From sound to inner silence

Tantra is not a philosophy. Rather, it is a science with one difference: science is objective, tantra is subjective. But still, it is a science and not a philosophy. Philosophy thinks about the truth, the unknown, the ultimate; science tries to discover what is. Science enters the immediate; philosophy thinks of the ultimate. Philosophy is always looking toward the sky; science is more down to earth.

Tantra is not concerned with the ultimate. It is concerned with the immediate, the here and now.

Tantra says, the ultimate is hidden in the immediate, so you need not worry about the ultimate. By worrying about the ultimate you will miss the immediate, and the ultimate is hidden in the immediate.

So by thinking about the ultimate you will miss both. If the immediate should be missed, because of it you will miss the ultimate also. So philosophy is just smoke. The approach of tantra is scientific, but the OBJECT is different from that of so-called science.

Science tries to understand the object, the objective world, the reality that is before your eyes. Tantra is the science of the reality that is behind your eyes, the subjectivity, but the approach is scientific.

Tantra doesn't believe in thinking, it believes in experimenting, in experiencing. And unless you can experience, everything is just a wastage of energy.

I am reminded of one incident. Mulla Nasruddin was crossing a street. Just in front of a church he was knocked down by a hit-and-run driver. He was an old man, and a crowd gathered. Someone was saying that "That man cannot survive." The priest of the church ran out. He came near and he found out that the old man was just going to die, so he prepared to administer the last rites. He came near and asked the dying Mulla, "Do you believe in God the Father? Do you believe in God the Son? Do you believe in God the Holy Ghost?" Mulla opened his eyes and said, "My God! I am dying and he is asking me puzzles!"

All philosophy is like this: it is asking puzzles while you are dying. Every moment you are dying, every moment everyone is on his deathbed - because death can occur at any moment. But philosophy goes on asking and answering puzzles. Tantra says, it is good for children to philosophize but those who are wise will not waste their time in philosophy. They should try to know - not to think, because through thinking there is no knowledge. Through thinking you go on webbing words, creating patterns of words. It leads nowhere, you remain the same - no transformation, no new insights. The old man just goes on gathering dust.

Knowing is a different phenomenon. It does not mean "thinking about," it means going deep into the existence itself in order to know, moving into the existence. Remember this, that tantra is not a philosophy. It is science - a subjective science. The approach is scientific and non-philosophic. It is very down to earth, concerned with the immediate. The immediate is to be used as a door to the ultimate, the ultimate happens if you enter the immediate. It is there, and there is no other way to reach to it.

Philosophy is not a way in the eyes of tantra. It is a false way! It only appears that this is a way.

It is a door which is not; it simply appears to be a door. It is a false door. The moment you try to enter it you come to know that you cannot enter, it is just a painted door, there is no door in reality.

Philosophy is a painted door. If you sit by its side and go on thinking and thinking, it is good. If you try to enter it, it is a wall.

So every philosophy is good for philosophizing. For experiencing, every philosophy is impotent.

That is why there is so much insistence on technique in tantra - SO MUCH insistence on technique, because a science can do nothing but give technology, whether of the outside world or of the inside.

The very word 'tantra' means technique. The very word 'tantra' MEANS technique! That is why, in this small and yet one of the greatest and deepest books, only techniques are given, no philosophy, just one hundred and twelve techniques to reach the ultimate through the immediate.

The ninth technique concerning sound:

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE "HH," EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY.

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH " Any word that ends in "AH" - intone it silently.

Emphasis should be given to the ending "AH." Why? Because the moment this sound "AH" is intoned, your breath goes out. You may not have observed it, but now you can observe: whenever your breath goes out you are more silent, and whenever your breath comes in you are more tense - because the outgoing breath is death and the incoming breath is life. Tension is part of life, not of death. Relaxation is part of death; death means total relaxation. Life cannot be totally relaxed; it is impossible.

Life means tension, effort. Only death is relaxed. So whenever a person becomes absolutely relaxed, he is both - alive outwardly and dead within. You can see in the face of a buddha both life and death simultaneously. That is why there is so much silence and calm, they are part of death.

Life is not relaxation. You relax in the night when you are asleep. That is why the old traditions say that death and sleep are similar. Sleep is a temporary death and death is permanent sleep. That is why night relaxes you, it is the outgoing breath. The morning is the incoming breath.

The day makes you tense and the night relaxes you. Light makes you tense, darkness relaxes you.

That is why you cannot sleep when there is light, it is difficult to relax because light is similar to life:

it is anti-death. Darkness is similar to death: it is pro-death.

So darkness has deep relaxation in it, and those who are afraid of darkness cannot relax...

impossible, because every relaxation is dark. And darkness surrounds your life on both the sides.

Before you are born you are in darkness; when life ceases you are again in darkness. Darkness is infinite, and this light and this life is just a moment in it, just a wave arising and then falling back. If you can remember the darkness that surrounds both the ends, you will be relaxed here and now.

