Meditation Technique No. 25

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

 Meditation Technique No. 25 

 

25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop. 

All these techniques are concerned with stopping in the middle. George Gurdjieff made these techniques very well-known in the West, but he was not aware of VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA. He learned these techniques in Tibet from Buddhist lamas. He worked on these techniques in the West, and many, many seekers came to realize the center through these techniques. He called them stop exercises, but the source of these exercises is VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA.

Buddhists learned from VIGYANA BHAIRAVA. Sufis also have such exercises; they are also borrowed from VIGYANA BHAIRAVA. Basically, this is the source book of all techniques which are known all over the world.

Gurdjieff used it in a very simple way. For example, he would tell his students to dance. A group would be dancing -- a group of, say, twenty people would be dancing -- and suddenly he would say, "Stop!" And the moment Gurdjieff would say stop, they would have to stop totally. Wherever the pause would fall, they would have to stop then and there. No change could be made, no adjustment could be made. If one of your feet was above the earth and you were just standing on one foot, you would have to remain that way. If you fell, that was another thing, but you were not to cooperate with the fall. If your eyes were opened, they had to remain opened. Now you could not close them. If they closed by themselves, that was another thing. But as far as you were concerned, consciously you had stopped, you had become just like a stone statue.

Miracles happened because in activity, in dance, in movement, when suddenly you stop, a gap happens. This sudden stoppage of all activity divides you into two: your body and you. Your body and you were in movement. Suddenly you stop. The body has the tendency to move. It was in movement, so there is momentum; you were dancing, and there is momentum. The body is not ready for this sudden stop. Suddenly you feel that the body has the impulse to do something, but you have stopped. A gap comes into existence. You feel your body as something distant, far away, with the impulse to move, with momentum for activity. And because you have stopped and you are not cooperating with the body and its activity and its impulse, its momentum, you become separate from it.

But you can deceive yourself. A slight cooperation and the gap will not happen. For example, you feel uncomfortable, but the teacher has said, "Stop!" You have heard the word, but still you make yourself comfortable and then you stop. Then nothing will happen. Then you have deceived yourself, not the teacher, because you missed the point. The whole point of the technique is missed. Suddenly, when you hear the word "Stop!" instantly you have to stop, not doing anything.

Perhaps the posture was inconvenient, you were afraid you might fall down, you might break a bone. But whatsoever happens, now it is not your concern. If you have any concern, you will deceive yourself. This suddenly becoming dead creates a gap. The stopping is at the body and the stopper is the center; the circumference and the center are separate. In that sudden stopping you can feel yourself for the first time; you can feel the center. Gurdjieff used this technique to help many.

This technique has many dimensions; it can be used in many ways. But first try to understand the mechanism. The mechanism is simple. You are in activity, and when you are in activity you forget yourself completely; the activity becomes the center of your attention.

Someone has died, and you are weeping and crying, and tears are falling down. You have forgotten yourself completely. The one who has died has become the center, and around that center this activity is happening -- your weeping, your crying, your sadness, your tears. If I suddenly say to you, "Stop!" and you stop yourself completely, you will be totally taken away from your body and the realm of activity. Whenever you are in activity, you are in it, deeply absorbed in it. Sudden stoppage throws you off balance; it throws you out of activity. This being thrown leads you to the center.

Ordinarily, what are we doing? From one activity we move to another. We go on from one activity to another, from A to B and from B to C. In the morning, the moment you are awake activity has started. Now you will be active the whole day. You will change to many activities, but you will not be inactive for a single moment. How to be inactive? It is difficult. And if you try to be inactive, your effort to be inactive will become an activity.

There are many who are trying to be inactive. They sit in a Buddha posture and they try to be inactive. But how can you try to be inactive? The very effort is again an activity. So you can convert inactivity also into activity. You can force yourself to be quiet, still, but that forcing is an activity of the mind. That is why so many try to go into meditation but never reach anywhere -- because their meditation is again an activity. They can change... If you were singing an ordinary song, you can now change to a BHAJAN, to a devotional song. You can sing slow now, but both are activities. You are running, you are walking, you are reading -- these are activities. You can pray -- that too is an activity. You move from one activity to another.

And with the last thing in the night, when you are falling into sleep, you are still active; the activity has not stopped. That is why dreams happen, because the activity goes on. You have fallen asleep, but the activity continues. In the subconscious you are still active -- doing things, possessing things, losing things, moving. Dreaming means you have fallen asleep because of exertion, but the activity is still there continuously.

Only sometimes, for a few moments -- and these have become more and more rare for the modern man -- only for a few moments dreaming stops and you are totally asleep. But then that inactivity is unconscious. You are not conscious, you are fast asleep. The activity has ceased; now there is no circumference, now you are at the center -- but totally exhausted, totally dead, unconscious.

That is why Hindus have always been saying that SUSHUPTI -- dreamless sleep -- and SAMADHI -- the ultimate ecstasy -- are similar, the same, with only one difference. But the difference is great: the difference is of awareness. In sushupti, in dreamless sleep, you are at the center of your being -- but unaware. In samadhi, in the ultimate ecstasy, in the ultimate state of meditation, also you are at the center -- but aware. That is the difference, but it is a great difference, because if you are unaware, even if you are at the center it is meaningless. It refreshes you, it makes you more alive again, it gives you vitality -- in the morning you feel fresh and blissful -- but if you are unaware, even if you are at the center your life remains the same.

In samadhi you enter yourself fully conscious, fully alert. And once you are at the center fully alert, you will never be the same again. Now you will know who you are. Now you will know that your possessions, your actions are just on the periphery; they are just the ripples, not your nature.

The mechanism of these techniques of stopping is to throw you suddenly into inactivity. The point must come suddenly, because if you try to be inactive you will turn it into activity. So do not try, and suddenly be inactive. That is the meaning of "Stop!" You are running and I say, "Stop!" Do not try, just stop! If you try, you will miss the point. For example, you are sitting here. If I say stop, then stop immediately then and there; not a single moment is to be missed. If you try and adjust, and you settle down and then say, "Okay, now I will stop," you have missed the point. SUDDENLY is the base, so do not make any effort to stop -- just stop!

You can try it anywhere. You are taking your bath -- suddenly order yourself to "Stop!" and stop. Even if it is only for a single moment, you will feel a different phenomenon happening within you. You are thrown to the center and suddenly everything stops -- not only the body. When the body stops totally, your mind stops also. When you say, "Stop!" do not breathe then. Let everything stop... no breathing, no body movement. For a single moment remain in this stop, and you will feel you have penetrated suddenly, at rocket speed, to the center. And even a glimpse is miraculous, revolutionary. It changes you, and by and by you can have more clear glimpses of the center. That is why inactivity is not to be practiced. Use it suddenly, when you are unaware.

So a master can be helpful. This is a group method. Gurdjieff used it as a group method because if you say "Stop!" you can deceive yourself easily. First you make yourself comfortable and then you say "Stop!" Or even if consciously you have not made any preparation for it, unconsciously you may be prepared. Then you may say, "Now I can stop." If it is done by the mind, if there is a planning behind it, it is useless; then the technique will not be of any help. So in a group it is good. A master is working with you, and he says, "Stop!" He will find moments when you are in a very inconvenient posture, and then a flash happens, a sudden lightning.

Activity can be practiced; inactivity cannot be practiced -- and if you practice it, it becomes just another activity. You can be inactive only suddenly. Sometimes it happens that you are driving a car, and suddenly you feel there is going to be an accident, that another car has reached near yours and in just a moment there will be a crash. Suddenly your mind stops, breathing stops, everything stops. So many times in such accidents one is thrown to the center. But you may miss the point even in an accident.

I was in a car and there was an accident, and one of the most beautiful accidents possible. Three persons were with me, but they missed the whole thing completely. It could have been a revolution in their lives, but they missed. The car went down into a river bed, into a dry river bed, from a bridge. The car was totally upside down, and the three persons with me began crying; they began weeping.

One woman was there and she was crying. She was just beside me and she was crying, "I am dead! I am dead!"

I told her, "If you were dead, then no one would be here to say this."

But she was trembling, and she said, "I am dead! What will happen to my children?" Even after we carried her out of the car she was trembling and saying the same thing: "What will happen to my children? I am dead!" It took at least half an hour for her to calm down.

She missed the point. It was such a beautiful thing: suddenly she could have stopped everything. And one couldn't do anything. The car was falling from the bridge, so her activity was not needed at all. One couldn't do anything. But still the mind can create activity. She started thinking about her children, and then she began crying, "I am dead!" A subtle moment was missed. In dangerous situations the mind stops automatically. Why? Because mind is a mechanism and it can work with only routine things -- that which it has been trained to do.

