Come back to existence:
76…
IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS.
‘वर्षा की अंधेरी राम में उस अंधकार में प्रवेश करो,जो रूपों का रूप है।’77….
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU.
OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS.
SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER.
‘जब चंद्रमाहीन वर्षा की रात में उपलब्ध न हो तो आंखें बंद करो और अपने सामने अंधकार को देखो। फिर आंखे खोकर अंधकार को देखो। इस प्रकार दोष सदा के लिए विलीन हो जाते है।’
78…
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
“जहां कहीं भी तुम्हारा अवधान उतरे, उसी बिंदु पर अनुभव।”
Once a doctor, a very well known historian and an eminent scholar, was staying in a village. The postmaster, the old postmaster of the village, became curious about this old man, this doctor. He was curious to know what kind of doctor he is, so one day he asked, ‘What kind of doctor are you sir?’
The man said, ‘Doctor of Philosophy.’
The old man had never heard about it. He was puzzled and he said, ‘I have never heard of any case of this disease here.’
Don’t laugh about it, because that old postmaster was right in a way – philosophy is a kind of disease.
Of course, doctors of philosophy are not doctors; rather, they are the perfect victims of a disease.
Philosophy is not a specific disease, so you cannot think of it in terms of cases. It is born with the human being. It is as old as humanity or the human mind. And every human being is a victim, more or less – because thinking leads nowhere; or, it leads you in circles, vicious circles. You move much, and if you are expert you can move fast, but you reach nowhere.
This has to be understood very deeply, because if you cannot understand and feel this, you cannot take a jump into meditation. Meditation means the very anti approach – anti to philosophy.
Philosophy means thinking and meditation means a state of non-thinking. They are polar opposites.
This is just human – to think about questions and to try to find out answers. But philosophy comes to no answers. Science comes to certain answers, religion comes to certain answers, but philosophy comes to no answers. And all the answers that philosophy appears to come to are just facades: if you dig deep in them you will find more questions and nothing else. So every answer leads to more questions – and this goes on and on.
Science comes to certain answers, because science depends not on thinking but on experimentation. Thinking is used as a help only, but the base is experimentation. That’s why science has given some answers. Philosophers, known and unknown, have been working and working for centuries, but not a single answer, not a single conclusion has been achieved. It cannot be achieved. The very nature of thinking is such that if you use thinking as a help towards experimentation, something can be achieved; that’s why science comes to certain answers.
But religion also comes to certain answers, because religion is also experimentation. Science experiments with the object, religion experiments with the subject, but both are experimentations and both depend on experiment. Between these two is philosophy – just pure thinking, abstract thinking, with no experiment. You can go on, you can go on, but you reach nowhere. Abstract thinking, speculative thinking, is thinking ad infinitum. You can enjoy, you can enjoy the journey, but there is no goal.
Religion and science are similar in a way – both believe in experiment. Religious experiment is of course deeper than scientific, because in science the experimenter himself is not involved. He is working with tools, working with things, working with objects; he remains aloof, he remains out of the experiment. Religion is a deeper science, because the experimenter himself becomes the experiment. There are no tools which are apart from him, no objects which are outside him. He is both – his tools, his objects, his method; he is everything. And he has to work upon himself.
It is arduous. Because you are involved, it is arduous. And because you are involved, the experiment will become experience. In science, the experiment will remain an experiment will remain an experiment. The scientist will not be touched by it, will not be transformed by it. The scientist will remain the same. But in religion, passing through the experiment, you will be a different man altogether. You cannot come out the same; you are bound to change. That’s why religious experiment becomes experience.
Remember this: you can go on thinking about God, about soul, about the other world, and you may make believe that you know something about God just by thinking ‘about’. That will be false. You cannot know anything about God – the word ‘about’ is absurd. You can know God, but you cannot know ‘about’ – that ‘about’ creates philosophy.
How can you know about God? Or, for example, how can you know about love? You can know love, you cannot about love, because ‘about’ means someone else knows and you believe in his knowledge. You collect and gather opinions. You say, ‘I know something about God.’ All knowledge which is ‘about’ is false, dangerous, because you can be deluded by it.
You can know God, you can know love, you can know yourself, but forget that ‘about’. That ‘about’ is philosophy. The Upanishads say something, the Vedas say something, the Bible says something, the Koran says something, but for you, all that will become ‘about’. Unless it becomes your experience it is futile, wasted.
This point must go deep within you, because you can go on thinking, and the mind is such that you can start thinking about meditation. You can make anything an object for meditation, for thinking.
Even about meditation you can think, and you can go on thinking about it – nothing will happen.
I am talking about so many methods. There is a danger: you may start thinking about these methods, you may become knowledgeable. That won’t do, that is of no use. Not only is it of no use, it is dangerous – because meditation is experience, knowing ‘about’ is worthless.
Remember this word ‘experience’. Life’s problems, all the problems of life, are existential, they are not speculative. You cannot solve them by thinking; you can solve them only by living them. Through living the future opens. Through thinking the future never opens. On the contrary, even the present closes.
You may not have observed: whenever you think, what happen? Whenever you think, you are closed. All that is present drops. You move on a dream-path in your mind. One word creates another, one thought creates another, and you go on moving. The more you move in thinking, the further away you go from existence. Thinking is a way to go away. It is a dream-way; it is dreaming in concepts. Come back to the earth. Religion is very earthly in this sense; not worldly but very earthly, substantial. Come back to existence.
Life’s problems can be solved only when you become deeply rooted in existence. Flying in thoughts you move away from the roots, and the further away you are, the less is the possibility of solving anything. Rather, you will confuse everything, and everything will become more entangled. And the more entangled, the more you will think, and the further away you will move. Beware of thinking!
Now we will enter the techniques.
The first technique:
76…
IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS.
‘वर्षा की अंधेरी राम में उस अंधकार में प्रवेश करो,जो रूपों का रूप है।’
IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS.
There has been one very old esoteric school about which you may not have heard. The school was known as the school of Essenes. Jesus was taught in that school; he belonged to the Essenes group. That Essenes group is the only group all over the world who thinks of God as absolute darkness. The Koran says God is light, the Upanishads say God is light, the Bible says God is light.
The Essenes group is the only tradition in the world which says that God is absolute blackness, absolute darkness, just an infinite black night.
This is very beautiful; strange, but very beautiful – and very meaningful. You must understand the meaning, then this technique will be very helpful, because this is the technique used by the Essenes to enter darkness, to become one with it.
Reflect. Why has God been symbolized everywhere as light? Not because God is light, but because man is afraid of darkness. This is human fear – we like light and we are afraid of darkness, so we cannot conceive God as darkness, as blackness. This is human conception. We conceive God as light because we are afraid of darkness.
Our gods are created out of our fear. We give them shape and form. That shape and form is given by us – it shows something about us, not about our gods. They are our creations. We are afraid in darkness, so God is light. But these techniques belong to the other school.
Essenes say that God is darkness, and there is something in it. One thing: darkness is eternal.
Light comes and goes and darkness remains. In the morning the sun will rise and there will be light; in the evening the sun will set and there will be darkness. For darkness nothing will rise – it is always there. It never rises and never sets. Light comes and goes; darkness remains. Light always has some source; darkness is without source. That which has some source cannot be infinite; only that which is sourceless can be infinite and eternal. Light has a certain disturbance; that’s why you cannot sleep in light. It creates a tension. Darkness is relaxation, total relaxation.
But why are we afraid of darkness? Because light appears to us as life – it is; and darkness appears to be death – it is. Life comes through light, and when you die it appears you have fallen into eternal darkness. That’s why we paint death as black, and black has become a color for mourning. God is light, and death is black. But these are our fears projected. Actually, darkness has infinity; light is limited. Darkness seems to be the womb out of which everything arises and into which everything falls.
Essenes took this standpoint. It is very beautiful and very helpful also, because if you can love darkness you will become unafraid of death. If you can enter into darkness – and you can enter only when there is no fear – you will achieve total relaxation. If you can become one with darkness, you are dissolved, it is a surrender. Now there is no fear, because if you have become one with darkness, you have become one with death. You cannot die now. You have become deathless.
Darkness is deathless. Light is born and dies; darkness simply is. It is deathless.
For these techniques, first you will have to remember that there should be no fear in your mind about darkness, about blackness, otherwise how can you do this experiment? First the fear must be dropped. So do one thing as a preliminary step: sit in darkness, put off the lights, feel darkness.
Have a loving attitude towards it; allow the darkness to touch you. Look at it. Open your eyes in a dark room or in a dark night; have a communion, be together, imbibe a relationship. You will become afraid – then these techniques cannot be of any help, you cannot do them.
