then you can go on doing many things and still you will feel you are not alive -- dead. Deep down something is dead, not alive. You go on doing things because you have to. Just to live you go on doing things, but that `just to live' is not life. There is no dance in it, no song in it. It has become a business. There is no play in it, and obviously you cannot enjoy it. These techniques of tantra are to teach you how to live. They are to teach you not to depend on animal instinct, because it is no more there. It has become so faint it cannot work for you, it cannot function.

It has been noted, observed, that if a human child is brought up without the mother, he will never be able to learn love, he will never be able to love. For his whole life he will remain without love, because now there is no instinct; he has to learn it. Even love has to be learned. A human child who is brought up without love cannot learn it. He will not be able to love. If a mother is not there, and if a mother doesn't become a source of happiness, of ecstasy, then no woman can become a source of happiness and ecstasy for that child. When he becomes mature, grown-up, he will not be attracted to women, because now instinct is not functioning.

This will not happen to animals: in the right moment they will start functioning. They will become sexual; they will move towards the opposite sex -- that is instinctive, mechanical. With man nothing is mechanical. If you don't teach a human child language, he will not learn it. If you don't teach it, he is not going to have it. It is not natural; there is no instinct for it. Whatsoever you are is because of your learning. Man is less nature and more culture. Animals are simply nature.

Man is less natural and more cultural, but one dimension, the basic and the most foundational, remains uncultured -- that is the dimension of being alive. You take it as if you already have it; it is taken for granted -- that is wrong. You don't know how to live, because just to breathe is not synonymous with living. Just to eat and sleep and just carry on the bodily affairs is not synonymous with living. You are existing, that's right, but you re not alive.

A Buddha is alive, not simply existing. That aliveness can come only if you learn it, if you become aware of it, and if you search for it and if you create situations in which it can evolve. Remember this: for man, mechanical evolution is not. Conscious evolution has taken place, and now you cannot do anything about it -- you have to move into conscious evolution. You cannot fall back. You can stick where you are -- then you will get bored.

That's what is happening. You are not moving. You go on accumulating physical things, so things are moving, not you. Your riches go on accumulating, they are growing -- your bank balance is growing, not you. You are not increasing at all. On the contrary, you may be shrinking, decreasing, but you are not increasing. Unless you do something consciously, you are lost. A conscious effort is needed. It is not asked from the animals because they are not responsible. So you have to understand one very basic thing: with freedom comes responsibility. And you can be free only if you are responsible.

Animals are not responsible, but they are also not free. They are not free; they have to follow a particular pattern. They are happy because nothing can go wrong. They are following a predetermined course: they are following a pattern which has been worked out in millennia, in centuries of evolution. It has been worked out and found correct. They are following that. There is no possibility of going wrong.

There is every possibility for you to go wrong, because there is no plan, there is no map, there is no pattern. Your life ahead is not charted. You are free. But then a great responsibility falls on you, and that responsibility is to choose rightly, to work rightly, and to create your future through your effort. Really, the human being has to create himself through his own effort.

What existentialists in the west say is true. They say man is born without an essence, or you can say without a soul. Sartre, Marcel, Heidegger, they say that man is born without an essence. He is born as an existence, and then through his own effort he creates the essence. He is born only as a possibility, and then through his own effort he creates the soul. He is born only as a form, and then through his own conscious effort he creates the substance.

Just the contrary is the case for all nature: every animal, every plant, is born with an essence, with a soul, with a program, with a fixed destiny. Man is born as an opening with no fixed destiny -- this creates burden, this creates responsibility. This gives you fear, anguish, anxiety. And then wherever you are, if you don't do anything you get stuck. That getting stuck creates boredom.

You can be alive, happy, festive, joyful, only when you are moving when you are growing, when you are increasing, when you are creating the soul; really when you are pregnant with the divine, and when the divine is growing in your womb, when you are going to give birth.

For tantra, God is not the beginning, God is in the end. God is not the creator, but the ultimate peak, the omega point, of evolution. It is the last, not the first; not the alpha but the omega. And unless you become pregnant and unless you carry a child within you, you will be bored, because then your life is futile -- nothing is going to come out of it; no fruit is going to come out of it. That creates boredom.

You can make this opportunity a source of evolution, or you can miss the opportunity and can make it a point of suicide. It depends on you.

