... Auditorium Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. BELOVED OSHO, BUDDHAS HAVE THREE BODIES: A TRANSFORMATION BODY, A REWARD BODY AND A REAL BODY. THE TRANSFORMATION BODY IS ALSO CALLED THE INCARNATION BODY. THE TRANSFORMATION BODY APPEARS WHEN MORTALS DO GOOD DEEDS, THE REWARD BODY WHEN THEY CULTIVATE WISDOM AND THE REAL BODY WHEN THEY BECOME AWARE OF...

... THE SUBLIME .... BUT ACTUALLY, THERE'S NOT EVEN ONE BUDDHA-BODY, MUCH LESS THREE. THIS TALK OF THREE BODIES IS SIMPLY BASED ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, WHICH CAN BE SHALLOW, MODERATE OR DEEP. PEOPLE OF SHALLOW UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PILING UP BLESSINGS AND MISTAKE THE TRANSFORMATION BODY AS THE BUDDHA. PEOPLE OF MODERATE UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PUTTING AN END TO SUFFERING AND MISTAKE THE...

... REWARD BODY AS THE BUDDHA. AND PEOPLE OF DEEP UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE EXPERIENCING BUDDHAHOOD AND MISTAKE THE REAL BODY AS THE BUDDHA. BUT PEOPLE OF THE DEEPEST UNDERSTANDING LOOK WITHIN, DISTRACTED BY NOTHING. SINCE A CLEAR MIND IS THE BUDDHA, THEY ATTAIN THE UNDERSTANDING OF A BUDDHA WITHOUT USING THE MIND .... INDIVIDUALS CREATE KARMA. KARMA DOESN'T CREATE INDIVIDUALS .... ONLY SOMEONE WHO'S...

... different, but it IS the expression of compassion. Both are expressing it in their own unique ways. The sutra: BUDDHAS HAVE THREE BODIES: A TRANSFORMATION BODY, A REWARD BODY AND A REAL BODY. THE TRANSFORMATION BODY IS ALSO CALLED THE INCARNATION BODY. THE TRANSFORMATION BODY APPEARS WHEN MORTALS DO GOOD DEEDS, THE REWARD BODY WHEN THEY CULTIVATE WISDOM AND THE REAL BODY WHEN THEY BECOME AWARE OF THE...

... SUBLIME .... BUT ACTUALLY, THERE'S NOT EVEN ONE BUDDHA-BODY, MUCH LESS THREE. THIS TALK OF THREE BODIES IS SIMPLY BASED ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, WHICH CAN BE SHALLOW, MODERATE OR DEEP. PEOPLE OF SHALLOW UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PILING UP BLESSINGS AND MISTAKE THE TRANSFORMATION BODY AS THE BUDDHA. PEOPLE OF MODERATE UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PUTTING AN END TO SUFFERING AND MISTAKE THE REWARD...

... BODY AS THE BUDDHA. AND PEOPLE OF DEEP UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE EXPERIENCING BUDDHAHOOD AND MISTAKE THE REAL BODY AS THE BUDDHA. It needs some explanation. It is possible you may pass a Gautam Buddha without recognizing him because the recognition of a buddha, of an awakened being, needs some insight on your part. It depends on you, your understanding. If you don't have any understanding of the...

... something to beautify existence. They don't want to be just a burden on the earth. They want to contribute something; they want to leave the world a little better than they found it when they came into existence. These people will see buddha's first body, the transformation body. They will see buddha surrounded with an aura of light. You have seen pictures of Jesus, of Krishna, of Buddha with a...

... blessings, who are completely drowned in his being, will be able to see something which an ordinary spectator will not be able to see. The more they become receptive, the more they become sensitive, the more Buddha's reality becomes apparent to them. The first experience is of the transformation body: a thin light body, just four inches bigger than your body ...just around your body a four-inch aura of...

... light, very soft light. This is the body that transmigrates. That's why, before death -- as Kirlian discovered -- six months before, this body starts disappearing, it starts becoming condensed inside the being of man. It takes six months for it to come back to the center and become just a point of light instead of a big aura. And this small point of light transmigrates while your whole body remains...

... to the scientists that light has no weight; that's why if a point of light transmigrates it won't make any difference on your weighing scales. Light is absolutely weightless and the transmigration body is nothing but pure light. This is experienced by people even of shallow understanding. Those who don't understand much, but still have a little consciousness -- just a shallow consciousness -- even...

... they can see this light. But the people of moderate understanding can see a deeper body, hidden behind this thin layer of light, a thicker layer of light known in the Buddhist scriptures as the reward body. It arises only when one has been meditating so much that one is earning immense reward. In this world the greatest treasure and the greatest reward is to learn to be silent, to be utterly silent...

