Techniques to put you at ease

Man has a center, but he lives off of it - off the center. That creates an inner tension, a constant turmoil, anguish. You are not where you should be; you are not at your right balance. You are off balance, and this being off balance, off center, is the base of all mental tensions. If it becomes too much, you go mad. A madman is one who has gone out of himself completely. The enlightened man is just the reverse of the madman. He is centered in himself.

You are in between. You have not gone completely out of yourself, and you are not at your center either. You just move in the gap. Sometimes you move very, very far away, so you have moments when you are temporarily mad. In anger, in sex, in anything in which you have moved too far away from yourself, you are temporarily mad. Then there is no difference between you and the madman.

The difference is only that he is permanently there and you are temporarily there. You will come back.

When you are in anger it is madness, but it is not permanent. Qualitatively there is no difference; quantitatively there is a difference. The quality is the same, so sometimes you touch madness and sometimes, when you are relaxed, totally at ease, you touch your center also. Those are the blissful moments. They happen. Then you are just like a Buddha or like a Krishna, but only temporarily, momentarily. You will not stay there. Really, the moment you realize that you are blissful you have moved. It is so momentary that by the time you have recognized the bliss it is finished.

We go on moving between these two, but this movement is dangerous. This movement is dangerous because then you cannot create a self-image, a fixed self-image. You do not know who you are. If you constantly move from madness to being centered in yourself, if this movement is constant, you cannot have a solid image of yourself. You will have a liquid image. Then you do not know who you are. It is very difficult. That is why you even become afraid if you are expecting blissful moments, so you try to fix yourself somewhere in between.

This is what we mean by a normal human being: he never touches his madness in anger and he never touches that total freedom, that ecstasy, either. He never moves from a solid image. The normal man is really a dead man, living between these two points. That is why all those who are exceptional - great artists, painters, poets - they are not normal. They are very liquid. Sometimes they touch the center, sometimes they go mad. They move fast between these two. Of course, their anguish is great, their tension is much. They have to live between two worlds, constantly changing themselves. That is why they feel that they have no identity. They feel, in the words of Colin Wilson, that they are outsiders. In your world of normality, they are outsiders.

It will be helpful to define these four types. First is the normal man who has a fixed, solid identity, who knows who he is - a doctor, an engineer, a professor, a saint - who knows who he is and never moves from there. He constantly clings to the identity, to the image.

Second are those who have liquid images - poets, artists, painters, singers. They do not know who they are. Sometimes they become just normal, sometimes they go mad, sometimes they touch the ecstasy that a buddha touches.

Third are those who are permanently mad. They have gone outside themselves; they never come back into their home. They do not even remember that they have a home.

And fourth are those who have reached their home... Buddha, Christ, Krishna.

This fourth category - those who have reached their home - is totally relaxed. In their consciousness there is no tension, no effort, no desire. In one word, there is no becoming. They do not want to become anything. They are, they have been. No becoming! And they are at ease with their being.

Whatsoever they are, they are at ease with it. They do not want to change it, do not want to go anywhere. They have no future. This very moment is eternity for them... no longing, no desire. That does not mean that a buddha will not eat or a buddha will not sleep. He will eat, he will sleep, but these are not desires. A buddha will not project these desires: he will not eat tomorrow, he will eat today.

Remember this. You go on eating in the tomorrow, you go on eating in the future; you go on eating in the past, in the yesterday. It rarely happens that you eat today. While you are eating today, your mind will be moving somewhere else. While you will be trying to go to sleep, you will start eating tomorrow, or else the memory of the past will come.

A buddha eats today. This very moment he lives. He does not project his life into the future; there is no future for him. Whenever future comes, it comes as the present. It is always today, it is always now. So a buddha eats, but he never eats in the mind - remember this. There is no cerebral eating.

You go on eating in the mind. It is absurd because the mind is not meant for eating. All your centers are confused; your entire body-mind arrangement is mixed up, it is mad.

A buddha eats, but he never thinks of eating. And that applies to everything. So a buddha is as ordinary as you while he is eating. Do not think that a buddha is not going to eat, or that when the hot sun is there he is not going to perspire, or when cold winds come he will not feel cold. He will feel it, but he will feel always in the present, never in the future. There is no becoming. If there is no becoming there is no tension. Understand this very clearly. If there is no becoming, how can there be any tension? Tension means you want to be something else which you are not.

