MEDITATION: LSD MEDITATION :The art of ecstasy (12-17)

 

                        LSD MEDITATION 

Meditation:

 The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #12

 Chapter title: LSD and Meditation 

Question 1

 QUESTION: CAN LSD BE USED AS A HELP IN MEDITATION? 

LSD can be used as a help, but the help is very dangerous; it is not so easy. If you use a mantra, even that can become difficult to throw, but if you use acid, LSD it will be even more difficult to throw. The moment you are on an LSD trip you are not in control. Chemistry takes control and you are not the master, and once you are not the master it is difficult to regain that position. The chemical is not the slave now, you are the slave. Now how to control it is not going to be your choice. Once you take LSD as a help you are making a slave of the master and your whole body chemistry will be affected by it. Your body will begin to crave LSD. Now the craving will not just be of the mind as it is when you get attached to a mantra. When you use acid as a help, the craving becomes part of the body; the LSD goes to the very cells of the body. It changes them. Your inner chemical structure becomes different. Then all the body cells begin to crave acid and it will be difficult to drop it. LSD can be used to bring you to meditation only if your body has been prepared for it. So if you ask if it can be used in the West, I will say that it is not for the West at all. It can be used only in the East -- if the body is totally prepared for it. Yoga has used it, tantra has used it, there are schools of tantra and yoga that have used LSD as a help, but then they prepare your body first. There is a long process of purification of the body. Your body becomes so pure and you become such a great master of it that even chemistry cannot become your master now. So yoga allows it, but in a very specific way. First your body must be purified chemically. Then you will be in such control of the body that even your body chemistry can be controlled. For example, there are certain yogic exercises: if you take poison, through a particular yogic exercise you can order your blood not to mix with it and the poison will pass through the body and come out in the urine without having mixed with the blood at all. If you can do this, if you can control your body chemistry, then you can use anything, because you have remained the master. In tantra, particularly in "leftist" tantra, they use alcohol to help meditation. It looks absurd; it is not. The seeker will take alcohol in a particular quantity and then will try to be alert. Consciousness must not be lost. By and by the quantity of alcohol will be raised, but the consciousness must remain alert. The person has taken alcohol, it has been absorbed in the body, but the mind remains above it; consciousness is not lost. Then the quantity of alcohol is raised higher and higher. Through this practice a point comes when any amount of alcohol can be given and the mind remains alert. Only then can LSD be a help. In the West there are no practices to purify the body or to increase consciousness through changes in body chemistry. Acid is taken without any preparation in the West. It is not going to help; rather, on the contrary, it may destroy the whole mind. There are many problems. Once you have been on an LSD trip you have a glimpse of something you have never known, something you have never felt. If you begin to practice meditation it is a long process, but LSD is not a process. You take it and the process is over; then the body begins to work. Meditation is a long process -- you have to do it for years, only then will the results be forthcoming. And when you have experienced a shortcut, it will be difficult to follow a long process. The mind will crave to return to using the drugs. So it is difficult to meditate once you have known a glimpse through chemistry; to undertake something that is a long process will be difficult. Meditation needs more stamina, more trust, more waiting, and it will be difficult because now you can compare. Secondly, any method is bad if you are not in control all the time. When you are meditating you can stop at any moment. If you want to stop, you can stop this very moment; you can come out of it. You cannot stop an LSD trip: once you have taken LSD you have to complete the circle. Now you are not the master. Anything that makes a slave of you is ultimately not going to help spiritually, because spirituality basically means to be the master of oneself. So I wouldn't suggest shortcuts. I am not against LSD, I may sometimes be for it, but then a long preliminary preparation is necessary. Then you will be the master. But then LSD is not a shortcut. It will take even longer than meditation. Hatha yoga takes years to prepare a body -- twenty years, twentyfive years, then a body is ready; now you can use any chemical help and it will not be destructive to your being. But then the process is far longer. Then LSD can be used; I am in favor of it then. If you are prepared to take twenty years to prepare the body in order to take LSD, then it is not destructive. But the same thing can be done in two years with meditation. Because the body is more gross, mastery is more difficult. The mind is more subtle so mastery is easier. The body is further away from your being, so there is a greater gap; with the mind the gap is shorter. In India the primitive method to prepare the body to be ready for meditation was hatha yoga. It took so long a time to prepare the body that sometimes hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life so that hatha yoga could be continued. It was such a long process that sixty years might not be enough, seventy years might not be enough. And there is a problem: if the mastery is not achieved in this life then in the next life you have to begin from abc because you have a new body. The whole effort has been lost. You do not have a new mind in your next life, the old mind continues, so whatever is attained through the mind remains with you, but whatever is attained through the body is lost with every death. So hatha yoga had to invent methods to prolong life for two hundred to three hundred years so that mastery could be attained. If the mastery is of the mind then you can change the body, but the preparedness of the body belongs to the body alone. Hatha yoga invented many methods so that the process could be completed, but then even greater methods were discovered: how to control the mind directly -- raja yoga. With these methods the body can be a little helpful, but there is no need to be too concerned with it. So hatha yoga adepts have said that LSD can be used, but raja yoga cannot say LSD can be used, because raja yoga has no methodology to prepare the body. Direct meditation is used. Sometimes it happens -- only sometimes, rarely -- that if you have a glimpse through LSD and do not become addicted to it, that glimpse may become a thirst in you to seek something further. So to try it once is good, but it becomes difficult to know where to stop and how to stop. The first trip is good, to be on it once is good; you become aware of a different world and then you begin to seek, you begin to search, because of it -- but then it becomes difficult to stop. This is the problem. If you can stop, then to take LSD once is good. But that "if" is a great one. Mulla Nasruddin used to say that he never took more than one glass of wine. Many friends objected to his statement because they had seen him taking one glass after another. He said, "The second glass is taken by the first; 'I' take only one. The second is taken by the first and the third by the second. Then I am not the master. I am master only for the first, so how can I say that I take more than one? 'I' take only one -- always only one!" With the first you are the master; with the second you are not. The first will try to take a second, and then it will go on continuously; then it is no longer in your hands. To begin anything is easy because you are the master, but to end anything is difficult because then you are not the master. So I am not against LSD, and if I am against it, it is conditional. This is the condition: if you can remain the master, then okay. Use anything, but remain the master. And if you cannot remain the master, then do not enter into a dangerous road at all. Do not enter at all; it will be better. 

Meditation: 

The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #13 

Chapter title: Intuition: A Non-Explanation 

 Question 1

 QUESTION: CAN INTUITION BE EXPLAINED SCIENTIFICALLY? IS IT A PHENOMENON OF THE MIND?

