Five techniques of attentiveness

When one of the great Greek philosophers, Pythagoras, reached Egypt to enter a school - a secret esoteric school of mysticism - he was refused. And Pythagoras was one of the best minds ever produced. He could not understand it. He applied again and again, but he was told that unless he goes through a particular training of fasting and breathing he cannot be allowed to enter the school.

Pythagoras is reported to have said, "I have come for knowledge, not for any sort of discipline." But the school authorities said, "We cannot give you knowledge unless you are different. And really, we are not interested in knowledge at all, we are interested in actual experience. No knowledge is knowledge unless it is lived and experienced. So you will have to go on a forty-day fast, continuously breathing in a certain manner, with a certain awareness on certain points."

There was no other way, so Pythagoras had to pass through this training. After forty days of fasting and breathing, aware, attentive, he was allowed to enter the school. It is said that Pythagoras said, "You are not allowing Pythagoras in. I am a different man, I am reborn. You were right and I was wrong, because then my whole standpoint was intellectual. Through this purification, my center of being has changed. From the intellect it has come down to the heart. Now I can feel things. Before this training I could only understand through the intellect, through the head. Now I can feel. Now truth is not a concept to me, but a life. It is not going to be a philosophy, but rather, an experience - existential."

What was that training he went through? This fifth technique was the technique that was given to Pythagoras. It was given in Egypt, but the technique is Indian.

The fifth technique:

ATTENTION BETWEEN EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT. This was the technique given to Pythagoras. Pythagoras went with this technique to Greece, and really, he became the fountainhead, the source of all mysticism in the West. He is the father of all mysticism in the West.

This technique is one of the very deep methods. Try to understand this: ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Modern physiology, scientific research, says that between the two eyebrows is the gland which is the most mysterious part of the body. This gland, called the pineal gland, is the third eye of the Tibetans - SHIVANETRA: the eye of the Shiva, of the tantra. Between the two eyes there exists a third eye, but it is non-functioning. It is there, it can function any moment, but it does not function naturally. You have to do something about it to open it. It is not blind; it is simply closed.

This technique is to open the third eye.

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS... Close your eyes, then focus both of your eyes just in the middle of the two eyebrows. Focus just in the middle, with closed eyes, as if you are looking with your two eyes. Give total attention to it.

This is one of the simplest methods of being attentive. You cannot be attentive to any other part of the body so easily. This gland absorbs attention like anything. If you give attention to it, both your eyes become hypnotized with the third eye. They become fixed; they cannot move. If you are trying to be attentive to any other part of the body it is difficult. This third eye catches attention, forces attention; It is magnetic for attention. So all the methods all over the world have used it. It is the simplest to train you in attention because not only are you trying to be attentive, the gland itself helps you; it is magnetic. Your attention is brought to it forcibly. It is absorbed.

It is said in the old tantra scriptures that for the third eye attention is food. It is hungry; it has been hungry for lives and lives. If you pay attention to it, it becomes alive. It becomes alive! The food is given to it. And once you know that attention is food, once you feel that your attention is magnetically drawn, attracted, pulled by the gland itself, attention is not a difficult thing then. One has only to know the right point. So just close your eyes, let your two eyes move just to the middle, and feel the point.

When you are near the point, suddenly your eyes will become fixed. When it becomes difficult to move them, then know you have caught the right point.

ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS, LET MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT... If this attention is there, for the first time you will come to experience a strange phenomenon. For the first time you will see thoughts running before you; you will become the witness. It is just like a film screen:

thoughts are running and you are a witness. Once your attention is focused at the third eye center, you become immediately the witness of thoughts.

Ordinarily you are not the witness, you are identified with thoughts. If anger is there, you become anger. If a thought moves, you are not the witness, you become one with the thought, identified, and you move with it. You become the thought; you take the form of the thought. When sex is there you become sex, when anger is there you become anger, when greed is there you become greed.

Any thought moving becomes identified with you. You do not have any gap between you and the thought.

But focused at the third eye, suddenly you become a witness. Through the third eye you become the witness. Through the third eye you can see thoughts running like clouds in the sky or people moving on the street.

You are sitting at your window looking at the sky or at people in the street; you are not identified. You are aloof, a watcher on the hill - different. Now if anger is there you can look at it as an object. Now you do not feel that YOU are angry. You feel that you are surrounded by anger - a cloud of anger has come around you - but you are not the anger. And if you are not the anger, anger becomes impotent, it cannot affect you; you remain untouched. The anger will come and go and you will remain centered in yourself.

This fifth technique is a technique of finding the witness. ATTENTION BETWEEN THE EYEBROWS, LET THE MIND BE BEFORE THOUGHT. Now look at your thoughts; now encounter your thoughts.

LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD AND THERE SHOWER AS LIGHT. When attention is focused at the third eye center, between the two eyebrows, two things happen. One is, suddenly you become a witness.

This can happen in two ways. You become a witness and you will be centered at the third eye. Try to be a witness. Whatsoever is happening, try to be a witness. You are ill, the body is aching and painful, you have misery and suffering, whatsoever - be a witness to it. Whatsoever is happening, do not identify yourself with it. Be a witness, an observer. Then if witnessing becomes possible, you will be focused in the third eye.

The vice versa is the case also. If you are focused in the third eye, you will become a witness.