First a deep friendship with darkness is needed. Sometimes in the night when everyone has gone to sleep, remain with the darkness. Don’t do anything, just remain with it. And just remaining with it will give you a deep feeling towards it, because it is so relaxing. You have not known it simply because of the fear. If you are not feeling sleepy, you will put on the light immediately, you will start reading or doing something, but you will not remain with the darkness. Remain with it. If you can remain with it, you will have new openings, new contacts with it.
Man has closed himself completely against darkness. There were reasons, historical reasons – because the night was very dangerous, and man was in the caves or in the jungles. In the day he was more secure: he could see all around, and no wild animals could attack him; or, he could make some arrangements, some defence – at least he could escape. But in the night everywhere was darkness and he was helpless, so he became afraid – and that fear has gone into the unconscious; still we are afraid.
We are not living in caves now and we are not at the mercy of wild animals, no one is going to attack us – but the fear is there, it has gone deep, because for millions of years the human mind was afraid.
Your unconsciousness is not your own; it is collective, it is hereditary, it has come down to you. The fear is there, and because of that fear you can have no communion with darkness.
One thing more: because of this fear, man started to worship fire. When fire was discovered, fire became a god. Not that fire is a god, but because of the fear of darkness. In the day there was light and no fear – man was more protected. In the night there was darkness, so when fire was discovered, of course, fire became a god – the greatest. The Parsees still go on worshipping fire.
The worship of fire came into being because of the fear of darkness. In the night the fire became the friend, the protector, the divine security.
That fear is still there. You may not be aware of it, because no situations are there in which you can become aware of it, but one day put off the light in the night and sit – and the primitive fear will come to you. In your own house you will start feeling that some wild animals are around. Some noise will come, and you will become afraid of wild animals – some danger is around. That danger is not around; that is in your unconscious.
So first you have to overcome your unconscious fear, and then you can enter these techniques, because these techniques are concerned with darkness. And Shiva is giving all the techniques that are possible.
My own experience with these techniques is very beautiful. If you can do them they are wonderful.
You will enter such a deep relaxation that you have never known. But first uncover your unconscious fears and try to live and love darkness. It is very blissful. Once you know, and once you are in contact with it, you are in contact with a very deep cosmic phenomenon.
So whenever you have the opportunity to be in the dark, and awake…. Because you can do two things: either you can put on the light or you can go to sleep. Both are tricks to escape the darkness.
If you are asleep then you are not afraid, because you are not conscious. Or, if you are conscious, then you will put on the light. Don’t put on the light and don’t go to sleep. Remain with darkness.
Many fears will be felt. Feel them. Be aware of them. Bring them to your conscious. They will come by themselves, and as they come, you remain just a witness.. They will disappear, and very soon a day will come when you can be in darkness with total surrender, with no fear. With a total let-go you can be in darkness. Then a very beautiful phenomenon happens. Then you can appreciate the saying of Essenes that God is darkness, absolute darkness.
IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS.
All forms arise out of darkness and dissolve into darkness. Worlds come, are created out of darkness, and they fall back into darkness. Darkness is the womb, the cosmic womb. The undisturbed, the absolute stillness is there.
Shiva says that it will be good to do this technique in a rainy night when everything is black, when clouds are there and no stars can be seen and the sky is completely dark. In a black night when there is no moon… ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS. Be a witness to that blackness, and then dissolve yourself into it. It is the form of all forms. You are a form – you can dissolve into it.
When there is light, you are defined. I can see you, the light is there. Your body has a definition.
You are defined, you have boundaries. Boundaries exist because of the light. When the light is not there, boundaries are dissolved. In blackness nothing is defined, everything merges into every other thing. Forms disappear.
That may be one of the causes of our fear – because then you are not defined, then you don’t know who you are. The face cannot be seen, the body cannot be known. Everything merges into a formless existence. That may be one of the causes of fear – because you cannot feel your defined existence. Existence becomes vague and fear enters, because you don’t know now who you are.
The ego cannot exist: undefined, it is difficult to exist as an ego. One feels afraid. One wants light to be there.
Contemplating, meditating, merging, it will be easier to merge into darkness than to merge into light, because light gives distinctions. Darkness takes away all distinctions. In the light you are beautiful or ugly, rich or poor. The light gives you a personality, a distinctness – educated, uneducated, saint or sinner. The light reveals you as a distinct person. Darkness envelops you, accepts you – not as a distinct person; it simply accepts you without any definitions. You are enveloped and you become one.
The darkness is doing it always, but because you are afraid you cannot understand it. put aside your fear and become one.
ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF ALL FORMS.
ENTER THAT BLACKNESS… How can you enter blackness? Three things. One: stare into blackness. Difficult. It is easy to stare at a flame, at any source of light, because it is there as an object, pointed; you can direct your attention to it. Darkness is not an object; it is everywhere, it is all around. You cannot see it as an object. Stare into the vacuum. All around it is there; you just look into it. Feel at ease and look into it. It will start entering your eyes. And when the darkness enters your eyes you are entering into it.
Remain with open eyes when doing this technique in the dark night. Don’t close your eyes, because with closed eyes you have a different darkness. That is your own, mental; it is not real. If is not real. Really, it is a negative part; it is not positive darkness. Here is light: you close your eyes and you can have a darkness, but that darkness is simply the negative of the light. Just as when you look at the window and then you close your eyes you have a negative figure of the window. All our experience is of light, so when we close our eyes we have a negative experience of light which we call darkness. It is not real, it won’t do.
Open your eyes, remain with open eyes in darkness, and you will have a different darkness – the positive darkness that is there. Stare into it. Go on staring into darkness. Your tears will start, your eyes will get sore, they will hurt. Don’t get worried, just go on. And the moment the darkness, the real darkness which is there, enters in your eyes, it will give you a very deep soothing feeling. When real darkness enters in you, you will be filled by it.
And this entering of darkness will empty you of all negative darkness. This is a very deep phenomenon. The darkness that you have within in a negative thing; it is against the light. It is not the absence of light; it is against the light. It is not the darkness that Shiva is speaking of as the form of all forms – the real darkness that’s there. We are so afraid of it that we have created many sources of light just as protection, and we live in a lighted world. Then we close our eyes and the lighted world reflects negatively inside. We have lost contact with the real darkness that is there – the darkness of the Essenes, or the darkness of Shiva. We have no contact with it. We have become so much afraid of it that we have turned ourselves completely away. We are standing with our backs to it.
So this will be difficult, but if you can do it, it is miraculous, it is magical. You will have a different being altogether. When darkness enters you, you enter into it. It is always reciprocal, mutual. You cannot enter into any cosmic phenomenon without the cosmic phenomenon entering in you. You cannot rape it, you cannot force any entry. If you are available, open, vulnerable, and if you give way for any cosmic realm to enter in you, then only will you enter into it. It is always mutual. You cannot force; you can only allow it.
It is difficult to find real darkness in cities now; difficult in our houses to find real darkness. With the unreal light we have made everything unreal. Even our darkness is polluted, it is not pure. So it is good to move to some remote place only to feel darkness. Just go to a very remote village where there is no electricity, or move to a mountain peak. Just be there for one week to experience pure darkness.
You will come back a different man, because in those seven days of absolute darkness, all the fears, all the primitive fears, will come up. You will have to face monsters, you will have to face your own unconscious. The whole humanity will… it will be as if you are passing through the whole passage that has passed, and deep from your unconscious many things will arise. They will look real. You may get afraid, scared, because they will be so real – and they are just your mental creations.
Many madmen in our mad asylums are suffering not from anything else but just from the primitive fears inside them which have erupted. The fears are there; the madmen are afraid, scared every moment of their lives. And we don’t yet know how to allow those primitive fears to evaporate. If madmen can be helped to meditate on darkness, madness will disappear.
But only in Japan do they work a little towards this. With their madmen they behave absolutely differently. If someone goes mad, psychotic or neurotic, the Japanese method is to allow him to live in isolation for three weeks or for six weeks, as the case may need. They just allow him to live in isolation. No doctor, no psychoanalyst goes to him. Food is supplied, his needs are taken care of, and he is left alone.
In the night there is no light;in darkness he is alone – suffering of course, passing through many phases. Every care is taken, but no companionship is given to him. He has to face his own madness immediately and directly. And within three to six weeks, the madness starts disappearing. Nothing has been done really; he has simply been left alone. This is the only measure that has been taken.
Western psychiatrists have become amazed. They can’t understand really how it can happen, because they work for years. They psychoanalyze, they treat, they do everything, but they never leave the man alone. They never leave him to face his inner unconscious totally on his own. Because the more help you give, the more you make him helpless, because the more he depends on you.