.... This is a silence body. But it is possible to be seen only by those who have come very close to Gautam Buddha. I have always divided people into three categories. The first is the student who comes to the awakened one. The student is capable of seeing the first body, the transformation body. The second is the disciple, who is not there with the buddha or any awakened human being out of curiosity...

... beyond the mind. He is capable of seeing the second body, the reward body. The reward body is really existence recognizing your meditation, your silence, and showering flowers on you. Existence is immensely happy when someone becomes enlightened, because the enlightenment of one person is really the triggering of enlightenment for many people. It can become a long chain, which can go for centuries. For...

... flower comes to release its fragrance. They are lamps without any flame in them. It is said of Diogenes, a man of the same caliber as Bodhidharma .... If they had met, it would have been a great meeting. Diogenes was in Greece. He lived naked; he had such a beautiful body that to hide it behind clothes would have been a crime. It is perfectly good to hide an ugly body behind clothes but a beautiful...

... body needs to be available for anybody who wants to see the beauty, the proportion. Diogenes was one of the most beautiful men. Even when Alexander the Great met him, he felt a little embarrassed -- although he was a world conqueror, compared to Diogenes he was utterly poor. Diogenes had nothing, but his richness was radiating from his naked body. Diogenes used to carry a lamp, even in the daytime...

... the eyes of the master. He looks into the very depth of his eyes. A disciple is not interested in what the master is saying, he is interested in what the master IS. Then he comes to know the second body of the master; his treasure, his reward body. The whole existence has been showering millions of rewards on the master. But there is still a third step. The man of the deepest understanding comes to...

... know the third body, the deepest body. The student comes to know the first body, the disciple comes to know the second body and the devotee comes to know the third body, the real body, the buddha's real being. Again there is a quantum leap -- from disciple to devotee. Disciple comes very close, very, very close, but even closeness is a distance. The devotee simply melts and merges into the master. He...

... is not close, he becomes one. And in this oneness he comes to know the real body of the awakened being. But Bodhidharma says: these three bodies and the experiences of these three bodies are of the normal mind. Actually, there is not even one buddha-body. A man of enlightenment is utterly nobody -- or no body. That's what the meaning of nobody is. He is pure emptiness. He is just pure sky without...

.... You can say anything you want to say a little loudly from outside." The moment a devotee forgets even that he IS, that no idea of I AM arises in him, then he comes to know that the buddha has no body at all. That buddha is a nobody; he is simply pure silence, emptiness, a total zero. BUT ACTUALLY, THERE'S NOT EVEN ONE BUDDHA-BODY MUCH LESS THREE. THIS TALK OF THREE BODIES IS SIMPLY BASED ON...

... HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, WHICH CAN BE SHALLOW, MODERATE OR DEEP. PEOPLE OF SHALLOW UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PILING UP BLESSINGS AND MISTAKE THE TRANSFORMATION BODY AS THE BUDDHA. PEOPLE OF MODERATE UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE PUTTING AN END TO SUFFERING AND MISTAKE THE REWARD BODY AS THE BUDDHA. AND PEOPLE OF DEEP UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE THEY'RE EXPERIENCING BUDDHAHOOD AND MISTAKE THE REAL BODY AS...

... seeds and caring for the crop. One friend wants to know whether there would be any difficulty if he did not shake his body and allow it to tremble. There will be no difficulty. What difficulty is there if you don't do anything at all? If he is so afraid of moving the body, what will he do when the inner energy begins to move? If he wants to restrain the body from shaking, what will he do when the...

... the body is united with the soul. That is why we say that a man is alive as long as he breathes. With breath gone, life comes to an end. Recently I happened to visit a home where a woman has been lying in a state of coma for nine months. And the physicians say that she will now never regain her consciousness, although she can live for another three years. The woman is being kept alive with the help...

... of drugs and food which are just injected into her body in its state of coma. She is completely unconscious; for nine months she has not regained consciousness even once. I visited her family and told her mother that she was as good as dead. The old woman said, "No, as long as breathing lasts there is always hope. The doctors say there is no hope, but who knows? The doctors are not always...

... correct. Who knows? She may regain consciousness, because she continues to breathe. There is breath; the bridge has not fallen yet. She can yet return to consciousness." Breath is the bridge that connects the soul with the body. When you breathe deep and fast, not only the body is shaken, even the fibers of the soul within are shaken. For instance, there is a bottle lying on your shelf for long. It...

