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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.
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