And the question is of an inner encounter; no one can help really. So those who know, they will leave you to face yourself.
You have to come to terms with your unconscious. And this meditation on darkness will absorb all your madness completely. Try it. Even in your home you can try it. Every night, for one hour remain with darkness. Don’t do anything, just stare into darkness. You will have a melting feeling, and you will feel that something is entering you and you are entering into something.
Staying, living with darkness for three months, for one hour a day, you will lose all feeling of individuality, of separation. Then you will not be an island; you will become the ocean. You will be one with darkness. And darkness is so oceanic: nothing is so vast, nothing is so eternal. And nothing is so near you, and of nothing are you so scared and afraid. It is just by the corner, always waiting.
IN RAIN DURING A BLACK NIGHT, ENTER THAT BLACKNESS AS THE FORM OF FORMS.
Stare so that it enters in your eyes.
Secondly: lie down and feel as if you are near your mother. The darkness is the mother, the mother of all. Think: when there was nothing, what was there? You cannot think of anything else than darkness. If everything disappears, what will be there still? Darkness will be there.
Darkness is the mother, the womb, so lie down and feel that you are lying in the womb of your mother. And it will become real, it will become warm, and sooner or later you will start feeling that the darkness, the womb, is enveloping you from everywhere. You are in it.
And thirdly: moving, going to work, talking, eating, doing whatsoever, carry a patch of darkness within you. The darkness that has entered in you, just carry it. As we were discussing about the method of carrying a flame, carry darkness. And as I said to you that if you carry a flame and feel you are light, your body will start radiating a certain strange light and those who are sensitive will start feeling it, the same will happen with darkness.
If you carry darkness within you, your whole body will become so relaxed and calm, so cool, that it will be felt. And as when you carry light within you some people will become attracted to you, when you carry darkness within you some people will simply escape from you. They will become afraid and scared. They will not be able to bear so silent a being; it will become unbearable to them.
If you carry darkness within you, those who are afraid of darkness will try to escape from you; they will not come near you. And everyone is afraid of darkness. You will start feeling that friends are leaving you. Your family will get disturbed when you enter, because you enter like a pool of coolness, and everyone is agitated and excited. It will be difficult for them to look into your eyes, because your eyes will become deep like valleys, an abyss. If someone looks into your eyes he will become dizzy, such a deep abyss will be felt there.
But you will feel many things. It will be impossible for you to get angry. Carrying darkness within, you cannot be angry. Carrying a flame you can be angry very easily, more easily than ever, because the flame can excite you. Carrying a flame you will feel more sexual than ever, because the flame will excite you, it will create passion. But carrying darkness within you, you will feel a deep asexuality happening to you. You will not feel sexual; you will not be able to easily get into anger. Passion will disappear. You will not feel that you are a man or a woman. You will feel that those words have become irrelevant, meaningless. You simply are.
Carrying darkness within for the whole day will help you very much, because then when you contemplate and meditate on darkness in the night, the inner darkness that you have carried the whole day will help you to meet – the inner will come to meet the outer.
And just be remembering that you are carrying darkness – you are filled with darkness, every pore of the body, every cell of the body is filled with darkness – you will feel so relaxed. Try it. You will feel so relaxed. Everything in you will be slowed down. You will not be able to run, you will walk, and that walk also will be slowed down. You will walk slowly, just as a pregnant woman walks. You will walk slowly, very carefully. You are carrying something.
And quite the opposite will happen when you are carrying a flame: your walk will become faster; rather, you would like to run. There will be more movement, you will become more active. Carrying darkness you will be relaxed. Others will start feeling that you are lazy.
In the days when I was at university, I was doing this experiment for two years. I became so lazy that even to get out of bed in the morning was difficult. My professors became very much disturbed about it, and they thought something had gone wrong with me – either I was ill, or I had become absolutely indifferent. One professor who loved me very much, the head of my department, became so worried that on my examination days he would come to fetch me from the hostel in the morning just to lead me to the examination hall so that I could be there on time. Every day he would see that I had entered the hall, and only then would he feel okay and go home.
Try it. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in life to carry darkness in your womb, to become dark. Walking, eating, sitting, doing whatsoever, remember, the darkness is filled in you; you are filled with it. And then see how things change. You cannot get excited, you cannot be very active, you cannot be tense. Your sleep will become so deep that dreams will disappear and the whole day you will move as if intoxicated.
Sufis have used this method, a particular sect of Sufis, and those Sufis are known as drunken Sufis.
They are drunk with this darkness. They make holes in the ground, and they lie down in the holes every night, and they meditate lying down in their holes – meditating darkness, becoming one with it. And their eyes will show you that they are intoxicated. You can feel from their eyes such deep relaxation, such a relaxed vibration, that it can happen only if you are deeply intoxicated or feeling very sleepy. Only then can your eyes show that expression. They are known as drunken Sufis – and they are drunk with darkness.
The second technique:
77….
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU.
OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS.
SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER.
‘जब चंद्रमाहीन वर्षा की रात में उपलब्ध न हो तो आंखें बंद करो और अपने सामने अंधकार को देखो। फिर आंखे खोकर अंधकार को देखो। इस प्रकार दोष सदा के लिए विलीन हो जाते है।’
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU.
OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS.
SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER.
I said that if you close your eyes the blackness will be false, so what to do if there is no moonless night, no dark night? If there is a moon and the moonlight is there? This sutra gives a key.
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU.
This blackness will be false in the beginning. You can make it real, and the method to make it real is – OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS. First close your eyes, see blackness. Then open the eyes, and the blackness that you have seen within, see it without. If it disappears without, that means that your blackness that you have seen within was false.
This is a little bit more difficult. In the first you carry the real darkness within. In the second you carry the false out – go on carrying it. Close your eyes, feel darkness; open your eyes, and with open eyes see the darkness out. This is how you throw the inner false darkness out – go on throwing it.
It will take at least three to six weeks, and then one day suddenly you will be able to carry the inner darkness out. The day you can carry the inner darkness out, you have come upon the inner real darkness. The real can be carried; the false cannot be carried.
And it is a very magical experience. If you can carry the inner darkness out, even in a lightened room you can carry it out, and a patch of darkness spreads before you. The experience is very weird, because the room is lightened. Or even in sunlight… if you have come to the inner darkness you can bring it out. Then a patch of darkness comes before your eyes. You can go on spreading it.
Once you know that it can happen, you can have darkness, dark as the darkest night, in the full sunny day. The sun is there, but you can spread the darkness. The darkness is always there; even while the sun is there the darkness is there. You cannot see it; it is covered by the sunlight. Once you know how to uncover it, you can uncover it.
In Tibet they have many methods just like this. They can bring things from the inner world to the outer world. You may have heard of one very famous technique; they call it ‘heat yoga’. The night is cold, ice-cold, snow is falling, and a Tibetan monk, a Tibetan lama, can sit under the open sky with snow falling all around, the temperature below zero, and he can start perspiring. This is a medical miracle. How is he perspiring? He is bringing the inner heat out.
And the inner coolness or inner cold can also be brought out. In Mahavir’s life it is related…. No one has tried to explain it up to now. Jains think that he was just doing an austerity; it is not so. It is related that whenever it was summer, the hot season, and the sun was burning hot, he would always stand somewhere where there was no shade, no tress, none at all. He would stand in the burning sun in the days of summer, and in winter he would find a cool place, the coolest – under a tree, a shady tree, or near a river, or just where the temperature had gone below zero.
In the cold season he would find a cool place to meditate, and in the hot season he would find the hottest place to meditate. People thought that he was mad, and his followers think he was just doing austerities. It is not so. He was really trying some inner techniques like this.
When it was hot he was trying to bring his inner cold – and it can be felt only in a contrast. When it was cold outside he was bringing his inner heat – and it can be felt only when there is a contrast.
He was not a body enemy, he was not against his body, as Jains think. They think that he was killing his body, because if you can kill your body, you can kill your desire. This is sheer nonsense. He was doing nothing of the sort. He was bringing the inner out, and he was protected by the inner. Just as Tibetan lamas can create heat and they can perspire while snow is falling, Mahavir would stand under a hot burning sun and he would not perspire. He was bringing his inner cold, and that inner cold would come out and protect his body.
Similarly you can bring your inner darkness, and that feeling is very cool. If you can bring it, you are protected by it: no excitement, no passion will disturb you. Try it. These three things: stare in darkness with open eyes and allow the darkness to enter within. Secondly: feel darkness as a mother’s womb all around; live with it; forget yourself more and more in it. And thirdly: carry a patch of darkness in your heart wherever you go.