Life, death - they both are two sides of existence. The incoming breath is life, the outgoing breath is death. So it is not that you die someday, you are dying with every breath. That is why the Hindus have been counting life in breaths, they do not count life in years. Tantra, yoga, all the old Indian systems, they count life in breaths: how many breaths you are going to live. So they say if you breathe very fast, with too much breathing in a short time, you will die very soon. If you breathe very slowly and your breaths are less in an interval, you will live very long. And this is so.

If you go and observe animals, those animals whose breathing is very slow live long. Take the elephant: the elephant lives long; the breath is very slow. Then there is the dog: the dog dies soon; the breath is very fast. Whenever you find an animal in which the breath is fast, any animal, the animal will not have a long life. A long life is always with slow breath.

Tantra and yoga and other Indian systems count your life in breaths. Really, with every breath you are born and with every breath you are dying. This mantra, this technique, uses the outgoing breath as the method, the medium, the vehicle, to go deep into silence. It is a death method. INTONE SILENTLY A WORD ENDING IN "AH." The breath has gone - that is why a word ending in "AH."

This AH is meaningful because when you say AH it completely empties you. The whole breath has moved out; nothing remains within. You are totally empty - empty and dead. For a single moment, for a very small interval, life has moved out of you. You are dead - empty. This emptiness, if realized, if you can become aware of it, will change you completely. You will be a different man.

Then you will know well that this life is not your life and this death is also not your death. Then you will know something which is beyond the incoming and outgoing breath - the witnessing soul. And this witnessing can happen easily when you are empty of breath, because life has subsided and with it all tensions have subsided. So try it, it is a very beautiful method. But the ordinary process, the ordinary habit, is to emphasize the incoming breath, never the outgoing breath.

We always take the breath in. We ALWAYS take it in, but we never throw it out. We take it in and THE BODY throws it out. Observe your breathing and you will know. We take it in. We never exhale, we only inhale. The exhaling is done by the body because we are afraid of death, that is the reason.

If it was in our power we would not exhale at all, we would inhale and then control it within. No one emphasizes exhaling - inhaling is emphasized. Because we HAVE to do exhaling after inhaling, that is why we go on "suffering" it. We tolerate it because we cannot inhale without exhaling.

So exhaling is accepted as a necessary evil, but basically we are not interested in exhaling. And this is not only about breath, this is our whole attitude toward life. We cling to everything that comes to us; we will not leave it. This is the miserliness of the mind.

And remember, there are many implications in it. If you are suffering from constipation, this will be the basic cause: you always inhale and never exhale. The mind which never exhales but just inhales will suffer from constipation. The constipation is the other end of the same thing. He cannot exhale anything, he goes on accumulating, he is afraid. The fear is there. He can only accumulate, but anything that is accumulated becomes poisonous.

If you only inhale and do not exhale, your very breath becomes poison to you; you will die because of it. You can turn a life-giving force into poison if you behave in a miserly way, because the exhaling is absolutely necessary. It throws all the poisons out of you.

So really, death is a purifying process and life is a poisoning process. This will look paradoxical. Life is a poisoning process because to live you have to use many things - and the moment you have used them they turn into poison, they are converted into poisons. You take a breath in, you use oxygen, and then what remains becomes poison. It was life only because it was oxygen, but you have used it. So life goes on changing everything into a poison.

Now there is a great movement in the West - ecology. Man has been using everything and turning it into poison, and the very Earth is just on the verge of dying. Any day it can die because we have turned everything into poison. Death is a purifying process. When your whole body has become poisonous, death will relieve you of the body. It will renew you, it will give you a new birth; a new body will be given to you. Through death all the accumulated poisons are dissolved back into nature.

You are given a new mechanism.

And this happens with every breath. The outgoing breath is similar to death - it takes poisons out.

And when it is going out, everything ebbs within. If you can throw the whole breath out, completely out so that no breath remains within, you touch a point of silence that can never be touched while the breath is in.

It is just like the ebb and tide: with every breath a tide of life comes to you; with every exhalation, everything ebbs - the tide has gone. You are just a vacant, empty shore. This is the use of this technique. SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." Emphasize the exhaling breath. And you can use it for many changes in the mind. If you are suffering from constipation, forget intaking.

Just exhale and do not inhale. Let the body do the work of inhaling; you just do the work of exhaling.

You force the breath out and do not inhale. The body will inhale by itself; you need not worry about it, you are not going to die. The body will take breath in, you just throw it out and let the body take it in. Your constipation will go.

If you are suffering from heart disease, just exhale, do not inhale. Then you will not suffer from heart disease. If while just going upwards on a staircase, or anywhere, you feel tired - very much tired, suffocated, breathless - simply do this: just exhale, do not inhale. Then you can climb up any amount of steps and you will not be tired. What happens? When you go with an emphasis on exhaling, you are ready to let go, you are ready to die. You are not afraid of death; that makes you open. Otherwise you are closed - fear closes you.