These two things are part of one. So the first thing: by being centered in the third eye there will be the arising of the witnessing self. Now you can encounter your thoughts. This will be the first thing.

And the second thing will be that now you can feel the subtle, delicate vibration of breathing. Now you can feel the form of breathing, the very essence of breathing.

First try to understand what is meant by "the form," by "the essence of breathing." While you are breathing, you are not only breathing air. Science says you are breathing only air - just oxygen, hydrogen, and other gases in their combined form of air. They say you are breathing air! But tantra says that air is just the vehicle, not the real thing. You are breathing prana - vitality. Air is just the medium; prana is the content. You are breathing prana, not only air.

Modern science is still not able to find out whether there is something like prana, but some researchers have felt something mysterious. Breathing is not simply air. It has been felt by many modern researchers also. In particular, one name is to be mentioned - Wilhelm Reich, a German psychologist who called it "orgone energy." It is the same thing as prana. He says that while you are breathing, air is just the container and there is a mysterious content which can be called orgone or prana or ELAN VITAL. But that is very subtle. Really, it is not material. Air is the material thing - the container is material - but something subtle, non-material, is moving through it.

The effects of it can be felt. When you are with a very vital person, you will feel a certain vitality arising in you. If you are with a very sick person you will feel sucked, as if something has been taken out of you. When you go to the hospital, why do you feel so tired? You are being sucked from everywhere. The whole hospital atmosphere is ill, and everyone there needs more elan vital, more prana. So if you are there, suddenly your prana begins to flow out of you. Why do you feel suffocated sometimes when you are in a crowd? Because your prana is being sucked. While you are alone under the sky in the morning, under the trees, suddenly you feel a vitality in you - the prana. Each person needs a particular space. If that space is not given, your prana is sucked.

Wilhelm Reich did many experiments, but he was thought to be a madman. Science has its own superstitions, and science is a very orthodox thing. Science cannot feel yet that there is anything more than air, but India has been experimenting with it for centuries.

You may have heard or you may have even seen someone going into SAMADHI, cosmic consciousness - underground samadhi - for days together, with no air penetrating. One man went into such underground samadhi in Egypt in 1880 for forty years. Those who had buried him all died, because he was to come out of his samadhi in 1920, forty years afterwards. In 1920 no one believed that they would find him alive, but he was found alive. He lived afterwards for ten years more. He had become completely pale, but he was alive. And there had been no possibility of air reaching to him.

He was asked by medical doctors and others, "What is the secret of it?" He said, "We do not know.

We only know this, that prana can enter and flow anywhere." Air cannot penetrate, but prana can penetrate. Once you know that you can suck prana directly, without the container, then you can go into samadhi for centuries even.

By being focused in the third eye, suddenly you can observe the very essence of breath - not breath, but the very essence of breath, prana. And if you can observe the essence of breath, prana, you are at the point from where the jump, the breakthrough happens.

The sutra says, LET FORM FILL WITH BREATH ESSENCE TO THE TOP OF THE HEAD... And when you come to feel the essence of breathing, prana, just imagine that your head is filled with it - just imagine. No need of any effort. I will explain to you how imagination works. When you are focused at the third eye center, imagine, and the thing happens - then and there.

Now your imagination is just impotent; you go on imagining and nothing happens. But sometimes, unknowingly, in ordinary life also things happen. You are imagining about your friend and suddenly there is a knock on the door. You say it is a coincidence that the friend has come. Sometimes your imagination works just like coincidence. But whenever this happens, now try and remember and analyze the whole thing. Whenever it happens that you feel your imagination has become actual, go inside and observe. Somewhere your attention must have been near the third eye. Whenever this coincidence happens, it is not a coincidence. It looks that way because you do not know the secret science. Your mind must have moved unknowingly near the third eye center. If your attention is in the third eye, just imagination is enough to create any phenomenon.

This sutra says that when you are focused between the eyebrows and you can feel the very essence of breathing, LET FORM FILL. Now imagine that this essence is filling your whole head, particularly the top of the head, the SAHASRAR - the highest psychic center. And the moment you imagine, it will be filled. THERE - at the top of the head - SHOWER AS LIGHT. This prana essence is showering from the top of your head as light. And it WILL begin to shower, and under the shower of light you will be refreshed, reborn, completely new. That is what inner rebirth means.

So two things: first, focused at the third eye your imagination becomes potent, powerful. That is why so much insistence has been given on purity. Before doing these practices, be pure. Purity is not a moral concept for tantra, purity is significant - because if you are focused at the third eye and your mind is impure, your imagination can become dangerous: dangerous to you, dangerous to others. If you are thinking to murder someone, if this idea is in the mind, just imagining may kill the man. That is why there is so much insistence on being pure first.

Pythagoras was told to go through fasting, through particular breathing - this breathing - because here one is traveling in a very dangerous land. Because wherever there is power there is danger, and if the mind is impure, whenever you get power your impure thoughts will take hold of it immediately.

You have imagined many times to kill but the imagination cannot work, fortunately. If it works, if it is actualized immediately, then it will become dangerous - not only to others, but to yourself also, because so many times you have thought to commit suicide. If the mind is focused at the third eye, just thinking of suicide will become suicide. You will not have any time to change, immediately it will happen.

