FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR.

Life without is a cyclone -- a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the surface -- just as on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant struggle. But this is not all of life. Deep down there is also a center -- soundless, silent, no conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with no struggle, with no fight, no violence Towards that inner center is the search. You can get identified with the surface, with the outer. Then anxiety and anguish follows. This is what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle that goes on there.

The surface is bound to be disturbed, nothing is wrong in it. And if you can be rooted in the center, the disturbance on the surface will become beautiful it will have a beauty of its own. If you can be silent within, then all the sounds without become musical. Then nothing is wrong; it becomes a play. But if you don't know the inner core, the silent center, if you are totally identified with the surface, you will go mad. And everyone is almost mad.

All religious techniques, techniques of yoga, meditation, Zen, are basically to help you to be again in contact with the center; to move within; to forget the periphery; to leave the periphery for a time being and to relax into your own being so deeply that the outer disappears completely and only the inner remains. Once you know how to move backwards, how to step down into yourself, it is not difficult. It becomes as easy as anything. But if you don't know, if you know only the mind clinging to the surface, it is very difficult. Relaxing into one's self is not difficult: non-clinging to the surface is.

I have heard a Sufi story. Once it happened that a Sufi fakir was traveling. It was a dark night and he lost his way. It was so dark he couldn't even see where he was moving -- then suddenly he fell into an abyss. He was terrified. He didn't know what was down there in the darkness or how deep the abyss was. So he caught hold of a branch and started praying. The night was cold. He cried but there was no one to listen, only his own voice echoed back. And the night was so cold that his hands were becoming frozen and he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave the branch -- it was going to be difficult to keep on holding it. His hands were getting so frozen that they were already slipping from the branch. Death was absolutely near. Any moment he would fall and die. And then the last moment came. You can understand how terrified he was. Dying moment by moment, then the last moment came and he saw the branch slipping out of his hand. And his hands were so frozen that there was no way to hold on, so he had to fall.

But the moment he fell he started dancing -- there was no abyss, he was on clear ground. And he had suffered all night....

This is the situation. You go on clinging to the surface, afraid that if you leave the surface you will be lost. Really, clinging to the surface you are lost. But deep down there is darkness and you cannot see any ground; you cannot see anything else than the surface. All these techniques are to make you courageous, strong, adventurous, so that you can stop the holding on and fall within yourself. That which looks like an abyss, dark, bottomless, is the very ground of your being. Once you leave the surface, the periphery, you will be centered.

This centering is the aim. Once you are centered you can move to the periphery but you will be totally different. The quality of your consciousness will have changed altogether. Then you can move to the periphery but you will never be the periphery again -- you will remain at the center. And remaining centered at the periphery is beautiful. Then you can enjoy it; it will become a beautiful play. Then there is no conflict; it is a game. Then it will not create tensions within you and there will be no anguish and no anxiety around you. And any moment that it becomes too much, too heavy on you, you can go back to the original source -- you can have a dip. Then you will be refreshed, rejuvenated, and you can move to the periphery again. Once you know the way.... And the way is not long. You are not going anywhere else than into your own self, so it is not long. It is just near. The only barrier is your holding on, holding to the periphery, afraid that if you leave it you will be lost. The fear feels just as if you are going to die. Moving to the inner center is a death -- death in the sense that your identity with the periphery will die, and a new image, a new feeling of your being will arise.

So if we want to say in a few words what Tantra techniques are, we can say that they are a deep relaxation into oneself, a total relaxation into oneself.

You are always tense, that is the holding, the clinging. You are never relaxed, never in a state of let-go. You are always doing something: that doing is the problem. You are never in a state of non-doing, when things are happening and you are just there not doing anything. Breath comes in and goes out, the blood circulates, the body is alive and throbbing, the breeze blows, the world goes on spinning around -- and you are not doing anything. You are not a doer. You are simply relaxed and things are happening. When things are happening and you are not a doer, you are totally relaxed. When you are a doer and things are not happening but are being manipulated by you, you are tense.

