Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 89
BELOVED, AT THIS MOMENT LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, BE INCLUDED
Osho – This technique is a little difficult, but if you can do it, then very wonderful, beautiful. Sitting, don’t divide. Sitting in meditation, be inclusive of all — your body, your mind, your breath, your thinking, your knowing, everything. Be inclusive of all. Don’t divide, don’t create any fragmentation. Ordinarily we are fragmenting; we go on fragmenting. We say, `The body is not me.’ There are techniques which can use that also, but this technique is totally different; rather, the opposite.
Don’t divide. Don’t say, `I am not the body.’ Don’t say, `I am not the breath.’ Don’t say, `I am not the mind.’ Just say, `I am all’ — and be all. Don’t create any fragmentation within you. This is a feeling. With closed eyes include everything that exists in you. Don’t get yourself centered anywhere — be uncentered. The breath comes and goes, the thought comes and moves. The form of your body will go on changing. You have not observed this.
If you sit with closed eyes, you will feel that sometimes your body is big, sometimes your body is small; sometimes it is very heavy, sometimes just light, as if you can fly. You can feel this increasing and decreasing of the form. Just close your eyes and sit and you will feel that sometimes the body is very big — filling the whole room; sometimes it is so small — just atomic. Why does this form change? As your attention changes, the form of the body changes. If you are inclusive, it will become big; if you exclude — this is not I, this is not I — then it will become very minute, very small, atomic.
This sutra says:
BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.
Include everything in your being and don’t discard anything. Don’t say, `This is not I,’ say, `I am,’ and include everything in it. If you can do this just sitting, wonderful, absolutely new happenings will happen to you. You will feel there is no center; in you there is no center. And with the center gone, there is no self, there is no ego; only consciousness remains — consciousness like a sky covering everything. And when it grows, not only your own breath will be included, not only your own form will be included; ultimately the whole universe becomes inclusive to you.
Swami Ramteerth used this technique for his own sadhana. A moment came when he started saying, `The whole world is in me, and the stars move in me.’ Somebody was talking to him and he said, `It is very beautiful here in the Himalayas.’ Ramteerth was staying in the Himalayas, and the man said to him, `It is very beautiful here in the Himalayas.’ And Ramteerth is reported to have said, `Himalayas? The Himalayas are in me.’
The man must have thought that he was mad. How could the Himalayas be in him? But if you practise this meditation, you can feel that the Himalayas are in you. Let me explain how it is possible.
Really, when you look at me you cannot look at the one who is here sitting in the chair. Really, you are looking at a picture of me which is in you, in your mind. How can you know me here on this chair? Your eyes carry just a picture. Not even a picture — just rays of light enter in your eyes. And then the eyes don’t go themselves to the mind; just rays passing through the eyes go inside. And your nervous system which carries those rays cannot carry them as rays; it transforms them into chemicals. So only chemicals travel, and these chemicals are decoded and you see me in your mind.
You have never been out of your mind. The whole world that you know, you decode it in your mind, you know it in your mind. All the Himalayas and all the suns and the stars and the moons, they are there in your mind in a very subtle existence. If you close your eyes and feel that everything is inclusive, you will know that the whole world is moving within you. And once you feel this — that the whole world is moving within you — all your individual misery is lost. You are no more an individual. You have become the absolute, the non-individual. You have become the whole existence.
This technique expands your consciousness. Now in the west, many drugs are being used to expand consciousness — LSD, marijuana, and other drugs. In India also, in the old days, they were used, because they give a false feeling of expansion. All those who use drugs, for them this technique will be beautiful, very helpful, because their hankering is for expansion.
When you take LSD, you are no more confined in yourself, you have become inclusive of all. There have been cases…. One girl jumped from a seven-storey building because she felt that she could not die, death was impossible. She felt that she could fly, and she felt that there were no barriers, there was no fear. She jumped out of a seven-storey building and died, shattered. But in her mind, under the influence of the drug, there was no limitation, no death.
Expansion of consciousness has become a fad, because when you expand you feel high. The whole world, by and by, becomes included in you. You become great, infinitely great, and with greatness, with expansion, all your individual miseries fall. But through LSD or marijuana or other drugs, this is only a false feeling.
Through this technique, this feeling becomes real — really the whole world comes within you. There are two reasons for this. One: our individual consciousness is not really individual; deep down it is collective. We look like islands, but all the islands deep down are connected to the earth. We look like islands, different — I am conscious, you are conscious — but your consciousness and my consciousness somewhere deep down is one. It is connected to the earth, the basic ground.