You are A and you want to be B; you are poor and you want to be a rich man; you are ugly and you want to be beautiful; or you are stupid and you want to be a wise man. Whatsoever the wanting, whatsoever the desire, the form is always this: A wants to become B. Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. For contentment something else is needed - that is the constant structure of a mind that is desiring. When you get it, again the mind will say that "This is not enough, something else is needed."

The mind always moves on and on. Whatsoever you get becomes useless. The moment you get it, it is useless. This is desire. Buddha has called it TRISHNA: this is becoming.

You move from one life to another, from one world to another, and this goes on. It can continue ad infinitum. There is no end to it, there is no end to desire, desiring. But if there is no becoming, if you accept totally whatsoever you are - ugly or beautiful, wise or stupid, rich or poor - whatsoever you are, if you accept it in its totality, becoming ceases. Then there is no tension; then the tension cannot exist. Then there is no anguish. You are at ease, you are not worried. This non-becoming mind is a mind that is centered in the self.

On quite the opposite pole is the madman. He has no being, he is only a becoming. He has forgotten what he is. The A is forgotten completely and he is trying to be B. He no longer knows who he is; he only knows his desired goal. He doesn't live here and now, he lives somewhere else. That is why he looks crazy to us, mad, because you live in this world and he lives in the world of his dreams. He is not part of your world, he is living somewhere else. He has completely forgotten his reality here and now. And with himself he has forgotten the world around him, which is real. He lives in an unreal world - for him, that is the only reality.

A buddha lives this very moment in the being and the madman is just the opposite. He never lives in the here and now, in the being, but always in the becoming - somewhere on the horizon. These are the two polar opposites.

So remember, the madman is not against you, he is against the buddha. And remember also, the buddha is not against you, he is against the madman. You are in between. You are both, mixed; you have madnesses, you have moments of enlightenment, but both are mixed.

Sometimes a glimpse into the center suddenly happens, if you are relaxed. There are moments when you are relaxed. You are in love: for a few moments, for a single moment, your lover, your beloved is with you. It has been a long desire, a long effort, and at last your beloved is with you.

For a moment the mind goes off. There has been a long effort to be with the beloved. The mind has been hankering and hankering and hankering, and the mind has always been thinking, thinking about the beloved. Now the beloved is there and suddenly the mind cannot think. The old process cannot be continued. You were asking for the beloved; now the beloved is there, so the mind simply stops.

In that moment when the beloved is there, there is no desire. You are relaxed; suddenly you are thrown back to yourself. Unless a lover can throw you to yourself it is not love. Unless you become yourself in the presence of the beloved, it is not love. Unless mind completely ceases to function in the presence of the lover or the beloved, it is not love.

Sometimes it happens that mind ceases and for a moment there is no desire. Love is desireless.

Try to understand this: you may desire love, but love is desireless. When love happens there is no desire; mind is quiet, calm, relaxed. No more becoming, nowhere to go.

But this happens only for a few moments, if it happens at all. If you have really loved someone, then it will happen for a few moments. It is a shock. The mind cannot work because its whole function has become useless, absurd. The one for whom you were longing is there, and the mind cannot think what to do now.

For a few moments the whole mechanism stops. You are relaxed in yourself. You have touched your being, your center, and you feel you are at the source of well-being. A bliss fills you, a fragrance surrounds you. Suddenly you are not the same man you were.

That is why love transforms so much. If you are in love you cannot hide it. That is impossible! If you are in love, it will show. Your eyes, your face, the way you walk, the way you sit, everything will show it, because you are not the same man. The desiring mind is not there. You are like a buddha just for a few moments. This cannot be continued for long because it is just a shock. Immediately the mind will try to find some ways and excuses to think again.

For example, the mind may start thinking you have attained your goal, you have attained your love, so now what? What are you going to do? Then the prophesying starts, the arguments start. You begin thinking, "Today I have reached my beloved, but will it be the same tomorrow also?" The mind has started working. And the moment mind is working you have moved again into becoming.

Sometimes even without love, just through fatigue, tiredness, one stops desiring. Then too one is thrown to oneself. When you are not away from yourself you are bound to be at your self, no matter what may be the cause of it. When one is tired totally, fatigued, when one does not even feel like thinking or desiring, when one is frustrated completely, without any hope, then suddenly one feels at home. Now he cannot go anywhere. All the doors are closed; hope has disappeared - and with it desire, with it becoming.

It will not be for long because your mind has a mechanism. It can go off for a few moments, but suddenly it will come alive again because you cannot exist hopelessly, you will have to find some hope. You cannot exist without desire. Because you do not know how to exist without desire, you will have to create some desire.

