Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 90
TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS
Osho – Before entering the technique, some introductory remarks about it. First, something has to be understood about the eye, because the whole technique depends on it.
The first thing: whatsoever you are, whatsoever you appear from without, is false, but you cannot deceive your eyes. You cannot create false eyes. You can create a false face; you cannot falsify your eyes. That is impossible — unless you become a perfect master like a Gurdjieff. Unless you become a perfect master of all your energies, you cannot falsify your eyes. No ordinary human being can do that. You cannot falsify your eyes.
That’s why if someone looks in your eyes, stares in your eyes, you feel offended, because he is trying to find the real thing. And at that point you cannot do anything — your eyes will reveal the true self. So it is not good manners to stare in anybody’s eyes. Even while talking you go on avoiding the eyes. Unless you are in love with someone, unless someone is ready to be true with you, you cannot stare. There is a limit.
Psychologists have observed that thirty seconds is the limit. With a stranger you can stare for thirty seconds, not more. If you stare more, you have started being aggressive, and the other will immediately start to feel uneasy. You can stare from a far-away point, because then no one is aware. If you are a hundred feet away I can go on staring at you, but if you are just two feet away it becomes impossible.
In a crowded train, or in a crowded elevator, sitting or standing just close together, you never look at each other’s eyes. You can touch the body — that is not so offensive — but you never look into each other’s eyes because that will be too much, too near, and you will penetrate the real man. The first thing to remember: eyes have no personality. They are pure nature. They have no personality.
The second thing to remember: you move into the world almost only through the eyes; they say eighty percent. Those who have been working with eyes, the psychologists, they say that eighty percent of contact with the world is through the eyes. Eighty percent of your life moves out through the eyes.
That’s why whenever you see a blind man, you feel pity. You never feel so much pity and sympathy when you see a deaf man, but when you see a blind man, suddenly you feel sympathy and compassion. Why? — because he is eighty percent non-alive. A deaf man is not so non-alive. Even if your feet are cut and your hands are cut, you will not be so unalive, but a blind man is eighty percent closed; he lives only twenty percent.
Through your eyes eighty percent of your energy moves out. You are moving into the world through the eyes. So when you get tired, the first thing is the eyes. Later on, other parts of the body will be affected; the eyes will be the first to be drained of energy. If you can refresh your eyes, you can refresh your whole body, because they are eighty percent of your energy. If you can revitalize your eyes, you have revitalized yourself.
In a natural surrounding you never feel as tired as you feel in an unnatural city, because in a natural surrounding your eyes are continuously fed. The greenery, the fresh atmosphere — everything relaxes your eyes and feeds them. In a modern city everything exploits your eyes and nothing feeds them. So move to a remote village, or to a hilltop where nothing artificial is in the milieu, where everything is natural, and you will see a different type of eyes. The twinkling, the quality, will be different — fresh, animal-like, penetrating, alive, dancing.
In a modern city, eyes are dead; just living on the minimum. They don’t know what festivity is. They don’t know what freshness is. The eyes are unaware of any life flowing through them; they are just being exploited. Eighty percent of your energy moves from your eyes, so you have to be perfectly aware, and you have to learn an art about this movement, this energy, and the possibility of the eyes.
In India we have been calling blind men PRAJNA-CHAKSHU — wisdom-eye — for a particular reason, because every misfortune can be transformed into a great opportunity. Eighty percent of the energy moves through the eyes, and when a person is blind, he is eighty percent not alive; with the world eighty percent of his contact is lost.
He is very poor as far as the world without is concerned, but if he can use this opportunity — this opportunity of being blind — then he can use this eighty percent of his energy for his inner world; this eighty percent that you cannot use ordinarily unless you know the art. So eighty percent of his energy is with him, it is a reservoir, and the energy that normally moves out can move within. If he knows how to allow it to move within, he will become a wisdom-eye.
A blind man is not a PRAJNA-CHAKSHU, a wisdom-eye, just by being blind, but he can be. He doesn’t have ordinary eyes, but he can get the eyes of wisdom. The possibility is there. We named him PRAJNA-CHAKSHU just to make him aware that he should not be sorry that he doesn’t have eyes. He can create an inner eye, and eighty percent of energy is with him which is not with those who have eyes. He can move it. He can use it.
