Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 94
FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, BONES, FLESH, BLOOD, SATURATED WITH THE COSMIC ESSENCE
Osho – Try with simple experiments. For seven days try one simple experiment: feel your blood, your bones, your flesh, your body, filled with sadness — every cell of the body sad; dark night around you; very heavy, depressed; not a single ray of light; no hope, gloomy, just as if you are going to die. Life is not throbbing in you; you are just waiting for death. It is as if death has already settled, or is settling. For seven days contemplate on the feeling that death has entered throughout the body; it has penetrated deep to the bone, to the very marrow. Go on thinking in this way, don’t disturb this mood. And then, after seven days, see how you feel.
You will be just a dead weight. All feeling will have disappeared, the body will not be felt as alive. And what have you done? You have been eating, you have been doing everything the same as you have always been doing; the only change has been in the imagination — there is a new pattern of imagination around you.
If you succeed in it…. You will succeed. Really, you have already succeeded in it; you are doing it, you are expert in doing this, unknowingly. That’s why I say start with sadness. If I say be filled with bliss, it will be very difficult. You cannot conceive of it. But if you can do it with sadness, then you will become aware that if sadness can happen to you, why not happiness? If you can create a sad milieu around you and become a dead thing in it, then why can’t you create an alive milieu around you and be alive, dancing? The other becomes conceivable.
Secondly, you will become aware that whatever sadness you have been suffering was not real. You were the creator of it, you were the author; unknowingly you have been doing this. It seems difficult to believe that your sadness is your imagination, because then the whole responsibility falls on you. Then no one else is responsible, then you cannot throw it on God, on fate, on others, on society, on wife, on husband — you cannot throw it anywhere. You are the creator, and whatsoever is happening to you, you are creating it.
Try it for seven days, consciously. And then, I say, you will never be sad again — because you will have known the key.
Then for seven days try just being in a stream of bliss — floating in it, every breath giving you ecstasy: just feel it. Start with sadness for seven days and then for seven days move to the contrary. And when you move to the direct opposite, you will feel it better because the contrast will be there.
Then only can you try this experiment — because it is deeper than happiness. Sadness is the surface, happiness is the middle, and this is the last core, the innermost core, the cosmic essence. FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, BONES, FLESH, BLOOD, SATURATED WITH THE COSMIC ESSENCE, with eternal life, with Divine energy, with cosmic essence. But don’t start it directly because then you will not be able to touch it. Start from sadness, then move to happiness, and then try the origin, the very origin of life — the cosmic essence. And feel yourself filled with it.
In the beginning you will become aware again and again that you are simply imagining it, but don’t stop. Even imagination is good. Even that you can imagine something worthwhile is good. You are imagining, and in the very imagination you are changing. It is you who are imagining. Go on imagining, and by and by you will forget completely that you are imagining it — it will have become a reality.
One of the greatest books ever written is the Buddhist scripture, `Lankawatar Sutra’. Buddha says again and again to his disciple Mahamati, he goes on saying again and again, “Mahamati, this is only mind. Hell is mind. Heaven is mind. The world is mind. Enlightenment is mind.” Mahamati asks again and again, “Just mind? Just mind? Even nirvana, enlightenment, just mind?” And Buddha says, “Just mind, Mahamati.”
When you understand that everything is just mind, you are freed. Then there Then there is no bondage, then there is no desire. In `Lankawatar Sutra’, Buddha says that the whole world is just like a magical world, a city of Gandharwa, as if a magician has created a world. Everything appears to be there, but it is there only because of the thought form.
But don’t start with outer reality, that is too far. That too is mind, but it is very away from you. Start from the very near, you own moods; and you will be the master if you can feel and know that they are your own creation.