You might have observed someone being hypnotized. When someone is hypnotized, the hypnotist can say anything and immediately the hypnotized person follows. Howsoever absurd the order, howsoever irrational or even impossible, the hypnotized person follows it. What is happening? This fifth technique is at the base of all hypnotism. Whenever someone is being hypnotized he is told to focus his eyes at a particular point - on some light, some dot on the wall or anything, or on the eyes of the hypnotist.

When you focus your eyes at any particular point, within three minutes your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye. And the moment your inner attention begins to flow toward the third eye, your face begins to change. And the hypnotist knows when your face begins to change. Suddenly your face loses all vitality. It becomes dead, as if deeply asleep. The hypnotist knows immediately when your face has lost the luster, the aliveness. It means that now attention is being sucked by the third eye center. Your face has become dead; the whole energy is running toward the third eye center.

Now the hypnotist immediately knows that anything said will happen. He says, "Now you are falling into a deep sleep" - you will fall immediately. He says, "Now you are becoming unconscious" - you will become unconscious immediately. Now anything can be done. If he says, "Now you have become Napoleon," you will become. You will begin to behave like a Napoleon, you will begin to talk like Napoleon. Your gestures will change. Your unconscious will take the order and will create the actuality. If you are suffering from a disease, now it can be ordered that the disease has disappeared and it will disappear. Or any new disease can be created.

Just putting an ordinary stone from the street in your hand, the hypnotist can say, "This is fire in your hand," and you will feel intense heat; your hand will get burned - not only in the mind, but actually.

Actually your skin will get burned. You will have a burning sensation. What is happening? There is no fire, there is just an ordinary stone, cold. How? How does this burning happen? You are focused at the third eye center, your imagination is being given suggestions by the hypnotist, and they are being actualized. If the hypnotist says, "Now you are dead," you will die immediately. Your heart will stop. It WILL stop.

This happens because of the third eye. In the third eye, imagination and actualization are not two things. Imagination is the fact. Imagine, and it is so. There is no gap between dream and reality.

There is NO gap between dream and reality! Dream, and it will become real. That is why Shankara has said that this whole world is nothing but the dream of the divine... the DREAM of the divine!

This is because the divine is centered in the third eye - always, eternally - so whatsoever the divine dreams becomes real. If you are also centered in the third eye, whatsoever you dream will become real.

Sariputta came to Buddha. He meditated deeply, then many things, many visions started coming, as it happens with anyone who goes into deep meditation. He began to see heavens, he began to see hells, he began to see angels, gods, demons. And they were actual, so real that he came running to Buddha to tell him that such and such a vision had come to him. But Buddha said, "It is nothing - just dreams. Just dreams!"

But Sariputta said, "They are so real. How can I say that they are dreams? When I see a flower in my vision it is more real than any flower in the world. The fragrance is there; I can touch it. When I see you," he said to Buddha, "I do not see you as real. That flower is more real than your being here just before me, so how can I differentiate between what is real and what is dream?" Buddha said, "Now that you are centered in the third eye, dream and reality are one. Whatsoever you are dreaming will be real, and vice versa also."

For one who is centered in the third eye dreams will become real and the whole reality will become just a dream, because when your dream can become real you know there is no basic difference between dream and reality. So when Shankara says that this whole world is just MAYA, a dream of the divine, it is not a theoretical proposition, it is not a philosophical statement. It is, rather, the inner experience of one who is focused in the third eye.

When you are focused in the third eye, just imagine that the essence of prana is showering from the top of the head, just as if you are sitting under a tree and flowers are showering, or you are just under the sky and suddenly a cloud begins to shower, or you are just sitting in the morning and the sun rises and rays begin to shower. Imagine, and immediately there is a shower - a shower of light falling down from the top of your head. This shower recreates you, gives you a new birth. You are reborn.

The sixth technique:

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW.

WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY, KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS... Forget breaths - keep attentive in between. One breath has come: before it returns, before it is exhaled out, there is the gap, the interval. One breath has gone out; before it is taken in again, the gap. IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY KEEP ATTENTIVE BETWEEN THE TWO BREATHS, AND SO PRACTICING, IN A FEW DAYS, BE BORN ANEW. But this has to be done continuously. This sixth technique has to be done continuously. That is why this is mentioned: WHEN IN WORLDLY ACTIVITY... Whatsoever you are doing, keep your attention in the gap between the two breaths. But it must be practiced while in activity.

We have discussed one technique that is just similar. Now there is only this difference, that this has to be practiced while in worldly activity. Do not practice it in isolation. This practice is to be done while you are doing something else. You are eating - go on eating and be attentive of the gap. You are walking - go on walking and be attentive of the gap. You are going to sleep - lie down, let sleep come, but you go on being attentive of the gap. Why in activity? Because activity distracts the mind, activity calls for your attention again and again. Do not be distracted, be fixed at the gap. And do not stop activity, let the activity continue. You will have two layers of existence - doing and being.

We have two layers of existence: the world of doing and the world of being; the circumference and the center. Go on working on the periphery, on the circumference; do not stop it. But go on working attentively on the center also. What will happen? Your activity will become an acting, as if you are playing a part.

You are playing a part - for example, in a drama. You have become Ram or you have become Christ.

You go on acting as Christ or as Ram, and still you remain yourself. In the center, you know who you are; on the periphery you go on acting as Ram, Christ or anyone. You know you are not Ram - you are acting. You know who you are. Your attention is centered in you; your activity continues on the circumference.

