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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - Meditation
Technique
28 SUPPOSE YOU ARE
GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF
DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND.
Osho - You can do it in an actual situation or you can imagine a
situation. For example: lie down, relax, and feel as if your body is
going to die. Close your eyes; start feeling that you are dying. Soon
you will feel that your body is becoming heavy. Imagine: "I am dying, I
am dying, I am dying." If the feeling is authentic, the body will start
becoming heavy; you will feel as if your body has become like lead. You
want to move your hand, but you cannot move; it has become so heavy and
dead. Go on feeling that you are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, and
when you feel that now the moment has come -- just a jump and you will
be dead -- then suddenly forget your body and transcend.
SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT
THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND.
When you feel that the body is dead, what is meant now by transcending?
Look at the body. Up to now you were feeling that you are dying; now the
body has become a dead weight. Look at the body. Forget that you are
dying and now be the observer. The body is lying dead and you are
looking at it. There will be a transcendence. You will be out of your
mind, because a dead body needs no mind. A dead body relaxes so much
that the very process of the mind stops. You are there and the body is
there, but the mind is absent. Remember, mind is needed for life, not
for death.
If suddenly you come to know that within an hour you will die, what will
you do in that hour? One hour left, and it is certain that you are going
to die after one hour - exactly after one hour. What will you do? Your
thinking will drop completely because the whole of thinking is concerned
with either the past or the future.
You were planning to purchase a house or to purchase a car, or you were
planning to marry someone or divorce someone. You were thinking many
things, and they were constantly on your mind. Now, with only one hour
more, there is no meaning in marriage and no meaning in divorce. Now you
can leave all the planning to others, who are going to live. With death
planning ceases, with death worrying ceases, because every worry is
life-oriented.
You have to live tomorrow; that is why there is worry. So all those who
have been teaching meditation to the world have always been saying: do
not think of tomorrow. Jesus says to his disciples, "Do not think of the
tomorrow," because if you think of the tomorrow you cannot go into
meditation. Then you move into worries. But we are so fond of worries
that not only do we think of the tomorrow, we think of the other life.
So we plan not only for this life, we plan for the other life, beyond
death, also.
One day I was passing through a street and someone gave me a pamphlet. A
very beautiful house was painted on the cover and a very beautiful
garden. It was lovely - divinely lovely. And in very big capital letters
was the question: "Do you want such a beautiful house and such a
beautiful garden? And without any price, without any cost -- for free?"
I turned it over. The house was not of this earth. It was a Christian
pamphlet, and it read, "If you want such a beautiful house and such a
beautiful garden, believe in Jesus. Those who believe in him will get
such houses free of cost in the kingdom of God."
The mind goes on not only thinking of tomorrow, but thinking of beyond
death, arranging and making reservations for the afterlife. Such a mind
cannot be a religious mind. A religious mind cannot think of tomorrow.
So those who think of the afterlife are constantly worried about whether
God will behave rightly with them or not.
Churchill was dying and someone asked him, "Are you ready to meet the
Father there in heaven?" Churchill said, "That is not my worry. I am
constantly worried whether the divine Father is ready to meet me."
But either way one goes on worrying about the future. Buddha said,
"There is no heaven and no afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul,
and your death will be total and complete; nothing will survive." People
thought he was an atheist. He was not, he was just trying to create a
situation in which you can forget the tomorrow and can remain in this
very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily.
So if you are thinking of death -- not the death which will come, or is
to come later -- fall down on the ground and lie dead. Relax and feel,
"I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." And not only think it, feel it in
every limb of the body, in every fib of the body. Let death creep in. It
is one of the most beautiful meditations. When you feel that the body is
a dead weight and you cannot move your hand, you cannot move your head
and everything has become dead, suddenly look at your own body.