Because man can commit suicide, only man can grow spiritually. No animal can grow spiritually. Because man can destroy himself, he can also create. Remember, both the possibilities move simultaneously. No animal can destroy himself -- impossible. You cannot conceive of a lion thinking about suicide, to jump from a cliff and end the whole thing -- no, impossible. No lion can think of it. Howsoever brave, no lion can think of ending himself, destroying himself. He's not free.

You can conceive of destroying yourself. It is impossible to find a human being who has not thought many times to destroy himself. And if you can find a human being who has not thought of committing suicide, then either he is animal or God. That is very basically human -- the possibility to destroy. But that also opens another door; simultaneously both the doors open -- you can create also. You can create yourself, because you can destroy yourself.

The first technique. This technique is very easy and really wonderful. You can do it, anyone can do it. There is no question of type: anyone can do this technique, and for everyone this will be helpful. Even if you cannot move very deeply in it, then too it will be helpful. It will refresh you.

Whenever you are bored, it will immediately refresh you. Whenever you are tired, it will immediately revitalize you. Whenever you are in a mood where you feel fed up with the whole thing, immediately a new surge of energy will flow within you. So for everyone, even if you are not meditation on it, it will be helpful, a medical help. It will give you health. And it is very easy to do; no prerequisites.

The sutra is:

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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON THIS MEDITATION

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS.

Before entering the technique, some introductory remarks about it. First, something has to be understood about the eye, because the whole technique depends on it.

The first thing: whatsoever you are, whatsoever you appear from without, is false, but you cannot deceive your eyes. You cannot create false eyes. You can create a false face; you cannot falsify your eyes. That is impossible -- unless you become a perfect master like a Gurdjieff. Unless you become a perfect master of all your energies, you cannot falsify your eyes. No ordinary human being can do that. You cannot falsify your eyes.

That's why if someone looks in your eyes, stares in your eyes, you feel offended, because he is trying to find the real thing. And at that point you cannot do anything -- your eyes will reveal the true self. So it is not good manners to stare in anybody's eyes. Even while talking you go on avoiding the eyes. Unless you are in love with someone, unless someone is ready to be true with you, you cannot stare. There is a limit.

Psychologists have observed that thirty seconds is the limit. With a stranger you can stare for thirty seconds, not more. If you stare more, you have started being aggressive, and the other will immediately start to feel uneasy. You can stare from a far-away point, because then no one is aware. If you are a hundred feet away I can go on staring at you, but if you are just two feet away it becomes impossible.

In a crowded train, or in a crowded elevator, sitting or standing just close together, you never look at each other's eyes. You can touch the body -- that is not so offensive -- but you never look into each other's eyes because that will be too much, too near, and you will penetrate the real man. The first thing to remember: eyes have no personality. They are pure nature. They have no personality.

The second thing to remember: you move into the world almost only through the eyes; they say eighty percent. Those who have been working with eyes, the psychologists, they say that eighty percent of contact with the world is through the eyes. Eighty percent of your life moves out through the eyes.

That's why whenever you see a blind man, you feel pity. You never feel so much pity and sympathy when you see a deaf man, but when you see a blind man, suddenly you feel sympathy and compassion. Why? -- because he is eighty percent non-alive. A deaf man is not so non-alive. Even if your feet are cut and your hands are cut, you will not be so unalive, but a blind man is eighty percent closed; he lives only twenty percent.

Through your eyes eighty percent of your energy moves out. You are moving into the world through the eyes. So when you get tired, the first thing is the eyes. Later on, other parts of the body will be affected; the eyes will be the first to be drained of energy. If you can refresh your eyes, you can refresh your whole body, because they are eighty percent of your energy. If you can revitalize your eyes, you have revitalized yourself.

In a natural surrounding you never feel as tired as you feel in an unnatural city, because in a natural surrounding your eyes are continuously fed. The greenery, the fresh atmosphere -- everything relaxes your eyes and feeds them. In a modern city everything exploits your eyes and nothing feeds them. So move to a remote village, or to a hilltop where nothing artificial is in the milieu, where everything is natural, and you will see a different type of eyes. The twinkling, the quality, will be different -- fresh, animal-like, penetrating, alive, dancing.

In a modern city, eyes are dead; just living on the minimum. They don't know what festivity is. They don't know what freshness is. The eyes are unaware of any life flowing through them; they are just being exploited. Eighty percent of your energy moves from your eyes, so you have to be perfectly aware, and you have to learn an art about this movement, this energy, and the possibility of the eyes.