 Intuition cannot be explained scientifically because the very phenomenon is unscientific and irrational. The very phenomenon of intuition is irrational. In language it looks okay to ask, "Can intuition be explained?" It means: can intuition be reduced to intellect? But intuition means something beyond the intellect, something not of the intellect, something coming from someplace where intellect is totally unaware. So intellect can feel it, but it cannot explain it. The leap can be felt because there is a gap. Intuition can be felt by the intellect -- it can be noted down that something has happened -- but it cannot be explained, because explanation means causality. Explanation means: from where does it come? why does it come? what is the cause? And it comes from somewhere else, not from the intellect itself, so there is no intellectual cause; there is no reason, no link, no continuity in the intellect. For example, Mohammed was an illiterate person. No one knew about him; no one ever felt that such a great thing as the Koran could come out of him. There was not a single act, not a single thought, that was special about him; he was just an ordinary man -- absolutely ordinary. No one ever felt that something extraordinary was possible in him. Then, suddenly, this parable is recorded: An angel appeared to Mohammed and said, "Read!" Mohammed said to him, "How can I read? I do not know how; I cannot read, I am illiterate." The angel repeated again, "Read!" Mohammed again said, "But how can I read? I do not know anything about reading." Then the angel said, "Read! By the grace of God, you will be able." And Mohammed began to read. This is intuition. He returned to his house trembling, trembling because he could not conceive of what had happened. He could read -- and he had read something inconceivable. The first ayat of the Koran had been given to him. He could not understand it because nothing in his whole past related to it. He could not feel the meaning of it; he had become the vehicle for something that was unrelated to his past, absolutely unrelated. Something from the unknown had penetrated him. It might have been related to something else, to someone else, but it did not relate to Mohammed at all. This is the penetration. He came into his house trembling, he felt feverish; he just went on thinking, "What has happened?" He was unable to understand what had happened, and for three days he was in deep fever, trembling, because there was no cause for what had occurred. He could not even gather the courage to say something to anyone. He was an illiterate: who was going to believe him? He himself could not believe what had happened; it was unbelievable. After three days of deep fever, coma, unconsciousness, he gathered the courage to tell his wife, but only under the condition that she not tell anyone else. "It seems that I have gone mad," he said. But his wife was older than he was and more learned. She was forty and Mohammed was twenty-six; she was a rich woman, a rich widow. She felt that something real had happened, and she was Mohammed's first convert. Only then could Mohammed get up the nerve to speak to some friends and relatives. Whenever he would speak he would tremble, perspire, because what was happening was inconceivable. That is why Mohammed insisted -- and this became a tenet, a foundational tenet of Islam -- that "I am not divine; I am nothing special. I am not extraordinary, I am just a vehicle." This is what is meant by surrender and nothing else -- nothing else! The postman just delivers the message to you; you yourself cannot even understand it. This is intuition. It is a different realm of happening that is not related to the intellect at all, although it can penetrate the intellect. It must be understood that a higher reality can penetrate a lower reality, but the lower cannot penetrate the higher. So intuition can penetrate intellect because it is higher, but intellect cannot penetrate intuition because it is lower. It is just like your mind can penetrate your body, but your body cannot penetrate the mind. Your being can penetrate the mind, but the mind cannot penetrate the being. That is why, if you are going into the being, you have to separate yourself from body and mind, both. They cannot penetrate a higher phenomenon. As you go into a higher reality, the lower world of happenings has to be dropped. There is no explanation of the higher in the lower, because the very terms of explanation are not existential there; they are meaningless. But the intellect can feel the gap, it can know the gap, it can come to feel that "something has happened which is beyond me." If even this much can be done, the intellect has done much. But intellect can also reject. That is what is meant by a faithful mind or a faithless mind. If you feel that what cannot be explained by the intellect is not, then you are a nonbeliever. Then you will continue in this lower existence -- tethered to it. Then you disallow mystery, then you disallow intuition to speak to you; this is what a rationalist mind means. The rationalist will not even see that something from beyond has come. Mohammed was chosen. There were scholars around, many scholars, but Mohammed, a very illiterate person, was chosen because he was faithful. The higher could penetrate; he could allow the higher to enter into him. If you are rationally trained, you will not allow the higher; you will deny it, you will say, "It cannot be. It must be my imagination; it must be my dream. Unless I can prove it rationally, I will not accept it." A rational mind becomes closed, closed within the boundaries of reasoning, and intuition cannot penetrate. But you can use the intellect without being closed; then you can use reason as an instrument, but you remain open, you are receptive to the higher. If something comes, you are receptive. Then you can use your intellect as a help: it notes down that "something has happened that is beyond me." It can help you to understand this gap. Beyond that, intellect can be used for expression -- not for explanation, for expression. A buddha is totally non-explanatory; he is expressive, but non-explanatory. All the Upanishads are expressive without any explanations. They say, "This is such, this is so; this is what is happening. If you want, come in; do not stand outside. No explanation is possible from the inside to the outside, so come in. Become an insider." Even if you come inside, things will not be explained to you; you will come to know and feel them. Intellect can try to understand, but it is bound to be a failure. The higher cannot be reduced to the lower. 

Question 2

 QUESTION: DOESN'T INTUITION COME TO ONE THROUGH THOUGHT WAVES THAT ARE JUST LIKE RADIO WAVES?

 This, again, will be very difficult to explain. If intuition comes through some kind of waves, then sooner or later the intellect will be able to explain it. It comes without any medium; that is the point. It comes without a vehicle! It travels without any vehicle, that is why it is a jump, that is why it is a leap. If some waves are there and it comes to you through those waves, then it is not a jump, it is not a leap. It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two; that is why it is a jump. If I come to you step by step, it is not a jump; only if I come to you without any steps is it a jump. And a real jump is even deeper: it means that something exists on point A and then it exists on point B, and between the two there is no existence. That is a real jump. Intuition is a jump. It is not something coming to you; that is a linguistic error. It is not something coming to you: it is something happening to you, not coming to you -- something happening to you without any causality anywhere, without any source anywhere. This sudden happening means intuition. If it is not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason will discover the path. It will take time, but it can be done. If some X-rays, some waves or anything are carrying it to you, reason will be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. Then any day an instrument can be developed -- just like radio or TV -- in which intuitions can be received. If intuition comes through rays or waves, then we can make an instrument to receive them. Then Mohammed is not needed. But as I see it, Mohammed will be needed. No instrument can pick up intuition because it is not a wave phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon at all; it is just a leap from nothing to being. Intuition means just that. That is why reason denies it. Reason denies it because reason is incapable of encountering it; reason can only encounter phenomena that can be divided into cause and effect. According to reason there are two realms of existence: the known and the unknown. And the unknown means that which is not yet known, but someday will be known. But religion says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable religion means that which can never be known. Intellect is involved with the known and the unknown, not with the unknowable, and intuition works with the unknowable, with that which cannot be known. It is not just a question of time before it will be known; "unknowability" is its intrinsic quality. It is not that your instruments are not fine enough or your logic not up to date or your mathematics primitive -- that is not the question. The intrinsic quality of the unknowable is unknowability; it will always exist as the unknowable. This is the realm of intuition. When something from the unknowable comes to be known, it is a jump. It is a jump! There is no interlink, there is no passage, there is no going from one point to another point. But it seems inconceivable, so when I say, "You can feel it, but you cannot understand it," when I say such things, I know very well that I am uttering nonsense. Nonsense only means "that which cannot be understood by our senses." And mind is a sense, the most subtle, and wisdom is a sense. Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, "There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him." Religion, on the other hand, says, "Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable -- a mystery." And if religion is not right then I think that science is going to destroy the whole meaning of life. If there is no mystery, the whole meaning of life is destroyed and the whole beauty is destroyed. The unknowable is the beauty, the meaning, the aspiration, the goal. Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored. The unknowable is the secret; it is life itself. I will say this: that reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible; the explanation is not. The more you try to explain it the more closed you will become, so do not try. Let reason work in its own field, but remember continuously that there are deeper realms. There are deeper reasons which reason cannot understand, higher reasons that reason is incapable of conceiving. 

Meditation:

 The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #14 

Chapter title: Consciousness, Witnessing & Awareness 

 Question 1

 QUESTION: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AWARENESS AND WITNESSING? 