When you exhale, the whole system changes and accepts death. There is no fear, you are ready to die. And one who is ready to die can live. Really, only one who is ready to die can live. He alone becomes capable of life - because he is not afraid.

One who accepts death, welcomes it, receives it as a guest, lives with it, goes deep into life. Exhale, do not inhale, and that will change your total mind. Because of simple techniques tantra never appeals, because we think, "My mind is such a complex thing." It is not complex - just foolish. And fools are very complex. A wise man is simple. Nothing is complex in your mind, it is a very simple mechanism. If you understand, you can change it very easily.

If you have not seen anybody dying, if you have been protected from seeing death as Buddha was protected, you cannot understand anything about it. Buddha's father was afraid because some astrologer said that "This boy is going to be a great sannyasin. He will renounce the world." The father asked, "What is to be done to protect him from doing such a thing?" So those astrologers thought and thought, and then they concluded and they said, "Do not allow him to see death, because if he is not aware of death he will never think of renouncing life."

This is beautiful - very meaningful. That means all religion, all philosophy, all tantra and yoga, is basically death-oriented. If you are aware of death, only then does religion become meaningful.

That is why no animal except man is religious, because no animal is aware of death. They die, but they are not aware. They cannot conceive or imagine that there is going to be death.

When one dog dies, other dogs never imagine that death is going to happen to them also. Always someone else dies, so how can a dog imagine that "I am going to die"? He has never seen himself dying. Someone else, some other dog dies, so how can he connect that "I am going to die"? No animal is aware of death; that is why no animal renounces. No animal can become a sannyasin.

Only a very high quality of consciousness can lead you to renounce - when you become aware of death. And if even by being a man you are not aware of death, you belong to the animal kingdom; you are not yet a man. You become a man only when you encounter death. Otherwise there is no difference between you and the animal.

Everything is similar; only death makes the difference. With death encountered, you are no more animal, something has happened to you which never happens to an animal. Now you will be a different consciousness.

So Buddha's father protected him from seeing any type of death - not only man's death, but the death of animals and even of flowers. So the gardeners were instructed not to allow the child to see a dead flower, a pale flower dying on the branch, a pale leaf, a dry leaf. No, nowhere should he come to realize that something dies - he may infer from it that "I am going to die." And you do not infer it even seeing your wife dying, your mother, your father, your child. You weep for them, but you never conceive that this is a sign that "I am going to die."

But the astrologers said, "The boy is very, very sensitive, so protect him from any type of death." And the father was over-conscientious He would not allow even an old man or an old woman to be seen, because oldness is just death heard from a distance; death is there from a distance, just coming.

So Buddha's father would not allow any old man or old woman to be seen by the child. If Buddha suddenly became aware that just by stopping the breath a man could die, it would be very difficult for him. "Just because no breath is coming in, how can a man die?" he would wonder. "Life is such a big, complex process."

If you have not seen anyone dying, even you cannot conceive that just by stopping the breath a man will die. Just by stopping the breath? Such a simple thing! And how can such a complex life die?

It is the same with these methods. They look simple, but they touch the basic reality. When the breath is going out, when you are completely emptied of life, you touch death: you are just near it, and everything becomes calm and silent within you.

Use it as a mantra. Whenever you feel tired, whenever you feel tense, use any word which ends in "AH." "Allah" will do - any word that brings your total breath out so that you exhale completely and you are emptied of breath. The moment you are emptied of breath you are emptied of life also.

And all your problems belong to life: no problem belongs to death. Your anxiety, your anguish, your anger, your sadness, they all belong to life.

Death is non-problematic. Death never gives any problem to anyone. And even if you think that "I am afraid of death and death creates a problem," it is not death that creates the problem but your clinging to life. Only life creates problems; death dissolves all problems. So when the breath has moved completely out, "AH," you are emptied of life. Look within at that moment when the breath is completely out. Before taking another breath in, go deep down in that interval and become aware of the inside calm, the silence. In that moment you are a buddha.

If you can catch that moment, you have known a taste of what Buddha might have known. And once known, you can detach this taste from the incoming-outgoing breath. Then the breath can go on coming in, going out, and you can remain in that quality of consciousness that you have come to know. It is always there; one has just to discover it. And it is easier to discover when life is emptied out.

SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE "HH," EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. And when the breath goes out, "HH," everything is emptied. EFFORTLESSLY:

in this moment, there is no need to make any effort. The SPONTANEITY: just be aware, be spontaneous, be sensitive, and realize this moment of death.

In this moment you are just near the door, just near the door!- very, very near to the ultimate. The immediate has moved out, the superfluous has moved out. In this moment you are not the wave:

you are the ocean - just near, just near! If you can become aware you will forget that you are a wave.

Again the wave will come, but now you can never be identified with it, you will remain the ocean.

Once you have known that you are the ocean, you can never again be the wave.