In India we have been calling blind men PRAJNA-CHAKSHU -- wisdom-eye -- for a particular reason, because every misfortune can be transformed into a great opportunity. Eighty percent of the energy moves through the eyes, and when a person is blind, he is eighty percent not alive; with the world eighty percent of his contact is lost.

He is very poor as far as the world without is concerned, but if he can use this opportunity -- this opportunity of being blind -- then he can use this eighty percent of his energy for his inner world; this eighty percent that you cannot use ordinarily unless you know the art. So eighty percent of his energy is with him, it is a reservoir, and the energy that normally moves out can move within. If he knows how to allow it to move within, he will become a wisdom-eye.

A blind man is not a PRAJNA-CHAKSHU, a wisdom-eye, just by being blind, but he can be. He doesn't have ordinary eyes, but he can get the eyes of wisdom. The possibility is there. We named him PRAJNA-CHAKSHU just to make him aware that he should not be sorry that he doesn't have eyes. He can create an inner eye, and eighty percent of energy is with him which is not with those who have eyes. He can move it. He can use it.

Even if the blind man is not aware, he becomes more silent than you are. He becomes more relaxed. Look at a blind man. He is more silent. His face is more relaxed. He seems to be at ease with himself; no discontent. This will not be the case with a deaf man. He will be more restless than you, and he will become cunning. But a blind man is never cunning, never restless, never calculative; basically trusting, in a deep faith with existence.

Why does this happen? -- because the eighty percent of energy, even if he doesn't know anything about it, is moving within. It becomes a constant fall, just like a waterfall. Even unaware, it goes on falling on his heart. The same energy that moves out, goes on falling on his heart -- that changes the quality of his being. In ancient India the blind man was very much respected -- very much respected. In deep respect we called him PRAJNA-CHAKSHU, wisdom-eye.

The same you can do with your eyes, and this technique is for that: to help your energy which moves out to fall back upon yourself, upon your own heart center. If it falls on the heart, you become as light as possible. You feel as if the whole body has become a feather; as if gravitation has absolutely no effect on it. And immediately you are connected with the deepest source of your being, which revitalizes you.

For tantra, deep sleep revitalizes you not because of sleep, but just because the energy which was moving out, moves in. If you know the secret, then what an ordinary man is doing in six hours or eight hours sleep, you can do within minutes. What an ordinary man is doing in eight hours, really he is not doing. He is allowing nature to do something, and he is not aware of what it is. A mysterious process is happening in your sleep. One of the basic things is that your energy is not moving out; it goes on falling on your heart, and that revitalizes you. You are in a deep bath with your own energy.

Something more about this moving energy. You might have observed that whenever there is a dominant man, he always stares in your eyes. Whenever there is a dominated man, he looks down. Slaves, servants, or anyone who is inferior to someone, will never stare in the eyes of the superior. But the superior can stare. Kings can stare, but standing before a king, standing in the audience of the king, you are not supposed to stare. That would be an offence. You have to look down.

Really, with your eyes your energy moves. It can become a subtle violence. And not only in man, even in animals. When two strangers meet, two animals meet, they stare each other in the eye just to judge who is going to be the superior and who is going to take the role of the inferior. And once one animal looks down, the thing is decided. Then they will not fight; the thing is over. It is now taken for granted who is superior.

Even children play the game of staring into each other's eyes, and whoever looks away is defeated. And they are right. When two children stare into each other's eyes, whosoever becomes first uncomfortable and starts fidgeting and starts looking away and avoiding the look of the other, is defeated. The one who goes on staring is stronger. If your eyes can defeat the other's eyes, it is a subtle indication that you are stronger than the other.

On the stage when someone comes to speak or to act, he becomes very afraid, a great trembling happens. Even with those who are long in the profession, old actors... even when they come on the stage a fear grips them, because so many eyes are staring; there is so much aggressive energy. There is so much energy from the thousands of people staring at them that they suddenly start trembling deep down. A fear grips them. A subtle energy is flowing through the eyes, a very subtle energy. The subtlest, the most refined of physical forces, is flowing through the eyes. And the quality of the energy changes with you.

From the eyes of a Buddha a different type of energy is flowing. From the eyes of a Hitler a totally different type. If you look at Buddha's eyes, they accept you, they welcome you, they become a door. If you look at Hitler's eyes, they reject you, they condemn you, they push you away, they throw you away. For Hitler, his eyes are like weapons; for Buddha, his eyes are compassion. The quality of the eyes changes. Sooner or later we must come to measure the eye-energy, and then there will be no need to know much about the man. Just the eye-energy and its quality will show what type of man is hidden behind. Sooner or later that will be possible.