Whenever you start thinking in terms of sadness, you become sad, and you become receptive to all the sadness around you. Then everybody helps you to be sad. Everybody helps, the whole world is always ready to help you, whatsoever you do. When you want to be sad, the whole world is helpful, cooperative. You have become receptive. Really, you fall to a certain wave-length where only sadness can be received. So even if someone comes to cheer you up, he will make you more sad. He will not look friendly, he will not look understanding; you will feel that he is insulting you because you are so sad and he is trying to cheer you up. He thinks your sadness is superficial. He is not taking you seriously.
And when you are ready to be happy, you are on a different wave-length. Now you are attuned to all the happiness that this world can give, now everywhere flowers start flowering, now every sound and noise becomes musical — and nothing has happened. The whole world remains the same, but you are different. You have a different pattern of looking, a different attitude, a different perspective; through that perspective a different world comes to you.
But start with sadness because you are expert in that. I was reading a sentence of some old Hassid mystic — I liked it very much. He says there are certain people, who, if their whole life becomes a bed of roses, will not be happy until they develop some allergy towards the roses. Roses cannot make them happy… only when they become allergic will they start feeling alive. They can be attuned only to sadness, to illness, to disease, they cannot be aware of anything else. They go on finding sadness. They are searchers after wrong — something wrong, something sad, depressed, dark. They are death-oriented.
I have been meeting hundreds and hundreds of persons deeply, intimately, closely. When they start talking about their sadness I have to be serious — otherwise they will not feel that I am sympathetic, they will not feel good about it. Then they will never turn to me again. I have to be sad with their sadness and serious with their seriousness to help bring them out of it.. and this is their own creation, and they are making every effort to create it. And if I try to bring them out, they create every type of barrier — not knowingly of course, because no one will do it knowingly.
This is what the Upanishads call ignorance. Unknowingly you go on disturbing your own life, you go on creating more problems and anxieties, and whatsoever happens will not make any difference because you have a pattern — whatsoever happens. There are persons who come to me and say, “We are lonely.” So they are unhappy. And the next moment someone comes and says he cannot find a place where he can be lonely. So he is unhappy. Then there are persons who have too much work on their minds, so they are unhappy, and there are persons who have no work, so they are unhappy. A person who is married is unhappy, a person who is not married, he is unhappy. It seems it is impossible for man to be happy. That’s what I mean when I say you are experts — you are very efficient in finding ways and means to be unhappy. And you always succeed.
Start from sadness, and for seven days be completely unhappy for the first time. That will transform you totally. Because once you know that consciously you can be unhappy, you will become conscious whenever you become unhappy. Then you will know what you are doing: it is your own doing. And if you can be unhappy by your own mind, then why can’t you be happy? There is no difference, the pattern is the same. And then you can try this.
FEEL YOUR SUBSTANCE, FLESH, BLOOD, BONES, SATURATED WITH THE COSMIC ESSENCE. Feel as if the Divine is flowing through you: you are not, but the cosmic exists in you, God exists in you. When you feel hungry, he feels hungry — then to give food to the body becomes worship. When you feel thirsty, he feels thirsty — the cosmic in you. When you feel sleepy, he feels sleepy, he wants rest, relaxation. When you are young, he is young in you. When you fall in love, he falls in love. Be saturated with him, and be TOTALLY saturated with him. Don’t make any distinction. Good or bad, whatsoever happens is happening to him. You just withdraw, you are no longer there, only he is there. So good or bad, hell or heaven, whatsoever happens, happens to him. All the responsibility is thrown onto him and you are no more. The `no-moreness’ that this technique can bring you is the ultimate in religion.
But you have to be saturated with it. And you don’t know any saturation, you don’t feel your body as porous, you don’t feel that in your body a life energy is flowing. You think of yourself as something solid, dead, closed. Life can happen only when you are vulnerable, open, not closed. Life moves through you, and whatsoever happens is happening to the life energy, not to you — you are just a fragment. And all the boundaries that you have created around you are false, they are not real.