There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it, the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object. Witnessing is a relationship between subject and object. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. There is no one who is witnessing in awareness; there is no one who is being witnessed. Awareness is a total act, integrated; the subject and the object are not related in it; they are dissolved. So awareness doesn't mean that anyone is aware, nor does it mean that anything is being attended to. Awareness is total -- total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon -- while in witnessing a duality exists between subject and object. Awareness is nondoing; witnessing implies a doer. But through witnessing awareness is possible, because witnessing means that it is a conscious act; it is an act, but conscious. You can do something and be unconscious -- our ordinary activity is unconscious activity -- but if you become conscious in it, it becomes witnessing. So from ordinary unconscious activity to awareness there is a gap that can be filled by witnessing. Witnessing is a technique, a method toward awareness. It is not awareness, but, as compared to ordinary activity, unconscious activity, it is a higher step. Something has changed: activity has become conscious, unconsciousness has been replaced by consciousness. But something more still has to be changed. That is, the activity has to be replaced by inactivity. That will be the second step. It is difficult to jump from ordinary, unconscious action into awareness. It is possible but arduous, so a step in between is helpful. If one begins by witnessing conscious activity, then the jump becomes easier -- the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all. This doesn't mean that awareness isn't consciousness; it is pure consciousness, but no one is conscious about it. There is still a difference between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious, but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness. Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there, but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind, and mind, as such, is the source of all duality, of all divisions, whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness. Every type of duality is mental. Awareness is nondual, so awareness means the state of no mind. Then what is the relationship between consciousness and witnessing? Witnessing is a state, and consciousness is a means toward witnessing. If you begin to be conscious, you achieve witnessing. If you begin to be conscious of your acts, conscious of your day-today happenings, conscious of everything that surrounds you, then you begin to witness. Witnessing comes as a consequence of consciousness. You cannot practice witnessing; you can only practice consciousness. Witnessing comes as a consequence, as a shadow, as a result, as a byproduct. The more you become conscious, the more you go into witnessing, the more you come to be a witness. So consciousness is a method to achieve witnessing. And the second step is that witnessing will become a method to achieve awareness. So these are the three steps: consciousness, witnessing, awareness. But where we exist is the lowest rank: that is, in unconscious activity. Unconscious activity is the state of our minds. Through consciousness you can achieve witnessing, and through witnessing you can achieve awareness, and through awareness you can achieve "no achievement." Through awareness you can achieve all that is already achieved. After awareness there is nothing; awareness is the end. Awareness is the end of spiritual progress; unawareness is the beginning. Unawareness means a state of material existence. So unawareness and unconsciousness are not both the same. Unawareness means matter. Matter is not unconscious; it is unaware. Animal existence is an unconscious existence; human existence is a mind phenomenon -- ninety-nine percent unconscious and one percent conscious. This one percent consciousness means you are one percent conscious of your ninety-nine percent unconsciousness. But if you become conscious of your own consciousness, then the one percent will go on increasing, and the ninety-nine percent unconsciousness will go on decreasing. If you become one hundred percent conscious, you become a witness, a sakshi. If you become a sakshi, you have come to the jumping point from where the jump into awareness becomes possible. In awareness you lose the witness and only witnessing remains: you lose the doer, you lose the subjectivity, you lose the egocentric consciousness. Then consciousness remains, without the ego. The circumference remains without the center. This circumference without the center is awareness. Consciousness without any center, without any source, without any motivation, without any source from which it comes -- a "no source" consciousness -- is awareness. So you move from the unaware existence that is matter, prakriti, towards awareness. You may call it the divine, the godly, or whatever you choose to call it. Between matter and the divine, the difference is always of consciousness. 

Meditation:

 The Art of Ecstasy

 Chapter #15 

Chapter title: The Difference between Satori & Samadhi 

  Question 1 

QUESTION: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IN EXPERIENCE BETWEEN SATORI -- IN ZEN, A GLIMPSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT -- AND SAMADHI, COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

 Samadhi begins as a gap, but it never ends. A gap always begins and ends -- it has boundaries: a beginning and an end -- but samadhi begins as a gap and then is everlasting. There is no end to it. So if the happening comes as a gap and there is no end, it is samadhi, but if it is a complete gap -- with a beginning and an end -- then it is satori, and that is different. If it is just a glimpse, just a gap, and the gap is again lost, if something is bracketed and the bracket is complete -- you peep into it and come back, you jump into it and come back -- if something happens and it is again lost, it is satori. It is a glimpse, a glimpse of samadhi, but not samadhi. Samadhi means the beginning of knowing, without any end. In India we have no word that corresponds to satori, so sometimes, when the gap is great, one can misunderstand satori as samadhi. But it never is; it is just a glimpse. You have come to the cosmic and looked into it, and then everything is gone again. Of course, you will not be the same; now you will never be the same again. Something has penetrated into you, something has been added to you, you can never be the same again. But still, that which has changed you is not with you. It is just a remembrance, a memory. It is only a glimpse. If you can remember it -- if you can say, "I have known the moment" -- it is only a glimpse, because the moment samadhi has happened, you will not be there to remember it. Then you can never say, "I have known it," because with the knowing the knower is lost. Only with the glimpse the knower remains. So the knower can keep this glimpse as a memory -- he can cherish it, long for it, desire it, again endeavor to experience it -- but he is still there. The one who has had a glimpse, the one who has looked is there. It has become a memory; and now this memory will haunt you, will follow you, and will demand the phenomenon again and again. The moment samadhi has happened, you are not there to remember it. Samadhi never becomes a part of memory because the one who was is no more. As they say in zen, "The old man is no more and the new one has come..." and these two have never met, so there is no possibility of there being any memory. The old has gone and the new has come, and there has been no meeting between the two, because the new can come only when the old has gone. Then it is not a memory; there is no haunting and no hankering after it, there is no longing for it. Then, as you are, you are at ease and there is nothing to desire. It is not that you have killed the desire -- no! It is desirelessness in the sense that the one who could desire is no more. It is not a state of no desire; it is desirelessness, because the one who could desire is no more. Then there is no longing, there is no future, because the future is created through our longings; it is a projection of our desires. If there is no desire, there is no future. And if there is no future, there is no need of the past, because the past is always a background against which, or through which, the future is longed for. If there is no future, if you know that this very moment you are going to die, there is no need to remember the past. Then there is no need to even remember your name, because the name has a meaning only if there is a future. It may be needed; but if there is no future, you just burn all your bridges of the past. There is no need of them; the past has become absolutely meaningless. It is only against the future or for the future that the past is meaningful. The moment samadhi has happened, the future becomes nonexistential. It is not; only the present moment is. It is the only time, there is not even any past. The past has dropped and the future also, and a single, momentary existence becomes the total existence. You are in it, but not as an entity that is different from it. You cannot be different because you only become different from the total existence due to your past or your future. The past and future crystallized around you is the only barrier between you and the present moment that is happening. So when samadhi happens there is no past and no future. Then it is not that you are in the present, but you are the present, you become the present. Samadhi is not a glimpse, samadhi is a death. But satori is a glimpse, not a death. And satori is possible through so many ways. An aesthetic experience can be a possible source for satori; music can be a possible source for satori; love can be a possible source for satori. In any intense moment in which the past becomes meaningless, in any intense moment when you are existing in the present -- a moment of either love or music or poetic feeling, or of any aesthetic phenomenon in which the past doesn't interfere, in which there is no desire for the future -- satori becomes possible. But this is just a glimpse. This glimpse is meaningful, because through satori you can feel for the first time what samadhi can mean. The first taste, or the first distinct perfume of samadhi, comes through satori. So satori is helpful; but anything that is helpful can be a hindrance if you cling to it and you feel that it is everything. Satori has a bliss that can fool you; it has a bliss of its own. Because you have not known samadhi, this is the ultimate that comes to you, and you cling to it. But if you cling to it, you can change that which was helpful, that which was friendly, into something that becomes a barrier and an enemy. So one must be aware of the possible danger of satori. If you are aware of this, then the experience of satori will be helpful. A single, momentary glimpse is something that can never be known by any other means. No one can explain it; no words, no communication, can even be a hint to it. Satori is meaningful, but just as a glimpse, as a breakthrough, as a single, momentary breakthrough into the existence, into the abyss. You have not even known the moment, you have not even become aware of it before it becomes closed to you. Just a click of the camera -- a click, and everything is lost. Then a hankering will be created; you will risk everything for that moment. But do not long for it, do not desire it; let it sleep in the memory. Do not make a problem out of it; just forget it. If you can forget it and do not cling to it, these moments will come to you more and more, the glimpses will be coming to you more and more. A demanding mind becomes closed, and the glimpse is shut off. It always comes when you are not aware of it, when you are not looking for it -- when you are relaxed, when you are not even thinking about it, when you are not even meditating. Even when you are meditating the glimpse becomes impossible, but when you are not meditating, when you are just in a moment of let-go -- not even doing anything, not even waiting for anything -- in that relaxed moment, satori happens. It will begin to happen more and more, but do not think about it; do not long for it. And never mistake it for samadhi. 