In any situation where it happens that suddenly the mind ceases functioning, you are at your center.

You are on a holiday, in a forest or at a hill station, or on a beach: suddenly your routine mind will not work. The office is not there, the wife is not there, or the husband is not there. Suddenly there is a very new situation, and the mind will need some time to function in it, to be adjusted to it. The mind feels unadjusted. The situation is so new that you relax, and you are at your center.

In these moments you become a buddha, but these will only be moments. Then they will haunt you, and then you would like to reproduce them again and again and repeat them. But remember, they happened spontaneously, so you cannot repeat them. And the more you try to repeat them, the more it will be impossible for them to come to you.

That is happening to everyone. You loved someone, and in the first meeting your mind ceased for a few moments. Then you got married. Why did you get married? To repeat those beautiful moments again and again. But when they happened you were not married, and they cannot happen in marriage because the whole situation is different. When two people meet for the first time, the whole situation is new. Their minds cannot function in it. They are so overwhelmed by it - so filled by the new experience, by the new life, the new flowering! Then the mind starts functioning and they think. "This is such a beautiful moment! I want to go on repeating it every day, so I should get married."

Mind will destroy everything. Marriage means mind. Love is spontaneous; marriage is calculating.

Getting married is a mathematical thing. Then you wait for those moments, but they will never come again. That is why every married man and woman is frustrated - because they are waiting for certain things that happened in the past. Why are they not happening again? They cannot happen because you are missing the whole situation. Now you are not new; now there is no spontaneity; now love is a routine. Now everything is expected and demanded. Now love has become a duty, not a fun. It was fun in the beginning; now it is a duty. And duty cannot give you the same bliss that fun can give.

It is impossible! Your mind has created the whole thing. Now you go on expecting, and the more you expect the less is the possibility of its happening.

This happens everywhere, not only in marriage. You go to a master and the experience is new. His presence, his words, his way of life are new. Suddenly your mind stops functioning. Then you think, "This is the man for me, so I must go every day." Then you get married to him. By and by frustration sets in because you have made it a duty, a routine. Now those same experiences will not be coming.

Then you think this man has deceived you or that you were fooled somehow. Then you think, "The first experience was hallucinatory. I must have been hypnotized or something. It was not real."

It was real. Your routine mind makes it unreal. And then the mind tries to expect, but the first time it happened you were not expecting. You had come without any expectations, you were just open to receive whatsoever was happening.

Now you come every day with expectations, with a closed mind. It cannot happen. It always happens in an open mind; it always happens in a new situation. That doesn't mean that you have to change your situation daily, it only means: do not allow your mind to create a pattern. Then your wife will be new every day, your husband will be new every day. But do not allow the mind to create a pattern of expectations; do not allow the mind to move in the future. Then your master will be every day new, your friend will be every day new. And everything is new in the world except the mind. Mind is the only thing which is old. It is always old.

The sun is rising anew every day. It is not the old sun. The moon is new; the day, the night, the flowers, the trees... everything is new except your mind. Your mind is always old - remember, always - because mind needs the past, the accumulated experience, the projected experience. Mind needs the past and life needs the present. Life is always blissful - mind never is. Whenever you allow your mind to come in, misery sets in.

These spontaneous moments will not be repeated again, so what to do? How to be in a relaxed state continuously? These three sutras are for this. These are three techniques concerning the feeling of ease, techniques to relax the nerves.

How to remain in the being? How not to move into the becoming? It is difficult, arduous, but these techniques can help. These techniques will throw you upon yourself.

The first technique: WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. Shiva starts with love. The first technique is concerned with love, because love is the nearest thing in your experience in which you are relaxed. If you cannot love, it is impossible for you to relax. If you can relax, your life will become a loving life.

A tense man cannot love. Why? A tense man always lives with purposes. He can earn money, but he cannot love because love is purposeless. Love is not a commodity. You cannot accumulate it; you cannot make a bank balance of it; you cannot strengthen your ego out of it. Really, love is the most absurd act, with no meaning beyond it, no purpose beyond it. It exists in itself, not for anything else.

You earn money FOR something - it is a means. You build a house for someone to live in - it is a means. Love is not a means. Why do you love? For what do you love? Love is the end in itself. That is why a mind that is calculative, logical, a mind that thinks in terms of purpose, cannot love. And the mind that always thinks in terms of purpose will be tense, because purpose can only be fulfilled in the future, never here and now.