If you can do this, the darkness will become the light. You will be enlightened through darkness.
WHEN A MOONLESS RAINY NIGHT IS NOT PRESENT, CLOSE EYES AND FIND BLACKNESS BEFORE YOU. OPENING EYES, SEE BLACKNESS.
That’s the method. First feel it inside, feel it deeply so you can perceive it out. Then open the eyes suddenly and feel it out. It will take time.
SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER.
And if you can bring the inner darkness outside, faults disappear forever, because if the inner darkness is felt, you have become so pool, so silent, so unexcitable, that faults cannot remain with you.
Remember this: faults can exist only if you are prone to be excited, if you tend to be excited. They don’t exist in themselves; they exist in your capacity to get excited. Someone insults you, and you have no darkness within to absorb the insult; you become inflamed, you get angry, you get fiery, and then everything is possible. You can be violent, you can kill, you can do what only a madman can do. Anything is possible – you are now mad. Someone praises you: you again go mad to the other extreme.
All around you there are situations, and you are not capable of absorbing. Insult a Buddha: he can absorb it, he can simply swallow it, digest it. Who digests that insult? An inner pool of darkness, silence. You throw anything poisoned; it is absorbed. No reaction comes out of it.
Try this, and when someone insults you, just remember that you are filled with darkness, and suddenly you will feel there is no reaction. You pass through a street; you see a beautiful woman or a man – you get excited. Feel that you are filled with darkness; suddenly the passion will disappear.
You try it. This is absolutely experimental, there is no need to believe it.
When you feel that you are filled with passion or desire or sex, simply remember the inner darkness.
For a single moment close your eyes and feel darkness and see – the passion has disappeared, the desire is no more there. The inner darkness has absorbed it. You have become an infinite vacuum into which anything can fall and it will not return. You are now like an abyss.
That’s why Shiva says: SO FAULTS DISAPPEAR FOREVER. These techniques appear so simple – they are. But don’t leave them without trying them because they appear so simple. They may not challenge your ego, but still try them. It always happens that we never try simple things, because we think they are so simple they cannot be true. And truth is always simple, it is never complex. There is no need for it to be complex. Only lies are complex. They cannot be simple, because if they are simple they will be caught immediately.
And because something appears simple we think nothing is possible out of it. Not that nothing is possible out of it, but because our ego gets challenged only when something is very difficult. Many schools and many systems have simply complicated their methods because of you. There is no need, but they have to create complexities, unnecessary hurdles, to make them difficult so that you feel good because your ego is challenged. If something is very difficult and only few can do it, then you feel, ‘Now, this is something to do, because only a few can do it; rarely can someone do it.’
These methods are absolutely simple. Shiva is not taking you into account. He is simply describing the exact method as it is – as simply as possible, as telegraphically as possible, only the bare essentials. So don’t seek any ego challenge. These techniques are not to send you on an ego trip.
They may not challenge you, but if you can try them, they will transform you. And challenge is not good, because with challenge you get feverish, you get mad.
The third technique:
78…
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
“जहां कहीं भी तुम्हारा अवधान उतरे, उसी बिंदु पर अनुभव।”
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE. What? What experience? In this technique, firstly you have to develop attention. You have to develop a sort of attentive attitude, only then will this technique become possible, so then wherever your attention alights you can experience – you can experience yourself. Just by looking at a flower you can experience yourself. Then looking at a flower is not looking at the flower only, but at the looker also – but only if you know the secret of attention.
You also look at a flower, and you may think you are looking at the flower, but you have started thinking about the flower, and the flower is missed. You are no more there, you have gone somewhere else, you have moved away. By attention is meant that when you are looking at a flower, you are looking at a flower and not doing anything else – as if the mind has stopped, as if now there is no thinking and only a simple experience of the flower there. You are here, the flower is there, and between you two there is no thought.
Suddenly – if this is possible – suddenly, from the flower your attention will come back, bounce back to yourself. It will become a circle. You will look at the flower and the look will come back; the flower will reflect it, rebounce it. If there are no thoughts, this happens. Then you are not looking at the flower only, you are looking at the looker also. Then the looker and the flower have become two objects and you have become a witness of both.
But first attention has to be trained, because you have no attention at all. Your attention is just flickering, moving from this to that, from that to something further. Not for a single moment are you attentive. Even if I am talking here, you never hear all my words. You hear one word, then your attention goes somewhere else; then you come back, you hear another, then your attention goes somewhere else. You hear a few words, and you fill the gaps, and then you think you have heard me.
And whatsoever you carry with yourself, it is your own business, it is your own creation. Just a few words you have heard from me, and then you have filled the gaps, and whatsoever you fill in the gaps changes everything. I say a word, and you have started thinking about it. You cannot remain silent. If you can remain silent while hearing, you will become attentive.
Attention means a silent alertness with no thoughts interfering. Develop it. You can develop it only by doing it; there is no other way. Do it more and you will develop it. Doing anything, being anywhere, try to develop it.
You are travelling in a car, or in a train. What are you doing there? Try to develop attention; don’t waste time. For half an hour you will be in a train: develop attention. Just be there. Don’t think. Look at someone, look at the train or look outside, but be the look, don’t think anything. Stop thinking.
Be there and look. Your look will become direct, penetrating, and from everywhere your look will be reflected back and you will become aware of the looker.
You are not aware of yourself because there is a wall. When you look at a flower, first your thoughts change your look; they give their own color. Then that look goes to the flower. It comes back, but then again your thoughts give it a different color. And when it comes back it never finds you there.
You have moved somewhere else, you are not there.
Every look comes back; everything is reflected, responsed, but you are not there to receive it. So be there to receive it. The whole day you can try it on many things, and by and by you will develop attentiveness. With that attentiveness do this:
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
Then look anywhere, but simply look. The attention has alighted – and you will experience yourself.
But the first requirement is to have the capacity to be attentive. And you can practise it. There is no need for it to take some extra time.
Whatsoever you are doing – eating, taking a bath, standing under a shower – just be attentive. But what is the problem? The problem is that we do everything with the mind, and we are planning continuously for the future. You may be travelling in a train, but your mind may be arranging other journeys; programming, planning. Stop this.
One Zen monk, Bokuju, has said, ‘This is the only meditation I know. While I eat, I eat. While I walk, I walk. And while I feel sleepy, I sleep. Whatsoever happens, happens. I never interfere.’
That’s all there is – don’t interfere. And whatsoever happens, allow it to happen; you be simply there.
That will give you attentiveness. And when you have attention, this technique is just in your hand.
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
You will experience the experiencer; you will fall back to yourself. From everywhere you will be rebounded; from everywhere you will be reflected. The whole existence will become a mirror; you will be reflected everywhere. The whole existence will mirror you, and only then can you know yourself, never before.
Unless the whole existence becomes a mirror for you, unless every part of existence reveals you, unless every relationship opens you…. You are such an infinite phenomenon – ordinary mirrors won’t do. You are such a vast existence within, that unless the whole existence becomes a mirror you will not be able to get a glimpse. When the whole universe becomes a mirror, only then will you be mirrored. In you exists the divine.
And the technique to make existence a mirror is this: create attention, becomes more alert, and then wherever your attention alights – wherever, on any object you alight – suddenly experience yourself.
This is possible, but right now impossible, because you don’t fulfill the basic requirement.
You can look at a flower, but that is not attention. You are just running near the flower, around and around. You have seen the flower while running; you have not been there for a single moment. Then the whole life becomes meditative.
WHEREVER YOUR ATTENTION ALIGHTS, AT THIS VERY POINT, EXPERIENCE.
Just remember yourself.
There is a deep reason because of which this technique can be helpful. You can throw a ball and hit the wall – the ball will come back. When you look at a flower or at a face, a certain energy is being thrown – your look is energy. And you are not aware that when you look, you are investing some energy, you are throwing some energy. A certain quantity of your energy, of your life energy, is being thrown. That’s why you feel exhausted after looking in the street the whole day: people passing, advertisements, the crowd, the shops. Looking at everything you feel exhausted and then you want to close your eyes to relax. What has happened? Why are you feeling so exhausted? You have been throwing energy.
Buddha and Mahavir both insisted that their monks should not look too much; they must concentrate on the ground. Buddha says that you can only look up to four feet ahead. Don’t look anywhere. Just look on the path where you are moving. To look four feet ahead is enough, because when you have moved four feet, again you will be looking four feet ahead. Don’t look more than that, because you are not to waste energy unnecessarily.