If this method is practiced, your whole life will become a long drama. You will be an actor playing roles, but constantly centered in the gap. If you forget the gap then you are not playing roles, you have become the role. Then it is not a drama; you have mistaken it as life. That is what we have done. Everyone thinks he is living life. It is not life, it is just a role - a part which has been given to you by the society, by the circumstances, by the culture, by the tradition, the country, the situation.

You have been given a role and you are playing it; you have become identified with it. To break that identification there is this technique.

Krishna has many names. Krishna is one of the greatest actors. He is constantly centered in himself and playing - playing many roles, many games, but absolutely non serious. Seriousness comes from identification. If you really become Ram in the drama then there are bound to be problems. Those problems will come out of your seriousness. When Sita is stolen you may get a heart attack, and the whole play will have to be stopped. If you really become Ram a heart attack is certain... even heart failure.

But you are just an actor. Sita is stolen, but nothing is stolen. You will go back to your home and you will sleep peacefully. Not even in a dream will you feel that Sita is stolen. When really Sita was stolen, Ram himself was weeping, crying and asking the trees, "Where has my Sita gone? Who has taken her?" But this is the point to understand. If Ram is really weeping and asking the trees, he has become identified. He is no more Ram; he is no more a divine person.

This is the point to remember, that for Ram his real life also was just a part. You have seen other actors playing Ram, but Ram himself was just playing a part - on a greater stage, of course.

India has a very beautiful story about it. I think that the story is unique; nowhere else in any part of the world does such a thing exist. It is said that Valmiki wrote the RAMAYANA before Ram was born, and then Ram had to follow. So really, the first act of Ram was also just a drama. The story was written before Ram was born and then Ram had to follow, so what can he do? When a man like Valmiki writes the story, Ram has to follow. So everything was fixed in a way. Sita was to be stolen and the war had to be fought.

If you can understand this, then you can understand the theory of destiny, BHAGYA - fate. It has a very deep meaning. And the meaning is, if you take it that everything is fixed for you, your life becomes a drama. If you are playing the role of Ram in the drama you cannot change it, everything is fixed, even your dialogue. If you say something to Sita it is just repeating something that is fixed.

You cannot change it if life is taken as fixed.

For example, you are going to die on a particular day - it is fixed. When you will be dying you will be weeping, but it is fixed. And such and such persons will be around you - it is fixed. If everything is fixed, everything becomes a drama. If everything is fixed, it means you are just to enact it. You are not asked to live it, you are just asked to enact it.

This technique, the sixth technique, is just to make yourself a psychodrama - just a play. You are focused in the gap between two breaths and life moves on, on the periphery. If your attention is at the center, then your attention is not really on the periphery - that is just "sub-attention"; it just happens somewhere near your attention. You can feel it, you can know it, but it is not significant. It is as if it is not happening to you. I will repeat this: if you practice this sixth technique, your whole life will be as if it is not happening to you, as if it is happening to someone else.

The seventh technique: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. More and more you are entering deeper layers. WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD... If you have known the third eye then you know the intangible breath, the invisible prana in the center of the forehead, and then you know the showering - the energy, the light showers. AS THIS REACHES HEART... When the shower will reach your heart... AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF.

Take this technique in three parts. One, you must be able to feel the prana in breath - the intangible part of it, the invisible part of it, the immaterial part of it. It comes if you are attentive between the two eyebrows; then it comes easily. If you are attentive in the gap, then too it comes, but a little less easily. If you are aware of the center at your navel where breath comes and touches and goes out, it also comes, but with less ease. The easiest way to know the invisible part of breath is to be centered at the third eye. But wherever you are centered, it comes, you begin to feel the prana flowing in.

If you can feel the prana flowing in you, you can know when you are going to die. Six months before the day of your death you begin to know, if you can feel the invisible part of breath. Why do so many saints declare the day of their death? It is easy, because if you can see the content of the breath, the prana flowing into you, the moment the process reverses you can feel it. Before you die, six months before you die, the process reverses: prana begins to flow out of you. Then the breath is not taking it in. Rather, on the contrary, the breath is taking it out - the same breath.

You cannot feel it because you do not know the invisible part - you know only the visible, you know only the vehicle. The vehicle will be the same. Now the breath is carrying prana in, leaving it there; then the vehicle goes back empty. Then again it is filled with the prana and it comes in. So the ingoing breath and the outgoing breath are not the same, remember. The ingoing breath and the outgoing breath are the same as vehicles, but the incoming breath is filled with prana and the outgoing breath is empty. You have taken in the prana and the breath has become empty.

The reverse happens when you are nearing death. The incoming breath comes prana-less, empty, because your body cannot suck prana from the cosmos. You are going to die; there is no need for it. The whole process has reversed. And when the breath goes out, it takes your prana out. One who has been able to see the invisible can know his day of death immediately. Six months before, the process reverses.

This sutra is very, very significant: WITH INTANGIBLE BREATH IN CENTER OF FOREHEAD, AS THIS REACHES HEART AT THE MOMENT OF SLEEP, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. While you are falling into sleep this technique has to be practiced - then only, not at any other time. While you are falling asleep, only then; that is the right moment to practice this technique. You are falling asleep. By and by, by and by, sleep is overtaking you. Within moments, your consciousness will dissolve; you will not be aware. Before that moment comes, become aware - aware of the breath and the invisible part prana, and feel it coming to the heart.