You are building a house - you cannot live in it just now, you will have to build it first. You can live in it in the future, not now. You earn money - the bank balance will be created in the future, not now.

Means you will have to use now, and ends will come in the future.

Love is always here; there is no future to it. That is why love is so near to meditation. That is why death is also so near to meditation - because death is also always here and now, it can never happen in the future. Can you die in the future? You can die only in the present. No one has ever died in the future. How can you die in the future? Or how can you die in the past? The past has gone, it is no more, so you cannot die in it. The future has not yet come, so how can you die in it?

Death always occurs in the present. Death, love, meditation - they all occur in the present. So if you are afraid of death, you cannot love. If you are afraid of love, you cannot meditate. If you are afraid of meditation, your life will be useless. Useless not in the sense of any purpose, but useless in the sense that you will never be able to feel any bliss in it. It will be futile.

It may seem strange to connect these three: love, meditation, death. It is not! They are similar experiences. So if you can enter in one, you can enter in the remaining two.

Shiva starts with love. He says, WHILE BEING CARESSED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER THE CARESSING AS EVERLASTING LIFE. What does it mean? Many things! One: while you are being loved the past has ceased, the future is not. You move in the dimension of the present. You move in THE NOW. Have you ever loved someone? If you have ever loved, then you know that the mind is no longer there.

That is why the so-called wise men say that lovers are blind, mindless, mad. In essence what they say is right. Lovers ARE blind because they have no eyes for the future, to calculate what they are going to do. They are blind; they cannot see the past. What has happened to lovers? They just move here and now without any consideration of past or future, without any consideration of consequences. That is why they are called blind. They are! They are blind for those who are calculating, and they are seers for those who are not calculating. Those who are not calculating will see love as the real eye, the real vision.

So the first thing: in the moment of love, past and future are no more. Then, one delicate point is to be understood. When there is no past and no future, can you call this moment the present? It is the present only between the two - between the past and the future. It is relative. If there is no past and no future, what does it mean to call it the present? It is meaningless. That is why Shiva doesn't use the word 'present'. He says, EVERLASTING LIFE. He means eternity... enter eternity.

We divide time into three parts - past, present, future. That division is false, absolutely false. Time is really past and future. The present is not part of time. The present is part of eternity. That which has passed is time; that which is to come is time. That which is, is not time because it never passes - it is always here. The now is always here. It is ALWAYS here! This now is eternal.

If you move from the past, you never move into the present. From the past you always move into the future; there comes no moment which is present. From the past you always move into the future.

From the present you can never move into the future. From the present you go deeper and deeper, into more present and more present. This is everlasting life.

We may say it in this way: from past to future is time. Time means you move on a plane, on a straight line. Or we may call it horizontal. The moment you are in the present the dimension changes: you move vertically - up or down, toward the height or toward the depth. But then you never move horizontally. A Buddha, a Shiva, live in eternity, not in time.

Jesus was asked, "What will happen in your kingdom of God?" The man who asked him was not asking about time. He was asking about what is going to happen to his desires, about how they will be fulfilled. He was asking whether there will be life everlasting or whether there will be death; whether there be any misery, whether there will be inferior and superior men. He was asking things of this world when he asked, "What is going to happen in your kingdom of God?" And Jesus replied - the reply is like that of a Zen monk - "There shall be time no longer."

The man who was replied to in this way may not have understood at all: "There shall be time no longer." Only this one thing Jesus said - "There shall be time no longer," because time is horizontal and the kingdom of God is vertical... it is eternal. It is always here! You have only to move away from time to enter into it.

So love is the first door. Through it, you can move away from time. That is why everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to love. And no one knows why so much significance is given to love, why there is such a deep longing for love. And unless you know it rightly, you can neither love nor be loved, because love is one of the deepest phenomena upon this earth.

We go on thinking that everyone is capable of love as he is. This is not the case - it is not so. That is why you are frustrated. Love is a different dimension, and if you try to love someone in time you will be defeated in your effort. In time, love is not possible.

I remember one anecdote. Meera was in love with Krishna. She was a housewife - the wife of a prince. The prince became jealous of Krishna. Krishna was no more; Krishna was not present, Krishna was not a physical body. There was a gap of five thousand years between Krishna's physical existence and Meera's physical existence. So really, how can Meera be in love with Krishna? The time gap was so great.

One day the prince, her husband, asked Meera, "You go on talking about your love, you go on dancing and singing around Krishna, but where is he? With whom are you so much in love? With whom are you talking continuously?" Meera was talking with Krishna, singing, laughing, fighting. She looked mad - she was, in our eyes. The prince said, "Have you gone mad? Where is your Krishna?