You relax partially while you are asleep, but it is not total. Even in your sleep you go on manipulating, even in your sleep you don't allow everything to happen. Watch a man sleeping: you will see that he is very tense, his whole body will be tense. Watch a small child sleeping, he is very relaxed. Or watch an animal, a cat -- a cat is always relaxed. You are not relaxed even while asleep; you are tense, struggling, moving, fighting with something. On your face there are tensions. In dreams you may be fighting, protecting -- doing the same things as when you were awake, repeating them in an inner drama. You are not relaxed; you are not in a deep let-go. That's why sleep is becoming more and more difficult. And psychologists say that if the same trend goes on, soon the day will come when no one will be able to sleep naturally. Sleep will have to be chemically produced because no one will be able to fall naturally into sleep. The day is not very far. You are already on the way towards it because even while asleep you are only partially asleep, partially relaxed.

Meditation is the deepest sleep. It is total relaxation plus something more; you are totally relaxed and yet alert. Awareness is there. Total sleep with awareness is meditation. Fully alert, things are happening but you are not resisting, not fighting, not doing. The doer is not there. The doer has gone into sleep. Only a witness is there a `non-doer alertness' is there. Then nothing can disturb you.

If you know how to relax then nothing can disturb you. If you don't know how to relax then everything will disturb you. I say everything. It is not really something else that disturbs you, everything else is just an excuse. You are almost always ready to be disturbed. If one thing doesn't disturb you, then something else will; you will get disturbed. You are ready, you have a tendency to get disturbed. If all the causes are withdrawn from you even then you will get disturbed. You will find some cause, you will create some cause. If nothing comes from without, you will create something from within -- some thought, some idea -- and you will get disturbed. You need excuses. Once you know how to relax nothing can disturb you. Not that the world will change, not that things will be different. The world will be the same. But you don't have the tendency, you don't have the madness; you are not constantly ready to be disturbed. Then all that happens around you is soothing -- even the traffic noise becomes soothing if you are relaxed. Even the market-place becomes soothing. It depends on you. It is an inner quality. The more you go towards the center the more the quality arises and the more you move towards the periphery the more you will be disturbed. If you are too disturbed or if you are prone to be disturbed that shows only one thing: that you are existing near the periphery -- nothing else. It is an indication that you have made your abode near the surface. And this is a false abode because your real home is at the center, the very center of your being.

Now we will enter the techniques.

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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON THIS MEDITATION

IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

This is a very simple method but it works miraculously -- try it. And anyone can try it, there is no danger. The first thing is to be in an easy relaxed position -- relaxed in a position that is easy for you. Don't try a particular position or ASANA. Buddha sits in a particular posture. It is easy for him. It also can become easy for you if you practise it for a time being, but in the very beginning it will not be easy for you. And there is no need to practise it: start from any posture that comes easy to you right now. Don't struggle with the posture. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be in a relaxed state.

So just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs -- feel whether there is some tension or not. If you feel there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel there is some tension in the right leg, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak -- then suddenly relax so that you can feel how the relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just looking everywhere for some tension. Wherever you feel the tension make it more so, because it is easy to relax when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. It is easy to move from one extreme to another, very easy, because the very extreme creates the situation to move to the other. So if you feel some tensions in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as possible, create tension and bring it to a peak. Bring it to a point where you feel that no more is possible -- then suddenly relax. In this way see that all parts of the body, all the limbs are relaxed.

And be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety per cent of the tensions -- the rest of the body carries only ten per cent. All your tensions are in the mind so the face becomes the storage. So strain your face as much as possible, don't be shy about it. Make it intensely anguished, anxious -- and then suddenly relax. Do it for five minutes so that you can feel that every limb in the whole body is relaxed. This is an easy posture for you.

You can do it sitting, or lying in bed or howsoever you feel is easy for you. IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

The second thing: when you feel that the body has got to an easy posture, don't make much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body. Because really, remembering the body is a sort of tension. That's why I say don't make much fuss about it. Relax it and forget it. Forgetting is relaxation. Whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body.

You may not have observed this, but there is a very easy experiment to try. Put your hand on your pulse and count it. Then close your eyes, bring your attention to your pulse for five minutes, and then count. The pulse will now be beating faster because the attention for five minutes gives tension to it. So really, whenever a doctor counts your pulse it is never the real count -- it is always more than it was before the doctor started counting it. Whenever the doctor has taken your hand in his hand you have become alert. And if the doctor is a lady doctor you will be more alert, and it will go faster. So whenever a lady doctor counts your pulse reduce it by ten. Then that will be exactly your pulse count -- otherwise there will be ten more counts per minute.