Go on feeling that it is coming to the heart. The prana enters from your heart into the body. Go on feeling that the prana is coming into the heart, and let sleep come while you are continuously feeling it. You go on feeling, and let sleep come and drown you.

If this happens - that you are feeling invisible breath coming into the heart and sleep overtakes you - you will be aware in dreams. You will know that you are dreaming. Ordinarily we do not know that we are dreaming. While you dream you think that this is reality. That too happens because of the third eye. Have you seen anyone asleep? His eyes move upwards and become focused in the third eye. If you have not seen, then see.

Your child is sleeping... just open his eyes and see where his eyes are. His pupils have gone up and they are focused in the third eye. I say look at children, do not look at grown-ups - they are not believable because their sleep is not deep. They will just be thinking that they are asleep. Look at children, their eyes move up. They become focused in the third eye. Because of this focusing in the third eye you take your dreams as real, you cannot feel they are dreams - they are real. You will know when you get up in the morning. Then you will know that "I was dreaming." But this is the later, retrospective realization. You cannot realize in the dream that you are dreaming. If you realize it, then there are two layers: dream is there but you are awake, you are aware. For one who becomes aware in dreams, this sutra is wonderful. It says, HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF.

If you can become aware of dreams, you can do two things. You can create dreams - one. Ordinarily you cannot create dreams. How impotent man is! You cannot even create dreams. If you want to dream a particular thing you cannot dream it; it is not in your hands. How powerless man is! Even dreams cannot be created. You are just a victim of dreams, not the creator. A dream happens to you; you cannot do anything. Neither can you stop it nor can you create it.

But if you move into sleep remembering the heart being filled with prana, continuously being touched by prana with every breath, you will become a master of your dreams - and this is a rare mastery.

Then you can dream whatsoever dreams you like. Just note while you are falling asleep that "I want to dream this dream," and that dream will come to you. Just say, while falling asleep, "I do not want to dream that dream," and that dream cannot enter your mind.

But what is the use of becoming the master of your dreaming? Isn't it useless? No, it is not useless.

Once you become master of your dreams you will never dream - it is absurd. When you are master of your dreams, dreaming stops; there is no need for it. And when dreaming stops, your sleep has a different quality altogether, and the quality is the same as of death.

Death is deep sleep. If your sleep can become as deep as death, that means there will be no dreaming. Dreaming creates superficiality in sleep. You move on the surface because of the dreams; because of hanging on to the dreams, you move on the surface. When there is no dreaming you just drop into the sea, its depth is reached.

Death is the same. That is why people in India have always been saying that sleep is a short duration of death, and death is a long sleep - qualitatively they are the same. Sleep is a day-to-day death.

Death is a life-to-life phenomenon, a life-to-life sleep. Every day you are tired. You fall into sleep and you regain your vitality, your aliveness in the morning; you are reborn. After a life of seventy or eighty years you are tired completely. Now such short durations of death won't do; you need a great death. After that great death or great sleep, you are reborn with a totally new body.

Once you can know dreamless sleep and can be aware in it, then there will be no fear of death. No one has ever died, no one can die - that is the only impossibility.

Just a day before I was telling you that death is the only certainty, and now I say to you that death is impossible. No one has ever died and no one can die - that is the only impossibility - because the universe is life. You are again and again reborn, but the sleep is so deep that you forget your old identity. Your mind is washed clean of the memories.

Think of it in this way. Today you are going to sleep: it is just as if there were some mechanism - and soon we will have this - like that which can erase on a tape recorder, which can wipe a tape clean so that whatsoever was recorded is no more there. The same is possible with memory, because memory is really just a deep recording. Sooner or later we will have a mechanism which can be put on the head and it will clean your mind completely. In the morning you will no longer be the same person because you won't be able to remember who it was who went to sleep. Then your sleep will look like death. There will be a discontinuity; you won't be able to remember who went to sleep.

This is happening naturally. When you die and you are reborn, you cannot remember who died. You start again.

With this technique, first you will become the master of your dreams - that is, dreaming will cease.

Or if you want to dream you will be able to dream, but dreaming will become voluntary. It will not be non-voluntary, it will not be forced upon you; you will not be a victim. Then the quality of your sleep will become just like that of death. Then you will know that death is sleep.

That is why this sutra says: HAVE DIRECTION OVER DREAMS AND OVER DEATH ITSELF. you will know that death is just a long sleep - and helpful and beautiful because it gives you new life; it gives you everything anew. Death ceases to be... with cessation of dreaming, death ceases to be.

There is another meaning to gaining power over death, direction over death. If you can come to feel that death is just a sleep, you will be able to direct it. If you can direct your dreams, you can direct your death also. You can choose where you are to be born again, to whom, when, in what form; you will become master of your birth also.

Buddha died... I am not referring to his last life, but to his last-but-one life, before he became Buddha.

Before dying he said, "I will be born to such and such parents; such will be my mother, such will be my father. But my mother will die immediately... when I am born my mother will die immediately.