Question 2 QUESTION: WHAT KIND OF PREPARATIONS ARE NECESSARY TO EXPERIENCE SATORI?

 Satori becomes possible for a great number of people, because sometimes it needs no preparations; sometimes it happens by chance. The situation is created, but unknowingly. There are so many people who have known it. They may not know it as satori, may not have interpreted it as satori, but they have known it. A great surging love can create it. Even through chemical drugs, satori is possible. It is possible through mescaline, LSD, marijuana, because through a chemical change the mind can expand enough so that there is a glimpse. After all, all of us have chemical bodies -- the mind and the body are chemical units -- so through chemistry, too, the glimpse can be possible. Sometimes a sudden danger can penetrate you so much that the glimpse becomes possible; sometimes a great shock can bring you so much into the moment that the glimpse becomes possible. And for those who have some aesthetic sensibility, who have a poetic heart, who have a feeling attitude toward reality, not an intellectual attitude, the glimpse can be possible. For a rational, logical, intellectual personality, the glimpse is impossible. Sometimes it can happen to an intellectual person, but only through some intense, intellectual tension -- when suddenly the tension is relaxed. It happened for Archimedes. He was in satori when he came out into the street naked from his bathtub, and began to cry, "Eureka, I've found it!" It was a sudden release of the constant tension he had concerning a problem. The problem was solved, so the tension that existed because of the problem was suddenly completely released. He ran out naked into the streets and cried, "Eureka, I've found it!" For an intellectual person, if a great problem that has demanded his total mind and brought him to the peak of intellectual tension is suddenly solved, it can bring him to a moment of satori. But for aesthetic minds it is easier. 

Question 3 QUESTION: YOU MEAN EVEN INTELLECTUAL TENSION CAN BE A WAY TO ACHIEVE SATORI?

 It may be, it may not be. If you become intellectually tense during this discussion and the tension is not brought to the extreme, it will be a hindrance. But if you become totally tense and then suddenly something is understood, that understanding will be a release and satori can happen. Or, if this discussion is not at all tense, if we are just chitchatting -- totally relaxed, totally nonserious -- even this discussion can be an aesthetic experience. It is not only that flowers are aesthetic; even words can be. It is not only that trees are aesthetic; human beings can also be. It is not only when you are watching clouds floating by that satori becomes possible; even if you participate in a dialogue it becomes possible. But either a relaxed participation is needed or a very tense participation. You can either be relaxed to begin with or relaxation can come to you because your tension has been brought to a peak and then released. When either happens, even a dialogue, a discussion, can become a source of satori. Anything can become a source of satori; it depends on you. It never depends on anything else. You are just passing through a street: a child is laughing and satori can happen. There is a haiku that tells a story something like this: a monk is crossing a street and a very ordinary flower is peeking out from a wall -- a very ordinary flower, a day-to-day flower, which is everywhere. He looks at it. It is the first time he has ever really looked at it, because it is so ordinary, so obvious. It is always to be found somewhere, so he never bothered to really look at it before. He looks into it -- and satori happens. An ordinary flower is never looked at. It is so common that you forget it. So the monk has never really seen this flower before. For the first time in his life he has seen it, and the event became phenomenal. This first meeting with the flower, with this very ordinary flower, becomes unique. Now he feels sorry for it. It has always been there waiting for him, but he has never looked at it. He feels sorry for it, asks its pardon... and the thing happens. The flower is there, and the monk is standing there dancing. Someone asks, "What are you doing?" He says, "I have seen something uncommon in a very common flower. The flower was always waiting; I never looked at it before -- but today a meeting has happened." The flower is not common now. The monk has penetrated into it, and the flower has penetrated into the monk. An ordinary thing, even a pebble, can be a source. For a child a pebble is a source, but for us it is not a source because it has become so familiar. Anything uncommon, anything rare, anything that has come into your sight for the first time, can be a source for satori, and if you are available -- if you are there, if your presence is there -- the phenomenon can happen. Satori happens to almost everyone. It may not be interpreted as such, you may not have known it to be satori, but it happens. And this happening is the cause of all spiritual seeking; otherwise spiritual seeking would not be possible. How can you be in search of something of which you have not even had a glimpse? First something must have come to you, some ray must have come to you -- a touch, a breeze -- something must have come to you that has become the quest. A spiritual quest is only possible if something has happened to you without your knowing. It may be in love, it may be in music, it may be in nature, it may be in friendship -- it may be in any communion. Something has happened to you that has been a source of bliss and it is now just a remembering, a memory. It may not even be a conscious memory; it may be unconscious. It may be waiting like a seed somewhere deep within you. This seed will become the source of a quest, and you will go on searching for something that you do not know. What are you searching for? You do not know. But still, somewhere, even unknown to you, some experience, some blissful moment, has become part and parcel of your mind. It has become a seed, and now that seed is working its way through and you are in quest of something which you cannot name, which you cannot explain. What are you seeking? If a spiritual person is sincere and honest he cannot say, "I am seeking God," because he does not know whether God is or not. And the word god is absolutely meaningless unless you have known. So you cannot seek God or moksha, liberation -- you cannot. A sincere seeker will have to fall back upon himself. The seeking is not for something outward, it is for something inward. Somewhere something is known which has been glimpsed at, which has become the seed, and which is compelling you, pushing you, toward something unknown. Spiritual seeking is not a pulling from without; it is a push from within. It is always a push. And if it is a pull, the seeking is insincere, unauthentic; then it is nothing but a search for a new sort of gratification, a new turn to your desires. Spiritual seeking is always a push toward something deep inside you of which you have had a glimpse. You have not interpreted it; you have not known it consciously. It may be a childhood memory of satori that is deep down in the unconscious. It may be a blissful moment of satori in your mother's womb, a blissful existence with no worry, with no tension, with a completely relaxed state of mind. It may be a deep, unconscious feeling, a feeling that you have not known consciously, that is pushing you. Psychologists agree that the whole concept of spiritual seeking comes from the blissful experience in the mother's womb. It is so blissful, so dark; there is not even a single ray of tension. With the first glimpse of light, tension begins to be felt, but the darkness is absolute relaxation. There is no worry, nothing to do. You do not even have to breathe; your mother breathes for you. You exist exactly as it is interpreted that one exists when moksha is achieved. Everything just is, and to be is blissful. Nothing has to be done to achieve this state; it just is. So it may be that there is a deep, unconscious seed inside you that has experienced total relaxation. It may be some childhood experience of aesthetic blissfulness, a childhood satori. Every childhood is satori-full, but we have lost it. Paradise is lost, and Adam is thrown out of paradise. But the remembrance is there, the unknown remembrance that pushes you on. Samadhi is different from this. You have not known samadhi, but through satori there is the promise that something greater is possible. Satori becomes a promise that leads you toward samadhi. 