When you look, you are throwing a certain amount of energy. Wait, be silent, allow that energy to come back. And you will be surprised. If you can allow the energy to come back, you will never feel exhausted. Do it. Tomorrow morning, try it. Be silent, look at a thing. Be silent, don’t think about it, and wait patiently for a single moment – the energy will come back; in fact, you may be revitalized.
People continuously ask me… I go on reading continuously so they ask me, ‘Why are your eyes still okay? You must have needed space long ago.’
You can read, but if you are reading silently with no thought, the energy comes back. It is never wasted. You never feel tired. My whole life I have been reading twelve hours a day, sometimes even eighteen hours a day, but I have never felt any tiredness. In my eyes I have never felt anything, never any tiredness. Without thought the energy comes back; there is no barrier. And if you are there you reabsorb it, and this reabsorption is rejuvenating. Rather than your eyes being tired they feel more relaxed, more vital, filled with more energy.
Enter this moment:
Question 1:
THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SAID THAT PHILOSOPHIES ARE ANTI-MEDITATION.
BUT ON THE OTHER HAND YOU AGREE THAT THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHIES SUCH AS TANTRA,
YOGA AND VEDANT, ARE THE WRITINGS OF ENLIGHTENED SAGES.WHY DO THE ENLIGHTENED SAGES LEAVE BEHIND THEM
A STRONG STRUCTURE OF PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEMPLATION,
IF PHILOSOPHIES ARE ANTI-MEDITATION?
Philosophy is not darshan. Darshan is the eastern term. Darshan means perception, philosophy means thinking. Herman Hesse has coined a new word to translate darshan into western languages.
He calls it ‘philosia’ – ‘sia’ from ‘to see’.
Philosophy means to think, and darshan means to see. Both are basically different; not only different, but diametrically opposite. Because when you are thinking you cannot see. You are so filled with thoughts that perception is blurred, perception is clouded. When thinking ceases, you become capable of seeing. Then your eyes are opened, they become unclouded. Perception happens only when thinking ceases.
For Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the whole western tradition, thinking is the base. For Kanad, Kapil, Patanjali, Buddha, and the whole eastern tradition, seeing is the base. So Buddha is not a philosopher, not at all; neither is Patanjali, nor Kapil or Kanad. They are not philosophers. They have seen the truth; they have not thought about it.
Remember well that you only think when you cannot see. If you can see, there is no reason to think. Thinking is always in ignorance. Thinking is not knowledge, because when you know, there is no need to think. When you don’t know, you will the gap by thinking. Thinking is groping in the dark. So eastern philosophies are not philosophies. To use the word philosophy for eastern darshan is absolutely wrong. Darshan means to see, to attain the eye, to realize, to know – immediately, directly, without the mediation of thinking and thought.
Thinking can never lead to the unknown. How can it lead? It is impossible. The very process of thinking has to be understood. When you think, what do you really do? You go on repeating old thoughts, memories. If I ask you a question – does God exist? – you can think about it. What will you do? All that you have heard, all that you have read, all that you have accumulated about God, you will repeat. Even if you come to a new conclusion, the newness of it will only be apparent, not real. It will be simply a combination of old thoughts. You can combine many old thoughts and create a new structure, but that structure will be apparently new, not new at all.
Thinking can never come to any original truth. Thinking is never original; it cannot be. It is always of the past, of the old, of the known. Thinking cannot touch the unknown; it is repetitively moving in the circle of the known. You don’t know truth, you don’t know God. What can you do? You can think about it. You will move in circles, around and around. You can never come to any experience of it.
So the eastern emphasis is not on thinking, but on seeing. You cannot think about God, but you can see. You cannot come to any conclusion about God, but you can realize. It can become an experience. You cannot get to it through information, through knowledge, through scriptures, through theories and philosophies; no, you cannot get to it. You can get into it only if you throw all knowledge. All that you have heard and read and collected, all the dust that your mind has collected, the whole past, must be put aside. Then your eyes are fresh, then your consciousness is unclouded, and then you can see it.
It is here and now – you are clouded. You have not to go somewhere else to find the divine or the truth – it is here. It is right there where you are. And it has always been so – only you are clouded, your eyes are closed. So the question is not to think more; the question is how to come to a non-thinking consciousness. That’s why I say that meditation and philosophy are anti each other.
Philosophy thinks, meditation comes to a no-thinking consciousness. And eastern philosophies are not really philosophies. In the West, philosophies exist; in the East, only religious realizations.
Of course, when a Buddha happens, or a Kanad or a Patanjali happens, when someone comes to realize the absolute, he makes statements about it. Those statements are different from the Aristotelan statements, from western philosophical conclusions. The difference is this: a Kanad, a Buddha, first comes to realize – the realization is the first thing – and then he makes statements about it. Experience is primary, and then he expresses it. Aristotle, Hegel and Kant, they think, and then through thinking and logical argument and dialectics, they reach particular conclusions. These conclusions are reached through thinking, through mind, not through any practice of meditation.
Then they make assertions, then they make statements. The source is different.
For a Buddha, his statements are only as a vehicle to communicate. He never says that through his communication you will achieve the truth. If you can understand Buddha, that doesn’t mean you have achieved the truth; that simply means you have gathered knowledge. You will have to pass through meditations, deep ecstasies, deep pools of the mind, only then will you come to the truth.
So truth is reached through a certain existential experience. It is existential, it is not mental. You must change to know it and to be it. If you remain the same and go on collecting information, you will become a great scholar, a philosopher, but you will not be enlightened. You will remain the same man; there will have been no mutation.
That’s why I said that philosophy is one dimension Meditation is quite the contrary, the very opposite, the polar-opposite dimension. So don’t think about life; rather, live it in depth. And don’t think about ultimate problems; rather, enter this very moment in the ultimate. And the ultimate is not in the future. It is always there, timelessly there.
Someone else has also asked a similar question. He has asked:
Question 2:
CAN PROBLEMS BE SOLVED THROUGH THINKING?
Yes, certain problems can be solved through thinking – only those problems which are created by thinking can be solved by it. But no real problem can be solved by it, no lived problem can be solved by it. It is not created by it; it is there in life itself. Thinking will not be of much help. Only in one way can thinking help you, and that is that through thinking and thinking and thinking, you will stumble upon the truth that thinking is futile. And the moment you realize that thinking is futile for existential problems, it has helped you in a way. It is through thinking that you have come to this realization.
But problems which are created by thinking can be solved by thinking itself. For example, a mathematical problem: it can be solved by thinking, because the whole mathematics is created by thinking. For example, if there is no man on earth, will there be mathematics? There will be no mathematics. With the disappearance of human mind, mathematics will disappear. There is no mathematics in life and existence. In the garden, trees are there, but when you count ONE, TWO, THREE, three trees are not there, because the THREE is a mental thing. The trees are there, but the figures are not there. The figure three is in your mind. If you are not there, the trees will be there, but not three trees, only trees. The THREE is a quality given by the mind, it is a projected quality.
Mind creates mathematics, so any problem of mathematics will be solved by mind, it will be solved by thinking. Remember, you cannot solve a mathematical problem through non-thinking. No meditation will be of help, because meditation will dissolve the mind, and with the mind the whole mathematics will dissolve. So there are problems which are created by the mind; they can be solved. But there are problems which are not created by the mind, but are existential. Those problems cannot be solved by the mind. You will have to move deep in existence itself.
For example, love. It is an existential problem. You cannot solve it by thinking; rather, you will get more puzzled. The more you think, the less you will be in touch with the source of the problem.
Meditation will be of help. It will give you insight, it will lead you to the unconscious roots of the problem. If you think about it, you will remain on the surface.
So remember, life problems cannot be solved by thinking. On the contrary, really, because of too much thinking you are missing all solutions, and more problems are created. For example, death.
Death is not a problem created by thinking; you cannot solve it by thinking. Whatsoever you think, how can you solve it? You can console, and you can think that consolation is a solution – it is not.
You can deceive yourself; that’s possible through thinking. You can create explanations, and through explanations you can think that you have solved it. You can escape the problem through thinking, but you cannot solve it. And see the distinction clearly.
For example, death is there. Your beloved dies, or your friend, or your daughter – the death is there.
Now what can you do? You can think about it. You can think and you can say that the soul is immortal – because you have read it. In the Upanishads it is said that the soul is immortal, only the body dies. You don’t know it at all, because if you really know, there is no problem – or is there a problem? If you really know that the soul is immortal, then death has not occurred; there is no problem at all. But the problem is there: death has occurred, and you are disturbed and deep in sorrow. Now you want to escape this sorrow. Now somehow you want to forget this sorrow.