... you breathe at its highest pitch you create a storm which not only shakes the body but also every fiber of the soul within. And it is in the moment of that trembling that you clearly feel that the body and soul are separate. Now you come and ask, "What if I don't breathe deeply? Will it harm?" It will do only this much harm - that you will never know that you are separate from your body...

.... That is why a basic condition has been attached to the breathing, that you have to be a wit ness to it. You breathe deeply and you watch at the same time that a breath comes in and another goes out. When you observe the movements of incoming and outgoing breaths then you know that not only the body is separate, even the breath is separate from you. Then you know that you are only an observer separate...

... from both body and breath. One's separation from the body can be known through breathing alone, but separation from breath can be realized through witnessing breathing. So two things, deep breathing and witnessing, make for the first stage, and they run through the second to the end - that is, the third stage. I ask you to let go of the body in the second stage. Deep breathing will continue, and in...

... addition to it you have to let go of the body. It has many implications, and I am going to go into a few of them here. Firstly, there are thousands of tensions stored in your body and you are not aware of them, although these are your collections. Civilization has made our lives so unnatural that even when you are angry with someone you keep smiling before him. Your body is not aware of your manners; it...

... feels like strangling the person concerned. Your fists clench by themselves, but you wear a false smile and you don't allow the fists to clench, you suppress them. Then the bodily nerves which had readied themselves for the clenched fists find themselves in a great difficulty. They simply fail to understand what it is all about. And a state of restlessness is created in the body. The fists should have...

... clenched. People who study and understand anger in depth say - and I say the same - that whenever you are so angry you do just one thing. Don't wear a false smile, instead take your fists under the desk, if you have one before you, and clench and unclench them energetically for five minutes. And then you will laugh, and it will be a different laugh altogether. The body does not know at all that man has...

... become civilized. The body functions absolutely like a machine. But man has put great constraints on its workings; the body has been inhibited in every way. And it is because of these inhibitions that your body has become a storehouse of tensions; thousands of tensions are collected inside your body. And too many tensions form complexes - knots of tensions. So when I ask you to let go of the body and...

... you do so, then these complexes that have been there since your childhood, begin to loosen up and dissolve. Their loosening up and dissolution is very necessary; otherwise you will never attain to bodilessness, you will never transcend the body and go beyond it. With the dissolution of the complexes your body will be come as light as a flower. Perhaps you have heard of a name given to Mahavira, the...

... civilization, your culture, your conditionings, your inhibitions, your being a woman or a man of position, your being this and that - all these things have such a strong hold on you that you don't let go of your body. Only this morning a woman came to me and said that she was afraid while meditating that someone's hands might touch her body. Right now this poor woman must be sitting at a great distance from...

... you all. But in spite of it if someone's body rolls by and reaches her, she will be in a mess again. She wanted to know if she could sit apart. I told her, "Who knows, the gods in the heavens may send one to wherever you will go. It is good that someone comes to you. He will come to you wherever you will go. So don't change your place. And what harm is there if someone touches your body?"...

...; The way of women is such that even if God crosses their path they will shrink away from him lest he should touch their body. Their entire body is rid den with complexes. From childhood they are trained and conditioned in a way that they look upon their body as if it is a disease which they have to bear. They don't live in the body; it is just a load they reluctantly carry with them. The body is like...

... others. It is enough if you can think and take care of yourself. Think out this much - whether you are insane, weak or strong - and only think about yourself. But we always do the contrary, we think about others. This is very wrong. As I said, letting go of the body leads firstly to a catharsis of the repressed tensions and dissolution of the body blocks and complexes. And secondly, when the body moves...

... by itself - you don't operate it, rather it operates on its own momentum - then its separation from you, from the soul becomes clear. Because when you see that the body is now whirling, that it is now at a standstill, that the hands are shaking - not that you shake them, rather they shake on their own - then you know for the first time that your being and your body are different and separate. Then...

... you will also know that it was not you, but your body that became youthful; and again it is not you, but the body that is going to grow old. And if this awareness deepens you will also know that you are not going to die; only the body will die. When the body spins like a machine, you will know in depth, that the body is really separate from you. This you will know only when you absolutely let go of...

... the body. And in the third stage we ask: "Who am I?" Even as one knows that he is not the body, even as one knows that he is not the breath, one still does not know who he is. It is a negative knowing that one is not the body, that one is not the breath; it is not positive. What is positive knowing? It is to know who he is, which he has not known yet. So in the third stage we ask: "...

... you are not aware why you ask it. You ask it with a motive to get rid of these three stages. But if you get rid of these, know well that the fourth stage will never happen. But why this fear of these three stages? The fear is there. And these stages are meant to wipe out this fear. The fear is that the body can do anything, and there are things you don't want it to do. But what can it do? You can...