Even if the blind man is not aware, he becomes more silent than you are. He becomes more relaxed. Look at a blind man. He is more silent. His face is more relaxed. He seems to be at ease with himself; no discontent. This will not be the case with a deaf man. He will be more restless than you, and he will become cunning. But a blind man is never cunning, never restless, never calculative; basically trusting, in a deep faith with existence.
Why does this happen? — because the eighty percent of energy, even if he doesn’t know anything about it, is moving within. It becomes a constant fall, just like a waterfall. Even unaware, it goes on falling on his heart. The same energy that moves out, goes on falling on his heart — that changes the quality of his being. In ancient India the blind man was very much respected — very much respected. In deep respect we called him PRAJNA-CHAKSHU, wisdom-eye.
The same you can do with your eyes, and this technique is for that: to help your energy which moves out to fall back upon yourself, upon your own heart center. If it falls on the heart, you become as light as possible. You feel as if the whole body has become a feather; as if gravitation has absolutely no effect on it. And immediately you are connected with the deepest source of your being, which revitalizes you.
For tantra, deep sleep revitalizes you not because of sleep, but just because the energy which was moving out, moves in. If you know the secret, then what an ordinary man is doing in six hours or eight hours sleep, you can do within minutes. What an ordinary man is doing in eight hours, really he is not doing. He is allowing nature to do something, and he is not aware of what it is. A mysterious process is happening in your sleep. One of the basic things is that your energy is not moving out; it goes on falling on your heart, and that revitalizes you. You are in a deep bath with your own energy.
Something more about this moving energy. You might have observed that whenever there is a dominant man, he always stares in your eyes. Whenever there is a dominated man, he looks down. Slaves, servants, or anyone who is inferior to someone, will never stare in the eyes of the superior. But the superior can stare. Kings can stare, but standing before a king, standing in the audience of the king, you are not supposed to stare. That would be an offence. You have to look down.
Really, with your eyes your energy moves. It can become a subtle violence. And not only in man, even in animals. When two strangers meet, two animals meet, they stare each other in the eye just to judge who is going to be the superior and who is going to take the role of the inferior. And once one animal looks down, the thing is decided. Then they will not fight; the thing is over. It is now taken for granted who is superior.
Even children play the game of staring into each other’s eyes, and whoever looks away is defeated. And they are right. When two children stare into each other’s eyes, whosoever becomes first uncomfortable and starts fidgeting and starts looking away and avoiding the look of the other, is defeated. The one who goes on staring is stronger. If your eyes can defeat the other’s eyes, it is a subtle indication that you are stronger than the other.
On the stage when someone comes to speak or to act, he becomes very afraid, a great trembling happens. Even with those who are long in the profession, old actors… even when they come on the stage a fear grips them, because so many eyes are staring; there is so much aggressive energy. There is so much energy from the thousands of people staring at them that they suddenly start trembling deep down. A fear grips them. A subtle energy is flowing through the eyes, a very subtle energy. The subtlest, the most refined of physical forces, is flowing through the eyes. And the quality of the energy changes with you.
From the eyes of a Buddha a different type of energy is flowing. From the eyes of a Hitler a totally different type. If you look at Buddha’s eyes, they accept you, they welcome you, they become a door. If you look at Hitler’s eyes, they reject you, they condemn you, they push you away, they throw you away. For Hitler, his eyes are like weapons; for Buddha, his eyes are compassion. The quality of the eyes changes. Sooner or later we must come to measure the eye-energy, and then there will be no need to know much about the man. Just the eye-energy and its quality will show what type of man is hidden behind. Sooner or later that will be possible.
This sutra, this technique:
TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO HEART AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS.
TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER… Use both your palms, put them on your eyes, and allow the palms to touch the eyeballs — but just like a feather, with no pressure. If you press you miss the point, you miss the whole technique. Don’t press; just touch like a feather. You will have to adjust, because in the beginning you will be pressing. Put less and less pressure until you are just touching with no pressure at all — just your palms touch the eyeballs. Just a touch, just a meeting with no pressure, because if the pressure is there, then the technique will not function. So — LIKE A FEATHER.