Whom are you loving? With whom are you conversing? I am here, and you have completely forgotten me."

Meera said, "Krishna is here - you are not here - because Krishna is eternal; you are not. He will always be here, he was always here, he is here. You will not be here; you were not here. You were not here one day, you will not be here another day, so how can I believe that between these two non-existences you are here? How is an existence possible between two non-existences?"

The prince is in time, but Krishna is in eternity. So you can be near the prince, but the distance cannot be destroyed. You will be distant. You may be very, very distant in time from Krishna, but you can be near. It is a different dimension, however.

I look in front of me and there is a wall; I move my eyes and there is a sky. When you look in time there is always a wall. When you look beyond time there is the open sky... infinite. Love opens the infinity, the everlastingness of existence. So really, if you have ever loved, love can be made a technique of meditation. This is the technique: WHILE BEING LOVED, SWEET PRINCESS, ENTER LOVING AS EVERLASTING LIFE.

Do not be a lover standing aloof, outside. Become loving and move into eternity. When you are loving someone, are you there as the lover? If you are there, then you are in time and love is just false, just pseudo. If you are still there and you can say, "I am," then you can be physically near but spiritually you are poles apart.

While in love, YOU must not be - only love, only loving. Become loving. While caressing your lover or beloved become the caress. While kissing, do not be the kisser or the kissed - be the kiss. Forget the ego completely, dissolve it into the act. Move into the act so deeply that the actor is no more.

And if you cannot move into love, it is difficult to move into eating or walking - very difficult, because love is the easiest approach for dissolving the ego. That is why those who are egoists cannot love.

They may talk about it, they may sing about it, they may write about it, but they cannot love. The ego cannot love!

Shiva says, become loving. When you are in the embrace, become the embrace, become the kiss.

Forget yourself so totally that you can say, "I am no more. Only love exists." Then the heart is not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is circulating. And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, love is moving to touch.

Become love and enter everlasting life. Love suddenly changes your dimension. You are thrown out of time and you are facing eternity. Love can become a deep meditation - the deepest possible.

Lovers have known sometimes what saints have not known. And lovers have touched that center which many yogis have missed. But it will be just a glimpse unless you transform your love into meditation. Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation. And now you can understand why tantra talks so much about love and sex. Why? Because love is the easiest natural door from where you can transcend this world, this horizontal dimension.

Look at Shiva with his consort, Devi. Look at them! They don't seem to be two - they are one.

The oneness is so deep that it has even gone into symbols. We all have seen the Shivalinga. It is a phallic symbol - Shiva's sex organ - but it is not alone, it is based in Devi's vagina. The Hindus of the old days were very daring. Now when you see a Shivalinga you never remember that it is a phallic symbol. We have forgotten; we have tried to forget it completely.

Jung remembers in his autobiography, in his memoirs, a very beautiful and funny incident. He came to India and went to see Konark, and in the temple of Konark there are many, many Shivalingas, many phallic symbols. The pundit who was taking him around explained everything to him except the Shivalingas. And they were so many, it was difficult to escape this. Jung was well aware, but just to tease the pundit he went on asking, "But what are these?" So the pundit at last said into his ear, in Jung's ear, "Do not ask me here, I will tell you afterwards. This is a private thing."

Jung must have laughed inside - these are the Hindus of today. Then outside the temple the pundit came near and said, "It was not good of you to ask before others. I will tell you now. It is a secret."

And then again in Jung's ear he said, "They are our private parts."

When Jung went back, he met one great scholar - a scholar of oriental thought, mythology, philosophy - Heinrich Zimmer. He related this anecdote to Zimmer. Zimmer was one of the most gifted minds who ever tried to penetrate Indian thought and he was a lover of India and of its ways of thinking - of the oriental non-logical, mystic approach toward life. When he heard this from Jung, he laughed and said, "This is good for a change. I have always heard about great Indians - Buddha, Krishna, Mahavir. What you relate says something not about any great Indians, but about Indians."

Love for Shiva is the great gate. And for him sex is not something to be condemned. For him sex is the seed and love is the flowering of it, and if you condemn the seed you condemn the flower. Sex can become love. If it never becomes love then it is crippled. Condemn the crippledness, not the sex. Love must flower, sex must become love. If it is not becoming it is not the fault of sex, it is your fault.