You cannot train your mind for accidents, otherwise they would not be called accidents. If you are ready, if you have passed through rehearsals, then they are not accidents. `Accident' means that the mind is not ready to do anything. The thing is so sudden, it leaps from the unknown -- mind cannot do anything. It is not ready, it is not trained for it. It is bound to stop unless you start something else, unless you start something for which you are trained.

This woman who was crying about her children was not at all attentive to what was happening. She was not even aware that she was alive. The present moment was not in her focus of consciousness. She had moved away from the situation to her children, to death and to other things. She had escaped. As far as her attention was concerned, she had escaped from the situation completely.

But as far as the situation was concerned, nothing could be done; one could only be aware. Whatsoever was happening was happening. One could only be aware. As far as the present moment is concerned, in an accident what can you do? It is already beyond you, and the mind is not prepared for it. The mind cannot function, so the mind stops.

That is why dangers have a secret appeal, an intrinsic appeal: they are meditative moments. If you race a car and it goes beyond ninety miles per hour, and then beyond one hundred and then beyond one hundred and ten and beyond one hundred and twenty, then a situation comes in which anything can happen and you will not be able to do anything. Now really, the car is beyond control, going beyond control. Suddenly the mind cannot function; it is not ready for it. That is the thrill of speed -- because a silence creeps in, you are thrown to the center.

These techniques help you to move to the center without any accidents, without any danger. But remember, you cannot practice them. When I say you cannot practice them, what do I mean? In a way you can practice them: suddenly you can stop. But the stopping must be sudden, you must not be prepared for it. You should not think about it and plan it and say that "At twelve o'clock I will stop." Let the unknown happen to you when you are unprepared. Move in the unknown, the uncharted, without any knowledge. This is one technique: JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO SOMETHING, STOP. This is one dimension.

For example, you have the impulse to sneeze. You are feeling that the impulse is coming, you are feeling the sneeze coming. Now a moment comes when you cannot do anything -- it will happen. But in the very beginning of the feeling, when you feel the sensation of a sneeze coming to you, the moment you become aware, stop! What can you do? Can you stop the sneeze? If you try to stop the sneeze, the sneeze will come sooner, because stopping will make your mind more conscious about it and you will feel the sensation more. You will become more sensitive, your total attention will be there, and that attention will help the sneeze to come out sooner. It will become unbearable. You cannot stop the sneeze directly, but you can stop yourself.

What can you do? You feel the sensation that the sneeze is coming: stop! Do not try to stop the sneeze, just you yourself stop. Do not do anything. Remain completely unmoving, with not even your breath going in or coming out. For a moment, stop, and you will feel that the impulse has gone back, that it has dropped. And in this dropping of the impulse a subtle energy is released which is used in going toward the center, because in a sneeze you are throwing some energy out -- in any impulse.

`Impulse' means you are burdened with some energy which you cannot use and cannot absorb. It wants to move out, it wants to be thrown out; you want a relief. That is why after you sneeze you will feel good, a subtle well-being. Nothing has happened, you have simply released some energy which was superfluous, a burden. Now it is no more there; you are relieved of it. Then you feel a subtle relaxation inside.

That is why physiologists, Pavlov, B. F. Skinner and others, say sex is also like sneezing. They say physiologically there is no difference, sex is just like sneezing. You are overburdened with energy; you want to throw it out. Once it is thrown out your mechanism relaxes, you become unburdened. Then you feel good. That good feeling is just a release, according to physiologists, and as far as physiology goes they are right. Whenever you have some impulse, JUST AS YOU HAVE THE IMPULSE TO DO SOMETHING, STOP! Not only with a physiological impulse, any impulse can be used.

For example, you were going to drink a glass of water. You have touched the water, the glass -- suddenly stop. Let the hand be there, let the desire to drink, the thirst be there inside, but you stop completely. The glass is outside, the thirst is inside; the hand is on the glass, the eyes are on the glass -- stop suddenly. No breathing, no movement, as if you have become dead. The very impulse, the thirst, will release energy, and that energy is used for going to the center. You will be thrown to the center. Why? Because any impulse is a movement outward. Remember, `impulse' means energy moving outward.

Remember another thing: energy is always in movement -- either going out or coming in. Energy can never be static. These are the laws. If you understand the laws, then the mechanism of the technique will be easy. Energy is always in movement. Either it is moving out or moving in; energy can never be static. If it is static it is not energy, and there is nothing which is not energy, so everything is moving somewhere.

When an impulse, any impulse, comes to you, it means energy is moving out. That is why your hand goes to the glass -- you have moved out. A desire has come to do something. All activities are movements toward that which is without from that which is within -- movements from within to without.

When you stop suddenly, the energy cannot be static in you. You have become static, but the energy cannot be static in you, and the mechanism through which it was moving out is not dead, it has stopped. So what can the energy do? The energy cannot do anything other than move inward. Energy cannot be static. It was going out. You have stopped, the mechanism has stopped, but the mechanism which can lead it toward the center is there. This energy will move inward.

You are converting your energy and changing its dimension every moment without knowing it. You are angry, and you feel to beat someone or to destroy something or to do something violent -- try this. Take someone -- your friend, your wife, your child, anyone -- and hug, kiss or embrace him or her. You were angry, you were going to destroy something; you wanted to do some violent thing. Your mind was destructive; the energy was moving toward violence. Love someone immediately.

In the beginning you may feel that this is just like acting. You will wonder, "How can I love? How can I love in this moment? I am angry!" You do not know the mechanism. In this moment you can love deeply because the energy has been aroused, it has arisen. It has come to a point where it wants to be expressed, and energy needs movement. If you just start loving someone, the same energy will move into love and you will feel a rush of energy that you may not have ever felt.

There are persons who cannot go into love unless they are angry, unless they are violent. There are people who can only go into deep love when their energy is moving violently. You may not have observed, but it happens daily: couples will fight before they make love. Wives and husbands fight, become angry, become violent, and then they make love, and they may not have understood what was happening. Then it becomes a mechanical habit -- whenever they fight they will love. And the day they do not fight they will not be able to love.

Particularly in Indian villages, where wives are still beaten, if a certain husband stops beating his wife it is known that now he has stopped loving her. And even wives understand that if the husband has become totally nonviolent toward them, it means the love has stopped. He is not fighting, so it means he is not loving.

Why? Why is fight so associated with love? It is associated because the same energy can move in different dimensions. You may call it "love" or "hate." They look opposite, but they are not so opposite, because the same energy is moving. So a person who becomes incapable of hate becomes incapable of love, according to your definitions of love. A person who cannot be violently angry becomes incapable of the love which you know. He may be capable of a different quality of love, but that is not your love. A Buddha loves, but that love is totally different. That is why Buddha calls it compassion; he never calls it love. It is more like compassion, less like your love, because your love implies hate, anger, violence.

Energy can move, can change directions. It can become hate, it can become love -- the same energy. And the same energy can move inward also, so whenever you have the impulse to do something, Stop! This is not suppression. You are not suppressing anything, you are just playing with energy -- just playing with energy and knowing the workings of it, how it works inwardly. But remember, the impulse must be real and authentic; otherwise nothing will happen.

For example, when there is no thirst you move to a glass of water and then suddenly you stop. Nothing will happen because there is nothing to happen -- the energy was not moving. You were feeling love toward your wife, your husband, your friend. You wanted to hug, to kiss -- stop! But the impulse must be there authentically. If the impulse is not there and you were just going to console someone, to kiss because the kiss is expected, and then you stop, then nothing will happen because nothing was moving inside.

So first remember, the impulse must be authentic, real. Only with a real impulse does energy move, and when a real impulse is suddenly stopped the energy becomes suspended. With no dimension from where to move out, it turns in. It has to move, it cannot remain there.

But we are so false that nothing seems real. You eat your meal because of the clock, because of the time, not because of hunger. So if you stop, nothing will happen because there was really no hunger behind it, no impulse. No energy was moving there. That is why if you take your meal at one o'clock, at one o'clock you will feel the hunger. But the hunger is false; it is just a mechanical habit, just a dead habit. Your body is not hungry. If you do not eat you will feel something is missing, but if you can remain for one hour without eating you will forget it, the hunger will have subsided.

A real hunger will grow more; it is bound to grow. If your hunger was real, then at two you will feel more hungry. If the hunger was false, then at two you will have completely forgotten. Really, there will be no hunger at two. Even if you want to eat, now you will not feel hungry. The hunger was just a false, mechanical feeling. No energy was moving, it was just the mind saying to you that now this is the time to eat, so eat.

If you are feeling sleepy, stop! But the feeling must be real; that is the problem. And that is the problem for us now. It was not so in Shiva's time. When the VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA was preached for the first time, it was not so. Man was authentic, humanity was real, pure, nothing was false about it. With us everything is false. You pretend that you love; you pretend that you are angry. You go on pretending and then you forget yourself whether you are pretending or whether anything real is left. You never say what is in you, you never express it. You go on expressing what is not there. Watch yourself and you will come to know it.