Before I am born my mother will have certain dreams." Not only do you gain power from your dreams, you gain power from others' dreams also. So Buddha, as an example, said, "Certain dreams will be there. When I will be in the womb, my mother will have certain dreams. So whenever any woman has these dreams in this sequence, know well I am going to be born to her."

And it happened. Buddha's mother dreamed the same sequence. The sequence was known all over India, because it was no ordinary statement. It was known to everyone, particularly those who were interested in religion and the deeper things of life and the esoteric ways of life. It was known, so the dreams were interpreted. Freud was not the first interpreter - and, of course, not the deepest. Only in the West was he the first.

So Buddha's father immediately called dream interpreters, the Freuds and Jungs of those days, and he asked, "What does this sequence mean? I am afraid. These dreams are rare, and they go on repeating in the same sequence. There are one, two, three, four, five, six dreams continuously being repeated. There are the same dreams, as if one is seeing the same film again and again. What is happening?"

So they told him, "You are going to be the father of a great soul - one who is going to be a buddha.

But then your wife is going to be in danger, because whenever this buddha is born it is difficult for the mother to survive."

The father asked, "Why?" The interpreters said, "We cannot say why, but this soul who is going to be born has made a statement that when he will be born again, the mother will die immediately."

Later on Buddha was asked, "Why did your mother die immediately?" He said, "Giving birth to a buddha is such a big event that everything else becomes futile afterwards. So the mother cannot exist. She will have to be born again to start anew. It is such a climax giving birth to a buddha, it is such a peak, that the mother cannot exist beyond it."

So the mother died. And Buddha had said in his previous life that he would be born while his mother was standing under a palm tree - and it happened. The mother was standing under a palm tree - standing while Buddha was born. And he had said, "I will be born while my mother is standing under a palm tree, and I will take seven steps. Immediately, I will walk. These are the signs I give to you,"

he said, "so that you will know that a buddha is born." And he carried out everything.

And this is not only so about Buddha. It is so about Jesus, it is so about Mahavir, it is so about many others. Every Jain TIRTHANKARA has predicted in his previous life how he is going to be born. And they have given particular dream sequences - that such and such will be the symbols - and they have told how it will happen.

You can direct. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything, because dream is the very stuff of this world. This life is made out of the stuff of dreams. Once you can direct your dreams you can direct everything. This sutra says, OVER DEATH ITSELF. Then one can give a certain birth, a certain life to oneself.

We are just victims. We do not know why we are born, why we die. Who directs us - and why?

There seems to be no reason. It all seems just a chaos, just accidental. It is because we are not masters. Once we are masters it is not like this.

The eighth technique: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. There is a slight difference in the techniques - slight modifications. But though the differences are slight in the techniques, for you they may be great.

A single word makes a great difference. WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH. The incoming breath has one junction where it turns, the outgoing breath has another junction where it turns. With these two turnings - and we have discussed these turnings - a slight difference is made: that is, slight in the technique, but for the seeker it may be great. Only one condition is added - WITH UTMOST DEVOTION - and the whole technique becomes different.

In the first form of it there was no question of devotion, just a scientific technique. You do it, and it works. But there are persons who cannot do such dry, scientific techniques. Those who are heart- oriented, those who belong to the world of devotion, for them a slight difference has been made:

If you are not of the scientific bent, of the scientific attitude, if you are not a scientific mind, then try this: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION - with faith, love, trust - CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER. How to do this? How? You can have devotion about someone: about Krishna, about Christ you can have devotion. But how can you have devotion about yourself, about this junction of breathing? The phenomenon seems absolutely non-devotional. But that depends....

Tantra says that the body is the temple. Your body is the temple of the divine, the abode of the divine, so do not treat your body as an object. It is sacred, it is holy. And while you are taking a breath in, it is not only you who is taking the breath, it is the divine within you. You are eating, you are moving or walking... look at it in this way: it is not you, but the divine moving in you. Then the whole thing becomes absolutely devotional.

It is said about many saints that they love their bodies. They treat their bodies as if their bodies belong to their beloveds. You can treat your body in this way or you can treat it just like a mechanism - that again is an attitude. You can treat it with guilt, sin; you can treat it as something dirty; you can treat it as something miraculous, as a miracle; you can treat it as the abode of the divine. It depends on you. If you can treat your body as a temple, then this technique will be helpful - WITH UTMOST DEVOTION...

Try it. While you are eating, try it. Do not think that YOU are eating. Think that it is the divine in you who is eating, and look at the change. You are eating the same thing, you are the same, but immediately everything becomes different. You are giving the food to the divine. You are taking a bath - a very ordinary, trivial thing - but change the attitude: feel that you are giving a bath to the divine in you. Then this technique will be easy: WITH UTMOST DEVOTION, CENTER ON THE TWO JUNCTIONS OF BREATH AND KNOW THE KNOWER.

The ninth technique: LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING.

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. Try it: suddenly you have gone dead. Leave the body! Do not move it, because you are dead. Just imagine that you are dead. You cannot move the body, you cannot move the eyes, you cannot cry, you cannot scream, you cannot do anything, you are just dead. And then feel how it feels. But do not deceive. You can deceive - you can slightly move the body. Do not move. If some mosquito is there, then treat the body as if it is dead. It is one of the most used techniques.

