Breathe Meditation - The second type

Breathe Meditation - Second Type

AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN -- THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.

It is the same, but with a slight difference. The emphasis is now not on the gap, but on the turning. The outgoing and ingoing breath make a circle. Remember, these are not two parallel lines. We always think of them as two parallel lines -- breath going in and breath going out. Do you think that these are two parallel lines? They are not. Breath going in is half the circle; breath going out is the other half of the circle.

So understand this: first, breathing in and out creates a circle. They are not parallel lines, because parallel lines never meet anywhere. Secondly, the breath coming in and the breath going out are not two breaths, they are one breath. The same breath which comes in, goes out, so it must have a turn inside. It must turn somewhere. There must be a point where the incoming breath becomes outgoing.

Why put such emphasis upon turning? Because, Shiva says, AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN, THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE. Very simple, but he says: realize the turns and you will realize the self.

Why the turn? If you know driving you know about gears. Each time you change the gear, you have to pass through the neutral gear, which is not a gear at all. From the first gear you move to the second or from the second to the third, but always you have to move through the neutral gear. That neutral gear is a turning point. In that turning point the first gear becomes the second and the second becomes the third. When your breath goes in and turns out, it passes through the neutral gear; otherwise it cannot turn out. It passes through the neutral territory.

In that neutral territory you are neither a body nor a soul, neither physical nor mental, because the physical is a gear of your being and the mental is another gear of your being. You go on moving from gear to gear, but you must have a neutral gear where you are neither body nor mind. In that neutral gear you simply are: you are simply an existence -- pure, simple, unembodied, with no mind.

That is why there is the emphasis on the turn. Man is a machine -- a large, very complicated machine. You have many gears in your body, many gears in your mind. You are not aware of your great mechanism, but you are a great machine. And it is good that you are not aware; otherwise you could go mad. The body is such a great machine that scientists say if we had to create a factory parallel to the human body, it would require four square miles of land, and the noise would be such that one hundred square miles of land would be disturbed by it.

The body is a great mechanical device -- the greatest. You have millions and millions of cells and each cell is alive. So you are a big city of seventy million cells; there are seventy million citizens inside you, and the whole city is running very silently, smoothly. Every moment the mechanism is working. It is very complicated. These techniques will be related at many points with the mechanism of your body and the mechanism of your mind. But always the emphasis will be on those points where suddenly you are not part of the mechanism -- remember this. Suddenly you are not part of the mechanism. There are moments when you change gears.

For example, in the night when you drop into sleep you change gears, because during the day you need a different mechanism for a waking consciousness -- a different part of the mind functions. Then you drop into sleep, and that part becomes non-functioning. Another part of the mind begins to function, and there is a gap, an interval, a turning. A gear is changed. In the morning when you are again getting up, the gear is changed. You are silently sitting, and suddenly someone says something and you get angry -- you move into a different gear. That is why everything changes.

If you get angry, your breathing will suddenly change. Your breathing will become irritated, chaotic. A trembling will get into your breathing; you will feel suffocated. Your whole body would like to do something, shatter something, only then can the suffocation disappear. Your breathing will change; your blood will take a different rhythm, a different movement. Different chemicals will have to be released in the body, the whole glandular system will have to change. You become a different man when you are angry.

A car is standing... you start it. Do not put it in any gear, let it be in neutral. It will go on pulling, vibrating, trembling, but it cannot move; it will get hot. That is why, when you are angry and you cannot do something, you will get hot. The mechanism is ready to run and do something and you are not doing -- you will get hot. You are a mechanism, but, of course, not only a mechanism. You are more, but the "more" has to be found. When you get into a gear, everything changes inside. When you change the gear, there is a turning.

Shiva says,

AS BREATH TURNS FROM DOWN TO UP, AND AGAIN AS BREATH CURVES FROM UP TO DOWN -- THROUGH BOTH THESE TURNS, REALIZE.

Be aware at the turn. But it is a very short turn; very minute observation will be needed. And we are just without any observing capacity; we cannot observe anything. If I say to you, "Observe this flower; observe this flower which I give to you," you cannot observe it. For a single moment you will see it, and then you will begin to think of something else. It may be about the flower, but it will not be THE FLOWER. You may think about the flower, about how beautiful it is -- then you have moved. Now the flower is no more in your observation, your field has changed. You may say that it is red, it is blue, it is white... then you have moved. Observation means remaining with no word, with no verbalization, with no bubbling inside -- just remaining WITH. If you can remain with a flower for three minutes, completely, with no movement of the mind, the thing will happen -- the beneficence. You will realize.

But we are not at all observers. We are not aware, we are not alert; we cannot pay attention to anything. We just go on jumping. This is part of our heritage, our monkey heritage. Our mind is just the growth of the monkey mind, so the monkey moves on. He goes on jumping from here to there. The monkey cannot sit still. That is why Buddha insisted so much on just sitting without any movement, because then the monkey mind is not allowed to go on its way.

In Japan they have a particular type of meditation which they call Zazen. The word 'zazen' in Japan means just sitting, doing nothing. No movement is allowed. One is just sitting like a statue -- dead, not moving at all. But there is no need to sit like a statue for years together. If you can observe the turn of your breath without any movement of the mind, you will enter. You will enter into yourself or into the beyond within.

Why are these turnings so important? They are important because on turning, the breath leaves you to move in a different direction. It was with you when it was coming in; it will be with you again when it goes out. But at the turning point it is not with you and you are not with it. In that moment the breath is different from you, and you are different from it: if breathing is life, then you are dead; if breathing is your body, then you are no-body; if breathing is your mind, then you are no-mind... in that moment.

I wonder whether you have observed it or not: if you stop your breath, the mind stops suddenly. If you stop your breath just now, your mind will stop suddenly; the mind cannot function. A sudden stoppage of breath and the mind stops. Why? Because they are disjoined. Only a moving breath is joined with the mind, with the body; a non-moving breath is disjoined. Then you are in the neutral gear. The car is running, the power is on, the car is making a noise -- it is ready to go forward -- but it is not in gear, so the body of the car and the mechanism of the car are not joined. The car is divided into two. It is ready to move, but the moving mechanism is not joined with it.