You say something, but you feel something else. Really, you wanted to say quite the opposite, but if you say the real thing you will become totally unfit -- because the whole society is false, and in a false society you can exist only as a false person. The more adjusted, the more false, because if you want to be real you will feel a maladjustment.

That is why renunciation came into existence, because of a false society. Buddha had to leave not because it had any positive meaning, but only a negative meaning -- because with a false society you cannot be real. Or at every moment you are in a constant struggle, unnecessarily and dissipating energy. So leave the unreal, leave the false, so that you can be real. That was the basic reason for all renunciation.

But watch yourself, how unreal you are. Watch the double mind. You are saying something, but you are feeling quite the contrary. Simultaneously, you are saying one thing in your mind and something else without. Thus, if you stop anything which is not real, the technique will not help. So find something authentic about yourself and try to stop that. Not everything has become false, many things are still real. Fortunately, everyone is real sometimes; in some moment everyone is real. Then stop it.

You are feeling angry, and you feel it is real. You are going to destroy something, beat your child, or do something: Stop! But do not stop with a consideration. Do not say, "Anger is bad, so I should stop" -- no ! Do not say, "This is not going to help the child, so I should stop." No mental consideration is needed, because if you consider, then the energy has moved into consideration. This is an inner mechanism.

If you say, "I should not beat my child because it is not going to do any good to him, and this is not good for me also. This is useless and this never helps," the same energy which was going to become anger has become consideration. Now you have considered the whole thing, and the energy has subsided. It has moved into consideration, into thinking. Then you stop, but then there is no energy to move in. When you feel angry, do not consider it, do not think about it being good or bad; do not think at all. Suddenly remember the technique and stop!

Anger is pure energy... nothing bad, nothing good. It may become good, it may become bad -- that will depend on the result, not on the energy. It can become bad if it goes out and destroys something, if it becomes destructive. It may become a beautiful ecstasy if it moves within and throws you to the center; it may become a flower. Energy is simply energy -- pure, innocent, neutral. Do not consider it. You were going to do something -- do not think, simply stop and then remain stopped. In that remaining you will have a glimpse of the inner center. You will forget the periphery and the center will come into your vision.

Just as you have the impulse to do something, Stop! Try it. Remember three things... One, try it only when a real impulse is there. Secondly, do not think about stopping, just stop. And thirdly, wait! When you have stopped, no breathing, no movement -- wait and see what happens. Do not try. When I say to wait, I mean do not try now to think about the inner center. Then you will again miss. Do not think of the self, of the atman. Do not think that now the glimpse is there, now the glimpse is coming. Do not think, just wait. Let the impulse, the energy move by itself. If you start thinking about the brahman and the atman and the center, the energy will have moved into this thinking.

You can waste this inner energy very simply. Just a thought will be enough to give it a direction; then you will go on thinking. When I say stop, it means stop totally, fully. Nothing is moving, as if the whole time has stopped. There is no movement -- simply you are! In that simple existence, suddenly the center explodes. 

Introducition to Meditation TechniqueNo.25,26,27

      Introduction to Meditation
Technique No. 25 26, 27

25. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop.

 26.  When some desire comes, consider it. then, suddenly, quit it.

 27. Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole.Life has two balances: one is of being and the other of doing. Your being is your nature. It is with you always; you have not to do anything to get it. It is already the case, you are it. It is not that you possess it, not even that a distance exists between you and it -- you are it. You are your being. Doing is an achievement. Whatsoever you do is not already the case. If you do it, it will happen; if you do not do it, it will not happen. All that is not already the case is not your being.

To exist, to survive, you have to do much. And then, by and by, your activity becomes a barrier to knowing your being. Your activity is your circumference -- you live on it, you cannot live without it. But it is only the circumference; it is not you, it is not the center. Whatsoever you have is the achievement of your doing; having is the result of doing. But the center is surrounded, engulfed by your doing and your having.

The first thing to note before we proceed into these techniques is that whatsoever you have is not your being, and whatsoever you do or can do is not your being. Your being precedes all doing. Your being precedes all your possessions, all your having. But the mind is constantly involved in doing and having. Beyond mind or below mind exists your being. How to penetrate into that center is what religions have been seeking. This is what has always been the search of all those who are interested in knowing the basic reality of human existence, the ultimate core, the substance of your being. Unless you understand this division between the circumference and the center, you will not be able to understand these sutras which we are going to discuss.

So note the distinction. Whatsoever you have -- money, knowledge, prestige, whatsoever you have -- it is not you. You have them, they are your possessions; you are different from them. Secondly, whatsoever you do is not your being. You may do it or you may not do it. For example, you laugh, but you may laugh or you may not laugh. You run, but you may run or you may not run. But you are and there is no choice. You cannot choose your being. You are already there.

Action is a choice. You may choose, you may not choose. You may do "this," you may not do "this." You may become a saint or you may become a thief, but your sainthood and your thiefhood are both doings. You can choose, you can change. A saint can become a thief and a thief can become a saint. But that is not your being: your being precedes your sainthood, your thiefhood.

Whenever you have to do something, you have to be there already; otherwise you cannot do it. Who runs? Who laughs? Who steals? Who becomes a saint? The being must precede all activity. The activity can be chosen, but being cannot be chosen. The being is the chooser, not the chosen, and you cannot choose the chooser -- he is already there. You cannot do anything about him. Remember this: having, doing, are with you just as a circumference is with the center, but you are the center.

This center is the self, or you may call it the ATMAN or whatsoever name you like. This center is your innermost point. How to reach it? And unless one reaches it, knows it, unless one realizes it, one cannot reach to a blissful state which is eternal, one cannot know the deathless, one cannot know the divine. Unless one realizes this center, one will remain in misery, anguish and suffering. The circumference is the hell. These techniques are the means to enter into this center. 

Meditaion Techenique No.23

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

 Meditation Technique No. 23

 

23 The eleventh technique: 
Feel an object before you. feel the absence of all other objects but this one. then leaving aside the object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize. FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU -- any object. For example, a rose flower. Anything will do. FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU. First, feel it. Seeing won't do -- feel it. You see a rose flower, but your heart is not stilled, you are not feeling it; otherwise you may start weeping and crying, otherwise you may start laughing and dancing. You are not feeling it, you are just seeing it. And even that seeing may not be complete, because you never see completely. The past, the memory, says that this is a rose, and you pass on. You have not seen it really. The mind says that this is a rose. You know everything about it, as you have known roses before, so what about this one? So you pass on. Just a glimpse is enough to revive the memory of your past experience of roses, and you pass on. Even seeing is not complete.

Remain with the rose. See it, then feel it. What to do to feel it? Smell it, touch it, let it become a deep bodily experience. First close your eyes and let the rose touch your whole face. Feel it. Put it on the eyes, let the eyes touch it; smell it. Put it against the heart, be silent with it; give a feeling to the rose. Forget everything, forget the whole world. FEEL AN OBJECT BEFORE YOU AND FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER OBJECTS, because if your mind is still thinking of other things then this feeling will not penetrate deeply. Forget all other roses, forget all other persons, forget everything. Just let this rose remain there. Only the rose, the rose, the rose! Forget everything else, let this rose envelope you completely... you are drowned in the rose.

This will be difficult because we are not so sensitive. But for women it will not be so difficult; they can feel it more easily. For men it may be a little bit more difficult, unless they have a very developed aesthetic sense, like a poet or a painter or a musician -- they can feel things. But try. Children can do it very easily.

I was teaching this method to the son of one of my friends. He could feel very easily. When I gave him a roseflower and I told him all that I have told to you, he did it, and he enjoyed it deeply. And then I asked him, "How are you feeling?" He said, "I have become a roseflower -- that is the feeling. I have become a roseflower." Children can do it very easily, but we never train them; otherwise they could be the best meditators.

Forget all other objects completely. FEEL THE ABSENCE OF ALL OTHER OBJECTS BUT THIS ONE. This is what happens in love. If you are in love with someone, you forget the whole world. If you are still remembering the world, then know well that this is not love. You have forgotten the whole world; only the beloved or the lover remains. That is why I say love is a meditation. You can use this technique also as a love technique: forget everything else.

Just a few days ago a friend came to me with his wife. His wife was complaining about a certain thing; that is why she had come. The friend said, "I have been meditating for a year and now I am deep in it. And while I meditate I have found it helpful when a peak comes to my meditation to suddenly cry, `Rajneesh, Rajneesh, Rajneesh!' It helps me, but now a strange thing has happened. When I am making love to my wife, when I come to a sexual peak, I start crying, `Rajneesh, Rajneesh, Rajneesh!' Because of this my wife is very much disturbed, and she says, `Are you making love with me, are you meditating, or what are you doing? And why does this "Rajneesh" come in?'"