Life is waves... death is the ocean. That is why Buddha so much insists about his NIRVANA that it is death-like. He never says you will attain life immortal, he says you will simply die totally. Jesus says, "Come to me and I will give you life, and life abundant." Buddha says, "Come to me to realize your death. I will give you death totally." And both mean the same thing, but Buddha's terminology is more basic. But you will become afraid of it. That is why Buddha had no appeal in India; he was uprooted completely. And we go on saying that this land is a religious land, but the most religious person couldn't get roots here.

What type of religious land is this? We have not produced another Buddha; he is incomparable.

And whenever the world thinks India to be religious, the world remembers Buddha - no one else.

Because of Buddha, India is thought to be religious. What type of religious land is this? Buddha has no roots here; he was totally uprooted. He used the language of death - that is the cause, and brahmins were using the language of life. They say THE BRAHMAN and he says NIRVANA:

'Brahman' means life - life, infinite life; and 'Nirvana' means just cessation, death - total death.

Buddha says, "Your ordinary death is not total; you will be born again. It is NOT total! You will be born again! I will give you a total death, and you will never be born again." A total death means now no birth is possible. So this so-called death, Buddha says, is not death. It is just a rest period, you will become alive again. It is just a breath gone out. You will take the breath in again, you will be reborn. Buddha says, "I will give you the way so that the breath will go out and will never come in again - total death, nirvana, cessation."

We become afraid because we cling to life. But this is the paradox: the more you cling to life, the more you will die, and the more you are ready to die, then the more you become deathless. If you are ready to die, then there is no possibility of death. No one can give you death if you accept it, because through that acceptance you become aware of something within you which is deathless.

This incoming breath and outgoing breath are the life and death of the body, not of "me." But "I" do not know anything other than the body; "I" am identified with the body. Then it will be difficult to be aware when the breath comes in, easy to be aware when the breath goes out. When the breath is going out, for that moment you have become old, dying, emptied completely of the breath; you are dead for a moment.

IN THE "HH," EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY. Try it! Any moment you can try it. Just riding in a bus or traveling in a train or moving to the office, whenever you have time intone a sound like "Allah" - any sound ending with "AH." This "Allah" helped so much in Islam - not because of any Allah there in the sky, but because of this "AH." This word is beautiful. And then the more one goes on using this word "Allah, Allah..." it becomes reduced. Then what remains is "Lah, Lah..." Then it is reduced further; then it remains as "Ah, Ah..." It is good, but you can use any word that ends in "AH"

- or just "AH" will do.

Have you observed that whenever you are tense you will sigh - "AH" - and you will feel relaxed. Or whenever you are in joy, overjoyed, you say "AH," and the whole breath is thrown out and you feel within a tranquility that you have never felt. Try this: when you are feeling very good, take the breath in and then see what you feel. You cannot feel that well-being that comes with "AH." It is coming because of the breath.

So languages differ, but these two things never differ. All over the world, whenever someone feels tired he will say "AH." Really, he is calling for death to come and relax him. Whenever one feels overjoyed, blissful, he says "AH." He is so overfilled with joy that he is not afraid of death now. He can relieve himself completely, relax completely.

And what will happen if you go on trying it, trying it? You will become fully aware of something within you - the spontaneousness of your being; of SAHAJ of being spontaneous. That you are already, but you are too much engaged with life, too much occupied with life. You cannot become aware of the being which is behind.

When you are not occupied with life, with the incoming breath, the being behind is revealed; there is a glimpse. But the glimpse will become, by and by, a realization. And once it is known you cannot forget it - and this is not something which you are creating. That is why it is spontaneous: it is not something you are creating. It is there, you have simply forgotten. It is a remembrance! It is a rediscovery!

Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. If you are sleeping and you are being observed, your chest comes up and down; your breath never goes down to the belly. The breath can go down to the belly only if you exhale and do not inhale. If you inhale and do not exhale, the breath cannot go down to the belly. The reason why breath goes to the belly is that when one exhales, the whole breath is thrown out and then the BODY takes it in. And the body takes only that amount which is needed - never more, never less.

The body has its own wisdom, and it is more wise than you. Do not disturb it. You can take more - then it will be disturbed. You can take less - then it will be disturbed. The body has its own wisdom, it only takes that amount which is needed. When more is needed, it creates the situation. When less is needed, it creates the situation. It never goes to the extreme, it is always balanced. But if YOU inhale it is never balanced, because you do not know what you are doing, you do not know what is the need of the body. And the need changes every moment.

Allow the body! You just exhale, you just throw it out, and then the body will take breath in - and it will take it deeply and slowly, and the breath will go down to the belly. It will hit the navel point exactly and your belly will go up and down. If you inhale then really, you never exhale totally. Then the breath is in and you go on inhaling, so the breath which is already in will not allow your breath to go down to the very bottom. Then just shallow breathing happens. You go on taking breath in, and the poisonous breath is there, filling you up.