You can take the explanation that the soul is immortal – now this is a trick. Not that the soul is not immortal – I am not saying that – but for you this is a trick. You are trying to deceive yourself. You are in sorrow, and now you want to escape this sorrow, so this explanation will be helpful. Now you can console yourself that the soul is immortal, no one dies, only the body – just as if one changes the clothes, or one changes the abode – so from one house to another the soul has gone. You can go on thinking, but you don’t know anything about it. You have heard, you have collected information; but through these explanations you will be at ease. You can forget the death.
Really this is no solution to the problem. Nothing has been solved. The next day someone else will die and the same problem will be there. Again someone will die and the same problem will be there.
And deep down you know that you will have to die. You cannot escape death – and the fear is there.
But you can go on postponing, and you can go on escaping through explanations. This won’t do.
Death is an existential problem. You cannot solve it through thinking. You can create only fake solutions. What to do then? Then there is another dimension – the dimension of meditation; not of thinking, not of mentation. You just encounter the situation.
Death has occurred. Your beloved is dead. Don’t move in thinking. Don’t bring the Upanishads and the Gita and the Bible. Don’t ask the Christs and Buddhas. Leave them alone. Death is there: face, encounter. Be with this situation totally. Don’t think about it. What can you think? You can only repeat old rubbish. The death is such a new phenomenon, it is so unknown, that your knowledge is not going to help in any way. So put aside your mind. Be in a deep meditation with death.
Don’t do anything, because what can you do which can be of any help? You don’t know. So be in ignorance. Don’t bring false knowledge, borrowed knowledge. Death is there; you be with it. Face death with total presence. Don’t move in thinking, because then you are escaping from the situation, you are becoming absent from here. Don’t think. Be present with the death.
Sadness will be there, sorrow will be there, a heavy burden will be on you – let it be there. It is part – part of life, and part of maturity, and part of the ultimate realization. Remain with it, totally present. This will be meditation, and you will come to a deep understanding of death. Then death itself becomes eternal life.
But don’t bring the mind and knowledge. Remain with death; then death will reveal itself to you, then you will know what death is. You will move into the inner mansions of it. Then death will take you to the very center of life – because death is the very center of life. It is not against life; it is the very process of life. But mind brings the contradiction that life and death are opposites. Then you go on thinking, and because the root is false, the opposition is false, you can never come to any conclusion which can be true and real.
Whenever there is a lived problem, be with the problem without your mind – that’s what I mean by meditation – and just being there with the problem will solve it. And if you have really been there, death will not occur to you again, because then you know what death is.
We never do this – never with love, never with death, never with anything that is authentically real.
We always move in thoughts, and thoughts are the falsifiers. They are borrowed, not your own. They cannot liberate you. Only the truth which is your own can become your liberation. And you can only come to your own truth through a very silent presence. With any problem, that fails. Thinking will not solve the real problems, but thinking can solve unreal problems created by thinking itself – because those problems follow the rules of logic. Life doesn’t follow the rules of logic. Life has its own hidden laws, and you cannot force logic on them.
One point more about this: wherever you bring the mind, the mind dissects, analyzes. Reality is one, and mind always divides. And when you have dived a reality, you have falsified it. Now you can struggle for your whole life – nothing will be achieved, because basically the reality was one and the mind divided into two, and now you are working with the division.
For example, as I was saying, life and death are one, but for the mind they are two and death is the enemy of life. It is not, because life cannot exist without death. If life cannot exist without death, how can death be the enemy? It is the basic situation. It makes life possible. Life grows in it; it is the soul. Without it life is impossible. But mind, thinking, divides it and puts it as a polar opposite.
Then you can go on thinking about. Whatsoever you think will be false, because in the beginning you have committed a sin – the sin of division.
When you meditate, divisions disappear. When you meditate, there cannot be divisions, because how can you divide in silence?
We are here. Everyone is thinking in his own mind something or other; then we are different, everyone is different, because your thought is yours, and my thought is mine. In my mind I have my own dreams and you have your own. There are many individuals here, but if we all are meditating – neither you are thinking nor I am thinking, the thinking has ceased – then there will not be so many individuals. Really, there will not be individuals at all. If we are all meditating then limitations have disappeared.
When I am meditating and you are meditating, there are not two persons, there cannot be, because two silences become one. They cannot be two, because how can you demark one silence from another silence? You cannot demark. You can demark one thought from another, one mind from another, but two silences are simply one – just like two zeros. Two zeros are not two; two zeros are one. You can put a thousand zeros, but they are one.
Meditation is creating a zero within – all limitations, all divisions disappear. And that gives you the real eye, the third eye, darshan. Now you have the real eyes to see. For these real eyes reality is clear, open, revealed. And with the reality revealed, there are no problems.
Question 3:
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GAZING AT AN OPEN CLEAR SKY,
GAZING AT AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER’S PHOTO, AND GAZING AT THE DARKNESS?
The technique of gazing is not concerned really with the object; it is concerned with gazing itself.
Because when you stare without blinking your eyes, you become focused, and the nature of the mind is to be constantly moving. If you are really gazing, not moving at all, the mind is bound to be in a difficulty.
The nature of the mind is to move from one object to another, to move constantly. If you are gazing at darkness or at light or at something else, if you are really gazing, the movement of the mind stops.
Because if the mind goes on moving, your gaze will not be there; you will go on missing the object.
When the mind has moved somewhere else, you will forget, you will not be able to remember what you were looking at. The object will be there physically, but for you it will have disappeared because your are not there; you have moved in thought.
Gazing means, TRATAK means, not allowing your consciousness to move. And when you are not allowing the mind to move, in the beginning it struggles, struggles hard, but if you go on practising gazing, by and by the mind loses struggling. For moments it stops. And when mind stops there is no mind, because mind can exist only in movement, thinking can exist only in movement. When there is no movement, thinking disappears, you cannot think, because thinking means movement – moving from one thought to another. It is a process.
If you gaze continuously at one thing, fully aware and alert… because you can gaze through dead eyes. Then you can go on thinking – only eyes, dead eyes, not looking at… just with dead men’s eyes you can look, but your mind will be moving. That will not be of any help. Gazing means not only your eyes, but your total mind focused through the eyes.
So whatsoever the object…. It depends: if you like light, it is okay. If you can like darkness, good.
Whatsoever the object, deeply it is irrelevant. The question is to stop the mind completely in your gaze, to focus it, so the inner movement, the fidgeting, stops; the inner wavering stops. You are simply looking at, not doing anything. That deep looking will change you completely. It will become a meditation.
And it is good; you can try it. But remember that your eyes and your consciousness should meet in the focusing. You must be really looking through the eyes; you must not be absent there. Your presence is needed – totally present. Then you cannot think, then thinking is impossible. There is only one danger: you may become unconscious, you may fall asleep. Even with open eyes it is possible that you may fall asleep. Then your gaze will become stony.
In the beginning the first trouble will be that you will be looking at, but you will not be present. This is the first barrier. Your mind will move. Your eyes will be fixed, your mind will be moving – there will be no meeting of the eyes and the mind. This will be the first difficulty. If you win over it, the second difficulty will be that gazing with no movement, you will fall asleep. You will move into auto-hypnosis, you will be hypnotized by yourself. That’s natural, because our mind knows only two states: either the constant movement or sleep. The mind knows only two states naturally: constant movement, thinking, or falling into sleep. And meditation is a third state.
The third state of meditation means your mind is as silent as a deep sleep, and as alert and aware as in thinking – both these must be present. You must be alert, completely alert, and as silent as if deep in sleep. So Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras say that meditation is a sort of deep sleep, with only one difference – that you are alert. Patanjali equates sushupti and samadhi: deep sleep and ultimate meditation. The difference is only that in deep sleep you are not aware, and in meditation you are aware, but the quality of both is deep silence – unrippled, unwavering silence, unmoving silence.
In the beginning it may happen that through staring you may fall asleep. So if you have become capable of bringing your mind to your focus and the mind is not moving, then remain alert, don’t fall asleep. Because if sleep comes, you have fallen in the abyss, the ditch. Just between these two ditches – constant thinking and sleep – is the narrow bridge of being in meditation.
Question 4:
YOU HAVE SAID THAT SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS WITH THE OBJECTIVE,
AND RELIGION WITH THE SUBJECTIVE.BUT NOW THERE IS A NEW GROWING SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY,
OR MORE ACCURATELY, DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY,
WHICH IS BOTH SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE.
SO SCIENCE AND RELIGION MEET IN DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY.
They cannot meet. Depth psychology, or the study of psychic phenomena, is again objective. And the method of depth psychology is the method of objective science.
Try to see the distinction. For example, you can study meditation in a scientific way. You can observe someone who is meditating, but then this has become objective for you. You meditate and I observe.