Whenever you bring your consciousness to any part of the body, that part becomes tense. You become tense when someone observes you; the whole body becomes tense. When you are alone you are different. When someone enters the room you are not the same. The whole body is going at a faster rate. You have become tense. So don't make much fuss about relaxation or you will be obsessed with it. For five minutes simply relax easily and forget. Your forgetting will be helpful and it will bring a deeper relaxation to the body.

.... GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE. Close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, your chest. First feel it just between the two armpits with your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, remember just the heart area between the two armpits, the chest, and feel it filled with great peace. The moment the body is relaxed, peace automatically happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious. And when you forget the whole body and bring your attention just to the chest and consciously feel it filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately.

There are areas in the body, particular centers, where particular feelings can be created consciously. Between the two armpits is the heart center, and the heart center is the source of all the peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That is why people all over the world, every race, without any distinction of cat, religion, country, cultured or uncultured, have felt this: that love arises from somewhere near the heart. No scientific explanation exists. Whenever you think of love you think of the heart. Really, whenever you are in love you are relaxed, and because you are relaxed you are filled with a certain peace. That peace arises from the heart. So peace and love have become joined, associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love.

So you can do two things. You can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But this path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. And the other is the other, and you are becoming in a way dependent. So love will give you peace sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish and anxiety, because the other has entered. Whenever another enters there is bound to be some disturbance, because you can meet with the other only on your surface. The surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict, only then will you sometimes be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.

So love can only give you glimpses of peace but nothing really established, rooted. No eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred and anger.

The other way is to find peace not through love, but directly. If you can find peace directly -- and this is the method for it -- your life will become filled with love. But now the quality of love will be different. It will not be possessive; it will not be centered around one. It will not be dependent and it will not make any one dependent on you. Your love will become just a lovingness, a compassion, a deep empathy. And now no one, not even a lover, can disturb you, because your peace is already rooted and your love comes as a shadow of your inner peace. The whole thing has become reversed. So Buddha is also loving but his love is not an anguish. If you love you will suffer, if you don't love you will suffer. If you don't love you will suffer the absence of love; if you love you will suffer the presence of love. Because you are on the surface and whatsoever you do can only give you momentary satisfaction -- then again the dark valley.

First be established in peace on your own, then you are independent, then love is not your need. Then you will never feel imprisoned when you are in love; you will never feel that love has become a sort of dependence, a slavery, a bondage. Then love will be just a giving: you have too much peace so you want to share it. Then it will be just a giving with no idea of return; it will be unconditional. And it is one of the secrets that the more you give, the more it happens to you. The more you give and share, the more it becomes your own. The deeper you enter into the treasury, which is infinite, the more you can go on giving to everybody. It is inexhaustible.

But love must happen to you as a shadow of inner peace. Ordinarily the reverse is the phenomenon: peace happens to you just as a shadow of love. Love must happen to you as a shadow of peace, then love is beautiful. Otherwise love also creates ugliness, it becomes a disease, a fever.

.... PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

Become aware of the area between the armpits and feel that it is filled with great peace. Just feel peace there and you will feel it is filled. It is always filled but you have never been alert about it. This is only to increase your alertness, to bring you nearer home. And when you feel this peace you are farther away from the surface. Not that things will not be happening there -- but when you try this experiment and when you are filled with peace you will feel a distance; the noise is coming from the street but there is a great distance now, a great space. It happens, but it brings no disturbance; rather, it brings you a deeper silence. This is the miracle. The children will be playing, someone will be listening to the radio, someone will be quarrelling and the whole world will be going around, but you feel that a great distance has come between you and everything. That distance comes because you have retreated from the periphery. Things are happening on the periphery and they will appear to you as if they are happening to someone else. You are not involved. Nothing disturbs you so you are not involved -- you have transcended. This is the transcendence.