They say that you have six thousand sacs in your lungs and only two thousand are touched by your breath. The four thousand are always filled with poisonous gases which need to be exhaled, and that two-thirds portion of your chest creates much anxiety, much anguish and misery in the mind, in the body. A child exhales, he never inhales. Inhaling is done by the body itself.

When the child is born, the first thing he is going to do is cry. With that cry his throat opens, with that cry comes the first "AH." The oxygen and air that had been given by the mother is exhaled. This is his first effort with breathing. That is why if a child is not crying, then the doctor will become uneasy, because he has not shown the sign of life. He still feels dependent on the mother. He must cry!

That cry shows that now he is becoming an individual; the mother is not needed, he will take his own breath. And the first thing is that he is going to cry in order to exhale that which was given by the mother, and then his body will start functioning, inhaling.

A child is always exhaling, and when the child starts inhaling, when the emphasis moves to inhaling, be aware. He has already become old; he has learned things from you. He has become tense.

Whenever you are tense, you cannot take a deep breath. Why? Your stomach becomes rigid.

Whenever you are tense your stomach becomes rigid, it won't allow breath to go down. Then you have to take shallow breaths.

Try with "AH." It has a beautiful feeling around it. Whenever you feel tired, "AH" - throw the breath.

And make it a point to emphasize exhaling. You will be a different man, and a different mind will evolve. With the emphasis on breathing in, you have developed a miser mind and a miser body. With exhaling, that miserliness will disappear and with it many problems. Possessiveness will disappear.

So tantra will not say leave possessiveness. Tantra says, change your system of breathing; you cannot possess then. Observe your own breathing and your moods, and you will become aware.

Whatsoever is wrong is always associated with the emphasis that is given to the incoming breath and whatsoever is good, virtuous, beautiful, true, is always associated with exhaling. Whenever you are speaking a lie, you will hold your breath in. Whenever you speak truth, you never hold the breath. You fear that "I am speaking a lie," so you hold the breath. You are afraid something may go out with it - the out-moving breath. Your hidden truth may be revealed, so you are afraid.

Go on trying this "AH" more and more. You will be more healthy in body, more healthy in mind, and a different quality of calm, at-easeness, tranquillity will develop.

The tenth sound method:

STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, ENTER THE SOUND.

We are not aware of the body even or how the body functions and what is its tao, what is its way. But if you observe, then you can become very easily aware. If you stop your ears and pull your rectum up, contract your rectum, everything will stop for you. It will be as if the whole world has become non-moving - as if everything has become static, stopped. Not only movements, you will feel as if time has stopped.

What happens when you pull the rectum up, contract it? What happens? When both the ears are closed simultaneously, with closed ears you will hear a sound within. But if the rectum is not pulled up, that sound is released by the rectum. That sound is very subtle. If the rectum is pulled up, contracted, and the ears are closed, you will see within you a pillar of sound - and that sound is of silence. It is a negative sound. When all sounds have ceased, then you feel the sound of silence or the sound of soundlessness. But it will be released from the rectum.

So close the ears and pull the rectum up. Then you are closed from both the sides, and your body becomes closed and just filled with sound. This feeling of being filled with sound gives a deep fulfillment. So we will have to understand many things around it, only then will it become possible for you to have the feeling of what happens.

We are not aware of the body - that is one of the basic problems for a seeker. And the society is against becoming aware of the body because society is afraid of the body. So we train every child not to be aware of the body, we make every child insensitive. We create a distance between the child's mind and body, so he is not very much aware of the body, because body awareness will create problems for the society.

Many things are implied. If the child is aware of the body, he will become aware of sex sooner or later. And if he is too much aware of the body, he will feel too much sexual, sensuous. So we have to kill the very root. He should be "made dull" about his body, insensitive, so he never feels it. You do not feel your body. You feel it only when something wrong happens, when something goes wrong.

You have a headache in the head, then you feel your head. Some thorn is there, then you feel your leg, your feet. When your body aches, you feel that you have a body. You feel it only when something goes wrong, and then too not right away. You are never aware of your diseases immediately. You become aware only when a period has passed and when the disease goes on knocking at your consciousness that, "I am here." Only then do you become aware. So no one really goes to the doctor in time. Everyone reaches there late, when the disease has entered deep and has done much wrong.

If a child has grown up with sensitivity he will become aware of the disease even before the disease happens. And now, in Russia particularly, they are working on the theory that a disease can be known even six months before its happening if someone is very deeply sensitive about his body, because subtle changes start long in advance. They prepare the body for the disease. The impact is felt even six months before.

But never mind disease, we never become aware even of death! If you are going to die tomorrow, you are not aware even today. A thing like death which may happen the next moment, and you are not aware this moment. You are totally dead to your body, insensitive. This whole society, the whole culture up to now, creates this dullness, this deadness, because it has been against the body. You are not allowed to feel it. Only in accidents can you be pardoned, forgiven for being aware of it; otherwise "do not be aware of the body."