I can bring all the scientific instruments to observe what is happening to you, what is happening there in you, but the study remains objective. I am outside. I am not meditating. You are meditating; you are an object to me.
Then I can try to understand what is happening to you. Even through instruments much can be known about you, but that will remain objective and scientific. So really, whatsoever I am studying is not the real thing that is happening to you, but the effects that your body is recording.
You cannot penetrate a Buddha, what is happening to him, because really nothing is happening there. The deepest center of an enlightened man is nothingness. Nothing is happening there. And if nothing is happening, how can you study it? You can study something. You can study the Alpha waves; what is happening to the mind, to the body, to the chemistry, you can understand. But really deep down, when someone becomes enlightened, there is not anything happening. All happening has ceased.
This is what is meant – the world has ceased. Now there is no sansar, no happening. He is as if he is not. That’s why Buddha says, ‘Now I have become a no-atman, no-self. There is no one inside me. I am just an emptiness. The flame has disappeared, and the house is vacant.’ Nothing is happening. What can you record about it? At the most you can record that nothing is happening. If something happens it can be recorded objectively.
The method of science remains objective, and science is very much afraid of the subjective, for many reasons. Science and the scientific mind cannot believe in the subjective, because firstly, it is private and individual and no one can enter in it. It cannot become public and collective, and unless something is public and collective, nothing can be said about it. The person who is saying may be deceived, or may be deceiving others. He may be a liar. Or, he may be just in an illusion, not a liar.
He may be thinking and believing that this has happened to him, and this may be just a delusion, a self-deception.
So for science the truth must be objective. Others must be able to participate in it, so we can judge whether it is happening or not. Secondly, it must be that it can be repeated; it must be repeatable. If we heat water it evaporates at a certain degree – it must be repeatable. So we repeat and repeat and again and again it evaporates at a certain degree. If it evaporates only once at a hundred degrees and never gain, or sometimes at ninety and sometimes at eighty, it cannot become a scientific fact. It must be repeatable, and the same conclusion should be achieved through many repeated experiments.
But the subjective realization is not repeatable – it is not even predictable. And you cannot invite it; it happens. You cannot force it. You may achieve a deep meditation, you may have a very elated peak experience, but if someone says, ‘Repeat it here,’ you may not be able to repeat it. On the contrary, because someone says, and you make an effort to repeat it, this very effort may become the barrier.
Even the presence of observers may be distracting. You may not be able to repeat it.
Science needs objective, repeatable experiments. And psychology, if it wants to be a science, must follow scientific rules. Religion is subjective. It is not concerned with proving any fact; rather, it is concerned with coming to an individual experiencing of it. And the deepest must remain individual, and the ultimate must remain private; it cannot become collective. Because unless everyone has come to the status of an enlightened one, it cannot become collective. You have to grow to achieve it.
So science and religion really cannot meet, because their approaches are different. Religion is absolutely private – the concern of the individual with himself. Because of this, those countries which in the past have been more religious than others have remained individualistic. For example, India.
India is individualistic. Sometimes it appears even selfish. Everyone is concerned with himself, his own growth, his own enlightenment; not concerned with others, indifferent to others, indifferent to society, social conditions, poverty, slavery. Everyone is concerned with himself, with growing to the ultimate peak. It also looks selfish.
Western countries are more socialistic, less individualistic. That’s why the very concept of communism was impossible with the Indian mind. We have given a Buddha and a Patanjali, but we couldn’t give a Marx. It had to come from the West where the society, the collective whole, is more important than the individual; where science is more important than religion; where that which happens objectively is more important than that which happens in your absolute privacy. That which happens in the privacy is dream-like for the West.
Look at this: that which happens publicly we have called maya, illusion. Shankara says the whole world is illusion; only that which happens deep down within you, the ultimate, the Brahma that happens there is real, and everything is unreal. Quite the opposite is the western scientific attitude:
that which happens within you is illusory; that which happens outside is the real. The reality is there outside, and the dream-world is there inside.
These are the two attitudes – so different, the approach so diametrically opposite, that there can be no meeting. There is no need also. Their dimensions are different, their spheres are different. They never trespass on each other; there is no conflict at all. And there need be no conflict. Science works with the objective world, and religion works with the individual, subjective world. They never cross each other. There cannot be any conflict.
And to me, when you are working with the outside world, work with a scientific attitude. When you are working with yourself, work with a religious attitude. And don’t create any conflict; there is no need. Don’t bring science for the inner world, and don’t bring religion for the outer world.
If you bring religion to the outer world, you will create chaos. In India we have created it – it is a mess. If you bring a scientific attitude for the inner, you will create madness – the West has created it. Now the West is completely neurotic. And both have made the same mistake. Don’t confuse the two, and don’t try to bring the outer to the inner, or the inner to the outer. Let the subjective be subjective and let the objective be the objective. While you move outwards be scientific and objective, and while you move inwards be religious and subjective.
There is no need to create any conflict. There is none. The conflict arises only because we want to impose one attitude on both realms. We want either to be scientific totally, or to be religious totally – that’s wrong. With the objective, the subjective approach will be false, dangerous, harmful, and vice versa.
Question 5:
YOU HAVE SPOKEN ABOUT SO MANY METHODS AND TECHNIQUES. THE YEARNING TO SUCCEED IN THEM IS VERY GREAT.HOW CAN WE OVERCOME OUR GREAT IMPATIENCE?
Two things to be remembered. One: spirituality cannot be an outcome of desire, because desire is the root cause of all our anxiety and anguish. And you cannot direct your desires to the spiritual realm. But it happens, it is natural, because we know only one movement – that is desire. We desire the things of the world. Someone desires riches, someone desires fame, someone desires prestige and power, or something else. We desire things of the world, and through this desiring we are frustrated.
And we are bound to be frustrated – it is irrelevant whether a desire is fulfilled or not. If it is not fulfilled, obviously we will be frustrated. If it is fulfilled, then too we will be frustrated, because whenever a desire is fulfilled, the desire is fulfilled, but the hope, the promise, is not fulfilled. You can get as much wealth as you desire, but the wealth was not desired really; something else was desired through it – that is never fulfilled.
You can achieve wealth, but the hope that was lingering around – the dream of happiness, of bliss, of some ecstatic life – that is not fulfilled. If wealth is not achieved you will feel frustrated. If wealth is achieved then too you will feel frustrated, because the promise is not fulfilled, the dream is not fulfilled. Everything is there. The means are there, and the end has escaped. The end is always elusive.
Through desire one comes to deep frustration. When this frustration happens you start looking for something absolutely other than this world – religious yearning is born, a religious longing, but again you start desiring. You become impatient; you want to achieve this and that. The mind has not changed. The object of desire is different: it was wealth, now it is meditation. It was power and prestige, now it is silence and peace. Before it was something, now it is something else. But the mind, the mechanism, the very working of your being, is the same. You were desiring A, now you are desiring B – but the desiring is there.
And desiring is the problem, not what you desire; that is not the problem. What you desire is not the problem – that you desire is the problem. Now you are again desiring and you will be frustrated again. If you achieve, you will be frustrated. If you don’t achieve, you will be frustrated. The same will happen to you, because you have not been able to see the point, you have missed the point.
You cannot desire meditation, because meditation happens only when there is no desire. You cannot desire liberation, nirvana, because it happens only in a desireless state. It cannot be made an object of desire. So to me, and to all those who know, desiring is the world; not that you desire worldly things. Desiring, the very phenomenon of desiring, is the world.
And when you desire, impatience is bound to be there, because the mind doesn’t want to wait, the mind doesn’t want to postpone. It is impatient. Impatience is the shadow of desire. The more intense the desire, the more impatience will be there. And impatience will create disturbance. So how will you achieve meditation? Desire will create movement of the mind, and then desiring will create impatience, and impatience will bring you to more disturbances.
So it happens, and I observe it daily, that a person who was living a very worldly life was not ordinarily so disturbed. When he starts to meditate, or to seek the religious dimension, he becomes more disturbed, more than ever. The reason is that now he has an even keener desire, more impatience.
And with the worldly things, things were so real and objective that he could wait for them. They were always in his reach. Now in the spiritual realm things are so elusive, so far away, they never seem to be in reach. Life seems to be very short, and now the object of desires seems to be infinite – there is more impatience and then more disturbance. And with a disturbed mind, how can you meditate?
So this is the puzzle. Try to understand it. If you are really frustrated and you have come to feel that all that is outside is futile – money or sex or power or prestige just futile – if you have come to this realization, then a deeper realization is also needed. If these things are futile, then desiring is even more futile: you desire and desire and nothing happens – and your desiring creates the misery.