The man said to me, "It is now very difficult because if I do not cry, `Rajneesh, Rajneesh!' I cannot achieve a peak. And if I cry, my wife is very much disturbed. She starts crying and weeping and making a scene. So what to do? Thus, I have brought my wife." Of course, his wife's complaint is right, because she does not like for someone else to be present between them. That is why love needs privacy -- absolute privacy. The privacy is meaningful, just to forget all else.

In Europe and America, now they are working with group sex. That is nonsense -- many couples making love in one room. It is absolute nonsense because then love can never go very deep. It will become just a sex orgy. The presence of others becomes a barrier; then it cannot be meditative.

With any object, if you can forget the whole world you are in a deep love -- with a rose or with a stone or with anything. But the condition is to feel the presence of this object and feel the absence of all else. Let this object be the only existential thing in your consciousness. It will be easy if you try with some object you are naturally in love with.

It would be difficult for you to put a stone, a rock, before you and forget the whole world. It would be difficult, but Zen masters have done it. They have rock gardens for meditation. No flowers, no trees, nothing -- just rocks and sand. And they meditate on a rock because, they say, if you can have a deep love relationship with a rock, then no man can create a barrier for you. And men are like rocks. If you can love a rock, then you can love a man, then there is no problem. Men are like rocks -- even more stony. It is difficult to break them and penetrate them.

But choose some object you naturally love, and then forget the whole world. Relish the presence, taste the presence, feel it, go deep into it and let it go deep into you. THEN, LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT... And then comes the most difficult part of this technique. You have left all other objects, and only one object has remained. You have forgotten all, only one has remained.

Now, LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING... Now leave aside the feeling that you have for this object. LEAVING ASIDE THE OBJECT-FEELING AND THE ABSENCE-FEELING -- of other objects. Now there are only two things; everything else is absent. Now leave that absence also. Only this rose, this face, this woman, this man, this rock, is present. Leave this also, and leave the feeling as well. Suddenly you fall into an absolute vacuum and nothing remains. And Shiva says, REALIZE. Realize this vacuum, this nothingness. This is your nature, this is pure being.

It will be difficult to approach nothingness directly -- very difficult and arduous. So it is easy to pass through one object as a vehicle. First put one object in the mind, and feel it so totally that you need not remember anything else. Your whole consciousness is filled with this one object. Then leave this also, forget this also.

You fall into an abyss. Now nothing remains, no object. Only your subjectivity is there -- pure, uncontaminated, unoccupied. This pure being, this pure consciousness, is your nature. But do it in steps; do not try the whole technique at once. First create an object-feeling. For a few days only do this part, do not do the whole technique.

First, for a few days or for a few weeks, just do one part -- the first part. Create an object-feeling; be filled with the object. And use one object, do not go on changing objects, because with every object you will have to make the same effort again. If you have chosen one rose flower, then go on using that rose flower every day. Be filled with it so that one day you can say, "Now I am the flower." Then the first part is fulfilled. When only the flower is there and all else is forgotten, then relish this idea for a few days. It is beautiful in itself -- very, very beautiful, vital, powerful in itself.

Just feel it for a few days. And then, when you are attuned to it and it has become easy, then you need not struggle. Then the flower comes there suddenly, the whole world is forgotten and only the flower remains.

Then try the second part: close your eyes and forget the flower also. If you have done the first, the second will not be difficult -- remember. But if you try the whole technique in one sitting, the second will be impossible -- because if you can do the first, if you can forget the whole world for one flower, you can forget the flower also for nothingness. So the second part will come, but first you have to struggle for it. But the mind is very tricky. The mind will always say to try the whole thing, and then you will not succeed. Then the mind will say, "It is not useful," or, "It is not for me." Try it in parts if you want to succeed. Let the first part be complete, and then do the second. Then the object is not there and only your consciousness remains, just like a light, a flame without anything around it.

You have a lamp and the lamp's light falls on many objects. Visualize it. In your room there are many, many objects. If you bring one lamp into the darkness of the room, all the objects are lighted. The lamp radiates light on every object so that you can see them. Now remain with an object; let there be one object. The lamp is the same, but now only one object is there in its light. Now remove that object also: now light remains without any object.

The same happens with your consciousness. You are a flame, a light; the whole world is your object. You leave the whole world, and you choose one object for your concentration. Your flame remains the same, but now it is not occupied with multi-objects, it is occupied with only one. And then drop that object also. Suddenly there is simply light -- consciousness. It is not falling on anything. This Buddha has called NIRVANA; this Mahavir has called KAIVALYA -- the total aloneness. The Upanishads have called it the experience of the BRAHMAN, or the ATMAN. Shiva says that if you can do this single technique, you will realize the supreme

Meditation TechiquesNo.22

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

 Meditation Technique No. 22

 

22 .Let attention be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having lost its present characteristics, is transformed. 
You are remembering your past -- any happening. Your childhood, your love affairs, the death of your father or mother... anything. Look at it, but do not get involved in it. Remember it as if you are remembering someone else's life. And when this happening is being filmed again, is on the screen again, be attentive, aware, a witness, remaining aloof. Your past form will be there in the film, in the story.

If you are remembering your love affair, your first love affair, you will be there with your beloved; your past form will be there with your beloved. You cannot remember otherwise. Be detached from your past form also. Look at the whole phenomenon as if someone else were loving someone else, as if the whole thing doesn't belong to you. You are just a witness, an observer.

This is a very, very basic technique. It has been used much, particularly by Buddha. There are many forms of this technique; you can find your own way of approaching this. For example, when you are just falling into sleep at night, just ready to fall into sleep, go backwards through the memories of the whole day. Do not start from the morning. Start right from where you are, just on the bed -- the last item -- and then go back. Then go back by and by, step by step, just to the first experience in the morning when you first became awake. Go back, and remember continuously that you are not getting involved.

For example, in the afternoon someone insulted you. See yourself, the form of yourself, being insulted by someone, but you remain just an observer. Do not get involved; do not get angry again. If you get angry again, then you are identified. Then you have missed the point of meditation. Do not get angry. He is not insulting you, he is insulting the form that was in the afternoon. That form has gone now.

You are just like a river flowing: the forms are flowing. In your childhood you had one form, and now you do not have that form; that form has gone. River-like, you are changing continuously. So when in the night you are meditating backwards on the happenings of the day, just remember that you are a witness -- do not get angry. Someone was praising you -- do not get elated. Just look at the whole thing as if you are looking indifferently at a film. And backwards it is very helpful, particularly for those who have any trouble with sleep.

If you have any trouble with sleep, insomnia, sleeplessness, if you find it difficult to fall into sleep, this will help deeply. Why? Because this is an unwinding of the mind. When you go back you are unwinding the mind. In the morning you start winding, and the mind becomes tangled in many things, in many places. Unfinished and incomplete, many things will remain on the mind, and there is no time to let them settle at the very moment that they happen.

So in the night go back. This is an unwinding process. And when you will be getting back to the morning when you were just on your bed, to the first thing in the morning, you will again have the same fresh mind that you had in the morning. And then you can fall asleep like a very small child.

You can use this technique of going back for your whole life also. Mahavir used this technique of going back very much. And now there is a movement in America called dianetics. They are using this method and finding it very, very useful. This movement, dianetics, says that all your diseases are just hangovers of the past. And they are right. If you can go backwards and unwind your whole life, with that unwinding many diseases will disappear completely. And this has been proven by so many successful incidents; there are so many successful cases now.

So many persons suffer from a particular disease, and nothing physiological, nothing medical helps; the disease continues. The disease seems to be psychological. What to do about it? To say to someone that his disease is psychological is no help. Rather, it may prove harmful, because no one feels good when you say his disease is psychological. What can he do then? He feels he is helpless.

This going backwards is a miraculous method. If you go back slowly -- slowly unwinding the mind to the first moment when this disease happened -- if by and by you go back to when for the first time you were attacked by this disease, if you can unwind to that moment, you will come to know that this disease is basically a complex of certain other things, certain psychological things. By going back those things will bubble up.

If you pass through that moment when the disease first attacked you, suddenly you will become aware of what psychological factors contributed to it. And you are not to do anything, you are just to be aware of those psychological factors and go on backwards. Many diseases simply disappear from you because the complex is broken. When you have become aware of the complex, then there is no need of it; you are cleaned of it, purged.

This is a deep catharsis. And if you can do it daily, you will feel a new health, a new freshness coming to you. And if we can teach children to do it daily, they will never be burdened by their past. They will not need ever to go to the past, they will be always here and now. There won't be any hang-up; nothing will be hovering over them from the past.

You can do it daily. It will give you a new insight for going backward through the whole day. The mind would like to start from the morning, but remember, then there is no unwinding. Rather, the whole thing is re-emphasized. If you start from the morning, you are doing a very wrong thing.