That’s why many things happen which look inexplicable. If you meditate alone it will be more difficult to enter into it, but if you meditate with a group it is very easy, because the whole group works as a unit. In meditation camps I have felt and observed that after two or three days your individuality is no more; you become part of a greater consciousness. And very subtle waves are being felt, very subtle waves start moving, and the group consciousness evolves.
So when you dance, you are not really dancing, but the group consciousness is dancing; you are just a part of it. The rhythm is not only within you, the rhythm is also without you. The rhythm is all around you. In a group you are not. The superficial phenomenon of being islands is forgotten and the deeper phenomenon of being one is realized. In a group you are nearer to the divine; alone you are further away, because again you become concentrated on the ego, on the superficial difference, on the superficial separation. This technique helps, because really you are one with the universe. It is only a question of how to dig it or how to fall into it and realize it.
Being with a friendly group always gives you energy. Being with someone who is antagonistic, you always feel that your energy has been drained out. Why? If you are with a friendly group, in a family, and you are sitting, relaxing, just being together, you feel energized, vitalized. Meeting a friend, you feel more alive than you were before. Just passing an enemy, you feel that you have lost some energy, you feel tired. What happens?
When you are meeting a friendly sympathetic group, you forget your individuality; you drop down to the basic level where you can meet. When someone is antagonistic, you become more individual, egoistic; you cling to your ego. Because of that clinging you feel tired. All energy comes from the roots; all energy comes with the feeling of a collective being.
In the beginning, doing this meditation you will feel a collective being arising, and then ultimately a cosmic consciousness arises. When all differences are lost, all boundaries disappear and existence remains as one piece, one unit, one whole; then everything is included. This effort to include everything starts from your own individual existence. Include.
BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.
The basic point is to remember inclusiveness. Don’t exclude. This is the key for this sutra — inclusiveness, include. Include and grow. Include and expand. Try it with your body, and then try it with the outside world also.
Sitting under a tree, look at the tree, then close your eyes and feel that the tree is within you. Look at the sky, then close your eyes and feel that the sky is within you. Look at the rising sun, then close your eyes and feel that the sun is rising within you. Feel more inclusive.
A tremendous experience will happen to you. When you feel that the tree is within you, immediately you will feel more young, more fresh. And this is not imagination, because the tree and you both belong to the earth. You both are rooted in the same earth and ultimately rooted in the same existence. So when you feel that the tree is within you, the tree IS within you — this is not an imagination — and immediately you will feel the effect. The tree’s aliveness, the greenery, the freshness, the breeze passing through it, will be felt within you in your heart. Include more and more existence and don’t exclude.
In many ways, many world teachers have been teaching this. Jesus says, `Love your enemy as yourself.’ This is an experiment in inclusiveness. Freud used to say, `Why should I love my enemy as myself? He is my enemy, so why should I love him as myself? And how can I love?’ His question seems relevant, but he is not aware of why Jesus says to love your enemy as yourself. It is not for any social politics, not for any change in society, not to create a better society, but to give you an expanded feeling of being and consciousness.
If you can include the enemy within yourself, he cannot harm you. That doesn’t mean that he cannot kill you: he can kill you, but he cannot harm you. The harm comes when you exclude him. The moment you exclude him, you become the ego, separate, alone, cut off from existence. If you include the enemy within you, then everything is included. When the enemy can be included, then why not the tree and why not the sky?
The emphasis for the enemy is that if you can include the enemy in your being, you can include everything; then there is no need to exclude anything. If you feel that your enemy is included within you, then even your enemy will give you vitality, energy. He cannot be harmful to you. He can kill, you, but even while he is murdering you, he cannot harm you. That harm comes from your own mind when you exclude.
But the case with us is totally diametrically opposite — even friends are not included. Enemies are excluded, and even friends are not included. Even your lover, your beloveds, are not included. While being with your lover, you are not merging in him or her. You remain separate, you control yourself. You don’t want to lose your identity. Because of this, love has become impossible.
Unless you lose identity how can you love? You want to remain yourself, and your lover wants to remain himself, and no one is ready to merge, no one is ready to include. Both exclude, both are bracketed in themselves: there is no meeting, no merging, no communion. If even lovers are not included, then it is bound to be that your existence is the poorest possible. You are alone, poor, a beggar. With the whole existence included, you are the emperor.
So remember this: make it a style of life to include. Not only meditation, but a style of life, a way of living. Try to include more and more. The more you include, the more you expand, the more your boundaries recede to the very corners of existence. One day only you are; the whole existence is included. This is the ultimate of all religious experience.
BELOVED
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.