The same happens when breath takes a turn. You are not joined with it. In that moment you can easily become aware of who you are. What is this being? What is it to be? Who is inside this house of the body? Who is the master? Am I just the house or is there some master also? Am I just the mechanism or does something else also penetrate this mechanism? In that turning gap, Shiva says, REALIZE. He says just be aware of the turning, and you become a realized soul. 
 

Breathe Meditations

RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS. AFTER BREATH COMES IN (DOWN) AND JUST BEFORE TURNING UP (OUT) -- THE BENEFICENCE.

That is the technique:

RADIANT ONE, THIS EXPERIENCE MAY DAWN BETWEEN TWO BREATHS.

After breath comes in -- that is, down -- and just before turning out -- that is, going up -- THE BENEFICENCE. Be aware between these two points, and the happening. When your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, or a thousandth part of a moment, there is no breathing -- before it turns up, before it turns outward. One breath comes in; then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops. Then breathing comes in.

Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing you are not in the world. Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you ARE still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it.

For tantra, each outgoing breath is a death and each new breath is a rebirth. Breath coming in is rebirth; breath going out is death. The outgoing breath is synonymous with death; the incoming breath is synonymous with life. So with each breath you are dying and being reborn. The gap between the two is of a very short duration, but keen, sincere observation and attention will make you feel the gap. If you can feel the gap, Shiva says, THE BENEFICENCE. Then nothing else is needed. You are blessed, you have known; the thing has happened.

You are not to train the breath. Leave it just as it is. Why such a simple technique? It looks so simple. Such a simple technique to know the truth? To know the truth means to know that which is neither born nor dies, to know that eternal element which is always. You can know the breath going out, you can know the breath coming in, but you never know the gap between the two.

Try it. Suddenly you will get the point -- and you can get it; it is already there. Nothing is to be added to you or to your structure, it is already there. Everything is already there except a certain awareness. So how to do this? First, become aware of the breath coming in. Watch it. Forget everything, just watch breath coming in -- the very passage.

When the breath touches your nostrils, feel it there. Then let the breath move in. Move with the breath fully consciously. When you are going down, down, down with the breath, do not miss the breath. Do not go ahead and do not follow behind, just go with it. Remember this: do not go ahead, do not follow it like a shadow; be simultaneous with it.

Breath and consciousness should become one. The breath goes in -- you go in. Only then will it be possible to get the point which is between two breaths. It will not be easy. Move in with the breath, then move out with the breath: in-out, in-out.

Buddha tried particularly to use this method, so this method has become a Buddhist method. In Buddhist terminology it is known as Anapanasati Yoga. And Buddha's enlightenment was based on this technique -- only this.

All the religions of the world, all the seers of the world, have reached through some technique or other, and all those techniques will be in these one hundred and twelve techniques. This first one is a Buddhist technique. It has become known in the world as a Buddhist technique because Buddha attained his enlightenment through this technique.

Buddha said, "Be aware of your breath as it is coming in, going out -- coming in, going out." He never mentions the gap because there is no need. Buddha thought and felt that if you become concerned with the gap, the gap between two breaths, that concern may disturb your awareness. So he simply said, "Be aware. When the breath is going in move with it, and when the breath is going out move with it. Do simply this: going in, going out, with the breath." He never says anything about the latter part of the technique.

The reason is that Buddha was talking with very ordinary men, and even that might create a desire to attain the interval. That desire to attain the interval will become a barrier to awareness, because if you are desiring to get to the interval you will move ahead. Breath will be coming in, and you will move ahead because you are interested in the gap which is going to be in the future. Buddha never mentions it, so Buddha's technique is just half.

But the other half follows automatically. If you go on practicing breath consciousness, breath awareness, suddenly, one day, without knowing, you will come to the interval. Because as your awareness will become keen and deep and intense, as your awareness will become bracketed -- the whole world is bracketed out; only your breath coming in or going out is your world, the whole arena for your consciousness -- suddenly you are bound to feel the gap in which there is no breath.

When you are moving with breath minutely, when there is no breath, how can you remain unaware? You will suddenly become aware that there is no breath, and the moment will come when you will feel that the breath is neither going out nor coming in. The breath has stopped completely. In that stopping, THE BENEFICENCE.

This one technique is enough for millions. The whole of Asia tried and lived with this technique for centuries. Tibet, China, Japan, Burma, Thailand, Ceylon -- the whole of Asia except India has tried this technique. Only one technique and thousands and thousands have attained enlightenment through it. And this is only the first technique.

But unfortunately, because the technique became associated with Buddha's name, Hindus have been trying to avoid it. Because it became more and more known as a Buddhist method, Hindus have completely forgotten it. And not only that, they have also tried to avoid it for another reason. Because this technique is the first technique mentioned by Shiva, many Buddhists have claimed that this book, VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, is a Buddhist book, not a Hindu book.

It is neither Hindu nor Buddhist -- a technique is just a technique. Buddha used it, but it was there already to be used. Buddha became a buddha, an enlightened one, because of the technique. The technique preceded Buddha; the technique was already there. Try it. It is one of the most simple techniques -- simple compared to other techniques; I am not saying simple for you. Other techniques will be more difficult. That is why it is mentioned as the first technique