You cannot exist alone. If you are alone on the earth, can you exist? You cannot exist alone. You cannot exist without the stars. Somewhere Eddington says that the whole existence is like a spider’s web — the whole existence is a spider’s net. If you touch the net anywhere, the whole vibrates; if you touch existence anywhere, the whole vibrates. It is one. If you touch a flower you have touched the whole cosmos; if you look into your neighbors eyes you have looked into the cosmos. Because the whole net is one. You cannot touch any part without touching the whole, and no part can exist without the whole.
When you start feeling this, the ego will disappear. The ego exists only when you take a certain part as the whole. When you make a part the whole, the ego exists. When you come to know the right proportion, that the part is part, and the whole is whole, the ego disappears. Ego is just a misunderstanding. And this technique, to feel oneself saturated with the cosmic, is just wonderful!
From the very early morning, when you feel life awakening, when you feel that the sleep has gone, the first thought must be of this saturation — now the Divine is opening, coming back out of sleep, not you. So Hindus, who have been one of the most penetrating races in the world, will start their first breath with the name of God. Now it has become a formality and the essential has been lost, but this was the root of it — that at the moment you become alert in the morning you must not remember yourself, you must remember the Divine. The Divine must become the first remembrance — and the last, at night, when you are falling asleep. The Divine must be remembered: he must be the first and the last. And if he is really the first in the morning and the last at night, he will be with you the whole day, in the middle also.
You must drop into sleep saturated with him. You will be surprised, because the quality of your sleep will be different. While falling into sleep tonight, please don’t you fall into sleep, let the Divine fall into sleep. While you are preparing the bed, prepare it for the Divine — the guest is coming. And while you are lying on the bed, let the Divine be there, not you — treat yourself as the guest. And while dropping into sleep go on feeling that the Divine exists, he saturates every breath, he pulsates in the blood, he beats in the heart. Now he is tired after a whole day of work, now he wants to sleep.
And in the morning you will feel that you have been sleeping in a different way. The quality of the sleep will be cosmic, because the meeting will be deep at the source.
When you feel yourself as Divine, you fall into the abyss because then there is no fear. Otherwise, even in the night while you are sleeping you are afraid to fall deeply into it. Many people are suffering from sleeplessness — not because of any other tension, but because they are afraid to fall asleep, because sleep appears like an abyss, a bottomless thing. I have known a few persons who are afraid.
One old man came to me and said that he could not sleep because he was afraid. I asked, “Why are you afraid?” He said, “I am afraid because if I really sleep, and I die, I will not be conscious, alert. And I can die because now I am old — and I don’t like the idea of dying in sleep. At least let me be aware and alert of what is happening.”
You go on clinging to something so that you cannot fall into sleep, but when you feel that the Divine is there, you have accepted. Then the abyss is also Divine. Then you fall very deeply into the very original sources of your being — and the quality will be different. And when you arise in the morning and you feel that sleep has gone, remember that the Divine is arising. The whole day will be different.
And be saturated — whatsoever you do, or you don’t do, let the Divine do it — simply allow it to be done. Eat, sleep, work, but let the Divine do it. Only then can you be saturated, can you become one with it. And once you feel, even for a single moment — even for a single moment, I say — that the peak has come, that you are not, that the Divine has saturated you completely, you are enlightened. In that single moment, that timeless moment, you will become aware of the whole mystery of life. Then there is no fear and then there is no death. Now you have become life itself. It goes on and on; it never ends, it never begins. Then life is ecstasy.
And the concepts of MOKSHA, of heaven and paradise, are just childish, because they are not really something geographical. They are symbols of this ultimate state of being: when the individual has dissolved into the cosmos or when the individual has allowed the cosmos to dissolve into him; when the two have become one, when mind and matter, both the manifestations, have come back to the original source, the third. The whole search is for that. That is the only search, and you will not be satisfied until this is achieved. Nothing can be a substitute for it. You can go on moving for lives and lives, but unless this is achieved, your search will be constantly haunting you. You cannot rest.