There are many so-called teachers in India who suggest to do it -- to reflect on the whole day -- and they always say to do it again from the morning. That is wrong and harmful, because then you are re-emphasizing the whole thing and the trap will be deepened. Never go from the morning to the evening, always go backward. Only then can you clean the whole thing, purge the whole thing. The mind would like to start from the morning because it is easy: the mind knows it and there is no problem. If you start going backward, suddenly you will feel you have jumped into the morning and you have started going forward again. Do not do that -- be aware, go back.

You can train your mind to go back through other things also. Just go back from a hundred -- 99, 98, 97... go back. Go from a hundred to one, backwards. You will feel a difficulty because the mind has a habit to go from one to hundred, never from a hundred to one.

In the same way you have to go backward with this technique. What will happen? Going backward, unwinding the mind, you are a witness. You are seeing things that happened to you, but now they are not happening to you. Now you are just an observer and they are happening on the screen of the mind.

While doing this daily, suddenly one day you will become aware during the day, while working in the market, in your office or anywhere, that you can be a witness to events that are happening just now. If you can be a witness later on, and look back at someone who had insulted you without becoming angry about it, why not right now, to what is presently happening?

Someone is insulting you: what is the difficulty? You can pull yourself aside just now and you can see that someone is insulting you, and still you are different from your body, from your mind, from that which is insulted. You can witness it. If you can be a witness to this, you will not get angry; then it is impossible. Anger is possible only when you are identified. If you are not identified, anger is impossible -- anger means identification.

This technique says, look at any happening of the past -- your form will be there. The sutra says your form, not you. You were never there. Always your form is involved; you are never involved. When you insult me, you do not insult ME. You cannot insult me, you can insult only the form. The form which I am is there just here and now for you. You can insult that form and I can detach myself from the form. That is why Hindus have always been insisting on being detached from name and form. You are neither your name nor your form. You are the consciousness who knows the form and the name, and the consciousness is different, totally different.

But it is difficult. So start with the past, then it is easy, because now, with the past there is no urgency. Someone insulted you twenty years back, so there is no urgency in it. The man may have died and everything is finished. It is just a dead affair, just dead from the past; it is easy to be aware of it. But once you can become aware there is no difficulty in doing the same with what is happening just here and now.

But to start from here and now is difficult. The problem is so urgent and it is so near that there is no space to move. It is difficult to create space and move away from the incident. That is why the sutra says to start with the past: look at your own form, detached, standing aloof and different, and be transformed through it.

You will be transformed through it because it is a deep cleaning, an unwinding. Then you can know that your body, your mind, your existence in time are not your basic reality. The substantial reality is different. Things come and go upon it without touching it in the least. You remain innocent, untouched; you remain virgin. The whole thing passes, the whole life passes: good and bad, success and failure, praise and blame -- everything passes. Disease and health, youth and old age, birth and death -- everything passes, and you are untouched by it.

But how to know this untouched reality within you? That is the purpose of this technique. Start with the past. There is a gap when you look at your past; the perspective is possible. Or look at the future. But to look at the future is difficult. Only for a few persons is observing the future not difficult -- for poets, for people with imagination who can look into the future as if they are looking at reality. But ordinarily the past is good to use; you can look into the past. For young men it may be good to look into the future. It is easier for them to look into the future because youth is future-oriented.

For old men there is no future except death. They cannot look into the future; they are afraid. That is why old men always start thinking about the past. They always go again and again into their memories, but they commit the same mistake. They start from the past toward their present state of being -- that is wrong, they should go backward.

If they can go backward many times, by and by they will feel that their whole past is washed away from them. And then a person can die without the past clinging to him. If you can die without the past clinging to you, you will die consciously; you will die fully aware. Then death will not be a death to you. Rather, it will be a meeting with the deathless.

Clean the whole consciousness of the depth of the past, and your very being will be transformed through it. Try this. This method is not very difficult, only persistent effort is needed; there is no inherent difficulty in the method. It is simple, and you can start with your day. Just tonight on your bed go backward, and you will feel very beautiful, you will feel very blissful. And then the whole day will have passed. But do not be in a hurry, pass it slowly so that nothing is missed. It is a very strange feeling, because many things will come up before your eyes. Many things you have really missed while passing through the day because you were too much engaged. But the mind goes on collecting even when you are unaware.

You were passing through a street. Someone was singing, but you might not have paid any attention. You might not have even been aware that you have heard the sound, just passing in the street. But the mind has heard and recorded it. Now that will cling; that will become a burden to you unnecessarily. So go back, but go very slowly, as if a film is being shown to you in very slow motion. Go back and see the details, and then your one day will look very, very long. It is, really, because for the mind there has been so much information, and the mind has recorded everything. Now go back.

By and by you will become capable of knowing everything that has been recorded. And once you can go back, it is just like a tape recorder: it is washed away. By the time you will reach the morning you will fall asleep, and the quality of the sleep will be different -- it will be meditative. Then again, in the morning when you feel that you have awakened, do not open your eyes immediately. Go backward into the night.

It will be difficult in the beginning. You may go a little. Some part, some fragment of a dream which you were just dreaming before the sleep was broken may come to your mind. But by and by, with gradual effort, you will be able to penetrate more and more and more, and after a three-month period you will be capable of moving backward to the point when you fell asleep. And if you can go backward deep within your sleep, your quality of sleep and waking will change completely, because then you cannot dream; dreaming will have become futile. If you can go back in the day and in the night, dreaming is not needed.

Now psychologists say that dreaming is really an unwinding. If you yourself have done it, then there is no need. All that has been hanging in the mind, all that has remained unfulfilled, incomplete, tries to complete itself in the dream.

You were passing and you have seen something -- a beautiful house -- and a subtle desire arose in you to possess it. But you were going to your office and that was no time for daydreaming, so you just passed by. You did not even notice that the mind had created a desire to possess this house. But now that desire is hanging there, suspended, and if it cannot be removed it will be difficult to sleep.

Difficulties in sleep basically mean only one thing, that your day is still hanging over you and you cannot be relieved of it. You are clinging to it. Then in the night you will see a dream that you have become the owner of this house -- now you are living in this house. The moment this dream comes to you, your mind is relieved.

So ordinarily people think that dreams are disturbances to sleep -- that is absolutely wrong. Dreams are not disturbances to your sleep. They are not disturbing your sleep, they are really helping; without them you could not sleep at all. As you are you cannot sleep without dreams, because your dreams are helping to complete things which have remained incomplete.

And there are things which cannot be completed. Your mind goes on desiring absurd desires, and they cannot be completed in reality, so what to do? Those incomplete desires go on in you, and they keep you hoping, they keep you thinking. So what to do? You have seen a beautiful woman and you were attracted to her. Now the desire has arisen to possess her. It may not be possible, the woman may not even look at you. So what to do? The dream will help you.

In a dream you can possess the woman, and then the mind is relieved. As far as the mind is concerned, there is no difference between dream and reality. What is the difference? Loving a woman in reality and loving a woman in a dream, what is the difference for the mind? There is no difference. Or this may be the difference, that the dream phenomenon may be more beautiful, because then the woman will not disturb you. It is your dream and you can do anything, and the woman will not create any problems for you. The other is absent completely, you are alone. There is no barrier, so you can do whatsoever you like.

There is no difference for the mind; mind cannot make any distinction between what is dream and what is reality. For example, if you could be put in a coma for one whole year, and you dream on and on, for one year you will not be able to feel in any way that whatsoever you are seeing is a dream. It will be real, and the dream will continue for one year.

Psychologists say that if you can put a man in a coma for a hundred years he will dream for a hundred years, not for a single moment suspecting that whatsoever he is doing is just a dream. And if he dies he will never know that his life was just a dream, that it was never real. For the mind there is no difference: reality and dream are both the same. So mind can unwind itself in dream.

If you do this technique, then there will be no need for dreams. The quality of your sleep will be changed totally, because without dreams you fall to the very bottom of your being, and without dreams you will be aware in your sleep.

That is what Krishna says in the Gita, that while everyone is deeply asleep the yogi is not, the yogi is awake. That doesn't mean that the yogi is not sleeping -- he is also sleeping, but the quality of the sleep is different. Your sleep is just like a drugged unconsciousness. A yogi's sleep is a deep relaxation with no unconsciousness. His whole body is relaxed; every fiber and cell of his whole body is relaxed, with no tension left. But he is fully aware of the whole phenomenon.

Try this technique. Start from tonight, try it, and then do it in the morning also. And when you feel that you are attuned to the technique, that you can do it, after one week try it for your whole past. Just take one day off. Go to some lonely place. It will be good if you fast -- fast and be silent. Lie down on some lonely beach or under some tree, and just move toward your past from this point: you are lying on the beach feeling the sand and the sun, and now move backward. Go on penetrating, penetrating, penetrating, and find out the last thing that you can remember.