Tantric Meditation For Woman - The Last Type

From The Discourses Of Book Of Secrets


O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN OMNIPOTENCE





Whatsoever we see is limited, whatsoever we feel is limited, all perceptions are limited. But if you can become aware, then every limited thing is disappearing into the unlimited. Look at the sky. You will see a limited part of it, not because the sky is limited by because your eyes are limited, your focus is limited. But if you can become aware that this limitation is because of the focus, because of the eye, it is not the sky that is limited, then you will see the boundaries melting into the unlimited. Otherwise existence is unlimited, otherwise everything is melting into something else. Everything is losing its boundary, every moment waves are disappearing into the ocean -- and there is no end to anything and there is no beginning. Everything is everything else also.Limitation is forced by us. It is because of us, because we cannot see the infinite, that we divide it. We have done it in everything. You make a fence around your house and you say, "This land belongs to me and beyond the fence is somebody else's land." But deep down your land and your neighbor's land are one. The fence is just because of you. The land is not divided, the neighbors and you are divided -- because of your mind.Nations are divided because of your mind. Somewhere India ends and Pakistan starts, but just a few years back India was where Pakistan now is. At that time India used to continue up to the limits of Pakistan, the present day limits. But now Pakistan is divided, there is a barrier. But the land remains the same.I have heard a story that happened when India and Pakistan were divided. There was a madhouse, a mad asylum, just on the boundary of India and Pakistan. The politicians were not very worried about where the madhouse went, to Pakistan or to India, but the superintendent was very worried. So he asked where the madhouse was going to be, whether it was going to be in India or in Pakistan. Somebody from Delhi informed him that he should ask the inmates, the madmen, and take a vote as to where they wanted to go.The superintendent was the only man who was not insane and he tried to explain. He gathered all the madmen together and told them, "Now it is up to you, wherever you want you can go. If you want to go to India, you can go to India. If you want to go to Pakistan, you can go to Pakistan." But the madmen said, "We want to remain here. We don't want to go anywhere." He tried and tried to explain. He said, "You will remain here. Don't worry about it. You will remain here, but where do you want to go?" Those madmen said, "People say we are mad, but you look more mad. You say you will remain here, and we will remain here, so why worry about going anywhere?" The superintendent was at a loss as to how to explain the whole thing.There was only one way. He erected a wall, and divided the madhouse into two equal parts. One part became India, another part became Pakistan. And it is reported that sometimes madmen from the Pakistan madhouse came over the wall, and the madmen from India they also jumped over the wall, and they're still much confused about what is happening. "We are in the same place, and you have gone to Pakistan, and we have gone to India, and no one has gone anywhere!"Those madmen are bound to be at a loss, they will never be able to understand, because in Delhi and Karachi there are bigger madmen.We go on dividing. Life, existence, is not divided. All demarcations are man-made. They are useful, if you don't go mad about them, and if you know that they are just artificial, man-made, utilitarian, not real, not true, that they are just myths, that they help but they don't go any deeper.O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN OMNIPOTENCE. So, whenever you see anything limited, always remember that beyond the limit it is disappearing, the limitation is disappearing. Always look beyond and beyond.This you can make a meditation. Just sit under a tree and look, and whatsoever comes into your view, just go beyond, look beyond, and don't stop anywhere. Just find where this tree is melting. This tree, this small tree just in your garden, has the whole of existence in it. It is melting every moment. If the sun does not rise tomorrow this tree will die, because this tree's life is bound together with the life of the sun. The distance between them is very long -- for the sun-rays to reach earth takes time, ten minutes' time. Ten minutes' time is very long, because light travels at a very fast speed, tremendous. Light travels one hundred and eighty-six lahk miles in one second and it takes ten minutes for light to reach this tree from the sun. The distance is tremendous, vast. But if the sun is no longer there, the tree will immediately disappear. They exist together. The tree is melting every moment into the sun and the sun is melting into the tree. Every moment the sun is entering into the tree, making it alive.... The other things is as yet unknown to science, but religion says another thing is also happening -- because in life nothing can exist without response. If the sun is giving life to the tee, the tree must be giving life back to the sun, because in life there is always a response. And energy equalizes. The tree must be giving life to the sun. They are one. Then the tree has disappeared, the limitation has disappeared.Wherever you look, look for the beyond and don't stop anywhere. Go on and on and on, until you lose your mind, until you lose all your limited patterns. Suddenly you will be illumined. The whole existence is one. That oneness is the goal. And suddenly mind is tired of pattern, limitation, boundary -- and as you insist on going beyond, as you go on pulling it beyond and beyond, the mind slips, suddenly it drops, and you look at existence as a vast oneness, everything melting into each other, everything changing into the other.O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN OMNIPOTENCE. You can make a meditation out of it. Sit for one hour and work it out. Don't create any limitation anywhere. Whatsoever the limitation just try to find the beyond, and move and go on moving. Soon the mind becomes tired because mind cannot cope with the unlimited. Only with the limited can it be related. With the unlimited, it cannot be related: it gets bored, it gets tired, it says, "Enough, now stop!" But don't stop, go on moving. A moment will come when mind is left behind and only consciousness is moving. In that moment you will have the illumination of oneness, of non-duality. That is the goal. That is the highest peak of consciousness. And that is the greatest ecstasy possible to human mind, and the deepest bliss.

Tantric Meditation For Woman - Eighth Type

From the Discourses of The Book Of Secrets

THE APPRECIATION OF OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS IS THE SAME FOR AN ENLIGHTENED AS FOR AN UNENLIGHTENED PERSON. THE FORMER HAS ONE GREATNESS: HE REMAINS IN THE SUBJECTIVE MOOD, NOT LOST IN THINGS .