Look at the fact that desiring creates misery. If you don’t desire, there is no misery. So drop desiring.
And don’t create a new desire; simply drop desiring. Don’t create a spiritual desire. Don’t say, ‘Now I am going to seek God. Now I am going to find this and that. Now I am going to realize the truth.’
Don’t create a new desire. If you create, it shows you have not understood your misery.
Look at the misery that desire creates. Feel that desire is misery and drop it. No effort is needed to drop it. Remember, if you make an effort you will create another desire. That’s why you need some other desire, because then you can leave it. If some other desire is there, you can hang onto it. You can cling to the new desire and you can leave the old one. To leave the old is easy if some new is to be gained, but then you are missing the whole point. Simply leave desire because it is misery, and don’t create a new desire.
Then there will be no impatience. Then meditation is not be practised really; it will start happening to you, because a non-desiring mind is in meditation. Then you can play with these techniques. And I say play. Then you can play with these techniques; there is no practice. Practice is not a good word the very word is wrong. Then you can play with these techniques, and you can enjoy playing, because there is no desire to achieve something and there is no impatience to reach somewhere.
You can play, and through play, when meditation is a play, everything is possible. And everything is possible immediately, because you are not disturbed, you are not impatient, you are not in any hurry, you are not going somewhere, not reaching somewhere. You are here and now. If meditation happens, okay. If it doesn’t happen, it is still okay. Nothing is wrong with you because there is no desire, no expectation, no future.
And remember, when meditation or no-meditation are similar to you, meditation has happened to you. You have reached. Now the goal has come, the ultimate has descended in you. This will look strange – that I say don’t make meditation a practice, rather make it a play, a fun. Enjoy it while doing it, not for any result.
But our minds are very serious, deadly serious. Even if we play, we make it a serious thing. We make it a work, a duty. Play just like small children. Play with meditation techniques, and then much more is possible through them. Don’t be serious about them; take them as fun. But we make everything serious. Even if we are playing, we make it serious. And with religion we have always been very serious. Religion has never been fun, that’s why the earth has remained irreligious. Religion must become a fun and a festivity,, a celebration – a celebration of the moment, enjoying whatsoever you are doing; enjoying so much and so deeply that mind ceases.
If you really understand me, these 112 techniques will show you that everything can become a technique – if you really understand. That’s why there are 112. Everything can become a technique if you understand the quality of the mind which brings meditation. Then whatsoever you do can become a technique. Be playful, celebrate it, enjoy it. Move so deeply in it that time ceases.
But time cannot cease if desire is there. Really, desire is time. When you desire, future is needed, because desire cannot be fulfilled here and now. Desire can be fulfilled only in the future somewhere, so you will need future to move. And then time destroys you. You miss eternity. Eternity is here.
So take meditation as a fun, a festivity, a celebration of anything. You are just digging outside in the garden – it can become a technique. Simply dig and enjoy and celebrate the very act. Become the act and forget the actor. The ‘I’ is not there, only the action remains, and you are present to the action, blissfully present. Then ecstasy is there – no impatience, no desire, and no motivation.
If you bring motivation, desire and impatience to meditation, you will destroy the whole thing. And then the more you do, the more frustrated you will feel. You will say, ‘I am doing so much and nothing is happening.’ People come to me. They say, ‘I am doing this and I am doing that, and for so many months and for so many years, and nothing has happened.’
One seeker from Holland was here, and he was doing a particular technique three hundred times every day. So he told me, ‘For two years I have been doing this technique three hundred times every day. Not a single day has been missed. I have left everything, because I have to do this three hundred times every day – and nothing has happened.’ And he was just on the verge of a nervous breakdown, because of the technique.
So I said, ‘The first thing is to leave this. Do anything whatsoever, but don’t do this. You will go mad.’
He was deadly serious about it. It was a life-and-death problem for him. It had to be achieved.
And he said, ‘Who knows how many days are left? Time is short, and I must achieve it in this life. I don’t want to be born again. Life is much a misery.’
He will be born again and again. The way he is doing, he will go more and more mad. But it is wrong – the whole attitude is wrong. Take meditation as a play, a fun, enjoy it, and then the very quality changes. Then it is not something you are doing as a cause to gain some effect. No, you are enjoying it here and now. It is the cause and it is the effect, both. It is the beginning and it is the end.
And then you cannot miss meditation. You cannot miss it, it will happen to you, because now you are ready to take it in. You are open. No one has said that meditation should be taken as a fun, but I say it. Make it a play. Just like small children, play with it.
Question 6:
THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT DARKNESS IS MORE FUNDAMENTAL TO EXISTENCE, WHILE MOST RELIGIONS HOLD THE CONTRARY VIEW.WILL YOU KINDLY SHED SOME MORE LIGHT ON THIS QUESTION,
PARTICULARLY IN VIEW OF WHAT MODERN SCIENCE HAS TO SAY ABOUT IT?DOES IT NOT SAY THAT THE LAST DIVISIBLE COMPONENTS OF MATTER
ARE JUST ELECTRIC ENERGY?
Again the same division – light and darkness. They are two if you look at them through the mind.
They are one if you meditate upon them. Whether you meditate on light or on darkness, it makes no difference. If you meditate, the other is dissolved into it. Then light is nothing but less darkness and darkness is nothing but less light; the difference is of degree. They are not two things opposed to each other; rather, two degrees of one phenomenon. And that one phenomenon is neither light nor darkness. That one of which these two are degrees is neither light nor darkness; or, it is both.
You can enter into it from light, you can enter into it from darkness.
Many religions have used light because it is more comfortable, easier. Darkness is difficult, more uncomfortable, and if you try to enter through darkness, you have chosen a more arduous path.
That’s why many religions have chosen light. But you can choose either; it depends on you. If you are adventurous, courageous, choose darkness. If you are afraid, and don’t want to go on an arduous path, choose light. Because both belong to one phenomenon which appears at one point as light, at another point as darkness.
For example, this room is filled with light. But it is not filled with the same light for everyone, or is it?
If my eyes are weak then the light is not as light as it is for you. I see it as a little darker. Imagine if someone from Mars or from some other planet comes, who has very penetrating eyes. Then where you see light, he will see much light, more light then you see. And where you see darkness, he will see light. There are animals and birds who see in the night where you cannot see. For them it is light, for you it is darkness.
So what is light? And what is darkness? – one phenomenon. And how much you can penetrate into it, and how much it can penetrate into you… it depends on that penetration whether you call it light or darkness. These polar opposites just appear to be opposites. They are not, they are relative degrees of one phenomenon. So scientists say that the last divisible components of matter are just electric energy. But they don’t say they are light; they say electric energy. Darkness is also electric energy, and light is also electric energy. Electric energy is not synonymous with light. If you give it the name electric energy, then light is one expression and darkness is another.
But there is no need to move into scientific discussion about it. It is useless. Rather, think about your own mind, what you like. If you feel at ease with light, enter through light. That is your door. If you feel at ease with darkness, enter through darkness. And both will lead to the same.
Many methods in these 112 are concerned with light; a few are concerned with darkness. And Shiva is trying to explain all the methods possible. He is not talking to particular types; he is talking to all types. But there are a few persons who will like to enter through darkness. For example, a feminine mind, more passive, more receptive, will like to enter through darkness; it will be more acceptable.
A male mind will like the light more.
You may not have observed the fact that many poets of the past and the present, many philosophers, and many others who have a deep insight into the human mind, have always compared the female with darkness, and the male with light. Light is aggressive, a male element; darkness is receptive, a female element. Darkness is like a womb.
So it depends: if you like darkness, good, enter through it. If you like light, enter through it.
Sometimes even the opposite becomes appealing. You can try that also. There is no danger in trying anything, because every path leads to the same goal.
But don’t go on thinking about what to choose. Don’t waste time; rather, try. Because you can go on thinking forever about what will be suitable, what to do and what not to do, and why so many religions have insisted on light, and so few on darkness. Don’t get worried about these things; they don’t help. Rather, you think about your own type, about what will be suitable for you, in what you will feel more comfortable, and then start it.
And then forget all others, because all of these 112 methods are not for you. Even if you choose one method, for you it is enough. You need not go through 112 methods; one method will do. So just be receptive and aware so that you can catch the method that is for you. You need not get worried about every other method; that is unnecessary. Choose one, play with it, and if you feel good and something is happening, then move into it and forget all the other 111. If you feel you have chosen wrongly, then throw it, choose another, and play with it. If you try this with four or five or six methods, you will fall upon the right one. But don’t be serious – just play.
Osho ~ Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 