This creates many problems, particularly for tantra, because tantra believes in deep sensitivity and knowledge of the body. You go on moving and your body goes on doing many things and you are unaware. Now much work is being done on body language. The body has its own language, and psychiatrists and psychologists and psychoanalysts in particular are being trained for body language, because they say you cannot believe the modern man. Whatsoever he says cannot be believed. Rather, one must observe his body, that will give a more true clue.

A man enters a psychiatrist's office. The old psychiatry, Freudian psychoanalysis, will talk and talk with the man to bring out whatsoever is hidden in his mind. Modern psychiatry will observe his body because that gives clues. If a man is an egoist, if ego is his problem, he stands in a different way than a humble man. His neck has a different angle than a humble man, his spine is not flexible but dead, fixed. He looks wooden, not alive. If you touch his body it has a wooden feeling, not the warmth of a living body. He is like a soldier just moving to the front.

Look at the soldier moving to the front. He has a wooden shape, a wooden feeling, and that is needed by a soldier because he is going to die or to kill. He must not be much aware of the body, so his whole training is to create a wooden body. Soldiers marching look like toys, like dead toys marching.

If you are humble you have a different body; you sit differently you stand differently. If you feel inferior, you stand differently; if you feel superior you stand differently. If you are always in fear, you stand in such a way as if you are protecting yourself from some unknown force. That is always there.

If you are not afraid, you are just like a child playing with his mother; there is no fear. Wherever you go you are unafraid, at home with the universe around you. The man who is afraid is armored. And when I say armored it is not only symbolically, physiologically he is armored.

Wilhelm Reich was working very much on body structure, and he came to see some deep associations between mind and body. If a man is afraid, his stomach is not flexible. You touch his stomach and it is like a stone. If he becomes fearless, his stomach relaxes immediately. Or if you relax the stomach, then the fear disappears. Massage the stomach to relax, and you will feel more fearless, less afraid.

A person who is loving has a different quality of body and warmth - he is warm bodily. A person who is not loving is cold, physiologically he is cold. Cold and other things have moved into your body and they have become barriers, they do not allow you to know about your body. But the body goes on working in its own way and you go on working in your own way - a rift is created. That rift has to be broken.

I have seen that if someone is suppressive, if you have suppressed your anger, then your fingers, your hands, have the sensation of a suppressed anger. And a person who knows how to feel it can feel just by touching your hand that you have suppressed anger. And why in the hand? Because anger has to be released by the hands. If you have suppressed anger then in your teeth, in your gums, it is suppressed - and it can be felt by touching. It gives a vibration that "I am suppressed here."

If you have suppressed sex, then in your erotic zones it is there. If a person has suppressed sex, then if you touch his erotic zones you can feel it. With any erotic zone touched, sex is there if it has been suppressed. The zone will become afraid and will withdraw from your touch, it will not be open.

Because the person inside is withdrawing, the part of the body will withdraw. It will not allow you to bring about an opening.

Now they say that fifty percent of women are frigid, and the reason is because we teach girls to be more suppressive than boys. So they have suppressed, and when a girl suppresses her sexual feelings up to the age of twenty, it has become a long habit - twenty years of suppression. Then when she will love, she will talk about love, but her body will not be open; the body will be closed.

And then an opposite, a diametrically opposite phenomenon happens: two currents oppose each other. She wants to love but her body is repressive, the body withdraws; it is not ready to come closer.

If you see a woman sitting with a man, if the woman loves the man she will be inclining toward him, the body will be inclining. If they are sitting on a sofa, both of their bodies will be inclining toward each other. They are not aware, but you can see it. If the woman is afraid of the man, her body will be inclining to the opposite direction. If a woman loves a man she will never cross her legs when sitting near him. If she is afraid of the man she will cross her legs. She is not aware; this is not done consciously. It is body armor. The body protects itself and works in its own ways.

Tantra became aware of this phenomenon; the first awareness of such deep body feeling, sensitivity, was with tantra. And tantra says that if you can use your body consciously, the body becomes the vehicle to move to the spirit. Tantra says, it is foolish, absolutely idiotic, to be against the body. Use it! It is a vehicle! And use its energy in such a way that you can go beyond it.

Now, STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, ENTER THE SOUND.

Many times you have been contracting the rectum and sometimes the rectum is released even without your consciousness. If you suddenly become afraid, the rectum is released. You may defecate in fear, you may urinate in fear. Then you cannot control it. If a sudden fear grips you, your bladder will relax, your rectum will relax. What happens? In fear, what happens? Fear is a mental thing, so why do you urinate in fear? Why is the control lost? There must be some deep connecting root.

Fear happens in the head, in the mind. When you are unafraid this never happens. The child really has no mental control over his body. No animal controls his urine, bladder or anything. Whenever the bladder is full it is released. No animal controls it, but man has to control it of necessity. So we force a child to control when he should go to the bathroom and when not. We tell him he has to control; we give timings. So the mind takes over the control of a function which is non-voluntary.