And the heart is naturally the source of peace. You are not creating anything. You are simply coming to a source which is always there. This imagining will help you become aware that the heart is filled with peace -- it is not that the imagining will create the peace. This is the difference between the Tantra attitude and Western hypnosis. Hypnotists think that you are creating it by imagination but Tantra thinks that you are not creating it by imagination, you are simply becoming attuned to something that is already there. Because whatsoever you can create by imagination cannot be permanent: if it is not a reality then it is false, unreal, and you are creating a hallucination. So it is better to be disturbed and real than to be in a hallucination of peace, because that is not a growth, you are simply intoxicated by it. Sooner or later you will have to come out because sooner or later the reality will shatter the illusion. Reality has to shatter all illusions; only a greater reality cannot be shattered.

A greater reality will shatter the reality which is on the periphery, hence Shankara and others say that the world is illusion. Not that the world is illusion, but they have come to know a higher reality and from that altitude this world looks dreamy. It is so far away, the distance is so infinite that it cannot be felt as real. The noise on the street will be as if you are dreaming about it -- it is not real. It cannot do anything. It just happens and passes and you remain untouched. And when you are untouched by reality how can you feel that it is real? The reality is felt only when it penetrates you deeply. The deeper the penetration, the more you feel it as real.

Shankara says the whole world is unreal. He must have come to a point from where the distance is so vast, so tremendously vast, that all that happens there becomes just like a dream. It comes but no reality comes with it because it cannot penetrate. Penetration is the proportion of reality. If I throw a stone at you it hits you. The hit penetrates you and that penetration makes the stone real. If I throw a stone and it touches you but doesn't penetrate you, deep down you will hear the thud of the falling stone on you, but there will be no disturbance. You will feel it as false, unreal, MAYA, illusory. But you are so near the periphery that if I throw a stone at you, you will be hurt. Not the body -- the body will be hurt in either case. If I throw a stone at a Buddha the body will be hurt as your body will be hurt, but Buddha is not on the periphery, he is rooted in the center. And the distance is so great that he will hear the thud of the stone without being hurt. The being will remain untouched, unscarred. This unscarred being will feel the stone as if it is something thrown in a dream. It is illusory. So Buddha says that nothing has substance to it, everything is `substanceless', without any substance. The world is empty of substance -- which is the same thing as Shankara saying that the world is illusory.

Try this. Whenever you are able to feel the peace between your two armpits filling you, pervading your heart center, the world will look illusory. This is a sign that you have entered meditation -- when the world feels and appears to be illusory. Don't think that the world is illusory, there is no need to think it -- you will feel it. It will suddenly occur to your mind, "What has happened to the world?" The world has suddenly gone dreamy. It is there, a dreamlike existence, without any substance. It looks so real, just like a film on the screen. It can even be three dimensional. It looks like something, but it is a projected thing. Not that the world is a projected thing, not that it is really unreal -- no. The world is real but you create the distance, and the distance gets more and more. And you can understand whether the distance is getting more and more or not by knowing how you are feeling about the world. That's the criterion. That is a meditative criterion. It is not a truth that the world is unreal -- if the world has become unreal, you have become centered in the being. Now the surface and you are so far away that you can look at the surface as being something objective, something other than you. You are not identified.

This technique is very easy and will not take much time if you try it. With this technique it sometimes even happens that with the very first effort you will feel the beauty and the miracle of it. So try it. But if you don't feel anything with the first effort, don't be disappointed. Wait. And go on doing it. And it is so easy that you can go on doing it any time. Just lying on your bed at night you can do it; just in the morning when you feel that you are now awake you can do it. Do first and then get up. Even ten minutes will be enough. Ten minutes at night just before falling asleep, do it. Make the world unreal, and your sleep will be so deep that you may not have slept like that before. If the world becomes unreal just before falling asleep, dreaming will be less. Because if the world has become a dream then dreams cannot continue. And if the world is unreal, you are totally relaxed because the reality of the world will not impinge itself upon you, hammer on you.

I have suggested this technique to people who suffer from insomnia. It helps deeply. If the world is unreal, tensions dissolve. And if you can move from the periphery, you have already moved to a deep state of sleep -- before the sleep comes you are already deep into it. And then in the morning it is beautiful because you are so fresh, so young; your whole energy is vibrating. It is because you are coming back to the periphery from the center.