Raman Maharshi attained his enlightenment through this technique, but it was not a technique used by him in his life. In his life it suddenly happened, spontaneously. But he must have persisted with this in some past life, because nothing happens spontaneously. Everything has a causal link, a causality. Suddenly one night Raman felt - he was just young, fourteen or fifteen at the time - that he was going to die. And it was so certain in his mind that death had taken over. He couldn't move his body, he felt as if he was paralyzed. Then he felt a sudden choking, and he knew that now the heart was going to stop. He could not even cry and say to another, "I am going to die."

Sometimes it happens in some nightmare - you cannot cry, you cannot move. Even when you become awake for a few moments you cannot do anything. That happened. He had absolute power over his consciousness, but no power over his body. He knew he was there, that he was present, conscious, alert, but he felt he was going to die. And the knowledge became so certain that there was no other possibility, so he just gave up. He closed his eyes and remained there, just waiting to die; he waited there just to die.

By and by the body became stiff. The body died, but then it became a problem. He knew that the body had died, but he was there and he knew it. He knew that he was alive and that the body had died. Then he came back. In the morning the body became okay but the same man never returned - because he had known death. He had known a different realm, a different dimension of consciousness.

He escaped from the house. That death experience changed him completely. He became one of the very few enlightened persons of this age.

This is the technique. This happened spontaneously to Raman, but it is not going to happen spontaneously to you. But try it. In some life it may become spontaneous. It may happen while you are trying it. And if it is not going to happen, the effort is never wasted. It is in you; it remains in you as a seed. Sometime, when the time is ripe and the rains will fall, it will sprout.

Every spontaneity is just like this. The seed was sown some time ago, but the time was not ripe; there were no rains. In another life the time becomes ripe. You are more mature, more experienced, more frustrated with the world - then suddenly, in a certain situation, there are rains and the seed explodes.

LIE DOWN AS DEAD. ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Of course, while you are dying it will not be a happy moment. It is not going to be so blissful while you are feeling that you are dead. Fear will take you, anger may come in the mind, or frustration, sadness, sorrow, anguish... anything. It will differ from individual to individual.

The sutra says: ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you feel enraged, stay so. If you feel sad, stay so. If you feel anxiety, fear, stay so. You are dead and you cannot do anything, so stay so.

Whatsoever is in the mind, the body is dead and you cannot do anything, so stay.

That staying is beautiful. If you can stay for a few minutes, suddenly you will feel that everything has changed. But we start moving. If there is some emotion in the mind, the body begins to move.

That is why we call it "emotion" - it creates motion in the body. If you are angry, suddenly your body begins to move. If you are sad, your body begins to move. That is why it is called emotion, because it creates motion in the body. Feel dead and do not allow emotions to move your body. Let them be there, but you STAY SO - fixed, dead. Whatsoever is there... no movement. Stay! No movement.

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. This OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH was the method of Meher Baba. For years together he was staring just at the ceiling of his room. For years together he was just lying dead on the floor, staring at the ceiling without moving an eyelash, without moving his eyes. He would lie down for hours together, just staring, not doing anything.

Staring with the eyes is good, because you become fixed again in the third eye. And once you are fixed in the third eye, even if you want to move the eyelids you cannot; they become fixed.

Meher Baba attained through this staring, and you say, "How with these small exercises...?" But for three years he was staring at the ceiling not doing anything. Three years is a long time. Do it for three minutes and you will feel as if you have been lying there for three years. Three minutes will become very, very long. It will look as if time is not passing and as if the clock has stopped.

Meher Baba stared and stared and stared. By and by thoughts ceased, movement ceased, and he became just a consciousness, he became just a staring. Then he remained silent for his whole life. He became so silent inside by this staring that it became impossible for him to formulate words again.

Meher Baba was in America. There was one man who could read others' thoughts, who could do mind readings, and he was really one of the rarest mind readers. He would close his eyes, sit before you, and within a few minutes he would become attuned with you and he would begin to write what you are thinking. Thousands and thousands of times he was examined, and he was always right, always correct. So someone brought him to Meher Baba. He sat there, and this was the only failure of his life - the only failure. But then again we cannot say it was a failure. He tried and tried, and he began to perspire, but he couldn't catch a single word.

Pen in his hand, he remained there and said, "What type of man is this? I cannot read because there is nothing to read. This man is absolutely vacant. I even forget that someone is sitting there. After closing my eyes, I have to open them again and look to see whether that man is there or whether he has escaped. So it is difficult to concentrate, because the moment I close my eyes I feel I am being deceived - as if that man has escaped and there is no one before me. I have to open my eyes again, and I find that this man is there. And he is not thinking at all." That staring, that constant staring had stopped his mind completely.

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. These are slight modifications. Anything will do... you are dead - it is enough.

ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. Even this part can become one technique. You are in anger: lie down, remain in the anger. Do not move from it, do not do anything, just remain still.

Krishnamurti goes on talking about this. His whole technique depends on this single thing:

ENRAGED IN WRATH, STAY SO. If you are angry then be angry, and remain angry. Do not move.

If you can stay so, anger will go and you will come out a different man. If you are in anxiety, do not do anything. Remain there, stay there. The anxiety will go; you will come out a different man. And once you have looked at anxiety without being moved by it, you will be the master.

