Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 70
“CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS RISING FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.”
Osho – Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is; then the application. The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh.
The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is SAHASRARA, the seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called PRAKRATI — the earth, the material. From the last center, or the second pole, SAHASRAR, in the head, you are in contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second is the SAHASRAR. There is no word for SAHASRAR in English. These are the two poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or SAHASRAR oriented. Either your energy will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be released from the SAHASRAR into the cosmos. From the SAHASRAR you flow into the BRAHMAN, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only glimpses — and very illusory ones.
When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. And once it reaches the SAHASRAR and is released from there, you will have the absolute bliss with you. That is NIRVANA. Then there is no glimpse; you become the bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts have felt this — that the moment they move beyond the earth’s gravity they don’t feel much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears.
The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts. Like the astronauts, you have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth’s gravitation is broken. It can be broken!
The techniques for how it can be broken are here — for how the energy can move vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. And the moment the energy is released from your SAHASRAR, the opposite pole of sex, you are no more man. Then you don’t belong to this earth; you have become divine. That is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like yours — their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die — everything happens in their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is happening to you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern.
But that you cannot see, it is not visible to your eyes. But sometimes when you are sitting by the side of a Buddha, you can feel this. Suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy within you, and your energy starts moving upwards. Only then do you know that something has happened. Just by being in contact with a buddha your energy begins to move upwards towards the SAHASRAR. A buddha is so powerful that even the earth is less powerful; it cannot pull your energy downwards. Those who have felt this around a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, have called them God. They have a different source of energy which is stronger than the earth.
How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all you must have observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your sex center starts functioning. Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with someone it functions better — because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love it is very difficult. It will not function.
This is the reason why male prostitutes were not found in the old days, only women prostitutes. It is difficult for a male prostitute if he has no love, and how can he have love just because of money? You can pay a man to have intercourse with you, but if he has no imagination for you he cannot function. Women can function because their sex is passive. Really, their functioning is not needed. They can be totally detached; they may not be feeling anything at all. Their bodies can just be there like corpses. With a prostitute you are not making love with a real body — only with a dead corpse. But women can easily be prostitutes because their sex is passive.
The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will sex. For sex will is impotent. If you try to love someone, you will feel you have gone impotent. So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can change its direction.
This sutra says, “CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS” — think of yourself, your being, as light rays — “FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE” — up your spine — “AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” Yoga has divided your spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is SAHASRAR, and between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, some into four. Division is not very meaningful, you can make your own division. Just five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, SAHASRAR, is just on the peak of your head. These five will do.
This sutra says, “CONSIDER YOURSELF…”, which means imagine yourself — close your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that everything consists of light particles — and you also. That is why the Koran says that God is light. YOU are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and light rays are moving in an upsurge — upwards towards the navel center. Division is needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the SAHASRAR. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the life force will rise up as light towards the SAHASRAR. But divisions will be more helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily.
So just feel that the energy — just the light rays — is rising up from your sex center to your navel like a river of light. Immediately you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. Through your imagination the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go on upwards.
“CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES `LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” And as you will feel warmth, just side by side you will feel a “livingness,” a new life coming to you, an inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In your body everything has two parts. Just like your body and mind, everything within you has two parts — one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise — but that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for that psychic part, the spinal passage is used — the spinal passage and its centers. But that has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead.
I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did she was not feeling, but thinking about feeling — and that is a different thing. So the therapist put his hand on the woman’s hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes and relate what she felt. She said immediately, “I feel your hand.”
But the therapist said, “No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you are not. This is inference. What do you feel?”
So she said, “I feel your fingers.”
The therapist again said, “No, this is not feeling. Don’t infer anything. Just close your eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel.”
Then she said, “Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth.”
When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is why people come to me and say, “You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing happens.” They have tried, but they are missing a dimension — the feeling dimension. So first you will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try.
You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to every corner; he will touch everything — not only touch, he will taste everything, he will smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing.
You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not intellectualizing, he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that corner from where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped, the world is no more there — only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child is not — only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so enriching, you will become again a child.
Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at the world as a child looks — from the feeling dimension. When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the warmth — and just by innocently following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You have simply forgotten.
The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow — the coldness. Just turn onto it; play with the pillow.
Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic or of the clock or anything. Just listen. Don’t label, don’t say anything. Don’t use the mind. Just live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that now sleep has gone, don’t start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child — innocent, fresh. Don’t start thinking. Don’t think about what you are going to do and when you are starting for the office and what train you are going to catch. Don’t start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few moments just listen to the noise. A bird is singing or the wind is passing through the trees or a child is crying or the milkman has come and is making sounds or the milk is being poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow.
When taking a shower, feel it all over the body — every drop of water touching you. Feel the touch, the coldness, the warmth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the chance, and everywhere there is a chance — everywhere! When just breathing, feel the breath — its movement within and its going out — just feel it! Just feel your own body. You have not felt it.
We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a loving way your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so. Touch your eyes with your palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your body all over. Feel your lover’s body, your friend’s body. Massage is good. Two friends can massage each other and feel each other’s bodies. You will become more sensitive.
Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and then you will feel “livingness” arising in you. Don’t leave this energy anywhere. Allow it to come to the SAHASRAR. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don’t leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening.
In India we have pictured SAHASRAR as a lotus — as a thousand- petalled lotus. `SAHASRAR’ means a thousandpetalled — an opening of a thousand petals. Just conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals, opened, and from every petal this light energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act — not with nature now, but with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm.
There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, and then the sex act becomes tantra SADHANA; it becomes meditation.
But don’t leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don’t leave the energy in any center. Otherwise that center where you leave the energy will become a wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise don’t do this. This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there.
You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come up from the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, “What is this?” They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But you don’t know life’s functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there alive. Now it needs movement. So don’t become scared and don’t think that something is wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation the sex center will become more sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any sexual excitement — but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you will feel energy flowing up. As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited.
When the energy will really move to the SAHASRAR, there will be no sensation at the sex center. It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy will move, the sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the head.
You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes you may even feel nausea because for the first time energy has come to the head and your head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don’t become afraid. Sometimes you may immediately become unconscious, but don’t be afraid. This happens. If so much energy moves suddenly and explodes in the head, you may become unconscious. But that unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don’t be afraid. If you do become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep.
Yoga calls it by a special name — YOGA TANDRA: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you move to your deepest center. But don’t be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a good sign. Release the energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower — as if energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely.