And the moment you become alert that now sleep is no more, don't open your eyes. First do this experiment for ten minutes, then open the eyes. The body is relaxed after the whole night and is feeling fresh and alive. You are already relaxed; so it will not take much time. Just relax. Bring your consciousness to the heart just between the two armpits: feel it filled with deep peace. For ten minutes remain in that peace, then open the eyes. The world will look totally different because that peace will also be radiated from your eyes. And the whole day you will feel different -- not only will you feel different but you will feel that people are behaving differently with you. To every relationship you contribute something. If your contribution is not there, people behave differently because they feel you are a different person. They may not be aware of it. But when you are filled with peace everyone will behave differently towards you. They will be more loving and more kind, less resistant, more open, closer. A magnet is there. Peace is the magnet. When you are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. And this is so physical a phenomenon that you can observe it easily. Whenever you are peaceful you will feel everyone wants to be closer to you because that peace radiates, it becomes a vibration around you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever comes near wants to be nearer to you -- like you want to move under the shadow of a tree and to relax there.

A person who is peaceful within has a shadow around him. Wherever he goes everyone would like to be closer to him, open, trusting. A person who has inner turmoil, conflict, anguish, anxiety, tensions, repels persons. Whosoever come near becomes afraid. You are dangerous. To be near you is dangerous. Because you will give whatsoever you have, you are constantly giving it. So you may want to love someone but if you are very disturbed within, even your lover will be repelled and he will want to escape from you because you will drain his energy and he will not feel happy with you. And whenever you leave him, you will leave him tired, exhausted, because you don;t have a life-giving source, you have a destructive energy within you.

So not only will you feel you are different, others will also feel that you are different.

Your whole life-style can change if you move a little closer to the center -- and the whole outlook and the whole outcome. If you are peaceful the whole world becomes peaceful to you. It is just a reflection. Whatsoever you are is reflected all over. Everyone becomes a mirror.

The second technique:

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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON THIS MEDITATION

FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR.

Tantra and yoga both think that your narrowness is the problem. Because you have made yourself so narrow, so tightly narrow, you feel always in bondage. The bondage is not coming from anywhere else: the bondage is coming from your narrow mind. And it goes on being narrower and narrower and you are very confined. That confinement gives you the feeling of bondage. You have an infinite soul and an infinite being but that infinite being feels imprisoned. So whatsoever you do, you feel limitations everywhere. Wherever you move, a point of cul de sac comes. You cannot move beyond it. Everywhere there is a boundary. There is no open sky to fly. But that boundary is created by you -- that boundary is your own creation. You have created it for certain reasons: for security, safety. You have created a boundary. And the narrower the boundary, the more you feel secure. If you have a very large boundary you cannot watch over all of it, you cannot be alert and watchful everywhere. It becomes vulnerable. Narrow the boundary and you can watch it, you can remain closed, you are not vulnerable, you feel safe. The safety, the security has created the boundary. But then you feel a bondage.

This is how the mind is paradoxical. You go on asking for more safety and you go on asking for more freedom. Both cannot be together. If you want freedom you will have to lose safety, security -- in any case the safety is just illusory, it is not really there. Because death is going to happen -- whatsoever you do, you are going to die. All your safety, security, is just a facade, nothing will help. But afraid of insecurity you create boundaries, you create big walls around you and then the open sky is closed. And then you suffer! And then you say, "Where is the open sky?" and "I want freedom and I want to move!" But you have created these boundaries.

So this is the first thing to remember before you do this technique otherwise it will not be possible to do it. With your boundaries intact you cannot do it. Unless you stop creating boundaries you will not be able to feel or do it.

.... PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. No boundaries, becoming infinite, becoming one with infinite space.... This will be impossible with your mind. How can you feel it? How can you do it? First you will have to stop doing certain things.

The first thing is that if you are too concerned about security and safety then remain in bondage. Really, prison is the most secure place. No one can harm you there. No one out of prison is as secure, as guarded, as the prisoners. You cannot kill, you cannot murder a prisoner. It is difficult. He is more guarded than a king. You can murder a president or a king, it is not so difficult. Every day they go on killing them. But you cannot kill a prisoner. He is so safe that those who want to be safe, really, must be in prisons, they must not live outside. To live out of a prison is dangerous, it is full of hazards. Anything can happen. So we have created mental prisons around us, psychological prisons around us, and we carry those prisons with us, they are portable. You need not remain with them, they move with you. Wherever you go, your prison goes with you.