You will be surprised. Ordinarily you cannot remember much, and you cannot pass the barrier of four or five years of age. Those who have a very good memory may go back to the age barrier of three years, but then suddenly a block comes and everything goes dark. But if you try with this technique, by and by you will break the barrier, and very easily you can come to remember the first day you were born. And that is a revelation.

Back again with your sun and beach, you will be a different man. If you make more effort, you can penetrate to the womb. And you have memories of the womb -- nine months of memories with your mother. That nine-month period is also recorded in the mind. When your mother was depressed, you have recorded it because you felt depressed. You were so connected with the mother, so united, so one, that whatsoever happened to your mother was happening to you. When she was angry, you were angry. When she was happy, you were happy. When she was praised, you felt praised. When she was ill, you felt the pain, the suffering, everything.

If you can penetrate to the womb, now you are on the right track. And then, by and by, you can penetrate more and you can remember the first moment when you entered the womb.

Only because of this remembrance, Mahavir and Buddha could say that there are past lives, rebirth. Rebirth is not really a principle, it is just a deep psychological experience. And if you can remember the first moment you entered the womb of your mother, then you can penetrate more and you can remember the death of your past life. Once you touch that point then the method is in your hands; then you can move very easily to all your past lives.

This is an experience, and the result is phenomenal, because then you know that through many, many lives you have lived the same nonsense that you are living now. You have been doing this whole nonsense so many times, repeatedly. The pattern is the same, the format is the same, only the details differ. You loved some other woman, now you love this woman. You gathered money... the coins were of one kind, now the coins are different. But the whole pattern is the same; it is repetitive.

Once you can see that for many, many lives you have lived the same nonsense, how stupid has been this whole vicious circle, suddenly you are awakened and the whole thing becomes a dream. You are thrown away from it, and now you do not want to repeat the same thing in the future.

Desire stops, because desire is nothing but the past being projected into the future. Desire is nothing but your past experience in search of another repetition again. Desire means just an old experience that you want to repeat again -- nothing else. And you cannot leave desire unless you become aware of this whole phenomenon. How can you leave it? The past is there as a great barrier, a rock-like barrier. It is upon your head; it is pushing you toward the future. Desires are created by the past and projected into the future. If you can know the past as a dream, all desires become impotent. They fall down, they just wither away -- and the future disappears. In that disappearance of past and future, you are transformed.

Deep Relaxation

Deep Relaxation (Yog Nidra) :
Learn to relax yourself completely at will !

Most of us have forgotten the art of relaxation 

Consider this :

Nomadic peoples all over Asia, journeying night and day, reach an oasis or camping place and at once throw themselves on the ground and lie there limp, apparently lifeless from head to foot. One hour of this rest refreshes them with as much new vitality and energy as a night's sleep for the average person. These wanderers are able to undertake surprisingly long journeys with very little rest.

These people have not yet forgotten the art of relaxation, the ability to completely rest at will. This art has been practiced by yogis since ancient times. They began their experimentation on this state by watching animals in deep relaxation during sleep, and especially during hibernation.
    Do you want to learn this art of deep relaxation ? 

     Let me tell you an ancient yogic method of deep relaxation (also known as Yog Nidra means the yogic sleep ) It is  strongly recommended for anybody who wants to learn meditation and is leading a very busy and demanding life to learn the art of deep relaxation. Since we all get exhausted (both physically and mentally) by the end of the day, it is very necessary for us to learn this art of deep relaxation. so that we an meditate with full vigor and enthusiasm. 

 Since we all get very tired and enervated in our daily routine, I am telling you a deep relaxation technique which is also a very powerful meditation. This technique serve the dual purpose of relaxation and meditation simultaneously. This is not only a very simple technique but  also a very effective way to completely rest our body and mind. 

 Most of us spend our day in rush hour. The minute we wake up till the minute we go to bed, our body is subjected to immense physical and mental pressure. In such condition it is natural when we go to bed, we are completely exhausted and enervated. When people say they feel like crying with sheer fatigue, they mean just that. Physically, they have reached a point where the only release for their weariness is an emotional purge. Afterwards, of course, they will end up completely exhausted, for nothing eats up one's energy like letting the emotions have full play. 

We keep loosing energy every moment 

Most of us are spendthrift of our energy resources. We dissipate them twenty-four hours a day. Just watch yourself and the people around you. Can you sit still, quiet and at ease, for ten or even five minutes? Or do you fidget, shift about, cross and re-cross your legs, drum with your fingers on the arm of your chair, rub your neck, bite your lips? In a room full of people, is there even one who is without nervous habits? If so, he is a happy exception. Nor mind you, does this apply to "busy-busy" persons alone. 

it is perfectly possible to spend a quiet day with nothing in the least urgent to do and still eat one's self up with tension. In fact boredom itself is an enemy in this respect. Think how many people with easy, routine jobs complain of being "dead tired" by the end of the day. And who of us hasn't said, at one time or another," I haven't done a thing all day, but I'm beat."?

What is NOT relaxation ?

Before we go on to a discussion of the actual techniques of Deep Relaxation, let us consider for a moment what relaxation is not. In the first place, it is not play. Nor is it a change of pace or of occupation. Play and change are fine, of course. They do help, they are a step in the right direction. But they are not the real thing.

Thus the tired businessman out for a day of golf, the home gardener, the knitter, the Sunday painter are all people who indulge in pleasant hobbies in order to get away from other routines, but they are merely substituting one form of activities for another. The same holds true for the avid reader, the Hi-Fi enthusiast, the TV fan. Each finds a degree of respite in doing what he enjoys, but each remains occupied. The mind keeps ticking away, the muscles remain at work. Even listening to music with the eyes closed requires a certain expenditure of energy! Very definitely, recreation cannot be considered true, complete relaxation.  Understand what is true relaxation 

The great art of relaxation is within the reach of all. It is better to understand it in detail. We use two kind of energy in our daily life - physical and mental. Overuse of physical energy results in exhaustion of physical body whereas use of mental energy results in an exhausted mind which specifically means exhaustion of our nervous system. In order to restore our vigor and replenish your energy , we need a relaxation exercise that helps us to relax us completely i.e. both mentally as well as physically.

A relaxation technique that that relaxes each and every muscle and every nerve of our body is Shava Asana ('Shuv 'Aa'Sun , Shuv sounds like 'love')

The Sanskrit meaning of Shavasan is Corpse Pose. It is not related to Death, only to hibernation, which has to do with the prolongation of life. It is an immense powerful technique for relaxing body and mind. This deep relaxation technique has far deeper effect than those of sleep. Moreover a very important meditation technique 'Death Meditation' is also based on it. This technique will relax you so deeply and so completely that it is impossible to sketch in words, the kind of vigour and energy you will received while doing it. So let us start learning Deep Relaxation by familiarizing ourselves with the important instructions for Deep

14th Meditation technique

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra :
 14th Meditation technique 
14. Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. in such be transformed.