There is a very beautiful method. You can start it as you are; no other prerequisite is needed. The method is simple: you are surrounded by persons, things, phenomena -- every moment something is around you. Things are there, events are there, persons are there -- but because you are not alert, you are not there. Everything is there but you are fast asleep. Things move around you, persons move around you, events move around you, but you are not there. Or, you are asleep.So whatsoever happens in your surroundings becomes a master, becomes a force over you; you are dragged by it. You are not only impressed, conditioned by it, you are dragged by it.Anything can catch you, and you will follow it. Somebody passes -- you look, the face is beautiful -- and you are carried away. The dress is beautiful, the color, the material is beautiful -- you are carried away. The car passes -- you are carried away. Whatsoever happens around you, catches you. You are not powerful. Everything else is more powerful than you. Anything changes you. Your mood, your being, your mind, depend on other things. Objects influence you.This sutra says that enlightened persons and unenlightened persons live in the same world. A Buddha and you both live and move in the same world -- the world remains the same. The difference is not in the world, the difference happens in the Buddha: he moves in a different way. He moves among the same objects but he moves in a different way. He is his own master. His subjectivity remains aloof and untouched. That is the secret. Nothing can impress him; nothing from the outside can condition him; nothing can overpower him. He remains detached; he remains himself. If he wants to go somewhere, he will go, but he will remain the master. If he wants to pursue a shadow, he will pursue it, but it is his own decision.This distinction must be understood. By `detachment' I don't mean a person who has renounced the world -- then there is no sense and no meaning in detachment. A detached person is a person who is living in the same world as you -- the difference is not in the world. A person who renounces the world is changing the situation, not himself. And you will insist on changing the situation if you cannot change yourself. That is the indication of a weak personality. A strong person, alert and aware, will start to change himself... not the situation in which he is. Because really the situation cannot be changed -- even if you can change the situation, there will be other situations. Every moment situations go on changing so every moment the problem will be there.This is the difference between the religious and the non-religious attitude. The non-religious attitude is to change the situation, the surrounding. It doesn't believe in you, it believes in situations: when the situation is okay, you will be okay. You are dependent on the situation: if the situation is not okay, you will not be okay. So you are not an independent entity. For communists, Marxists, socialists, and all those who believe in changing the situation, you are not important; really, you don't exist. Only the situation exists and you are just a mirror which reflects the situation. The religious attitude says that as you are you may be a mirror, but this is not your destiny -- you can become something more, someone who is not dependent.There are three steps of growth. Firstly, the situation is the master, you are just dragged by it. You believe that `you are', but you are not. Secondly, `you are', and the situation cannot drag you, the situation cannot influence you because you have become a will, you are integrated and crystalized. Thirdly, you start influencing the situation: just by your being there, the situation changes.The first state is that of the unenlightened; the second state is of the person who is constantly aware but as yet unenlightened -- he has to be alert, he has to do something to be alert. The alertness has not become natural yet so he has to fight. If he loses consciousness or alertness for a single moment, he will be in the influence of the thing. So he has to stand on his toes continuously. He is the seeker, the SADHAK, the one who is practising something. The third state is that of the SIDDHA, the enlightened one. He is not trying to be alert, he simply is alert -- there is no effort to it. Alertness is just like breathing: it goes on, he does not have to maintain it. When alertness becomes a phenomenon like breathing, natural, SAHAJ, spontaneous, then this type of person, this type of centered being, automatically influences situations. Situations change around him -- not that he wishes them to change, but he is powerful.Power is the thing to be remembered. You are powerless so anything can overpower you. And power comes through alertness, awareness: the more alert, the more powerful; the less alert, the less powerful. Look... while you are asleep even a dream becomes powerful because you are fast asleep, you have lost all consciousness. Even a dream is powerful, and you are so weak that you cannot even doubt it. Even in an absurd dream you cannot be skeptical, you will have to believe it. And while it lasts, it looks real. You may see just absurd things in the dream, but while you are dreaming, you cannot doubt. You cannot say this is not real; you cannot say this is a dream; you cannot say this is impossible. You simply cannot say it because you are so fast asleep. When consciousness is not there even a dream affects you. While awake, you will laugh and you will say, "It was absurd, impossible, this cannot happen. This dream was just illusory." But you have not noticed that while it was there you were influenced by it, you were totally taken over by it. Why was a dream so powerful? The dream was not powerful -- you were powerless. Remember this: when you are powerless even a dream becomes powerful.While you are awake, a dream cannot influence you, but reality, the so-called reality around, does. An awakened person, an enlightened person, has become so alert that your reality also cannot influence him. If a woman passes, a beautiful woman, you are suddenly carried away. Desire has arisen, the desire to possess. If you are alert, the woman will pass by, but the desire will not arise -- you have not been influenced, you have not been taken over. When this happens for the first time, when things move around you and you are not influenced, you will feel a subtle joy of being. For the first time really you feel that you are; nothing can drag you out of you. If you want to follow, that is another thing. That is your decision. But don't deceive yourself. You can deceive. You can say, "Yes. The woman is not powerful, but I want to follow her, I want to possess her." You can deceive. Many people go on deceiving. But you are deceiving nobody except yourself -- then it is futile. Just take a close look: you will know the desire is there. The desire comes first, and then you start rationalizing it.For an enlightened person, things are there and he is there but there is no bridge between him and the thing. The bridge has broken. He moves alone. He lives alone. He follows himself. Nothing else can possess him. Because of this feeling we have called this attainment MOKSHA -- total freedom, MUKTI. He is totally free.