Mind will not be there. You can look! You will be there; consciousness
will be there. Look at your body -- it will not look like yours, it will
be just a body. The gap between you and the body will be clear - crystal
clear. There will be no bridge. The body is lying dead and you are there
standing as a witness, not in it -- NOT in it!
Remember, the feeling that you are in the body is because of the mind.
This feeling that you are in the body is because of the MIND! If the
mind is not there, if it is absent, you will not say you are in the body
or out of the body. You will simply be there, no in or out. "In" and
"out" are both relative terms associated with the mind. Simply, you will
be there witnessing. This is transcendence. You can do it in many ways.
Sometimes it is possible in actual situations... You are ill and you are
feeling that there is no hope, you are going to die. This is a very
useful situation. Use it for meditation. You can try it in other ways
also. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength. Lie down and
feel as if the whole existence is sucking your strength out. You are
being sucked from everywhere -- your strength is being sucked. Soon you
will be impotent, completely devoid of strength. Your energy is flowing
out, being taken out. Soon nothing will be left inside. That is how life
is: you are being sucked out, everything that is around you is sucking
you out. One day you will be just a dead cell; everything will have been
sucked out. The life will have flown out of you, and only the dead body
will remain there.
Even this very moment you can do it. Imagine this: lie down and feel
that the energy is being sucked out. Within a few days you will have the
knack of how energy goes out. And when you feel that everything has
moved out, nothing is now left within you, TRANSCEND: AT THE INSTANT OF
DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When the last quantum of energy is leaving you,
transcend. Be an onlooker; just become a witness. Then this universe and
this body, both, are not you. You are looking at the phenomenon.
This transcendence will bring you out of the mind. This is the key. And
you can do it in many ways, whatsoever is your liking. For example, we
were talking about a run around. Exhaust yourself; go on running and
running and running. Do not stop by yourself, let the body fall. When
every fib is exhausted, you will fall down. When you are falling down,
become aware. Just look and see that the body is falling down. Sometimes
a very miraculous happening happens. You remain standing and the body
has fallen down, and you can look at it. You can look, as only the body
has fallen down and you are still standing. Do not fall with the body.
Roam around, run, dance, exhaust the body -- but remember, you are not
to lie down. Then the inner consciousness also moves with the body and
lies down.
You are not to lie down, you just go on doing it until the body falls by
itself. Then it falls like a dead weight. Immediately, you feel the body
is falling and you cannot do anything. Open your eyes, be alert, do not
miss the point. Be alert and see what is happening. You may be still
standing, and the body has fallen down. And once you know it, you can
never forget that you are different from the body.
This "standing out" is the real meaning of the English word ecstasy.
Ecstasy means to stand out. And once you can feel you are out of the
body, there is no mind in that moment, because mind is the bridge that
gives you the feeling that you are in the body. If you are out of the
body for a single moment, there will be no mind in that moment. This is
transcendence. Then you can move in the body, then you can move in the
mind, but now you cannot forget the experience . That experience has
become part and parcel of your being; it will be there always. Go on
doing it every day, and many things happen through such a simple
process.
The West is always worried about how to tackle mind, and it tries to
find many ways. But still, nothing works or seems to work. Everything
becomes a fashion and then dies. Now psychoanalysis is a dead movement.
New movements are there - encounter groups, group psychology, action
psychology and many other things - but just like a fashion they come and
go. Why? Because within mind, at the most you can only make
arrangements. They will be disturbed again and again. Making
arrangements with the mind is making a house on sand, or making a house
of playing cards. It is always wavering, and the fear is always there
that now it is going. At any moment it may not be there.
Going beyond the mind is the only way to be inwardly happy and healthy,
to be whole. Then you can move in the mind and use the mind, but the
mind becomes the instrument and you are not identified with it. So two
things. Either you are identified with the mind -- this is illness for
tantra -- or you are not identified with the mind. Then you use it as an
instrument, and then you are healthy and whole.
The fifth technique is very simple in one sense and the most difficult
in another, and it is only of two words.
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