OR STARE WITHOUT MOVING AN EYELASH. OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. This last one is physical and easy to do, because sucking is the first thing a child has to do. Sucking is the first act of life. When the child is born, he begins to cry. You may not have tried to penetrate into why there is this crying. He is not really crying - it appears to us that he is crying - he is just sucking air. And if the child cannot cry, within a few minutes he will be dead, because crying is the first effort to suck air. The child was not breathing while he was in the womb. He was alive without breathing. He was doing the same which yogis are doing underground. He was just getting prana without breathing - pure prana from the mother.

That is why the love between the child and the mother is an altogether different thing from other loves, because the purest prana - energy - joins both. Now this can never happen again. There was a subtle pranic relationship. The mother was giving her prana to the child, and the child was not breathing at all. When he is born, he is thrown out of the mother into an unknown world. Now the prana, the energy, will not reach him so easily. He has to breathe himself.

The first cry is an effort to suck, and then he will suck the milk from the mother's breast. These are the first basic acts which you have done. Whatsoever YOU have done comes later - these are the first life acts. They can be practiced also. This sutra says: OR SUCK SOMETHING AND BECOME THE SUCKING. Suck something - just suck the air, but forget the air and become the sucking. What does this mean? You are sucking something; you are the sucker, not the sucking. You are standing behind and sucking.

This sutra says, do not stand behind, move in the act and become the sucking. Try anything that will work. You are running - become the running, do not be the runner. Become the running and forget the runner. Feel that there is no runner inside, just the process of running. You are the process, a river-like process running. Nobody is there inside. It is quiet inside and there is only a process.

Sucking is good, but you will feel that it is very difficult because we have forgotten it completely - but not really completely, however, because we go on substituting for it. The mother's breast is substituted by a cigarette; you go on sucking it. It is nothing but the nipple, the mother's breast and the nipple. And when the warm smoke flows in, it is just like warm milk.

So those who were not really allowed to suck the mother's breast as much as they wanted will smoke later on. This is a substitute, but the substitute will do. While you are smoking a cigarette become the sucking. Forget the cigarette, forget the smoker: become the smoking.

There is the object you are sucking, there is the subject who is sucking, and the process in between of sucking. Become the sucking, become the process. Try it. You will have to try it with many things; then you will find out what is right for you.

You are drinking water, the cold water is going in - become the drinking. Do not drink the water.

Forget the water, forget yourself and your thirst, just become the drinking - the very process.

Become the coolness, the touch, the entry, and the sucking that has to be given to the process.

Why not? What will happen? If you become the sucking, what will happen? If you can become the sucking, immediately you will become innocent, like a first-day, newly-born child - because that is the first process. You will be regressed in a way. But the hankering is there. The very being of man hankers after sucking. He tries many things, but nothing helps because the point is missed. Unless you become the sucking, nothing will help. So try it.

I gave this method to one man. He had tried many things; he had tried many, many methods. Then he came to me, so I asked him, "If I give you only one thing to choose in the whole world, what are you going to choose?" And I told him immediately to close his eyes and tell me, and not think about it. He became afraid, hesitant, so I told him, "Do not be afraid, do not be hesitant. Be frank and tell me."

He said, "This is absurd, but a breast appears before me."

And then he began to feel guilty, so I said, "Do not feel guilty. Nothing is wrong in a breast; it is one of the most beautiful things, so why be guilty?"

But he said, "This has always been an obsession with me." And he said to me, "Please tell me first, then you can proceed with your method and the technique: first tell me why I am so much interested in the breasts of women? Whenever I look at a woman, the first thing I see is the breast. The whole body is secondary."

And it is not so only with him, it is so with everyone - with almost everyone. And it is natural, because the breast of the mother was the first acquaintance with the universe. It is basic. The first contact with the universe was the mother's breast. That is why breasts are so appealing. They look beautiful; they attract, they have a magnetic force. That magnetic force comes from your unconscious. That was the first thing with which you came in contact, and the contact was lovely, it felt beautiful. It gives you food, instant vitality, love, everything. The contact was soft, receptive, inviting. It has remained so in the mind of man.

So I told that man, "Now I will give you the method." And this was the method I gave him, to suck something and become the sucking. I told him, "Just close your eyes. Imagine your mother's breasts or anybody's breasts that you like. Imagine, and start sucking as if there is a real breast.

Start sucking." He started sucking. Within three days he was sucking so fast, so madly, he became so much enchanted by it. He told me, "It has become a problem - I want to suck the whole day. And it is so beautiful, and such deep silence is created by it."

Within three months the sucking became a very, very silent gesture. The lips stopped, you couldn't even have judged that he was doing something. But inner sucking had started. He was sucking the whole day. It became a mantra, a JAPA - a mantra repetition.

After three months he came to me and said, "Something strange is happening to me. Something sweet is falling from my head onto my tongue continuously. And it is so sweet and so energy filling that I do not need any food, there is no hunger left. Eating has become just a formality. I take something in order not to create any problems in the family. But something is continuously coming to me. It is so sweet, life-giving."

I told him to continue. Three months more, and one day he came just mad, dancing to me, and he said, "Sucking has disappeared, but I am a different man. I am no more the same man who had come to you. Some door has opened within me. Something has broken and there is no desire left.

Now I do not want anything - not even God, not even MOKSHA - liberation. I do not want anything.

Now everything is okay as it is. I accept it and I am blissful."

Try this. Just suck something and become the sucking. It may be helpful to many because it is so basic.

This much for today.