All over the world, man has searched for freedom; you cannot find a man who is not hankering after freedom in his own way. Through many paths man tries to find a state of being where he can be free, and he resents anything that gives him a feeling of bondage. He hates it. Anything that hinders, that makes him imprisoned, he fights. He struggles against it. Hence so many political fights, so many wars, revolutions; hence so many continuous family fights -- wife and husband, father and son, all fighting each other. The fight is basic. The fight is for freedom. The husband feels confined, the wife has imprisoned him -- now his freedom is cut. And the wife feels the same. They both resent each other, they both fight, they both try to destroy the bondage. The father fights the son because every stage of growth in the son means more freedom for him. And the father feels he is losing something: power, authority. In families, in nations, in civilizations, man is hankering after only one thing -- freedom.But nothing is achieved through political fights, revolutions, wars. Nothing is achieved. Because even if you get freedom, it is superficial -- deep down you remain in bondage. So every freedom proves a disillusionment. Man longs so much for wealth, but as far as I understand it, it is not a longing for wealth, it is a longing for freedom. Wealth gives you a feeling of freedom. If you are poor, you are confined, your means are limited -- you cannot do this, you cannot do that. You don't have the money to do it. The more money you have, the more you feel you have freedom, you can do anything you like. But when you have all the money and you can do all that you wish, imagine, dream about, suddenly you feel this freedom is superficial, because inside your being knows well that you are powerless and that anything can attract you. You are impressed, influenced, possessed by things and persons.This sutra says that you have to come to a state of consciousness where nothing impresses you, you can remain detached. How to do it? Throughout the whole day the opportunity is there to do it. That is why I say this method is good for you to do. Any moment you can become aware that something is possessing you. Then take a deep breath, inhale deeply, exhale deeply, and look at the thing again. While you are exhaling look at the thing again, but look just as a witness, as a spectator. If you can achieve the witnessing state of mind for even a single moment, suddenly you will feel you are alone, nothing can impress you; at least in that moment nothing can create desire in you. Take a deep breath and exhale it whenever you feel that something is impressing you, influencing you, dragging you away from you, becoming more important than yourself. And in that small gap created by the exhalation look at the thing -- a beautiful face, a beautiful body, a beautiful building, or anything. If you feel it is difficult, if just by exhaling you cannot create a gap, then do one thing more: exhale, and stop inhalation for a single moment so the exhalation has thrown all the air out. Stop, don't inhale. Then look at the thing. When the air is out, or in, when you have stopped breathing, nothing can influence you. In that moment you are unbridged -- the bridge is broken. Breathing is the bridge. Try it. It will be only for a single moment that you will have the feeling of witnessing, but that will give you the taste, that will give you the feeling of what witnessing is. Then you can pursue it. Throughout the whole day, whenever something impresses you and a desire arises, exhale, stop in the interval, and look at the thing. The thing will be there, you will be there, but there will be no bridge. Breathing is the bridge. Suddenly you will feel you are powerful, you are potential. And the more powerful you feel, the more YOU will become. The more things drop, the more their power over you drops, the more crystalized you will feel. Individuality has begun. Now you have a center to refer to, and any moment you can move to the center and the world disappears. Any moment you can take shelter in your own center, and the world is powerless.This sutra says, THE APPRECIATION OF OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS IS THE SAME FOR AN ENLIGHTENED AS FOR AN UNENLIGHTENED PERSON. THE FORMER HAS ONE GREATNESS: HE REMAINS IN THE SUBJECTIVE MOOD, NOT LOST IN THINGS. He remains in the subjective mood, he remains within himself, he remains centered in consciousness. Remaining in the subjective mood has to be practised. As many opportunities as you can get, try it. And every moment there is an opportunity, every single moment there is an opportunity. Something or other is impressing you, dragging you out, pulling you out, pushing you in.I am reminded of an old story. A great king, Bharthruhari, renounced the world. He renounced the world because he had lived in it totally and he had come to realize that it was futile. It was not a doctrine to him, it was a lived reality. He had come to the conclusion through his own life. He was a man of strong desire, he had indulged in life as much as possible, then suddenly he realized it was useless, futile. So he left the world, he renounced it, and he went to a forest.One day he was meditating under a tree. The sun was rising. Suddenly he became aware that just on the road, the small road which passed nearby the tree, lay a very big diamond. As the sun was rising, it was reflecting the rays. Even Bharthruhari had not seen such a big diamond before. Suddenly, in a moment of unawareness, a desire arose to possess it. The body remained unmoved, but the mind moved. The body was in the posture of meditation, SIDDHASANA, but the meditation was no longer there. Only the dead body was there, the mind had moved -- it had gone to the diamond.Before the king could move, two men came from different directions on their horses and simultaneously they became aware of the diamond lying on the street. They pulled out their swords, each one claiming that he had sene the diamond first. There was no other way to decide so they had to fight. They fought and killed each other. Within moments two dead bodies were lying there next to the diamond. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his eyes, and went into meditation again.What happened? He again realized the futility. And what happened to these two men? The diamond became more meaningful than their whole life. This is what possession means: they threw away their life just for a stone. When desire is there, you are no more -- desire can lead you to suicide. Really, every desire is leading you to suicide. When you are in the power of a desire, you are not in your senses, you are just mad.The desire to possess arose in Bharthruhari's mind also; in a fragment of a moment the desire arose. And he might have moved to get it but before he could, the other two persons came and fought, and there were two dead bodies lying on the road with the stone there in its own place. Bharthruhari laughed, closed his eyes, and went into his meditation again. For a single moment his subjectivity was lost. A stone, a diamond, the object, became more powerful. But again the subjectivity was regained. Without the diamond the whole world disappeared, and he closed his eyes.For centuries meditators have been closing their eyes. Why? It is only symbolic that the world has disappeared, that there is nothing to look at, that nothing is worth anything, even to look at. You will have to remember continuously that whenever desire arises, you have moved out of your subjectivity. This is the world, this movement. Regain, move back, get centered again! You will be able to do it: the capacity is there with everyone. No one ever loses the inner potential, it is always there. You can move. If you can move out, you can move in. If I can go out of my house, why can I not come back within it? The same route is to be traveled; the same legs are to be used. If I can go out, I can come in. Every moment you are moving out, but whenever you move out, remember -- and suddenly come back. Be centered. If you feel it difficult in the beginning then take a deep breath, exhale, and stop. In that moment look at the thing which was attracting you. Really, nothing was attracting you, YOU were attracted. That diamond lying there on the road in the lonely forest was not attracting anybody, it was simply lying there being itself. The diamond was not aware that Bharthruhari had been attracted, that someone had moved from his meditation, from his subjectivity, had come back into the world. The diamond was not aware that two persons had fought for it and lost their lives.So nothing is attracting you -- YOU get attracted. Be alert and the bridge will be broken and you will regain balance inside. Go on doing it more and more. The more you do, the better. And a moment will come when you will not need to do it because the inner power will give you such a strength that the attraction of things will be lost. It is your weakness which is attracted. Be more powerful and nothing will attract you. Only then for the first time are you master of your own being.That will give you real freedom. No political freedom, no economic freedom, no social freedom, can be of much help. Not that they are not desirable, they are good, good in themselves, but they will not give you the things which the innermost core of your being is longing for -- the freedom from things, from objects, the freedom to be oneself without any possibility of being possessed by anything or anybody.