... dance, you can cry, you can shout, you can fall down. But what is the difficulty about it all? You breathe deeply in the first stage, and in the second you continue breathing and let go of the body. There should be no difficulty whatsoever in breathing deep and fast and letting go of the body. You don't have to make any effort to dance; if you dance, it will impede deep breathing. But if dancing...

... ENERGY? No one can do shaktipat, no one can transmit energy; but someone can be a vehicle for such transmission. It is true that no one can do it. And if some body claims that he can do it, he is indulging in sheer deception. No one can do it, and yet in some moment transmission of energy can happen through someone. If that someone is totally empty and surrendered, shaktipat can happen in his presence...

... happening to you, even if a little bit has been happening to your body, you will do well to stand up tomorrow and meditate. Because movements in a standing position can be the fastest and the most intense, too. In a standing position the flow of energy is at its highest. Up to now I did not ask you to stand up because you were lacking in courage even for doing it sitting. Now if you do it standing, the...

... day of the camp, you should bring your whole will and energy into play tomorrow. Another friend asks: Question 5 JUST NOW YOU TALKED ABOUT THE THREE STAGES. CAN YOU EXPLAIN WHAT EFFECTS THEY HAVE ON THE STATES OF ONE'S BODY, HEART, BRAIN AND MIND? Effects will be many. (A VOICE) WILL THEY CAUSE HEART-FAILURE? It would be fine if the heart fails. Nothing like it. That is what is wanting. Let the...

... results. Many physical diseases can disappear, longevity can increase and many chemical changes can take place in the body. Numerous glands of the body that are at the moment as good as dead, can be activated. We have no idea what the psychologists now say, even the physiologists say, about anger. When one is angry, they say, a particular kind of poison is released in the body. But up to now they have...

... not been able to know what it is that happens in the case of love. As in anger, a special kind of poison is released, so in love a special kind of nectar is released in the body. But because love is a rare phenomenon in our world, a loving man has yet to visit a scientist's lab. That is why he has not been able to detect it. If meditation has its full impact, the body begins to secrete nectar or...

... ambrosia which symbolizes immortality. Meditation has really deep chemical effects on the body. Those who go deep into meditation begin to see extraordinary colors, smell uncommon perfumes and hear unheard of sounds. Extraordinary waves of light and sound begin to flow through them. These are all chemical effects of meditation. You will see such fantastic colors as you have never seen. In fact, the whole...

... chemistry of the body undergoes a sea-change. The body begins to perceive, think and understand things in a different way altogether. All the electric circuits of the body change. Just as a good deal happens at the level of the body, so also a great deal happens at the level of the mind, too. But these are matters of detail, and I will talk to the questioner about it separately. The possibilities are...

... really great. Question 6 ANOTHER QUESTION: WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF DEEP BREATHING ON THE BRAIN, THE HEART, ETC? As soon as you begin deep breathing, the proportion of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body will change. There is a particular amount of carbon and oxygen in our body; deep breathing will change its ratio. And as soon as this ratio changes, consequent changes take place in the whole body...

... SAME AS AUTOHYPNOSIS? This meditation agrees with autohypnosis to a large extent, but at the last point it parts company. It is largely linked with hypnosis; its first three stages, except the witnessing part of it, belong to hypnosis as such. The witnessing, which is needed throughout its practice, the awareness on the part of the meditator that breath is in and out, that the body is shaking and...

... information. You can go on accumulating; you can become a teacher. A teacher is one who knows without knowing. He attracts people, if he is a good talker, a good writer, if he has a personality, if he has a certain charisma about him, magnetic eyes, a forceful body. And by and by he becomes more and more skillful. But the people around him cannot be disciples, they will remain students. Even if he pretends...

... has become a Master of Masters. Now he is a god What will he be doing then, a Master of Masters? This stage comes only when a Master leaves the body - never before it. Because in the body you can be aware, in the body you can realize that there is no time. But body has a biological clock. It feels hunger, and after a time gap again hunger - satiety and hunger, sleep, disease, health. In the night...

... the body has to go to sleep; in the morning it has to wake. Body has a biological clock. So the third Master happens only when a Master leaves the body - when he is not to come back to the body again. Buddha has two terms. First he calls it nirvana, enlightenment, when Buddha became enlightened but remained in the body. That is enlightenment, nirvana. Then after forty years he left the body; he...

... calls it the absolute nirvana - mahaparinirvana Now he becomes a Master of Masters, and he has remained a Master of Masters. Every Master, when he leaves the body permanently, when he is not to come back again, he becomes a Master of Masters. Mohammed, Jesus, Mahavira, Buddha, Patanjali, they have remained Master of Masters, and they have continuously been guiding - Masters not disciples. Whenever...