Sex must not remain sex; that is the tantra teaching. It must be transformed into love. And love also must not remain love. It must be transformed into light, into meditative experience, into the last, ultimate mystic peak. How to transform love? Be the act and forget the actor. While loving, be love - simply love. Then it is not your love or my love or anybody else's - it is simply LOVE. When you are not there, when you are in the hands of the ultimate source, or current, when you are in love, it is not you who is in love. When the love has engulfed you, you have disappeared; you have just become a flowing energy.

D. H. Lawrence, one of the most creative minds of this age, was knowingly or unknowingly a tantra adept. He was condemned in the West completely, his books were banned. There were many cases in the courts only because he had said, "Sex energy is the only energy, and if you condemn it and suppress it you are against the universe. Then you will never be capable of knowing the higher flowering of this energy. And when it is suppressed it becomes ugly - this is the vicious circle."

Priests, moralists, so-called religious people - popes, shankaracharyas and others - they go on condemning sex. They say that this is an ugly thing. And when you suppress it, it becomes ugly. So they say, "Look! What we said is true. It is proved by you. Look! Whatsoever you are doing is ugly and you know it is ugly."

But it is not sex which is ugly, it is these priests who have made it ugly. Once they have made it ugly they are proved right. And when they are proved right you go on making it more and more ugly.

Sex is innocent energy - life flowing in you, existence alive in you. Do not cripple it! Allow it to move toward the heights. That is, sex must become love. What is the difference? When your mind is sexual you are exploiting the other; the other is just an instrument to be used and thrown away.

When sex becomes love the other is not an instrument, the other is not to be exploited; the other is not really the other. When you love, it is not self-centered. Rather, the other becomes significant, unique.

It is not that you are exploiting him - no! On the contrary, you both are joined in a deep experience.

You are partners of a deep experience, not the exploiter and the exploited. You are helping each other to move into a different world of love. Sex is exploitation. Love is moving together into a different world.

If this moving is not momentary and if this moving becomes meditative - that is, if you can forget yourself completely and the lover and the beloved disappear, and there is only love flowing - then, says Shiva, everlasting life is yours.

The second technique:

STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN.

This looks very simple, but it is not so simple. I will read it again: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This is only an example; anything will do. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT, and then - THEN - the thing will happen. What is Shiva saying?

You have a thorn in your foot - it is painful, you are suffering. Or one ant is there creeping on your leg. You feel the creeping and suddenly you want it to be thrown away. Take any experience! You have a wound - it is painful. You have a headache, or any pain in the body. Anything will do as an object. It is only an example - the CREEPING OF AN ANT. Shiva says: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. Whatsoever you are feeling, stop all the doors of the senses.

What is to be done? Close your eyes and think that you are just blind and you cannot see. Close your ears and think that you cannot hear. With all of the five senses, you just close them. How can you close them? It is easy. Stop breathing for a single moment: all your senses will be closed.

When the breath has stopped and all the senses are closed, where is this creeping? Where is the ant? Suddenly you are removed - far away.

One of my friends, an old friend, very aged, fell down the staircase, and doctors said that now he would not be able to move from his bed for three months, he would have to rest for three months.

And he was a very restless man; it was difficult for him. I went to see him, so he said, "Pray for me and bless me so that I may die, because these three months are more than death. I cannot remain stone-like. And others are saying, 'Don't move.'"

I told him, "This is a good opportunity. Just close your eyes and think that you are only a stone, you cannot move. How can you move? You are a stone - just a stone, a statue. Close your eyes. Feel that you are now a stone, a statue." He asked me what will happen. I told him, "Just try. I am sitting here, and nothing can be done. Nothing can be done! You will have to be here for three months anyhow, so try."

He would have never tried, but the situation was so impossible that he said, "Okay! I will try because something may happen. But I don't believe it," he said. "I don't believe that something can happen just by thinking that I am stone-like, dead like a statue, but I will try." So he tried.

I was also not thinking that something was going to happen, because the man was such. But sometimes when you are in an impossible situation, hopeless, things begin to happen. He closed his eyes. I waited, because I was thinking that within two or three minutes he would open them and he would say, "Nothing happened." But he would not open his eyes, and thirty minutes passed. I could feel and see that he had become a statue. All the tension on his forehead disappeared. His face was changed.

I had to leave, but he would not open his eyes. And he was so silent, as if dead. His breathing calmed down, and because I had to leave, I had to tell him, "I want to go now, so please open your eyes and tell me what has happened."

He opened his eyes a different man. And he said, "This is a miracle. What have you done to me?"