Tantric Meditation For Woman - Seventh Type

From the discourses of Book of Secrets

FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR

Tantra and yoga both think that your narrowness is the problem. Because you have made yourself so narrow, so tightly narrow, you feel always in bondage. The bondage is not coming from anywhere else: the bondage is coming from your narrow mind. And it goes on being narrower and narrower and you are very confined. That confinement gives you the feeling of bondage. You have an infinite soul and an infinite being but that infinite being feels imprisoned. So whatsoever you do, you feel limitations everywhere. Wherever you move, a point of cul de sac comes. You cannot move beyond it. Everywhere there is a boundary. There is no open sky to fly. But that boundary is created by you -- that boundary is your own creation. You have created it for certain reasons: for security, safety. You have created a boundary. And the narrower the boundary, the more you feel secure. If you have a very large boundary you cannot watch over all of it, you cannot be alert and watchful everywhere. It becomes vulnerable. Narrow the boundary and you can watch it, you can remain closed, you are not vulnerable, you feel safe. The safety, the security has created the boundary. But then you feel a bondage.This is how the mind is paradoxical. You go on asking for more safety and you go on asking for more freedom. Both cannot be together. If you want freedom you will have to lose safety, security -- in any case the safety is just illusory, it is not really there. Because death is going to happen -- whatsoever you do, you are going to die. All your safety, security, is just a facade, nothing will help. But afraid of insecurity you create boundaries, you create big walls around you and then the open sky is closed. And then you suffer! And then you say, "Where is the open sky?" and "I want freedom and I want to move!" But you have created these boundaries.So this is the first thing to remember before you do this technique otherwise it will not be possible to do it. With your boundaries intact you cannot do it. Unless you stop creating boundaries you will not be able to feel or do it..... PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. No boundaries, becoming infinite, becoming one with infinite space.... This will be impossible with your mind. How can you feel it? How can you do it? First you will have to stop doing certain things.The first thing is that if you are too concerned about security and safety then remain in bondage. Really, prison is the most secure place. No one can harm you there. No one out of prison is as secure, as guarded, as the prisoners. You cannot kill, you cannot murder a prisoner. It is difficult. He is more guarded than a king. You can murder a president or a king, it is not so difficult. Every day they go on killing them. But you cannot kill a prisoner. He is so safe that those who want to be safe, really, must be in prisons, they must not live outside. To live out of a prison is dangerous, it is full of hazards. Anything can happen. So we have created mental prisons around us, psychological prisons around us, and we carry those prisons with us, they are portable. You need not remain with them, they move with you. Wherever you go, your prison goes with you.You are always behind a wall. Only sometimes, rarely, do you stretch your hand out of it to touch someone. But only a hand -- you never come out of your prison. So whenever we meet, it is simply meeting hands out of prisons. Out of windows we stretch a hand, afraid, scared, and ready any moment to withdraw the hand. Both the parties are doing the same -- only hands touch. And now psychologists say that even that is just an appearance, because hands have their own armor around them. No hand is ungloved. Not only Queen Elizabeth uses gloves, you also have gloves so that no one can touch you. Or even if someone touches, there is only a hand, dead. You are already withdrawn, afraid. Because the other creates fear. As Sartre says, "The other is the enemy." The other will look like an enemy if you are so armored. With an armored person there can be no friendship. Friendship is impossible, love is impossible, communion is impossible. You are afraid. Someone may make you a possession, someone may overpower you, someone may make you a slave... afraid of this, you have created a prison, a safety wall around you. Cautiously you move, cautiously you take every step. Life becomes a drudgery, life becomes a boredom. If you are too cautious, life cannot be an adventure. If you are protecting yourself too much, hankering after security too much, you are already dead.So remember one basic law: life is insecurity. And if you are ready to live in insecurity, only then will you be alive. Insecurity is freedom. If you are ready to be insecure, constantly insecure, you will be free. And freedom is the door to the Divine.Afraid, you create a prison -- you become dead, more and more dead. And then you call, "Where is God?" And then you question, "Where is life? What does life mean? Where is bliss?" Life is there waiting for you, but you have to meet it on its own terms. You cannot have your own terms, life has its own terms. And the basic term is: remain insecure. Nothing can be done about it. You can only create an illusion and in that illusion you can waste your life. Nothing can be done about it. Whatsoever you do is just a deception.If you fall in love you become afraid that this woman can leave you or this man can leave you. Fear enters immediately. You were never afraid when you were not in love. Now you are in love: life has entered and insecurity has entered with it. One who never loves anybody is never afraid that anyone will leave him. The whole world can leave him, he is not afraid. You cannot harm him. He is secure. The moment you love someone, insecurity has entered because life has entered. And with life, death has entered. The moment you love you have become afraid: this person can die, this person can leave, this person can love somebody else! Now to make things secure, you must do something -- you must get married. So a legal bondage is made so that it is now difficult for this person to leave you. \Now society will protect you, the law will protect you, the policeman, the judge, will all protect you. Now if this person wants to leave, you can drag him to the court, and if he wants a divorce he will have to prove something against you. Even then it will take three or five years. Now you have created safety around you. But the moment you are married you are dead. The relationship is not alive. Now it has become a law, not a relationship. Now it is a legal phenomenon, not an alive thing. The court cannot protect life; the law can only protect laws. Now marriage is something which is dead. It can be defined. Love cannot be defined. Marriage is definable, love is indefinable. Now you have come under the world of definitions.But the phenomenon is already dead. The moment you wanted it to be secure, the moment you wanted to enclose it so that no new thing happens to it, you are imprisoned in it. Then you will suffer. Then you will say that this wife has become a bondage to you. The husband will say this wife has become a bondage to him. And then you fight because you have each become an imprisonment for the other. Now you fight. Now love has disappeared, there is only conflict. That is what happens because of the hankering for security.And this has happened in everything. Remember it as something basic: life is insecure. This is the very nature of it. So when there is love, suffer the fear that the beloved can leave you, but don;t create security. Then love will grow. The beloved can die and you cannot do anything, but that will not kill love. Security can kill. Love will grow more.Really, if man were immortal, I say love would be impossible. If man were immortal it would be difficult to love anybody. It would be so dangerous to fall in love. Death is there and life is just like a dew drop on a trembling leaf. Any moment the breeze will come and the dew drop will fall and disappear. Life is just a wavering. Because of that wavering, because of that movement, death is always there. It gives intensity to love. Love is possible only because there is death. Love becomes intense because there is death. Think... if you know your beloved is going to die the next moment, all meanness will go, all conflict will go. And this one moment will become eternity. And there will be so much love that your whole being will be poured into it. But if you know the beloved is going to live, there is no hurry. You can fight and you can postpone the loving for later on. If life is eternal, if the body is immortal, you cannot love.Hindus have a beautiful myth. They say in heaven where Indra rules -- Indra is the king of heaven -- there is no love. There are beautiful girls, more beautiful than on the earth, and deities. They have sex but there is no love because they are immortal.So it is recorded in one of the Indian stories that Urvashi, the chief of the heavenly girls, asked permission of Indra to move to earth for a few days to love a man. "What nonsense!: Indra said. "You can love here! And you will not find such beautiful persons on the earth." Urvashi said, "They are beautiful but they are immortal, so there is no charm. They are really dead."They are really dead because there is no death to make them alive. They will always be there. They cannot die, so how can they be alive? That aliveness exists against