This sutra, this technique:

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS.

TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER... Use both your palms, put them on your eyes, and allow the palms to touch the eyeballs -- but just like a feather, with no pressure. If you press you miss the point, you miss the whole technique. Don't press; just touch like a feather. You will have to adjust, because in the beginning you will be pressing. Put less and less pressure until you are just touching with no pressure at all -- just your palms touch the eyeballs. Just a touch, just a meeting with no pressure, because if the pressure is there, then the technique will not function. So -- LIKE A FEATHER.

Why? Because a needle can do something which a sword cannot do. If you press, the quality has changed -- you are aggressive. And the energy that is flowing through the eyes is very subtle: a small pressure and it starts fighting and a resistance is created. If you press, then the energy that is flowing through the eyes will start a resistance, a fight; a struggle will ensue. So don't press; even a slight pressure is enough for the eye-energy to judge.

It is very subtle, it is very delicate. Don't press -- like a feather, just your palm is touching, as if not touching. Touching as if not touching, no pressure; just a touch, a slight feeling that the palm is touching the eyeball, that's all.

What will happen? When you simply touch without any pressure, the energy starts moving within. If you press, it starts fighting with the hand, with the palm, and moves out. Just a touch and the energy starts moving within. The door is closed; simply the door is closed and the energy falls back. The moment energy falls back, you will feel a lightness coming all over your face, your head. This energy moving back makes you light.

And just between these two eyes is the third eye, the wisdom-eye, the PRAJNA-CHAKSHU. Just between these two eyes is the third eye. The energy falling back from the eyes hits the third eye. That's why one feels light, levitating, as if there is no gravitation. And from the third eye the energy falls on the heart. It is a physical process: just drip, drip, it drops, and you will feel a very light feeling entering in your heart. The heartbeats will slow down, the breathing will slow down. Your whole body will feel relaxed.

Even if you are not entering deep meditation, this will help you physically. Any time in the day, relax on a chair -- or if you don't have any chair, when just sitting in a train -- close your eyes, feel a relaxed being in the whole of your body, and then put both your palms on your eyes. But don't press -- that's the very significant thing. Just touch like a feather.

When you touch and don't press, your thoughts will stop immediately. In a relaxed mind thoughts cannot move; they get frozen. They need frenzy and fever, they need tension to move. They live through tension. When the eyes are silent, relaxed, and the energy is moving backwards, thoughts will stop. You will feel a certain quality of euphoria, and that will deepen daily.

So do it many times in the day. Even for a single moment, touching will be good. Whenever your eyes feel exhausted, dry of energy, exploited -- after reading, seeing a film, or watching TV -- whenever you feel it, just close the eyes and touch. Immediately there will be the effect. But if you want to make it a meditation, then do it for at least forty minutes. And the whole thing is not to press. Because it is easy for a single moment to have a feather-like touch; it is difficult for forty minutes. Many times you will forget and you will start pressing.

Don't press. For forty minutes, just remain aware that your hands have no weight; they are just touching. Go on being aware that you are not pressing, only touching. This will become a deep awareness, just like breathing. As Buddha says to breathe with full awareness, the same will happen with touching, because you have to be constantly mindful that you are not pressing. Your hand should just be a feather, a weightless thing, simply touching.

Your mind will be totally there, alert, near the eyes, and the energy will be flowing constantly. In the beginning it will be just dropping in drops. Within months you will feel it has become a river-like thing, and within a year you will feel it has become a flood. And when it happens -- TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM -- when you touch you will feel lightness. You can feel it right now. Immediately, the moment you touch, a lightness comes. And that LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO THE HEART; that lightness penetrates, opens into the heart. In the heart, only lightness can enter; nothing heavy can enter. Only very light things can happen to the heart.

This lightness between the two eyes will start dropping into the heart, and the heart will open to receive it -- AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. And as the falling energy becomes a stream and then a river and then a flood, you will be washed completely, washed away. You will not feel that you are. You will feel simply the cosmos is. Breathing in, breathing out, you will feel you have become the cosmos. The cosmos comes in and the cosmos goes out. The entity that you have always been, the ego, will not be there.

This technique is very simple, without any danger, so you can experiment with it as you like. But because it is so easy, you may not be able to do it. The whole thing depends on touch without pressure, so you will have to learn it. Try it. Within a week it will happen. Suddenly some day when you are just touching with no pressure, immediately you will feel what I am saying -- a lightness and an opening in the heart, and something dropping from the head into the heart.