You are always behind a wall. Only sometimes, rarely, do you stretch your hand out of it to touch someone. But only a hand -- you never come out of your prison. So whenever we meet, it is simply meeting hands out of prisons. Out of windows we stretch a hand, afraid, scared, and ready any moment to withdraw the hand. Both the parties are doing the same -- only hands touch. And now psychologists say that even that is just an appearance, because hands have their own armor around them. No hand is ungloved. Not only Queen Elizabeth uses gloves, you also have gloves so that no one can touch you. Or even if someone touches, there is only a hand, dead. You are already withdrawn, afraid. Because the other creates fear. As Sartre says, "The other is the enemy." The other will look like an enemy if you are so armored. With an armored person there can be no friendship. Friendship is impossible, love is impossible, communion is impossible. You are afraid. Someone may make you a possession, someone may overpower you, someone may make you a slave... afraid of this, you have created a prison, a safety wall around you. Cautiously you move, cautiously you take every step. Life becomes a drudgery, life becomes a boredom. If you are too cautious, life cannot be an adventure. If you are protecting yourself too much, hankering after security too much, you are already dead.

So remember one basic law: life is insecurity. And if you are ready to live in insecurity, only then will you be alive. Insecurity is freedom. If you are ready to be insecure, constantly insecure, you will be free. And freedom is the door to the Divine.

Afraid, you create a prison -- you become dead, more and more dead. And then you call, "Where is God?" And then you question, "Where is life? What does life mean? Where is bliss?" Life is there waiting for you, but you have to meet it on its own terms. You cannot have your own terms, life has its own terms. And the basic term is: remain insecure. Nothing can be done about it. You can only create an illusion and in that illusion you can waste your life. Nothing can be done about it. Whatsoever you do is just a deception.

If you fall in love you become afraid that this woman can leave you or this man can leave you. Fear enters immediately. You were never afraid when you were not in love. Now you are in love: life has entered and insecurity has entered with it. One who never loves anybody is never afraid that anyone will leave him. The whole world can leave him, he is not afraid. You cannot harm him. He is secure. The moment you love someone, insecurity has entered because life has entered. And with life, death has entered. The moment you love you have become afraid: this person can die, this person can leave, this person can love somebody else! Now to make things secure, you must do something -- you must get married. So a legal bondage is made so that it is now difficult for this person to leave you. \Now society will protect you, the law will protect you, the policeman, the judge, will all protect you. Now if this person wants to leave, you can drag him to the court, and if he wants a divorce he will have to prove something against you. Even then it will take three or five years. Now you have created safety around you. But the moment you are married you are dead. The relationship is not alive. Now it has become a law, not a relationship. Now it is a legal phenomenon, not an alive thing. The court cannot protect life; the law can only protect laws. Now marriage is something which is dead. It can be defined. Love cannot be defined. Marriage is definable, love is indefinable. Now you have come under the world of definitions.

But the phenomenon is already dead. The moment you wanted it to be secure, the moment you wanted to enclose it so that no new thing happens to it, you are imprisoned in it. Then you will suffer. Then you will say that this wife has become a bondage to you. The husband will say this wife has become a bondage to him. And then you fight because you have each become an imprisonment for the other. Now you fight. Now love has disappeared, there is only conflict. That is what happens because of the hankering for security.

And this has happened in everything. Remember it as something basic: life is insecure. This is the very nature of it. So when there is love, suffer the fear that the beloved can leave you, but don;t create security. Then love will grow. The beloved can die and you cannot do anything, but that will not kill love. Security can kill. Love will grow more.