This technique can be very helpful and there is no danger in it; you can practise it without a master. Remember this: all the techniques that start with the body are dangerous without a master — because the body is a very complex phenomenon, very complex. It is a mechanism, and without someone who knows exactly what is going on, it is dangerous to start — you may disturb the mechanism, and then it will be difficult to repair it. All the techniques that start directly from mind are based on imagination, and are not dangerous because the body is not touched at all.
They can be done even without a master — although it will be difficult because you don’t have any self-confidence. A master is not really going to do anything, but he becomes a catalytic agent. He is not going to do anything — really nothing can be done — but with just his presence, your confidence and trust are touched, and it helps. With just the feeling that the master is there, you move confidently. Because he is present, you are not afraid; because he is with you, you can move into the unknown, the uncharted. But with body techniques he is very necessary, because the body is a mechanism and you can do something which cannot be easily undone. You can harm yourself.
One man came to me, he was doing SIRSHASAN — standing on his head for hours together. In the beginning it was very good and he felt very relaxed and cool the whole day. But then problems followed, and he became very disturbed when the coolness disappeared and he became hot all over. He became almost mad. And because he thought that SIRSHASAN helped in the beginning, and he became very cool, and felt very collected, silent, relaxed, he did it more because now he felt so disturbed. He thought more SIRSHASAN would help him — and SIRSHASAN was really the cause.
The mind mechanism, the brain, needs only a certain amount of blood to circulate through it; if less blood is circulating, you will be in difficulty. And with everyone it is different. It depends. That’s why you cannot sleep without pillows. If you try to sleep without pillows, you cannot sleep, or you will sleep less because more blood flows into the head. Those pillows help you. Your head is high so less blood flows, and for sleep, less blood is needed. If more blood flows, then the brain is alert, it cannot relax. If you do too much of SIRSHASAN, your sleep may be completely lost.
You may not be able to sleep at all. And there are dangers. It has been recorded that seven days is the longest you can go without sleep. Only seven days, after that you will go mad, because very subtle tissues of the brain will break, and they cannot be replaced easily. While you are standing on your head in SIRSHASAN, all the blood is flowing downwards towards the head. So I have not seen anyone doing SIRSHASAN who is in any way intelligent. If a person is doing much SIRSHASAN, he is bound to become stupid, because the very subtle tissues of the brain will be destroyed. With so much blood passing through, delicate tissues cannot exist.
So it has to be decided by a master who knows how much will be helpful to you — a few seconds, or a few minutes. And this is just an example. All the bodily postures, asanas, techniques, have to be done with a master. They are never to be done alone because you don’t know your body. Your body is such a big thing, you cannot even conceive of it. The small head, your head, has seven crores of cells in it. And those seven crores of cells are interrelated. Scientists say that the interrelationship is as complex as the whole universe.
Old Hindu seers have said that the whole cosmos exists in the head in miniature. The whole complexity of the universe is there in miniature. If the whole relationship of all the cells can be understood, you have understood the whole complexity of the universe. You are not aware of any cells, and about any relationship you are not aware. And it is good that you are not aware, otherwise you will go mad with such a big war going on. It can go on only unconsciously. The blood circulates, but you are not aware of it.
Only just three centuries ago it was discovered that blood circulates in the body. Before that it was thought that the blood was static, not circulating. Circulation is a very recent concept. And man has been in existence for millions of years but no one could feel that the blood was circulating. You cannot feel it. Much speed, much work is going on there. It is a big factory, your body, and one of the most delicate ones. It is constantly repairing itself, constantly renewing itself. For seventy years, if you don’t make any trouble for it, it will run smoothly. We have not created any mechanism up to now that can take care of itself for seventy years. So when you start any work on your body remember to be near a master who knows about what he is telling you to do. Otherwise don’t do it. But with imagination there is no problem. It is a simple phenomenon. You can start it.