death. A man is alive because death is there constantly, fighting. Against the background of death life exists.So Urvashi said, "Give me permission to move to the earth. I want to love someone." Permission was given so she came down to earth and fell in love with Pururuwa, a young man.But there was a condition from Indra. Indra made the condition that she could go to the earth, she could love someone, but she must tell the man who loved her not to ask anything about who she was. This is difficult for love because love is curious. Love wants to know everything about the beloved, everything. The whole unknown has to be made known. The whole mystery has to be entered and penetrated. So Indra cunningly made a condition which Urvashi didn't understand the craftiness of. So she said, "Okay. I will tell my lover not to be curious about me, not to ask who I am. And if he asks, immediately I will leave him, I will come back." And she said to Pururuwa, "Don't ever ask anything about me, who I am. The moment you ask I will have to leave earth."But love is curious. Because of this Pururuwa must have become more curious about who she was. He could not sleep. He would go on looking at Urvashi. Who is she? Such a beautiful woman, made of dreamy stuff, doesn't look earthly, doesn't look substantial. Perhaps she comes from somewhere else, some unknown dimension. He became more and more curious. But he also became more and more afraid, because she might leave. He became so afraid that in the night when he went to sleep he would take a fragment of her saree in his hand because he was not confident about himself. Any moment he could ask, the question was always there. Even in his sleep he could ask. And Urvashi said that even in sleep he could not ask about her. So he slept with a part of her saree in his hand.But one night he couldn't contain himself -- and he thought that now she loved him so much that she would not leave. So he asked. And Urvashi had to disappear -- only a fragment of her saree remained in Pururuwa's hand. And it is said that he is still searching for her.In heaven there cannot be love because there is no life really. Life exists here on earth, where death exists. Whenever you make anything secure, life disappears. Remain insecure, that is the very quality of life itself. Nothing can be done about it. And it is beautiful!Just think if your body was immortal -- it would be ugly. You will start finding ways and means of committing suicide. And if it is impossible, against the law, you will suffer so much you cannot even imagine. Immortality is a very long thing. Now in the West they go on thinking about euthanasia because people are now living longer. So a person who reaches the age of a hundred wants the right to kill himself. And really, the right will have to be given. We made it a law not to commit suicide when life was very short. Really in Buddha's age to be forty or fifty was much. The average life was just about twenty. In India, just two decades ago the average life was twenty-three. Now in Sweden the average life is eighty-three. So people can very easily live to be a hundred and fifty. In Soviet Russia there are fifteen hundred people who have reached the mark of a hundred and fifty. Now if they say they have the right to kill themselves, because now it is too much, we will have to give them the right. It cannot be denied them. Sooner or later suicide will be one of the birth rights. You cannot deny it if a person wants to die -- not for any reason, just because now life has no meaning. It has been too long already. A person living at a hundred doesn't feel like living. Not that he is frustrated, not that there is no food. Everything is there, but life has no meaning.So think of immortality. Life will be totally meaningless. The meaning comes with death. Love has meaning because love can be lost. Then it throbs, vibrates, pulsates. It can be lost! You cannot be certain about it! You cannot think anything about it for tomorrow because it may not be there. You have to love the lover and the beloved with the view that tomorrow may never be there at all. Then love becomes intense.So first, withdraw your efforts to create a secure life. Just by withdrawing, your walls around you will fall. For the first time you will feel rains coming to you directly, the wind blowing at you directly, the sun rising to you directly. You will be under the open sky. It is beautiful. And if it looks horrible to you it is only because you have become accustomed to living in a prison. You will have to get accustomed to this new freedom. This freedom will make you more alive, more flowing, more open, more rich, more radiant. But the more radiant you are, the higher the peak of your aliveness, the deeper will be the death near you. Just near. You can rise only against death, the valley of death. The peak of life and the valley of death are always near and in proportion.That's why I always say that Nietzsche's dictum is to be followed. It is a very religious dictum. Nietzsche says, "Live dangerously." Not that you have to seek danger positively, there is no need to seek danger positively. Don't create protections. Don't create walls around you. Live naturally, and that will be dangerous, dangerous enough. There is no need to seek any danger.Then you can do this technique. FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. Then it is very easy. If walls are not there, you will already be feeling yourself pervading everywhere. Then there is no point at where you end. You simply begin in the heart and end nowhere. You have a center and no periphery. The periphery goes on expanding -- on and on. The whole space is surrounded by it. Stars move in it. Earths are born and dissolve. Planets arise and set. The whole cosmos becomes your periphery. In this vastness where will your ego be? In this vastness where will your suffering be? In this vastness where will your mean mind be? The mediocre mind, where will it be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can exist only in a narrow field. It can exist only when it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. The encapsulation is the problem. Live dangerously and be ready to live in insecurity.And the beauty is that even if you decide not to live in insecurity, you will! You cannot do anything!I have heard about a king. He was very afraid of death.... Kings are more afraid. They are more afraid because they have exploited so many people; they have pushed, crushed; they have played many political games on so many people. They have made many enemies. A real king has no friend. He cannot have. Because the closest friend is also an enemy, just waiting for an opportunity to kill him, to be in his place. A man in power cannot have any friends. A Hitler, a Stalin, a Nixon, they cannot have friends. They just have enemies who are parading around them as friends and just waiting for the right chance to push them aside from the throne. Whenever they get the chance they do everything. Just a moment ago they were friendly, but their friendliness is a strategy. Their friendliness is a tactic. A man who is in power cannot have friends. So Lao Tzu says, "If you want friends, don't be in power." Then the whole world will be friendly to you. If you are in power, then you are your only friend, everyone is your enemy..... So the king was very afraid. He was very scared of death, it was all around. He was haunted by the idea that everyone around him was going to kill him. He couldn't sleep. So he asked his wise men, his counsellors, what to do. They told him to make a palace with only one door. At the door he should put seven rings of military men: the first watching the palace, the second watching the first, the third ring watching the second. With only one door no one could enter and the king would be safe.The king built the palace with only one door and with seven rings of soldiers watching each other. The news spread all over and another king from a nearby state came to see it. He was also afraid. News had reached him that his neighbor had built such a secure palace that it was impossible to kill him. He came to visit his neighbor and together they appreciated very much the idea of only one door and every safety; no danger.While they were looking at the door a beggar just sitting at the corner of the street started laughing. So the king, the owner of the palace, asked the beggar, "Why are you laughing?" The beggar replied, "I am laughing because you have made one error. You should go inside and close, seal this door also. This door is dangerous, someone can enter it. A door means that somebody can enter. So you do one thing: go inside and let this door be also closed. Then you will be really safe because death cannot enter." But the king said, "That means I would be already dead if I closed this door also." The beggar said, "You are already ninety-nine per cent dead -- you are only as much alive as this door. That is the danger, this much alive. Leave this aliveness also."Everyone in his own way is creating a palace around him where nothing can enter and he can remain in peace. But then you are already dead. And peace happens only to those who are alive; peace is not a dead thing. Remain alive, live dangerously, live a vulnerable life, open, so that everything can happen to you. And let everything happen to you. The more that happens to you the richer you will be.Then you can practise this technique. This technique is then very easy, you will not even need to practise it. Just think, and you will be pervading the whole space.