     For this sutra, for this technique of meditation, one has to close his eyes and visualize his spinal column, his backbone. It is good to look up in some physiology book the structure of the body, or to go to some medical college or hospital and look at the structure of the body. Then close your eyes and visualize your backbone. Let the backbone be straight, erect. Visualize it, see it, and just in the middle of it visualize a nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, running in the center of your spinal column.
   IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. If you can, concentrate on the spinal column, and then on a thread in the middle of it -- on a very delicate nerve like a lotus thread running through it. Concentrate on it, and this very concentration throws you to your center. Why? The spinal column is the base of your whole body structure. Everything is joined to it. Really, your brain is nothing but one pole of your spinal column. Physiologists say it is nothing but a spinal column growth; your brain is really a growth of your spinal column. Your spine is connected with your whole body -- everything is connected to it. That is why it is called the spine, the base. 
    In this spine there is really a thread-like thing, but physiology will not say anything about it because it is not material. In this spine, just in the middle, there is a silver cord -- a very delicate nerve. It is not really a nerve in the physiological sense. You cannot operate and find it; it will not be found there. But in deep meditation it is seen. It is there; it is non-material. It is energy, not matter. And really, that energy cord in your spinal column is your life.
    Through that you are related to the invisible existence, and through that also you are related to the visible. That is the bridge between the invisible and the visible. Through that thread you are related to the body, and through that thread also you are related to your soul. First, visualize the spine. At first you will feel very strange, you will be able to visualize it, but as an imagination. And if you go on endeavoring, then it will not be just your imagination. You will become capable of seeing your spinal column. 
    I was working with a seeker on this technique. I gave him a picture of the body structure to concentrate upon so that he would begin to feel how the spinal column can be visualized inside. Then he started. Within a week he came and said, "This is very strange. I tried to see the picture you gave me, but many times that picture disappeared and I saw a different spine. It is not exactly like the picture you gave to me." So I told him, "Now you are on the right path. Forget that picture completely, and go on seeing the spine that has become visible to you."
    Man can see his own body structure from within. We have not tried it because it is very, very fearful, loathsome; because when you see your bones, blood, veins, you become afraid. So really, we have completely blocked our minds from seeing within. We see the body from without, as if someone else is looking at the body. It is just as if you go outside this room and look at it -- then you know the outer walls. Come in and look at the house -- then you can look at the inner walls. You see your body from outside as if you are somebody else seeing your body. You have not seen your body from inside. We are capable of it, but because of this fear it has become a strange thing. 
     Indian yoga books say many things about the body which have been found to be exactly right by new scientific research, and science is unable to explain this. How could they know? Surgery and knowledge of the inside of the human body are very recent developments. How could they know of all the nerves, of all the centers, of all the inner structures? They knew even about the latest findings; they have talked about them, they have worked upon them. Yoga has always been aware about all the basic, significant things in the body. But they were not dissecting bodies, so how could they know? Really, there is another way of looking at your own body -- from within.
      If you can concentrate within, suddenly you begin to see your body -- the inner lining of the body. This is good for those who are deeply body-oriented. If you feel yourself a materialist, if you feel yourself to be nothing but body, this technique will be very helpful for you. If you feel yourself to be a body, if you are a believer in Charvak or in Marx, if you believe that man is nothing but a body, this technique will be very helpful for you. Then go and see the bone structure of man. In the old tantra and yoga schools they used many bones.
     Even now a tantric will always be found with some bones, with a man's skull. Really, that is to help concentration from inside. First he concentrates on that skull, then he closes his eyes and tries to visualize his own skull. He goes on trying to see the outer skull inside, and by and by he begins to feel his own skull. His consciousness begins to be focused. That outer skull, the concentration on it and the visualization, are just helps.
     Once you are focused inside, you can move from your toes to your head. You can move inside -- and it is a great universe. Your small body is a great universe. This sutra uses the spinal column because within the spinal column there is the thread of life. This is why there is so much insistence on a straight backbone, because if the backbone is not straight you will not be capable of seeing the inner thread. It is very delicate, it is very subtle -- it is minute. It is an energy flow. So if the spinal column is straight, absolutely straight, only then can you have glimpses of that thread.
     But our spinal columns are not straight. Hindus have tried to make everyone's spinal column straight from the very childhood. Their ways of sitting, their ways of sleeping, their ways of walking were all based, basically, on a straight spinal column. If the spinal column is not straight, then it is very difficult to see the inner core. It is delicate -- and really, it is not material. It is immaterial; it is a force. When the spinal column is absolutely straight, that thread-like force is seen easily. ... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Once you can feel, concentrate and realize this thread, you will be filled with a new light. The light will be coming from your spinal column. It will spread all over your body; it may even go beyond your body. When it goes beyond, auras are seen. 
    Everyone has an aura, but ordinarily your auras are nothing but shadows with no light in them -- just dark shadows around you. And those auras reflect your every mood. When you are angry, then your auras become as if blood-filled; they become filled with a red, angry expression. When you are sad, dim, down, then your auras are filled with dark threads, as if you are just near death -- everything dead, heavy. When this spinal column thread is realized, your auras become enlightened.
    So a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Krishna, a Christ are not painted with auras just as decorations, those auras exist. Your spinal column begins to throw out light. Within, you become enlightened -- your whole body becomes a body of light -- then it penetrates the outer. So really, for a buddha, for anyone who is enlightened, there is no need to ask anyone what he is. The aura shows everything. And when someone becomes enlightened the master knows it, because the aura reveals everything. 
     I will tell you one story... Hui Neng, a Chinese master, was working under his master. When Hui Neng went to his master, the master said, "For what have you come here? There is no need to come to me." He couldn't understand. Hui Neng thought that he was not yet ready to be accepted, but the master was seeing something else. He was seeing his growing aura. He was saying this: "Even if you do not come to me, the thing is bound to happen sooner or later, anywhere. You are already in it, so there is no need to come to me." But Hui Neng said, "Do not reject me."
    So the master accepted him and told him to go just behind the monastery, in the kitchen of the monastery. It was a big monastery of five hundred monks. The master said to Hui Neng, "Just go behind the monastery and help in the kitchen, and do not come again to me. Whenever it will be needed, I will come to you." No meditation was given to Hui Neng, no scriptures to read, study or meditate upon. Nothing was taught to him, he was just thrown into the kitchen. The whole monastery was working. There were pundits, scholars, and there were meditators, and there were yogis, and the whole monastery was agog. Everyone was working and this Hui Neng was just cleaning rice and doing kitchen work. 
    Twelve years passed. Hui Neng didn't go again to the master because it was not allowed. He waited, he waited, he waited... he simply waited. He was just taken as a servant. Scholars would come, meditators would come, and no one would even pay any attention to him. And there were big scholars in the monastery. Then the master declared that his death was near, and now he wanted to appoint someone to function in his place, so he said, "Those who think they are enlightened should compose a small poem of four lines. In those four lines you should put all that you have gained. And if I approve any poems and see that the lines show that enlightenment has happened, I will choose someone as my successor."
      There was a great scholar in the monastery, and no one attempted the poem because everyone knew that he was going to win. He was a great knower of scriptures, so he composed four lines. Those four lines were just like this... the meaning of it was like this: "Mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it. Clean the dust, and you are enlightened." But even this great scholar was afraid because the master would know. He already knows who is enlightened and who is not. Though all he has written is beautiful, it is the very essence of all the scriptures -- mind is like a mirror, and dust gathers on it; remove the dust, and you are enlightened -- this was the whole gist of all the Vedas, but he knew that was all that it was. He had not known anything, so he was afraid. 
     He didn't go directly to the master, but in the night he went to the hut, to his master's hut, and wrote all the four lines on the wall without signing -- without any signature. In this way, if the master approved and said, "Okay, this is right," then he would say, "I have written them." If he said, "No! Who has written these lines?" then he would keep silent, he thought. But the master approved. In the morning the master said, "Okay!" He laughed and said, "Okay! The man who has written this is an enlightened one." So the whole monastery began to talk about it. Everyone knew who had written it. They were discussing and appreciating, and the lines were beautiful -- really beautiful. Then some monks came to the kitchen. They were drinking tea and they were talking, and Hui Neng was there serving them. He heard what had happened. 
    The moment he heard those four lines, he laughed. So someone asked, "Why are you laughing, you fool? You do not know anything; for twelve years you have been serving in the kitchen. Why are you laughing?" No one had even heard him laugh before. He was just taken as an idiot who would not even talk. So he said, "I cannot write, and I am not an enlightened one either, but these lines are wrong. So if someone comes with me, I will compose four lines. If someone comes with me, he can write it on the wall. I cannot write; I do not know writing." So someone followed him -- just as a joke.
    A crowd came there and Hui Neng said, "Write: There is no mind and there is no mirror, so where can the dust gather? One who knows this is enlightened." But the master came out and he said, "You are wrong," to Hui Neng. Hui Neng touched his feet and returned back to his kitchen. In the night when everyone was asleep, the master came to Hui Neng and said, "You are right, but I could not say so before those idiots -- and they are learned idiots. If I had said that you are appointed as my successor, they would have killed you. So escape from here! You are my successor, but do not tell it to anyone. And I knew this the day you came. Your aura was growing; that was why no meditation was given to you. There was no need.
     You were already in meditation. And these twelve years' silence -- not doing anything, not even meditation -- emptied you completely of your mind, and the aura has become full. You have become a full moon. But escape from here! Otherwise they will kill you. "You have been here for twelve years, and the light has been constantly spreading from you, but no one observed it. And they have been coming to the kitchen, everyone has been coming to the kitchen every day -- thrice, four times. Everyone passes through here; that is why I posted you in the kitchen. But no one has recognized your aura. So you escape from here." 
    When the spinal column thread is touched, seen, realized, an aura begins to grow around you. ... IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. Be filled with that light and be transformed. This is also a centering -- a centering in the spinal column. If you are body-oriented, this technique will help you. If you are not body-oriented, it is very difficult, it will be very difficult to visualize from the inside. Then to look at your body from the inside will be difficult. This sutra will be more helpful for women than for men. They are more body-oriented. They live more in the body; they feel more.
     They can visualize the body more. Women are more body-oriented than men, but for anyone who can feel the body, who feels the body, who can visualize, who can close his eyes and feel his body from within, this technique will be very helpful for him. Then visualize your spinal column, and in the middle a silver cord running through it. First it may look like imagination, but by and by you will feel that imagination has disappeared and your mind has become focused on that spinal column. And then you will see your own spine. The moment you see the inner core, suddenly you will feel an explosion of the light within you. Sometimes this can also happen without any effort.
     It happens sometimes. Again, in a deep sex act it sometimes happens. Tantra knows: in a deep sex act your whole energy becomes concentrated near the spine. Really, in a deep sex act the spine begins to discharge electricity. And sometimes, even, if you touch the spine you will get a shock. If the intercourse is very deep and very loving and long -- really, if the two lovers are just in a deep embrace, silent, non-moving, just being filled with each other, just remaining in a deep embrace -- it happens. It has happened many times that a dark room will suddenly become filled with light, and both bodies will be surrounded with a blue aura.
      Many, many such cases have happened. Even in some of your experiences it may have happened, but you may not have noticed that in a dark room, in deep love, suddenly you feel a light around both of your bodies, and that light spreads and fills the whole room. Many times it has happened that suddenly things drop from the table in the room without any visible cause. And now psychologists say that in a deep sex act, electricity is discharged. That electricity can have many effects and impacts. Things may suddenly drop, move or be broken, and even photographs have been taken in which light is visible. But that light is always concentrated around the spinal column. So sometimes, in a deep sex act also -- and tantra knows this well and has worked on it -- you may become aware, if you can look within to the thread running in the middle of the spinal column. 
     And tantra has used the sex act for this realization, but then the sex act has to be totally different, the quality has to be different. It is not something to be gotten over with; it is not something to be done for a release; it is not something to be finished hurriedly; it is not a bodily act then. Then it is a deep spiritual communion. Really, through two bodies it is a deep meeting of two innernesses, of two subjectivities, penetrating each other. So I will suggest to you to try this technique when in a deep sex act -- it will be easier. Just forget about sex. When in a deep embrace, remain inside. Forget the other person also, just go inside and visualize your spinal column.
     It will be easier, because then more energy is flowing near the spinal column, and the thread is more visible because you are silent, because your body is at rest. Love is the deepest relaxation, but we have made love also a great tension. We have made it an anxiety, a burden. In the warmth of love, filled, relaxed, close your eyes. But men ordinarily do not close their eyes. Ordinarily, women do close their eyes. That is why I said that women are more body-oriented while men are not. In a deep embrace in the act of sex, women will close their eyes. Really, they cannot love with open eyes. With closed eyes, they feel the body more from within. Close your eyes and feel your body. Relax. Concentrate on the spinal column. And this sutra says very simply, IN SUCH BE TRANSFORMED. And you will be transformed through it. 