I told him, "I have not done anything at all."

He said, "You must have done something because this is a miracle. When I began to think that I am just like a stone, like a statue, suddenly the feeling came to me that even if I wanted to move my hands it was impossible to do so. I wanted so many times to open my eyes, but they were like stone so I couldn't open them."

He said, "I even became worried about what you will be thinking, as it was so long, but what could I do? I couldn't move myself for these thirty minutes. And when every movement ceased, suddenly the world disappeared and I was alone, deep down in me, myself. Then the pain disappeared."

There was severe pain; he could not sleep in the night without a tranquilizer. But the pain disappeared. I asked him how he felt when the pain was disappearing. He said, "First I began to feel that it was somewhere distant. The pain was there, but very far away as if happening to someone else. And then by and by, by and by, as if someone is going away and away and you cannot see him, it disappeared. The pain disappeared! For at least ten minutes, the pain was no more. How can a stone body have pain?"

This sutra says, STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES. Become stone-like, closed to the world.

When you are closed to the world, really, you are closed to your own body also, because your body is not part of you; it is part of the world. When you are closed completely to the world, you are closed to your own body also. Then, Shiva says, then the thing will happen.

So try it with the body. Anything will do, you will not need some ant creeping on you. Otherwise you will think, "When the ant will creep, I will meditate." And such helpful ants are difficult to find, so anything will do. You are lying on your bed, you feel the cold sheets - become dead. Suddenly the sheets will go away, away, away, and they will disappear. Your bed will disappear; your bedroom will disappear; the whole world will disappear. You are closed, dead, a stone, like a Leibnitzian monad with no window outside - no window! You cannot move!

And then, when you cannot move, you are thrown back to yourself, you are centered in yourself.

Then, for the first time you can look from your center. And once you can look from your center, you can never be the same man again.

The third technique: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. You are sitting here. Just feel that you have become weightless, there is no weight.

You will feel that somewhere or other there is weight, but go on feeling the weightlessness. It comes.

A moment comes when you feel that you are weightless, that there is no weight. When there is no weight you are no more a body, because the weight is of the body - not of you. You are weightless.

That is why there were so many experiments done. Someone is dying... many scientists all over the world have tried to weigh the person. If there is a slight difference, if when a man is alive the weight is more and when a man is dead the weight is less, then scientists can say that something has moved from the body, that a soul or the self or something that was there is no more - because for science nothing can be weightless, nothing!

Weight is basic to all matter. Even sunrays have weight. It is very, very slight, minute, and they are difficult to weigh, but scientists have weighed them. If you can collect all the sunrays on a five- square-mile plot of ground, their weight will be similar to that of a hair. But sunrays do have weight; they have been weighed. Nothing can be weightless for science. And if something can be weightless then it is immaterial, it cannot be matter. And science has believed for these twenty or twenty-five years that there is nothing except matter.

So when a man dies, if something leaves the body the weight must differ. But it never differs; the weight remains the same. Sometimes it even becomes more - that is the problem. The alive man weighs less; the dead man becomes more weighty. That created new problems, because they were really trying to find out if some weight is lost; then they can say something has left. But it seems that, on the contrary, something has come in. What has happened? Weight is material, but you are not a weight. You are immaterial.

If you try this technique of weightlessness, you just have to conceive of yourself as weightless - and not only conceive, but feel that your body has become weightless. If you go on feeling, feeling, feeling, a moment comes when suddenly you realize that you are weightless. You are already, so you can realize it anytime. You have only to create a situation in which you can feel again that you are weightless.

You have to dehypnotize yourself. This is the hypnosis, the belief that "I am a body and that is why I feel weight." If you can dehypnotize yourself into realizing that you are not a body, you will not feel weight. And when you do not feel weight you are beyond mind, says Shiva: WHEN ON A BED OR A SEAT, LET YOURSELF BECOME WEIGHTLESS, BEYOND MIND. Then the thing can happen.

The mind also has weight; everyone's mind has a different weight.

At one time there were some proposals that the weightier the mind, the more intelligent. And generally it is true, but not absolutely, because sometimes very great men had very small minds, and sometimes some stupid idiot's mind weighed very much. But generally it is true, because when you have a bigger mechanism of the mind it weighs more. The mind is also a weight, but your consciousness is weightless. To feel this consciousness, you have to feel weightlessness. So try it:

walking, sitting, sleeping, you can try it.