That is why it is so difficult to train the child for the toilet. And now psychologists say that if we stop toilet training, humanity will very much improve.

Toilet training is the first repression of the child and its natural spontaneity, but it seems difficult to listen to these psychologists. We cannot listen to them because then the children will create many problems. We have to train them of necessity. Only a very, very rich, affluent society will be able not to bother. Poor societies have to manage. We cannot afford it. If the child urinates anywhere, we cannot afford it. If he urinates on the sofa we cannot afford it, so we have to train. This training is mental. The body really has no built-in program for it. The body has NO built-in program for it!

Man is an animal as far as body is concerned, and the body knows no culture, no society. That is why when you are in deep fear, the control mechanism that you have imposed on the body is relaxed. You are not in control; you are thrown off control. You can control only in normal conditions.

In emergencies you cannot control because for emergencies you have never been trained. You have only been trained for the normal, day-to-day, routine world. In an emergency the control is lost, your body starts functioning in its own animal way. But one relationship can be understood, that with a fearless man this will never happen. So this has become a sign of a coward.

If in fear you urinate or defecate, this shows you are a coward. A fearless man will not behave in this way, because a fearless man is taking deep breaths. His body and his breathing system are related; there is no gap. With a man who is a coward there is a gap, and because of that gap he is always overburdened with urine and defecation. So whenever an emergency comes, that overburdenedness has to be thrown: he has to be unburdened. And it has a reason in nature. A coward who is unburdened can escape more easily with his stomach relaxed, can run more easily.

A burdened stomach will become a hindrance, so it is helpful for a coward to be relaxed.

Why am I talking about this? I am just saying this, that you have to be aware of your mental processes and your stomach processes; they are deeply related. Psychologists say that fifty to ninety percent of your dreams are because of your stomach processes. If you have taken a very heavy meal you are bound to see nightmares. They are not related with the mind, it is just that the heavy stomach creates them.

Many dreams can be created by outside tricks. If you are sleeping, your hands can be crossed on your chest and immediately you will start dreaming some nightmare. A pillow can be put on your chest and you will dream that some demon is sitting on your chest just going to kill you. And this has been one of the problems. Why is there such a burden from the small weight of a pillow? If you are awake, there is no weight; you do not feel anything heavy. But why is it that a small pillow placed on you in the night when you are sleeping is felt as being so heavy that it is as if you have been burdened with a big stone or a rock? Why is so much weight felt?

The reason is this: when you are aware, when you are awake, your mind and body are not correlated; the gap is there. You cannot feel the body and its sensitivity. While asleep, the control, the culture, the conditioning, dissolves; you have again become a child and your body has become sensitive.

Because of that sensitivity, a small pillow is felt as a rock. It is magnified because of sensitivity - the sensitivity magnifies it. So body-mind processes are deeply related, and if you know what happens you can use this.

Rectum closed, pulled upwards, contracted, creates a situation in the body in which sound can be felt if present. You will feel a pillar of sound in silence within the closed space in your body. Close the ears and pull up the rectum, and then just remain with what is happening inside you. Just remain in that vacant state which is created by these two things. Your life energy is moving within and it has no way to go out. Sound goes out either from your ears or from your rectum. Those are the two doors from where the sound can move out. If is not moving out, you can feel it more easily.

And what will happen when you feel this inner sound? With the very phenomenon of hearing the inner sound, your thoughts dissolve. Just try it anytime during the day: just pull up the rectum and put your fingers in the ears. Press the ears and pull up the rectum. You will feel that your mind has stopped. It will not be functioning; thoughts will have stopped. That constant flow of thoughts is not there. It is good! And if one goes on doing it whenever there is time, in the day if you can do it for five or six times, within three or four months you will become an expert in it. And then such a well-being flows out of it!

And the inner sound, once heard, remains with you. Then you can hear it the whole day. The market is noisy, the road is noisy, the traffic is noisy, but if even in that noise you have heard the inner sound, you will feel the still small voice that goes on inside. And then nothing will disturb you. If you can feel your inner sound, then nothing from the outside can disturb you. You remain silent; whatsoever happens around you makes no difference.

The last sound technique:

ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS SOUND, ALL SOUNDS.

Your own name can be used as a mantra very easily, and it is very helpful because your name has gone very deep into your unconscious. Nothing else has gone so deep. If we are all are sitting here, and we all fall asleep and someone comes and calls "Ram," no one will listen except the person whose name is Ram. He will listen to it; he will be disturbed in his sleep. No one else will listen to the sound "Ram," but why does this man listen? It has gone down deep; it is not conscious now, it has become unconscious.

Your name has gone very deep within you, but there is a very beautiful phenomenon about your name: you never call it, others call it. Others use it; you never use it.

I have heard that in the first world war, for the first time in America rationing was created. Thomas Edison was a very great scientist, but he was very poor so he had to stand in the queue for his ration card. And he was such a great man that no one ever used his name before him. There was no need to use his name for himself, and no one else would use his name because he was so much respected. Everyone would call him Professor, so he had forgotten what was his name.