Really, if man were immortal, I say love would be impossible. If man were immortal it would be difficult to love anybody. It would be so dangerous to fall in love. Death is there and life is just like a dew drop on a trembling leaf. Any moment the breeze will come and the dew drop will fall and disappear. Life is just a wavering. Because of that wavering, because of that movement, death is always there. It gives intensity to love. Love is possible only because there is death. Love becomes intense because there is death. Think... if you know your beloved is going to die the next moment, all meanness will go, all conflict will go. And this one moment will become eternity. And there will be so much love that your whole being will be poured into it. But if you know the beloved is going to live, there is no hurry. You can fight and you can postpone the loving for later on. If life is eternal, if the body is immortal, you cannot love.

Hindus have a beautiful myth. They say in heaven where Indra rules -- Indra is the king of heaven -- there is no love. There are beautiful girls, more beautiful than on the earth, and deities. They have sex but there is no love because they are immortal.

So it is recorded in one of the Indian stories that Urvashi, the chief of the heavenly girls, asked permission of Indra to move to earth for a few days to love a man. "What nonsense!: Indra said. "You can love here! And you will not find such beautiful persons on the earth." Urvashi said, "They are beautiful but they are immortal, so there is no charm. They are really dead."

They are really dead because there is no death to make them alive. They will always be there. They cannot die, so how can they be alive? That aliveness exists against death. A man is alive because death is there constantly, fighting. Against the background of death life exists.

So Urvashi said, "Give me permission to move to the earth. I want to love someone." Permission was given so she came down to earth and fell in love with Pururuwa, a young man.

But there was a condition from Indra. Indra made the condition that she could go to the earth, she could love someone, but she must tell the man who loved her not to ask anything about who she was. This is difficult for love because love is curious. Love wants to know everything about the beloved, everything. The whole unknown has to be made known. The whole mystery has to be entered and penetrated. So Indra cunningly made a condition which Urvashi didn't understand the craftiness of. So she said, "Okay. I will tell my lover not to be curious about me, not to ask who I am. And if he asks, immediately I will leave him, I will come back." And she said to Pururuwa, "Don't ever ask anything about me, who I am. The moment you ask I will have to leave earth."

But love is curious. Because of this Pururuwa must have become more curious about who she was. He could not sleep. He would go on looking at Urvashi. Who is she? Such a beautiful woman, made of dreamy stuff, doesn't look earthly, doesn't look substantial. Perhaps she comes from somewhere else, some unknown dimension. He became more and more curious. But he also became more and more afraid, because she might leave. He became so afraid that in the night when he went to sleep he would take a fragment of her saree in his hand because he was not confident about himself. Any moment he could ask, the question was always there. Even in his sleep he could ask. And Urvashi said that even in sleep he could not ask about her. So he slept with a part of her saree in his hand.

But one night he couldn't contain himself -- and he thought that now she loved him so much that she would not leave. So he asked. And Urvashi had to disappear -- only a fragment of her saree remained in Pururuwa's hand. And it is said that he is still searching for her.

In heaven there cannot be love because there is no life really. Life exists here on earth, where death exists. Whenever you make anything secure, life disappears. Remain insecure, that is the very quality of life itself. Nothing can be done about it. And it is beautiful!

Just think if your body was immortal -- it would be ugly. You will start finding ways and means of committing suicide. And if it is impossible, against the law, you will suffer so much you cannot even imagine. Immortality is a very long thing. Now in the West they go on thinking about euthanasia because people are now living longer. So a person who reaches the age of a hundred wants the right to kill himself. And really, the right will have to be given. We made it a law not to commit suicide when life was very short. Really in Buddha's age to be forty or fifty was much. The average life was just about twenty. In India, just two decades ago the average life was twenty-three. Now in Sweden the average life is eighty-three. So people can very easily live to be a hundred and fifty. In Soviet Russia there are fifteen hundred people who have reached the mark of a hundred and fifty. Now if they say they have the right to kill themselves, because now it is too much, we will have to give them the right. It cannot be denied them. Sooner or later suicide will be one of the birth rights. You cannot deny it if a person wants to die -- not for any reason, just because now life has no meaning. It has been too long already. A person living at a hundred doesn't feel like living. Not that he is frustrated, not that there is no food. Everything is there, but life has no meaning.

So think of immortality. Life will be totally meaningless. The meaning comes with death. Love has meaning because love can be lost. Then it throbs, vibrates, pulsates. It can be lost! You cannot be certain about it! You cannot think anything about it for tomorrow because it may not be there. You have to love the lover and the beloved with the view that tomorrow may never be there at all. Then love becomes intense.