The second technique:

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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON THIS MEDITATION

KIND DEVI, ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM.

KIND DEVI, ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM. The second can be done only if you have done the first. It can be done separately also, but then it will be very difficult. But if you do the first, then it is good to do the second and very easy.

Whenever this happens -- that you feel light, levitating, as if you can fly -- suddenly you will become aware that around your body form there is a bluish light. But that you can see only when you feel that you can levitate, that your body can fly, that it has become light, completely free of any burden, completely free of any gravitation towards the earth.

Not that you can fly; that is not the point. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it happens that it comes to such a balancing point that your body goes up. But that is not the goal, and don't think about it at all. This much will do: if you feel with closed eyes that your body has gone up. When you open your eyes you will see you are just sitting on the ground, so don't become worried about it. If with closed eyes you feel as if your body has gone up and you feel there is no weight to it, this is enough.

For meditation this is enough. But if you are trying to learn levitation, then it is not enough. But I am not interested in that, and I will not tell you anything about it. This much is enough -- that you feel that your body has no weight, it has become weightless.

Whenever you feel this weightlessness, just with closed eyes become aware of the form of your body. Just with closed eyes, feel your toes and their form, and the legs and their form, and then the form of the whole body. If you are sitting in siddhasana, just like a Buddha, then feel the form while sitting like a Buddha. Just inside try to feel the form of your body. It will become apparent, it will appear before you, and you will simultaneously become aware that just around the form there is a bluish light.

Do it with closed eyes in the beginning. And when this light goes on spreading and you feel an aura, a bluish aura, all around the form, then sometimes while doing it in the night with no light in a dark room, open your eyes and you will see it exactly around your body -- a bluish form, just light, blue light, all around your body. If you want to see it actually, not with closed eyes but with open eyes, do it in a dark room with no light at all.

This bluish form, this bluish light, is the presence of the etheric body. You have many bodies. This technique is concerned with the etheric body, and through the etheric body you can enter into the highest ecstasy. There are seven bodies, and every body can be used to enter into the divine; every body is just a door.

This technique uses the etheric body, and the etheric body is the easiest to realize. The deeper the body, the more difficult; but the etheric body is just near you, just near the physical. It is just near. The second form is of the etheric -- just around you, just around your body. It penetrates your body and it is also around your body just like a hazy light, a blue light, hanging all around like a loose robe.

KIND DEVI,

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE

PERVADING FAR ABOVE AND BELOW YOUR FORM.

Far above, below -- everywhere around your form. If you can see that blue light around you, thinking will stop immediately, because for the etheric body, no thinking is needed. And the blue light is so calming, so soothing, so relaxing. Even ordinarily blue light is so soothing. Why? -- because it is the light of your etheric body. The blue sky is so soothing. Why? -- because it is the color of your etheric body. And the etheric body is very soothing.

Whenever someone loves you, whenever someone touches you with deep love, he touches your etheric body. That's why you feel it as such a soothing thing. It has even been photographed. Two lovers in deep love, making love: if their intercourse can continue for a certain limit, beyond forty minutes, and there is no ejaculation, around both the bodies, deep in love, a blue light appear. It has even been photographed.

And sometimes there have been very strange phenomena, because this light is a very subtle electric force. All around the world, many times it has happened that a new couple, staying in a new room on their honeymoon, or on their first night when they don't know each other's body and they don't know what is possible.... If both the bodies are in a certain vibration of love, of attraction, of deep involvement and commitment -- open, vulnerable to each other, ready to become one space -- then sometimes it has happened accidentally that their bodies have become so electrified, their etheric body becomes so alive, that things in the room start falling.

Very strange phenomena: a statue is there on the table -- suddenly it falls down. The glass on the table suddenly breaks. There is no one else, only the couple making love, and they have not even touched the glass. Or suddenly something catches fire. These cases have been reported to many police stations all around the world, and much investigation has been done, and then it was found that two persons in deep love can create such an electric force that it may affect things around them.

That force also comes through the etheric body. Your etheric body is your electric body. Whenever you are overflowing with energy, you have a bigger range to your etheric body. Whenever you are sad, depressed, you don't have any etheric body near your body. It recedes back into the body. So with a sad person, depressed person, you will also feel sad. If a really sad person enters in this room, you will feel that something has gone wrong, because his etheric body affects you immediately. He becomes an exploiter, because his own etheric forces are so depressed they start feeding on others.