Some observations.... Why does the dead body become more weighty sometimes? Because the moment the consciousness leaves the body, the body becomes unprotected. Many things can enter it immediately. They were not entering because of you. Many vibrations can enter into a dead body - they cannot enter into you. You are there, the body is alive, resistant to many things. That is why once you are ill, it begins to be a long sequence; one illness, then another, and then another - because once you are ill you become unprotected, vulnerable, non-resistant. Then anything can enter into you. Your presence protects the body. So sometimes a dead body can gain weight. The moment you leave it, anything can enter into the body.

Secondly, when you are happy you always feel weightless; when you are sad you always feel more weight, as if something is pulling you down. The gravitation becomes much more. When you are sad, you are more weighty. When you are happy, you are light. You feel it. Why? Because when you are happy, whenever you feel a blissful moment, you forget the body completely. When you are sad, suffering, you cannot forget the body, you feel the weight of it. It pulls you down - down to the earth, as if you are rooted. Then you cannot move; you have roots in the earth. In happiness you are weightless. In sorrow, sadness, you become weighty.

In deep meditation, when you forget your body completely, you can levitate. Even the body can go up with you. It happens many times. Scientists have been observing one woman in Bolivia. While meditating she goes up four feet, and now it has been observed scientifically; many films have been taken, many photographs. Before thousands and thousands of observers suddenly the woman goes up and gravity becomes nil, nullified. As of yet there is no explanation for what is happening, but that same woman cannot go up while not in meditation. And if her meditation is disturbed, suddenly she falls down.

What happens? Deep in meditation you forget your body completely, and the identification is broken.

The body is a very small thing; you are very big, you have infinite power. The body has nothing in comparison to you.

It is as if an emperor has become identified with his slave, so as the slave goes begging, the emperor goes begging; as the slave weeps, the emperor weeps. When the slave says, "I am no one," the emperor says, "I am no one." Once the emperor recognizes his own being, once he recognizes that he is the emperor and this man is just a slave, everything will change suddenly.

You are infinite power identified with a very finite body. Once you realize your self, then weightlessness becomes more and the weight of the body less. Then you can levitate, the body can go up.

There are many, many stories which cannot yet be proven scientifically, but they will be proven...

because if one woman can go up four feet, then there is no barrier. Another can go a thousand feet, another can go completely into the cosmos. Theoretically there is no problem: four feet or four hundred feet or four thousand feet, it makes no difference.

There are stories about Ram and about many others who have disappeared completely with the body. Their bodies were never found dead on this earth. Mohammed disappeared completely - not only with his body; it is said he disappeared with his horse also. These stories look impossible, they look mythological, but they are not necessarily so.

Once you know the weightless force, you have become the master of gravity. You can use it; it depends on you. You can disappear completely with your body.

But to us weightlessness will be a problem. The technique of SIDDHASAN, the way Buddha sits, is the best way to be weightless. Sit on the earth - not on any chair or anything, but just on the floor. And it is good if the floor is not of cement or anything artificial. Just sit on the ground so that you are the nearest to nature. It is good if you can sit naked. Just sit naked on the ground in the Buddha posture, siddhasan - because siddhasan is the best posture in which to be weightless.

Why? Because you feel more weight if your body is leaning this way or that way. Then your body has more area to be affected by gravity. If I am sitting on this chair then a greater area of my body is affected by gravity.

While you are standing less area is affected, but you cannot stand for too long. Mahavir always meditated standing - always, because then one covers the least area. Just your feet are touching the ground. When you are standing on your feet, straight, the least amount of gravity works on you - and gravity is weight.

Sitting in a Buddha posture, locked - your legs are locked, your hands are locked - also helps, because then your inner electricity becomes a circuit. Let your spine be straight.

Now you can understand why so much emphasis has been given to a straight spine, because with a straight spine less and less area is covered, so gravity affects you less. With closed eyes, balance yourself completely, center yourself. Lean to the right and feel the gravity; lean to the left and feel the gravity; lean forward and feel the gravity; lean backward and feel the gravity. Then find the center where the least pull of gravity is felt, the least weight is felt, and remain there. Then forget the body and feel that you are not weight - you are weightless. Then go on feeling this weightlessness.

Suddenly you become weightless; suddenly you are not the body; suddenly you are in a different world of bodilessness.

Weightlessness is bodilessness. Then you transcend mind also. Mind is also part of the body, part of matter. Matter has weight; you do not have any weight. This is the basis of this technique.

Try any technique, but stick to it for a few days so that you can feel whether it is working or not.

Enough for today.