So first, withdraw your efforts to create a secure life. Just by withdrawing, your walls around you will fall. For the first time you will feel rains coming to you directly, the wind blowing at you directly, the sun rising to you directly. You will be under the open sky. It is beautiful. And if it looks horrible to you it is only because you have become accustomed to living in a prison. You will have to get accustomed to this new freedom. This freedom will make you more alive, more flowing, more open, more rich, more radiant. But the more radiant you are, the higher the peak of your aliveness, the deeper will be the death near you. Just near. You can rise only against death, the valley of death. The peak of life and the valley of death are always near and in proportion.

That's why I always say that Nietzsche's dictum is to be followed. It is a very religious dictum. Nietzsche says, "Live dangerously." Not that you have to seek danger positively, there is no need to seek danger positively. Don't create protections. Don't create walls around you. Live naturally, and that will be dangerous, dangerous enough. There is no need to seek any danger.

Then you can do this technique. FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. Then it is very easy. If walls are not there, you will already be feeling yourself pervading everywhere. Then there is no point at where you end. You simply begin in the heart and end nowhere. You have a center and no periphery. The periphery goes on expanding -- on and on. The whole space is surrounded by it. Stars move in it. Earths are born and dissolve. Planets arise and set. The whole cosmos becomes your periphery. In this vastness where will your ego be? In this vastness where will your suffering be? In this vastness where will your mean mind be? The mediocre mind, where will it be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can exist only in a narrow field. It can exist only when it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. The encapsulation is the problem. Live dangerously and be ready to live in insecurity.

And the beauty is that even if you decide not to live in insecurity, you will! You cannot do anything!

I have heard about a king. He was very afraid of death....

Kings are more afraid. They are more afraid because they have exploited so many people; they have pushed, crushed; they have played many political games on so many people. They have made many enemies. A real king has no friend. He cannot have. Because the closest friend is also an enemy, just waiting for an opportunity to kill him, to be in his place. A man in power cannot have any friends. A Hitler, a Stalin, a Nixon, they cannot have friends. They just have enemies who are parading around them as friends and just waiting for the right chance to push them aside from the throne. Whenever they get the chance they do everything. Just a moment ago they were friendly, but their friendliness is a strategy. Their friendliness is a tactic. A man who is in power cannot have friends. So Lao Tzu says, "If you want friends, don't be in power." Then the whole world will be friendly to you. If you are in power, then you are your only friend, everyone is your enemy.

.... So the king was very afraid. He was very scared of death, it was all around. He was haunted by the idea that everyone around him was going to kill him. He couldn't sleep. So he asked his wise men, his counsellors, what to do. They told him to make a palace with only one door. At the door he should put seven rings of military men: the first watching the palace, the second watching the first, the third ring watching the second. With only one door no one could enter and the king would be safe.

The king built the palace with only one door and with seven rings of soldiers watching each other. The news spread all over and another king from a nearby state came to see it. He was also afraid. News had reached him that his neighbor had built such a secure palace that it was impossible to kill him. He came to visit his neighbor and together they appreciated very much the idea of only one door and every safety; no danger.

While they were looking at the door a beggar just sitting at the corner of the street started laughing. So the king, the owner of the palace, asked the beggar, "Why are you laughing?" The beggar replied, "I am laughing because you have made one error. You should go inside and close, seal this door also. This door is dangerous, someone can enter it. A door means that somebody can enter. So you do one thing: go inside and let this door be also closed. Then you will be really safe because death cannot enter." But the king said, "That means I would be already dead if I closed this door also." The beggar said, "You are already ninety-nine per cent dead -- you are only as much alive as this door. That is the danger, this much alive. Leave this aliveness also."

Everyone in his own way is creating a palace around him where nothing can enter and he can remain in peace. But then you are already dead. And peace happens only to those who are alive; peace is not a dead thing. Remain alive, live dangerously, live a vulnerable life, open, so that everything can happen to you. And let everything happen to you. The more that happens to you the richer you will be.

Then you can practise this technique. This technique is then very easy, you will not even need to practise it. Just think, and you will be pervading the whole space.