Question 4

 QUESTION: WHAT SHOULD WE DO TO ACHIEVE IT?

 You should not do anything. Only one thing: you must be aware, you must not resist; there must not be any resistance to it. But there is resistance; that is why there is suffering. There is an unconscious resistance. If something begins to happen to the brahma randhra, it just begins to make ego death come nearer. It seems so painful that there is inner resistance. This resistance can take two forms: either you will stop doing meditation or you will ask what can be done to transcend it, to go beyond it. Nothing should be done. This asking, too, is a sort of resistance. Let it do what it is doing. Just be aware and accept it totally. Be with it; let it do whatever it is doing, and be cooperative with it.

 Question 5 

QUESTION: SHOULD I JUST BE A WITNESS TO IT? 

Don't be just a witness, because to be just a witness to this process will create barriers. Do not be a witness. Be cooperative with it; be one with it. Just cooperate with it, totally surrender to it -- surrender yourself to it -- and say to it, "Do anything, do whatsoever is needed," and you just be cooperative. Do not resist it and do not be attentive to it, because even your attention will be a resistance. Just be with it and let it do whatever is needed. You cannot know what is needed and you cannot plan what is to be done. You can only surrender to it and let it do whatever is necessary. The brahma randhra has its own wisdom, every center has its own wisdom, and if we become attentive to it a disturbance will be created. The moment you become aware of any of the inner workings of your body you create a disturbance because you create tension. The whole working of the body, the inner working, is unconscious. For example, once you have taken your food you must not be attentive to it; you must let your body do whatever it likes. If you become attentive to your stomach, then you will disturb it; the whole working will become disturbed and the whole stomach will be diseased. Likewise, when the brahma randhra is working, do not be attentive to it, because your attention will work against it, you will work against it. You will be face to face with it, and this facing, this encountering, will be a disturbance; then the process will be unnecessarily prolonged. So starting from tomorrow, just be with it, move with it, suffer with it, and let it do whatever it wants to do. You must be totally surrendered, wholly given to it. This surrender is akarma, nonactivity. It is more akarma than being attentive, because your attention is karma, action; it is an activity. So just be with whatever is happening. It is not that by being with it you will not be aware, but only that you will not be attentive. You will be aware and that is different. While being with it there will be awareness, a diffused awareness. You will be knowing all the time that something is happening, but now yo

u will be with it, and there will be no contradiction between your awareness and the happening. 

Question 6 

QUESTION: WILL MEDITATION LEAD TO SAMADHI? 

In the beginning effort will be needed. Unless you are beyond the mind, effort will be needed. Once you are beyond the mind there is no need of effort, and if it is still needed that means you are not beyond the mind. A bliss that needs effort is of the mind. A bliss that does not need any effort has become natural, it is of the being; then it is just like breathing. No effort is needed -- not only no effort, but no alertness is needed. It continues. Now it is not something added to you; it is you. Then it becomes samadhi. Dhyan, meditation is effort; samadhi is effortlessness. Meditation is effort; ecstasy is effortlessness. Then you do not need to do anything about it. That is why I say that unless you come to a point where meditation becomes useless, you have not achieved the goal. The path must become useless. If you have achieved the goal, if you have come to the goal, the path is useless. 

Meditation: 

The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #16 

Chapter title: Sexual Energy & the Awakening of the Kundalini

Question 1

 QUESTION: HOW DOES ONE OVERCOME THE PULL TOWARD SEX SO THAT THE KUNDALINI CAN GO UPWARD?

 Energy has been going downward through the sex center continuously for many births, so when any energy is created it will first try to move downward. That is why meditation sometimes will create more sexuality in you than you have ever felt before. You will feel more sexual because you have generated more energy than you previously had. When you have conserved something, the old, habitual passage is ready to release it. The mechanism is ready, the old passage is ready. Your mind only knows one passage -- the lower one, the sexual passage -- so when you are meditating the first movement of your life energy will be downward. Just be aware of it. Do not struggle with it; just be aware of it. Be aware of the habitual passage, be aware of sexual images; let them come. Be aware of them, but do not do anything about the situation; just be aware of it. The sexual passage cannot operate without your cooperation, but if you cooperate with it even for a single moment, it can start functioning. So do not cooperate with it: just be aware of it. The mechanism of sex is so much a momentary phenomenon that it only functions momentarily; if you do not cooperate at the right moment, it stops. At the right moment your cooperation is needed, otherwise it cannot work. It is only a momentary mechanism, and if you do not cooperate with it, it will stop by itself. Time and time again, energy is created through meditation. It continues to move downward, but now you are aware of it. The old passage is cut -- not suppressed. Energy is there and it needs to be released, but the lower door is closed: not suppressed -- closed. You have not cooperated with it, that's all. You have not positively suppressed it, you have only negatively not cooperated with it. You have just been aware of what is happening to your mind, to your body. You are just aware; then energy is conserved. Then the quantity of the energy becomes more and more intense and an upward thrust becomes necessary. Now the energy will go upward; by its very force, a new passage will be thrown open. When energy goes upward you will be more sexually attractive to others, because life energy going upward creates a great magnetic force. You will become more sexually attractive to others, so you will have to be aware of this. Now you will attract persons unknowingly, and the attraction will not only be physical; the attraction will be etheric. Even a repulsive body, a nonattractive body, will become attractive with yoga. The attraction is etheric; and it is so magnetic that one has to be constantly aware of it, constantly aware. You will be attractive... and the opposite sex will be irresistably drawn to you. There are subtle vibrations that are created by your etheric body: you have to be aware of them. The type of attraction that will be felt by the opposite sex will differ -- it will take so many different forms -- but basically it will be sexual. At its root, it will be sexual. But you can help these people. Even if they are attracted to you sexually, they have become attracted to a sexual energy that is moving upward. And they too are not ordinary sexual beings: upward-moving sexual energy has become an attraction, a magnet. So you can help them; if you do not become involved, then you can help them. 

Question 2

 QUESTION: IN THE AWAKENING OF THE KUNDALINI, IN THE OPENING OF THE PASSAGE, ISN'T THERE AN INCREASE IN SEXUAL POWER?