He was standing in the queue, and when his name was called, when it was asked who Thomas Alva Edison was, he just stared blankly. Again the name was called, then someone who was a neighbor to Edison said to him, "Why are you standing? Your name is being called. It is your name, Professor."

Then he became aware and he said, "But how can I recognize it? No one calls me Edison. It has been so long... they just call me Professor."

You never use your own name. Only others use it - you have heard it used by others. But it has gone deep, very deep. It has penetrated like an arrow into your unconscious. If you yourself use it, then it becomes a mantra. And for two reasons it helps: one, when you use your own name, if your name is "Ram" and you use "Ram, Ram, Ram...", suddenly you feel as if you are using someone else's name - as if it is not yours. Or if you feel that this IS yours, you feel that there is a separate entity within you which is using it. It may belong to the body, it may belong to the mind, but he who is calling "Ram, Ram..." becomes a witness.

You have always called others' names. When you call your own name it looks as if it belongs to someone else, not to you, and it is a very revealing phenomenon. You can become a witness to your own name, and with the name your whole life is involved. Separated from the name, you are separated from your whole life. And this name has penetrated deep within you because everyone has called you this from your very birth, you have always heard this. So use this sound, and with this sound you can go to the very depths to which the name has gone.

In the old days we gave everyone a name of God - everyone. Someone was Ram, someone was Narayan, someone was Krishna, someone was Vishnu, or something like that. They say all the Mohammedan names are the names of God - ALL the Mohammedan names! And all over the world that was the practice, to give a name which is really a name of God.

This was for good reasons. One reason was this technique - because if your name can be used as a mantra it will serve you a double purpose. It will be YOUR name - and you have heard it so much, so many times, and all your life it has penetrated deep. Then also, it is the name of God. So go on repeating it inside, and suddenly you will become aware that "This name is different from me." Then by and by this name will have a sanctity of its own. You will remember any day that "Narayan" or "Ram," this is God's name. Your name has turned into a mantra.

Use it! This is very good! You can try many things with your name. If you want to be awakened at five o'clock in the morning, no alarm is so exact as your own name. Just repeat thrice inside, "Ram, you have to be awake by five o'clock sharp." Repeat it three times, and then just fall asleep. You will be awakened at five o'clock because "Ram," YOUR name, is very deep in the unconscious.

Call your name and tell yourself that "At five o'clock in the morning, let me be awakened." Someone WILL awaken you. And if you continue this practice, one day you will suddenly realize that at five o'clock someone calls you and says, "Ram, be awake." That is your unconscious calling you.

This technique says, ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS SOUND, ALL SOUNDS. Your name becomes just a door for all names. But enter the sound. First, when you repeat "Ram, Ram, Ram..." it is just a word. But it means something when you go on repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram..."

You must have heard the story of Valmiki. He was given this mantra "Ram," but he was an ignorant man - uneducated, simple, innocent, childlike. He started repeating "Ram, Ram, Ram..." but he was repeating so much that he forgot completely and reversed the whole thing. Instead he was chanting "Mara, Mara..." He was chanting "Ram, Ram, Ram..." so fast that it became "Mara, Mara, Mara..."

And he achieved the goal through "Mara, Mara, mara..."

If you go on repeating the name fast inside, soon it will not be a word: it will become a sound, just meaningless. And then there is no difference between Ram and Mara - no difference! Whether you call Ram or Mara, it makes no sense, they are not words. It is just the sound, just the sound that matters. Enter the sound of your name. Forget the meaning of it, just enter the sound. Meaning is with the mind, sound is with the body. Meaning is in the head, sound spreads all over the body. So forget the meaning. Just repeat it as a meaningless sound, and through this sound you will enter all sounds. This sound will become the door to all sounds. And "all sounds" means all that exists.

This is one of the basic tenets of Indian inner search, that the basic unit of the existence is sound and not electricity. Modern science says that the basic unit of the existence is electricity, not sound, but they also say that sound is a form of electricity. Indians, however, have always been saying that electricity is nothing but a form of sound.

You may have heard that through a particular RAGA, a particular sound, fire can be created. It can be created - because this is the Indian idea, that sound is the basis of all electricity. So if you hit sound in a particular frequency, electricity will be created.

On long bridges, if a military, is passing, they are not allowed to march because many times it has happened that because of their march the bridge falls. It is because of sound, not because of their weight. They will be passing anyhow, but if they pass marching, then the particular sound of their feet breaks the bridge.

In old Hebrew history, the city of Jericho was very protected by great walls and it was impossible to break those walls by guns. But through a particular sound the walls were broken, and that sound was the secret of the breaking of those walls. If that sound is created before walls, the walls will give way.

You have heard the story of Ali Baba: a particular sound and the rock moves. These are allegories.

Whether they are right or not, one thing is certain: if you can create a particular sound so continuously that meaning is lost, mind is lost, the rock at your heart will be removed.