Techniques to penetrate the inner centers

Vigyan Bhairav Tantra : "Techniques to penetrate the inner centers"
15. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all inclusive.

16. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus.

17. Unminding mind, keep in the middle -- until.

     Man is as if he is a circle without a center. His life is superficial; his life is only on the circumference. You live on the outside, you never live within. You cannot, unless a center is found. You cannot live within, really you have no within. You are without a center, you have only the without. That is why we go on talking about the within, about how to go in, how to know oneself, how to penetrate inwards, but these words do not carry any authentic meaning. You know the meaning of the words, but you cannot feel what they mean because you are never in. You have never been in.

Even when you are alone, in your mind you are in a crowd. When no one is there outside, still you are not within. You go on thinking of others; you go on moving outwards. Even while asleep you are dreaming of others, you are not within. Only in very deep sleep, when there is no dreaming, are you within; but then you become unconscious. Remember this fact: when you are conscious you are never within, and when you are within in deep sleep you become unconscious. So your whole consciousness consists of the without.  
And whenever we talk about going within, the words are understood but the meaning is not -- because the meaning is not carried by the words, the meaning comes through experience.  
Words are without meaning. When I say 'within', you understand the word -- but only the word, not the meaning. You do not know what within is, because consciously you have never been within. Your mind is constantly outgoing. You do not have any feel of what the inner means or what it is.
That is what I mean when I say that you are a circle without a center -- a circumference only. The center is there, but you drop into it only when you are not conscious. Otherwise, when you are conscious you move outwards, and because of this your life is never intense; it cannot be. It is just lukewarm. You are alive as if dead, or both simultaneously. You are deadly alive -- living a dead-like life. You are existing at the minimum -- not at the maximum peak, but at the minimum. You can say, "I am," that is all. You are not dead; that is what you mean by being alive.
 But life can never be known at the circumference. Life can be known only at the center. On the circumference only lukewarm life is possible. So really, you live a very inauthentic life, and then even death becomes inauthentic -- because one who has not really lived cannot really die. Only authentic life can become authentic death.
 Then death is beautiful: anything authentic is beautiful. Even life, if it is inauthentic, is bound to be ugly. And your life is ugly, just rotten. Nothing happens. You simply go on waiting, hoping that something will happen somewhere, someday.
 At this very moment there is just emptiness, and every moment has been like that in the past -- just empty. You are just waiting for the future, hoping that something will happen someday, just hoping. Then every moment is lost. It has not happened in the past, so it is not going to happen in the future either. It can happen only in this moment, but then you will need an intensity, a penetrating intensity. Then you will need to be rooted in the center. Then the periphery will not do. Then you will have to find your moment. Really, we never think about what we are, and whatsoever we think is just hokum.
 Once I lived with a professor on a university campus. One day he came and he was very upset, so I asked, "What is the matter?"
 He said, "I feel feverish."
 I was reading something, so I said to him, "Go to sleep. Take this blanket and rest."
He went to the bed, but after a few minutes he said, "No, I am not feverish. Really, I am angry. Someone has insulted me, and I feel much violence against him."
 So I said, "Why did you say that you are feeling feverish?"
 He said, "I couldn't acknowledge the fact that I was angry, but really I am angry.
  There is no fever." He threw off the blanket.
Then I said, "Okay, if you are angry then take this pillow. Beat it and be violent with it. Let your violence be released. And if the pillow is not enough, then I am available. You can beat me, and let this anger be thrown out."
 He laughed, but the laughter was false -- just painted on his face. It came on his face and then disappeared, it never penetrated in. It never came from within; it was just a painted smile. But the laughter, even false laughter, created a gap. He said, "Not really... I am not really angry. Someone said something before others, and I felt very much embarrassed. Really, this is the thing."
So I said to him, "You have changed your statement about your own feelings three times within half an hour. You said you were feeling feverish, then you said you were angry, and now you say that you are not angry but just embarrassed. Which one is real?"
He said, "Really, I am embarrassed."
 I said, "Which? When you said you were feverish, you were also certain about that. When you said you were angry, you were also certain about that. And you are also certain about this. Are you one person or many persons? For how long a time is this certainty going to continue?"
 So the man said, "Really, I do not know what I am feeling. What it is, I do not know. I am simply disturbed. Whether to call it anger or embarrassment or what, I do not know.
 And this is not the moment to discuss it with me." He said, "Leave me alone. You have made my situation philosophical. You are discussing what is real, what is authentic, and I am feeling very much disturbed."  
This is not only with some other person -- X, Y or Z -- it is with you. You are never certain, because certainty comes from being centered. You are not even certain about yourself. It is impossible to be certain about others when you are never certain about yourself. There is just a vagueness, a cloudiness; nothing is certain.
 Someone was here just a few days ago, and he said to me, "I am in love with someone, and I want to marry her." I looked into his eyes deeply for a few minutes without saying anything. He became restless and he said, "Why are you looking at me? I feel so awkward." I continued looking. He said, "Do you think that my love is false?" I didn't say anything, I just continued looking. He said, "Why do you feel that this marriage is not going to be good?" He said by himself, "I had not really thought it over very much, and that is why I have come to you. Really, I do not know whether I am in love or not."
 I had not said a single word. I was just looking into his eyes. But he became restless, and things which were inside began to come up, to bubble up.
 You are not certain, you cannot be certain about anything; neither about your love, nor about your hate, nor about your friendships.
 There is nothing which you can be certain about because you have no center. Without a center there is no certainty. All your feelings of certainty are false and momentary. One moment you will feel that you are certain, but the next moment the certainty will have gone because in each moment you have a different center. You do not have a permanent center, a crystallized center. Each moment is an atomic center, so each moment has its own self.
 George Gurdjieff used to say that man is a crowd. Personality is just a deception because you are not a person, you are many persons. So when one person speaks in you, that is a momentary center. The next moment there is another. With every moment, with every atomic situation, you feel certain, and you never become aware that you are just a flux -- many waves without any center. Then in the end you will feel that life has been just a wastage. It is bound to be. There is just a wastage, just a wandering -- purposeless, meaningless.
 Tantra, yoga, religion... their basic concern is how first to discover the center, how first to be an individual. They are concerned with how to find the center which persists in every situation. Then, as life goes on moving without, as the flux of life goes on and on, as waves come and go, the center persists inside. Then you remain one -- rooted, centered.
 These sutras are techniques to find the center
 The center is already there, because there is no possibility of being a circle without a center. The circle can exist only with a center, so the center is only forgotten. It is there, but we are not aware. It is there, but we do not know how to look at it. We do not know how to focus the consciousness on it.
 The third technique about centering: 
Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all inclusive.