 The increase in sexual power and the opening of the kundalini passage are simultaneous - - not the same, but simultaneous. The increase in sexual power will be the thrust to open up the higher centers; so sexual power will increase. If you can be aware of it and not use it sexually -- if you do not allow it to be released sexually -- it will become so intense that the upward movement will begin. First the energy will try its best to be released sexually, because that is its usual outlet, its usual center. So one must first be aware of one's downward "doors." Only awareness will close them; only noncooperation will close them. Sex is not so forceful as we feel it to be. It is forceful only momentarily: it is not a twenty-four-hour affair, it is a momentary challenge. If you can be noncooperative and aware, it goes. And you will feel more happiness than when sexual energy is released from the downward passage. Conservation of energy is always blissful: wastage of energy is only a relief, it is not blissful. You have unburdened yourself; you have alleviated something that was troubling you. Now you have become unburdened, but you have also become emptied. The feeling of emptiness that is overtaking the whole Western mind is just because of sexual wastage. Life seems to be empty. Life is never empty, but it seems to be empty because you have been simply unburdening yourself, just relieving yourself. If something is conserved it becomes a richness: if your upward door is open and energy goes upward, not only do you feel relieved, not only is the straining point relieved, but it is not vacant. In a way it is fulfilled; it is overflowing. The energy has gone upward, but the basic center has not become empty. It is overflowing, and the overflowing energy goes upward, up toward the brahma randhra. Then, near the brahma randhra, there is neither an upward movement nor a downward movement. Now the energy goes to the cosmic: it goes to the all; it goes to the brahman - - the ultimate reality. That is why the seventh chakra is known as the brahma randhra -- the door to the brahman, the door to the divine. Then there is no "up" and no "down." It will feel like something is penetrating, thrusting upward -- and a moment will come when one will feel as though that something is no longer there, that it has gone. Now it is overflowing into the passage. The petals of the sahasrar are just a symbol for the feelings that occur when energy overflows. The overflowing is a flowering, just like a flower itself is an overflowing. You will feel that something has become a flower; the door is open, and it will go outward. It will not be felt inwardly; it will be felt outwardly. Something has opened like a flower, like a flower with a thousand petals. It is just a feeling, but the feeling corresponds to the truth. The feeling is a translation and interpretation. The mind cannot conceive of it, but the feeling is just like a flowering. The closest, the nearest thing that we can say is that it is like a bud opening. It is felt like that. That is why we have conceived of the opening of the sahasrar as a thousand-petaled lotus. So many petals -- so many! And they go on opening, they go on opening... the opening is endless. It is a fulfillment; it is a flowering of the human being. Then you become just like a tree, and everything that was in you has flowered. Then all you can do is to offer this flower to the divine. We have been offering flowers, but they are broken flowers. Only this flower can be a real offering.

 Meditation:

 The Art of Ecstasy 

Chapter #17 

Chapter title: The Manifestations of Prana in the Seven Bodies 

Question 1

 QUESTION: WHAT IS PRANA AND HOW IS IT MANIFESTED IN EACH OF THE SEVEN BODIES? 