Why? Because a needle can do something which a sword cannot do. If you press, the quality has changed — you are aggressive. And the energy that is flowing through the eyes is very subtle: a small pressure and it starts fighting and a resistance is created. If you press, then the energy that is flowing through the eyes will start a resistance, a fight; a struggle will ensue. So don’t press; even a slight pressure is enough for the eye-energy to judge.
It is very subtle, it is very delicate. Don’t press — like a feather, just your palm is touching, as if not touching. Touching as if not touching, no pressure; just a touch, a slight feeling that the palm is touching the eyeball, that’s all.
What will happen? When you simply touch without any pressure, the energy starts moving within. If you press, it starts fighting with the hand, with the palm, and moves out. Just a touch and the energy starts moving within. The door is closed; simply the door is closed and the energy falls back. The moment energy falls back, you will feel a lightness coming all over your face, your head. This energy moving back makes you light.
And just between these two eyes is the third eye, the wisdom-eye, the PRAJNA-CHAKSHU. Just between these two eyes is the third eye. The energy falling back from the eyes hits the third eye. That’s why one feels light, levitating, as if there is no gravitation. And from the third eye the energy falls on the heart. It is a physical process: just drip, drip, it drops, and you will feel a very light feeling entering in your heart. The heartbeats will slow down, the breathing will slow down. Your whole body will feel relaxed.
Even if you are not entering deep meditation, this will help you physically. Any time in the day, relax on a chair — or if you don’t have any chair, when just sitting in a train — close your eyes, feel a relaxed being in the whole of your body, and then put both your palms on your eyes. But don’t press — that’s the very significant thing. Just touch like a feather.
When you touch and don’t press, your thoughts will stop immediately. In a relaxed mind thoughts cannot move; they get frozen. They need frenzy and fever, they need tension to move. They live through tension. When the eyes are silent, relaxed, and the energy is moving backwards, thoughts will stop. You will feel a certain quality of euphoria, and that will deepen daily.
So do it many times in the day. Even for a single moment, touching will be good. Whenever your eyes feel exhausted, dry of energy, exploited — after reading, seeing a film, or watching TV — whenever you feel it, just close the eyes and touch. Immediately there will be the effect. But if you want to make it a meditation, then do it for at least forty minutes. And the whole thing is not to press. Because it is easy for a single moment to have a feather-like touch; it is difficult for forty minutes. Many times you will forget and you will start pressing.
Don’t press. For forty minutes, just remain aware that your hands have no weight; they are just touching. Go on being aware that you are not pressing, only touching. This will become a deep awareness, just like breathing. As Buddha says to breathe with full awareness, the same will happen with touching, because you have to be constantly mindful that you are not pressing. Your hand should just be a feather, a weightless thing, simply touching.
Your mind will be totally there, alert, near the eyes, and the energy will be flowing constantly. In the beginning it will be just dropping in drops. Within months you will feel it has become a river-like thing, and within a year you will feel it has become a flood. And when it happens — TOUCHING EYEBALLS AS A FEATHER, LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM — when you touch you will feel lightness. You can feel it right now. Immediately, the moment you touch, a lightness comes. And that LIGHTNESS BETWEEN THEM OPENS INTO THE HEART; that lightness penetrates, opens into the heart. In the heart, only lightness can enter; nothing heavy can enter. Only very light things can happen to the heart.
This lightness between the two eyes will start dropping into the heart, and the heart will open to receive it — AND THERE PERMEATES THE COSMOS. And as the falling energy becomes a stream and then a river and then a flood, you will be washed completely, washed away. You will not feel that you are. You will feel simply the cosmos is. Breathing in, breathing out, you will feel you have become the cosmos. The cosmos comes in and the cosmos goes out. The entity that you have always been, the ego, will not be there.
This technique is very simple, without any danger, so you can experiment with it as you like. But because it is so easy, you may not be able to do it. The whole thing depends on touch without pressure, so you will have to learn it. Try it. Within a week it will happen. Suddenly some day when you are just touching with no pressure, immediately you will feel what I am saying — a lightness and an opening in the heart, and something dropping from the head into the heart.