Tantric Meditation for Woman - Sixth Type

From the discourses of The Book of Secrets
IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tantric Meditation For Woman : The Fifth Type

From the discourses of The Book of Secrets
CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS.





There are seven bodies. The bliss body is the last body, so the more you enter within, the more you feel yourself to be blissful. You are nearing the bliss body, the layer of bliss. It is just around your essential soul, which is the first body from within outwards, or the last body from without inwards. Just around your being, the essential soul, is the layer of bliss. It is called the bliss body. Sitting on a hilltop, looking at the endless sky, feel that the whole space, the whole plenum, is filled with your bliss body. Feel that your bliss body has increased and the whole space is filled with it.How will you feel it? You don't know what bliss is so how to imagine it? It will be better to try first to feel that the whole space is filled with silence, not with bliss. Feel it filled with silence. Nature will be helpful about it because in nature even noises are silent. In cities even silence is noisy. Natural sounds are silent because they don't disturb. They are harmonious. So don't think that silence is necessarily soundlessness. No, a musical sound can be silence because it is so harmonious -- it doesn't disturb you. Rather, it deepens your silence. So when you move into nature, the breeze blowing, the stream, the river, the wind or whatsoever sounds there are, are harmonious, they make a whole. They are not disturbing. You can listen to them and the very listening will deepen your silence. So first feel that the whole space is filled with silence; feel deeply that it is growing more and more silent, that the sky has become silence around you.And when you feel that the sky has become silence, only then should you try to be filled with bliss. As silence deepens you will have the first glimpse of bliss. As tension increases, you have the first glimpse of misery, strain; as silence deepens you will feel at ease, at home, relaxed, and the first glimpse of bliss will come to you. And when that glimpse comes, then you can imagine that the whole space is now filled with that bliss. CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS. The whole sky becomes your body of bliss.You can do it separately, there is no need to join it to the first, but the same requirements are needed -- endless space, silence, no human beings around you. Why this insistence on no human beings around you? Because the moment you see a human being you will start reacting in the old ways. You cannot see a human being without reacting. Something or other will happen to you immediately. He brings you back to your old patterns. If you don't see human beings you forget that you are human, and to forget that you are human, part of society, is good. It is good to remember that simply you are, even if you don't know what. You don't belong to anybody, to any society, to any group, to any religion. This non-belonging will be helpful.So it will be good if you move alone somewhere and do this, practise this. Alone this technique will be helpful, but remember to start with something that you can feel. I have seen people doing techniques which they cannot feel. If you cannot feel, if you don't have any experience, even a glimpse, then the whole thing becomes false. A man came to me and he said, "I am practising that God is everywhere." So I asked him, "How can you practise? What do you imagine? Have you any taste, any feeling of God? Only then will it be easy to imagine. Otherwise, you will be simply thinking that you are imagining and nothing will happen."Remember this for any technique you do -- at the start you must do something you are acquainted with; you may not be totally acquainted with it, but a little glimpse will be necessary. Only then can you progress, step by step. But don't jump into something which is absolutely unknown to you because then you cannot feel it and you cannot imagine it. Because of this, many masters, particularly Buddha, completely dropped the word `God'. Buddha said, "You cannot work with it. It is the very end, and you cannot bring the end into the beginning. So begin from the very beginning." He said, "Forget the end, the end will follow automatically." And he said to his disciples, "Don't think of God. Think of compassion. Think of love." So he doesn't say that one should feel that God is everywhere, one should simply feel compassion for everyone who is there -- for the tree, for human beings, for animals. Simply feel compassion. Feel sympathetic, create a love... because love you know, howsoever little. There has been something like love in everybody's life. You may not have loved, but someone may have loved you, your mother at least. You must have looked into her eyes: she loved you."Just be motherly to existence," Buddha says, "and feel deep compassion. Feel that the whole world is filled with your compassion. Then everything else will follow."Remember this as a basic law: always start with something you can feel because only then can the unknown enter through it.