Prana is energy -- the living energy in us, the life in us. This life manifests itself, as far as the physical body is concerned, as the incoming and the outgoing breath. These are two opposite things. We take them as one. We say "breathing" -- but breathing has two polarities: the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. Every energy has polarities, every energy exists in two opposite poles. It cannot exist otherwise. The opposite poles, with their tension and harmony, create energy -- just like magnetic poles. The incoming breath is quite contrary to the outgoing, and the outgoing is quite contrary to the incoming. In a single moment the incoming is just like birth and the outgoing is just like death. In a single moment both things are happening: when you take breath in, you are born; when you throw breath out, you die. In a single moment there is birth and death. This polarity is life energy coming up, going down. In the physical body, life energy takes this manifestation. Life energy is born, and after seventy years it dies. That too is a greater manifestation of the same phenomenon: the incoming breath and the outgoing breath... the day and the night. In all of the seven bodies -- the physical, the etheric, the astral, the mental, the spiritual, the cosmic, and the nirvanic, there will be a corresponding incoming and outgoing phenomenon. As far as the mental body is concerned, thought coming in and thought going out is the same kind of phenomenon as breath coming in and breath going out. Every moment a thought comes in your mind and a thought goes out. Thought itself is energy. In the mental body the energy manifests as the coming of thought and the going of thought; in the physical body it manifests as breath coming and breath going. That is why you can change your thinking with breathing. There is a correspondence. If you stop your breath from coming in, thought will be stopped from coming in. Stop your breath in your physical body and in the mental body thought will stop. And as the physical body becomes uneasy, your mental body will become uneasy. The physical body will long to breathe in; the mental body will long to take thought in. Just as breath is taken in from the outside and the air exists outside you, likewise an ocean of thought exists outside you. Thought comes in, and thought goes out. Your breath can become my breath at another moment and your thought can become my thought. Every time you throw your breath out you are likewise throwing your thought out. Just as air exists, so thought exists; just as air can be contaminated, so thought can be contaminated; just as air can be impure, so thought can be impure. The breath itself is not prana. Prana means the vital energy that manifests itself by these polarities of coming in and going out. The energy that takes the breath in is prana, not the breath itself. The energy that takes breath in, which asserts it, that energy that is taking the breath in and throwing it out, is prana. The energy that takes thought in and throws thought out, that energy too is prana. In all of the seven bodies, this process exists. I am only talking now of the physical and the mental, because these two are known to us; we can understand them easily. But in every layer of your being the same thing exists. Your second body, the etheric body, has its own incoming and outgoing process. You will feel this process in each of the seven bodies, but you will feel it to be just like the incoming breath and outgoing breath, because you are only acquainted with your physical body and its prana. Then you will always misunderstand. Whenever any feeling comes to you of another body or its prana you will first understand it as the coming in and the going out of breath, because this is the only experience you know. You have only known this manifestation of prana, of vital energy. But on the etheric plane there is neither breath nor thought, but influence -- simply influence coming in and going out. You come into contact with somebody without having known him before. He has not even talked with you, but something about him comes in. You have either taken him in or thrown him out. There is a subtle influence: you may call it love or you may call it hatred -- the attractive or the repulsive. When you are repulsed or attracted, it is your second body. And every moment the process is going on; it never stops. You are always taking influences in and then throwing them out. The other pole will always be there. If you have loved someone, then in a certain moment you will be repulsed. If you have loved someone the breath has been taken in: now it will be thrown out and you will be repulsed. So every moment of love will be followed by a moment of repulsion. The vital energy exists in polarities. It never exists at one pole. It cannot! And whenever you try to make it do so, you try the impossible. You cannot love someone without hating him at some time. The hatred will be there because the vital force cannot exist at a single pole. It exists at opposite polarities, so a friend is bound to be an enemy -- and this will go on. This coming in and going out will happen up to the seventh body. No body can exist without this process -- this coming in and going out. It cannot, just as the physical body cannot exist without the incoming and outgoing breath. As far as the physical body is concerned, we never take these two things as opposites, so we are not disturbed about it. Life makes no distinction between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. There is no moral distinction. There is nothing to be chosen; both are the same. The phenomenon is natural. But as far as the second body is concerned, hatred must not be there and love must be there. Then you have begun to choose. You have begun to choose, and this choice will create disturbances. That is why the physical body is ordinarily more healthy than the second, the etheric, body. The etheric body is always in conflict because moral choosing has made a hell out of it. When love comes to you, you feel a wellbeing, but when hatred comes to you, you feel diseased. But it is bound to come -- so a person who knows, a person who has understood the polarities, is not disappointed when it comes. A person who has known the polarities is at ease, at equilibrium. He knows it is bound to happen, so he neither tries to love when he is not loving nor does he create any hatred. Things come and go: he is not attracted to the incoming nor repulsed by the outgoing. He is just a witness. He says, "It is just like breath coming in and breath going out." The Buddhist meditation method of Anapana-sati Yoga is concerned with this. It says to just be a witness to your incoming and outgoing breath. Just be a witness, and begin from the physical body. The other six bodies are not talked about in Anapana-sati because they will come by themselves, by and by. The more you become acquainted with this polarity -- with this dying and living simultaneously, with this simultaneous birth and death -- the more you will become aware of the second body. Toward hatred, then, Buddha says, have upeksha. Be indifferent. Whether it is hatred or it is love, be indifferent. And do not be attached to anyone, because if you are attached, what will happen to the other pole? Then you will be at a "dis-ease." Disease will be there; you will not be at ease. Buddha says, "The coming of the beloved one is welcomed, but the going of the beloved one is wept over. The meeting with the one who is repulsive is a misery, and the departing of a repulsive one is bliss. But if you go on dividing yourself into these polarities, you will be in hell, living in a hell." If you just become a witness to these polarities, then you say, "This is a natural phenomenon. It is natural to the 'body' concerned" -- that is, one of the seven bodies. "The body exists because of this; otherwise, it cannot exist." And the moment you become aware of it, you transcend the body. If you transcend your first body, then you become aware of the second. If you transcend your second body, then you become aware of the third.... Witnessing is always beyond life and death. The breath coming in and the breath going out are two things, and if you become a witness, then you are neither. Then a third force has come into being. Now you are not the manifestations of prana in the physical body: now you are the prana, the witness. Now you see that life manifests on the physical level because of this polarity, and if this polarity stops the physical body will not be there, it cannot exist. It needs tension to exist -- this constant tension of coming and going, this constant tension of birth and death. It exists because of this. Every moment it moves between the two poles; otherwise, it would not exist. In the second body, "love and hate" is the basic polarity. It is manifested in so many ways. The basic polarity is this liking and disliking, and every moment your liking becomes disliking and your disliking becomes liking -- every moment! But you never see it. When your liking becomes disliking, if you suppress your disliking and continue fooling yourself that you will go on liking the same things always, you are only fooling yourself doubly. And if you dislike something, you go on disliking it, never allowing yourself to see the moments when you have liked it. We suppress our love for our enemies, and we suppress our hatred for our friends. We are suppressing! We allow only one movement, only one pole, but because it comes back again, we are at ease. It returns, so we are at ease. But it is discontinuous; it is never continuous. It never can be. The vital force manifests itself as like and dislike in the second body. But it is just like breath: there is no difference. Influence is the medium here; air is the medium in the physical body. The second body lives in an atmosphere of influences. It is not simply that someone comes in contact with you and you begin to like him. Even if no one comes in and you are alone in the room, you will be liking/disliking, liking/disliking. It will make no difference: the liking and disliking will go on alternating continuously. It is through this polarity that the etheric body exists; it is its breath. If you become a witness to it, then you can just laugh. Then there is no enemy and no friend. Then you know it is just a natural phenomenon. If you become aware and become a witness to the second body -- to the liking and disliking -- then you can know the third body. The third is the astral body. Just like the "influences" of the etheric body, the astral body has "magnetic forces." Its magnetism is its breath. One moment you are powerful and the next moment you are powerless; one moment you are hopeful and the next moment you are hopeless; one moment you are confident and the next moment you lose all your confidence. It is a coming in of magnetism to you and a going out of magnetism from you. There are moments when you can defy even God, and there are moments when you fear even a shadow. When the magnetic force is in you, when it is coming into you, you are great; when it has gone from you, you are just a nobody. And this is changing back and forth, just like day and night; the circle revolves, the wheel revolves. So even a person like Napoleon had his impotent moments and even a very cowardly person has his moments of bravery. In judo there is a technique to know when a person is powerless. That is the moment to attack him. When he is powerful you are bound to be defeated, so you have to know the moment when his magnetic power is going out and attack him then, and you should incite him to attack you when your magnetic force is coming in. This coming in and going out of the magnetic force corresponds to your breathing. That is why, when you have to do something difficult, you will hold your breath in. For example, if you are to lift a heavy stone, you cannot pick it up when the breath is going out. You cannot do it! But when the breath is coming in, or when the breath is held in, you can do it. Your breath corresponds to what is happening in the third body. So when the breath is going out -- unless the person has been trained to fool you -- that is the moment when his magnetic force is going out; that is the moment to attack. And this is the secret of judo. Even a stronger person than you can be defeated if you know the secret of when he is fearful and powerless. When the magnetic force is out of him, he is bound to be powerless. The third body lives in a magnetic sphere, just like air. There are magnetic forces all around: you are breathing them in and breathing them out. But if you become aware of this magnetic force that is coming and going, then you are neither powerful nor powerless. You transcend both. Then there is the fourth body, the mental body: thought pulling in and thought pulling out. But this "thought coming in" and "thought going out" has parallels, too. When thought comes to you while you breathe in, only in those moments is original thinking born. When you breathe out, those are moments of impotency; no original thought can be born in those moments. In moments when some original thought is there, the breathing will even stop. When some original thought is born, then the breath stops. It is only a corresponding phenomenon. In the outgoing thought, nothing is born. It is simply dead. But if you become aware of thoughts coming in and thoughts going out, then you can know the fifth body. Up to the fourth body things are not difficult to understand, because we have some experience which can become the basis to understand them. Beyond the fourth, things become very strange -- but still, something can be understood. And when you transcend the fourth body you will understand it more. In the fifth body... how to say it? The atmosphere for the fifth body is life -- just as thought, as breath, as magnetic force, as love and hatred, are atmospheres for the lower bodies. For the