A sad person will make you sad, a depressed person will make you depressed, an ill person will make you ill, because it is not only that which you see that he is; something hidden is constantly working. Even if he has not said anything, even if he is smiling outwardly, if he is depressed he will exploit you. Your etheric body will lose its energy -- he will exploit, he will feed on you. When someone is happy and he enters, immediately you feel a happiness around you, because he is throwing so much etheric force. He is really giving you a feast; he is feeding you. He has so much he is overflowing.

When a Buddha moves around, or a Christ, or a Krishna, they are constantly giving you a feast, constantly you are guests. And when you come after seeing a Buddha, you feel so refreshed, so alive, so vitalized, so rejuvenated. What has happened? Buddha may not have said anything. Even a darshan, just a look, and you feel something has changed within you, something has entered within you.

What is entering? He is so overflowing with his energy.... And whosoever is at peace with himself is always overflooded, because his energy is not wasted in unnecessary nonsense in which you are wasting your energy. He is always overflooded, and whosoever comes can take. Jesus says, `Come unto me. If you are heavily burdened, come unto me. I will unburden you.' Really he is not doing anything; it is just his presence.

It is said that whenever a god-man, a teerthankara, an avatar, a Christ, moves on the earth, around him a particular milieu is created. Jain yogis have even measured it. They say it is twenty-four miles. Twenty-four miles is the radius around a teerthankara, and for twenty-four miles in the whole radius everyone is flooded with his energy: knowing, not knowing, friend or enemy, following him or opposing him, it makes no difference.

If following, you are flooded more, because you are more open; if opposing, you are flooded, but not so much because you are closed -- but the energy is flooding. A single man is such a reservoir; a single man, if undisturbed, silent, at ease, at home, is such a reservoir that for twenty-four miles around him in all directions a milieu is created. And in that milieu you are on a constant feast.

This happens through the astral body. The astral body is your electric body. The body that we see is the physical, the material. This is not really life. Life comes to this body because of the electric, the etheric body. That is your prana, that is your vitality.

So Shiva says:

KIND DEVI,

ENTER ETHERIC PRESENCE...

First you will have to become aware of the form that surrounds your physical form, and when you have become aware, then help it to grow, help it to increase and expand. What can you do?

Just sitting silently, looking at it; not doing anything, just looking at the bluish form around you; not doing anything, just looking at it, you will feel it is increasing, spreading, becoming bigger and bigger. Because when you are not doing anything, the whole energy goes to the etheric. Remember this. When you are doing anything, the energy is taken out of the etheric.

Lao Tzu says, `Non-doing, no one is stronger than me. Not doing anything at all, and no one is stronger than me. Those who are strong by doing can be defeated.' Says Lao Tzu, `I cannot be defeated, because my energy comes from non-doing.' So the secret is not doing anything.

What was Buddha doing under the Bodhi tree? -- not doing anything. He was not doing in that moment. He was not. Just sitting he achieved the ultimate. It looks puzzling. We are doing so much effort and nothing is achieved, and Buddha was not doing anything under the Bodhi tree and he achieved the ultimate.

When you are not doing anything, your energy is not moving out. It goes to the etheric. It is accumulated there. Your etheric body becomes an electric reservoir. And the more it grows, the more you become silent. The more you become silent, the more it grows. And once you know how to give energy to the etheric body and how not to waste it unnecessarily, you have come to realize, you have come to know about a secret key.

Then you can be festive. Really, only then can you be festive. As you are now, drained of energy, how can you be festive? How can you celebrate? How can you blossom? Flowers are part of the luxury. When the tree is overflowing with energy, then flowers come. Flowers are always luxury.

If the tree is starved, flowers won't come, because even for the leaves there is not enough food. There is a hierarchy: first the roots will be fed, because they are the most basic. If they disappear, then there is no possibility for the flowers. Then the trunk will be fed, then the branches will be fed. If everything goes okay and energy is still there, then the leaves will be fed, and if still the food is there and the tree is totally satisfied and no food is needed, no energy is needed to exist and survive, suddenly it blooms. The overflowing energy becomes flowers. Flowers are a feast for others. It is a presentation. It is a gift from the tree to you.

And the thing happens in man also. A Buddha is a tree which has flowered. Now the energy is so overflowing that he has invited all and sundry to come and share.

First try the first technique and then try the second. You can do it separately also, but it will be more difficult to realize the bluish form of the ethereal body.