fifth body, life itself is the atmosphere. So in the fifth, the coming in is a moment of life, and the going out is a moment of death. With the fifth, you become aware that life is not something that is in you. It comes into you and goes out from you. Life itself is not in you; it simply comes in and goes out just like breath. That is why breath and prana became synonymous -- because of the fifth body. In the fifth body, the word prana is meaningful. It is life that is coming and life that is going. And that is why the fear of death is constantly following us. You are always aware that death is nearby, waiting at the corner. It is always there, waiting. This feeling of death always waiting for you -- this feeling of insecurity, of death, of darkness -- is concerned with the fifth body. It is a very dark feeling, very vague, because you are not completely aware of it. When you come to the fifth body and become aware of it, then you know that life and death both are just breaths to the fifth body -- coming in and going out. And when you become aware of this, then you know that you cannot die, because death is not an inherent phenomenon; nor is life. Both life and death are outward phenomena happening to you. You never have been alive, you never have been dead; you are something that completely transcends both. But this feeling of transcendence can only come when you become aware of the life force and the death force in the fifth body. Freud said somewhere that he somehow had a glimpse of this. He was not an adept in yoga, otherwise he would have understood it. He called it "the will to die," and he said every man sometimes is longing for life and sometimes is longing for death. There are two opposing wills in men: a will to live and a will to die. To the Western mind it was absolutely absurd: how could these contradictory wills exist in one person? But Freud said that because suicide is possible, there must be a will to die. No animal can commit suicide, because no animal can become aware of the fifth body. Animals cannot commit suicide because they cannot become aware, they cannot know, that they are alive. To commit suicide, one thing is necessary: to be aware of life -- and they are not aware of life. But another thing is also necessary: to commit suicide you must also be unaware of death. Animals cannot commit suicide because animals are not aware of life, but we can commit suicide because we are aware of life but not aware of death. If one becomes aware of death, then one cannot commit suicide. A buddha cannot commit suicide because it is unnecessary; it is nonsense. He knows that you cannot really kill yourself, you can only pretend to. Suicide is just a pose, because really you are neither alive nor dead. Death is on the fifth plane, in the fifth body. It is a going out of a particular energy and a coming in of a particular energy. You are the one in which this coming and going happens. If you become identified with the first, you can commit the second. If you become identified with living, and if life becomes impossible, you can say, "I will commit suicide." This is the other aspect of your fifth body asserting itself. There is not a single human being who has not thought at some time to commit suicide... because death is the other side of life. This other side can become either suicide or murder: it can become either. If you are obsessed with life, if you are so attached to it that you want to deny death completely, you can kill another. By killing another you satisfy your death wish: "the will to die." By this trick you satisfy it, and you think that now you will not have to die because someone else has died. All those persons who have committed great murders -- Hitler, Mussolini -- are still very much afraid of death. They are always in fear of death, so they project this death on others. The person who can kill someone else feels that he is more powerful than death: he can kill others. In a "magical way," with a "magical formula," he thinks that because he can kill he transcends death, that a thing he can do to others cannot be done to him. This is a projection of death, but it can come back to you. If you kill so many persons that in the end you commit suicide, it is the projection coming back to you. In the fifth body, with life and death coming to you -- with life coming and going -- one cannot be attached to anyone. If you are attached, you are not accepting the polarity in its totality, and you will become ill. Up to the fourth body it was not so difficult, but to conceive of death and to accept it as another aspect of life is the most difficult act. To conceive of life and death as parallel -- as just the same, as two aspects of one thing -- is the most difficult act. But in the fifth, this is the polarity. This is pranic existence in the fifth. With the sixth body, things become even more difficult, because the sixth is no longer life. For the sixth body... what to say? After the fifth, the "I" drops, the ego drops. Then there is no ego; you become one with the all. Now it is not your "anything" that comes in and goes out because the ego is not. Everything becomes cosmic, and because it becomes cosmic, the polarity takes the form of creation and destruction -- srishti and pralaya. That is why it becomes more difficult with the sixth: the atmosphere is "the creative force and the destructive force." In Hindu mythology they call these forces Brahma and Shiva. Brahma is the deity of creation, Vishnu is the deity of maintenance, and Shiva is the deity of the great death -- of destruction or dissolution, where everything goes back to its original source. The sixth body is in that vast sphere of creativity and destructivity: the force of Brahma and the force of Shiva. Every moment the creation comes to you, and every moment everything goes into dissolution. So when a yogi says, "I have seen the creation, and I have seen the pralaya, the end; I have seen the coming of the world into being and I have seen the returning of the world into nonbeing," he is talking about the sixth body. The ego is not there: everything that is coming in and going out is you. You become one with it. A star is being born: it is your birth that is coming. And the star is going out: that is your going out. So they say in Hindu mythology that one creation is one breath of Brahma -- only one breath! It is the cosmic force breathing. When he, Brahma, breathes in, the creation comes into existence: a star is born, stars come out of chaos -- everything comes into existence. And when his breath goes out, everything goes out, everything ceases: a star dies... existence moves into nonexistence. That is why I am saying that in the sixth body it is very difficult. The sixth is not egocentric; it becomes cosmic. And in the sixth body, everything about creation is known -- everything that all of the religions of the world talk about. When one talks about creation, he is talking about the sixth body and the knowledge concerned with it. And when one is talking of the great flood, the end, one is talking about the sixth body. With the great flood of Judeo-Christian or Babylonian mythology, or Syrian mythology, or with the pralaya of the Hindus, there is one out breath -- that of the sixth body. This is a cosmic experience, not an individual one. This is a cosmic experience; you are not there! The person who is in the sixth body -- who has reached to the sixth body -- will see everything that is dying as his own death. A Mahavira cannot kill an ant, not because of any principle of nonviolence, but because it is his death. Everything that dies is his death. When you become aware of this, of the creation and the destruction -- of things coming into existence every moment and things going out of existence every moment -- the awareness is of the sixth body. Whenever a thing is going out of existence, something else is coming in: a sun is dying, another is being born somewhere else; this earth will die, another earth will come. We become attached even in the sixth body. "Humanity must not die!" -- but everything that is born must die, even humanity must die. Hydrogen bombs will be created to destroy it. And the moment we create hydrogen bombs, the very next moment we create a longing to go to another planet, because the bomb means that the earth is near its death. Before this earth dies, life will begin to evolve somewhere else. The sixth body is the feeling of cosmic creation and destruction -- creation/destruction... the breath coming in/the breath going out. That is why "Brahma's breath" is used. Brahma is a sixth-body personality; you become Brahma in the sixth body. Really, you become aware of both Brahma and Shiva, the two polarities. And Vishnu is beyond the polarity. They form the trimurti, the trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh -- or Shiva. This trinity is the trinity of witnessing. If you become aware of the Brahma and Shiva, the creator and the destroyer -- if you become aware of those two, then you know the third, which is Vishnu. Vishnu is your reality in the sixth body. That is why Vishnu became the most prominent of the three. Brahma is remembered, but although he is the god of creation, he is worshipped in perhaps only one or two temples. He must be worshipped, but he is not really worshipped. Shiva is worshipped even more than Vishnu, because we fear death. The worship of him comes out of our fear of death. But hardly anyone worships Brahma, the god of creation, because there is nothing to be fearful of; you are already created, so you are not concerned with Brahma. That is why not a single great temple is dedicated to him. He is the creator, so every temple should be dedicated to him, but it is not. Shiva has the greatest number of worshippers. He is everywhere, because so many temples were made as a dedication to him. Just a stone is enough to symbolize him; otherwise it would have been impossible to create so many idols of him. So just a stone is enough.... Just put a stone somewhere and Shiva is there. Because the mind is so fearful of death, you cannot escape from Shiva; he must be worshipped -- and he has been worshipped. But Vishnu is the more substantial divinity. That is why Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu, every avatar -- divine incarnation -- is an incarnation of Vishnu. And even Brahma and Shiva worship Vishnu. Brahma may be the creator, but he creates for Vishnu; Shiva may be the destroyer, but he destroys for Vishnu. These are the two breaths of Vishnu, the incoming and the outgoing: Brahma is the incoming breath and Shiva is the outgoing one. And Vishnu is the reality in the sixth body. In the seventh body things become even more difficult. Buddha called the seventh body the nirvana kaya, the body of enlightenment, because the truth, the absolute, is in the seventh body. The seventh body is the last body, so there is not even creation and destruction but, rather, being and nonbeing. In the seventh, creation is always of something else, it is not of you. Creation will be of something else and destruction will be of something else, not of you, while being is of you, and nonbeing is of you. In the seventh body, being and nonbeing -- existence and nonexistence -- are the two breaths. One should not be identified with either. All religions are started by those who have reached the seventh body; and at the end language can be stretched, at the most, to two words: being and nonbeing. Buddha speaks the language of nonbeing, of the outgoing breath, so he says, "Nothingness is the reality"; while Shankara speaks the language of being and says that the Brahman is the ultimate reality. Shankara uses positive terms because he chooses the incoming breath, and Buddha uses negative terms because he chooses the outgoing breath. But these are the only choices as far as language is concerned. The third choice is the reality, which cannot be said. At the most we can say "absolute being" or "absolute nonbeing." This much can be said, because the seventh body is beyond this. Transcendence is still possible. I can say something about this room if I go out. If I transcend this room and reach another room, I can recollect this one, I can say something about it. But if I go out of this room and fall into an abyss, then I cannot say anything about even this room. So far, with each body, a third point could be caught into words, symbolized, because the body beyond it was there. You could go there and look backward. But only up to the seventh is this possible. Beyond the seventh body nothing can be said, because the seventh is the last body; beyond it is "bodilessness." With the seventh, one has to choose being or nonbeing -- either the language of negation or the language of positivity. And there are only two choices. One is Buddha's choice: he says, "Nothing remains," and the other is Shankara's choice: he says, "Everything remains." In the seven dimensions -- in the seven bodies -- as far as man is concerned and as far as the world is concerned, life energy manifests into multidimensional realms. Everywhere, wherever life is to be found, the incoming and the outgoing process will be there. Wherever life is, the process will be. Life cannot exist without this polarity. So prana is energy, cosmic energy, and our first acquaintance with it is in the physical body. It manifests first as breath, and then it goes on manifesting as breath in other forms: influences, magnetism, thoughts, life, creation, being. It goes on, and if one becomes aware of it, one always transcends it to reach to a third point. The moment you reach this third point, you transcend that body and enter the next body. You enter the second body from the first, and so on. If you go on transcending, up to the seventh there is still a body, but beyond the seventh there is bodilessness. Then you become pure. Then you are not divided; then there are no more polarities. Then it is adwait, not two: then it is oneness.

AHOBHAV WORLD🙏