..., immediately a relationship comes into existence. Suddenly he is joined with Buddha - Buddha who is no more in the body, Buddha who is no more in time and no more in space, but still is - Buddha who has become one with totality, but still is. This is very paradoxical and very difficult to understand because we cannot understand anything which is beyond time. Our whole understanding is within time; our whole...

... ticking and the hands have been taken off. Just imagine a clock goes on ticking, and no hands, so you cannot say what is the time. A man without desire is a clock ticking without hands. That is the state of a Buddha. In body, he lives, the clock goes on ticking, because the body has its own biological process to continue. It will be hungry, it will ask for food. It will be thirsty and ask for a drink...

.... It will feel sleepy and will go to sleep. And the body will need, so it is ticking. But the innermost being has no time: the clock is without hands. But because of the body you are anchored in the world - in that world of time. Your body has a weight, and because of that weight the gravitation still functions on you. When the body is left, when a Buddha leaves body, then the ticking itself stops...

.... Then he is pure consciousness: no body, no hunger, no satiety; no body, no thirst; no body, then no need. Remember this - desire and need - these two words. Desire is of the mind; need is of the body. Desire and need, then you are a clock with hands. Only need, no desire, then you are a clock without hands, and when need also drops, you have gone beyond time. This is eternity; beyond time is eternity...

.... For example: if I don't look at the watch - and I have to look continuously the whole day - if I don't look at the watch, I don't know what is the time. Even if I have seen it five minutes before, again I have to look because I don't know exactly, because now - no time inside - only the body is ticking. Consciousness has no time. Time is created when consciousness desires something: immediately time...

... carry it. A Buddha has no future. He is finished with that also because he has no desire. But needs are there because the body is there. Few more karmas have to be fulfilled; few more days the body will go on ticking, just the old momentum will continue. You have to wind a clock. Even if you stop winding, it will continue to tick for few hours or few days. The old momentum will continue. BEING BEYOND...

... THE LIMITS OF TIME, HE IS THE MASTER OF MASTERS. When need and desire both disappear, time disappears. And remember to make a distinction between desire and need; otherwise you can be in a very deep mess. Never try to drop needs. Nobody can drop, unless the body drops. And don't get confused what is what. Always remember what is need and what is desire. Need comes from the body and desire comes from...

... the mind. Need is animal; desire is human. Of course, when you feel hungry you need food. Stop when the need stops; your stomach immediately says, "Enough" But the mind says, "A little more. It is so tasty." This is desire. Your body says, "I am thirsty," but the body never says for Coca Cola. The body says, "Thirsty" - you drink. You cannot drink water more...

... time, and you are materialists because your time stops at death. Remember, it is easy to drop needs, because body is so silent you can torture it. And body is so adaptive that if you torture it too long it becomes adjusted to your torture. And it is dumb It cannot say anything If you fast, for two, three days it will say that "I am hungry, I am hungry" But your mind is thinking of heaven...

..., and without being hungry you cannot enter. It is written in the scriptures: "Fast - so you don't listen to the body. It is also written in the scriptures that "Don't listen to the body - the body is the enemy." And body is a dumb animal: you can go on torturing. For few days it will say, if you start a long fast, at the most the first week... Fifth, sixth day, the body stops because...

... nobody is listening, so body starts making adjustments of its own. It has a reservoir for ninety days. Every healthy body has a reservoir of fat for ninety days for some emergency situation - not for fasting. Sometime you are lost in a forest and you cannot get food. Sometime there is a famine and you cannot get food. For ninety days the body has a reservoir. It will feed itself; it eats itself. And it...

... eating your own fat, your own flesh. You have become a man-eater, a cannibal. Fasting is cannibalism. Within ninety days you will be a skeleton, every reservoir finished. Then you have to die. It is easy to be violent to the body: it is so dumb. But to the mind it is difficult because mind is so vocal, it won't listen. And the real thing is to make the mind listen and cut the desires. Don't ask for...

... and become aware. Then you will be beyond time. Desires create time; if you cut desires you will be beyond time. Bodily needs will remain til the body is there, but if desires disappear, then this is your last or, at the most last but one life. Soon you will also disappear. One who has attained desirelessness will sooner or later become beyond needs only because then the body is not needed. Body is...

... a vehicle of the mind; if the mind is not there, body cannot be needed any more. HE IS KNOWN AS AUM: And this God, the perfect flowering, is known as aum. Aum is the symbol of the universal sound. In you you hear thoughts, words, but never the sound of your being. When there is no desire, no need, when the body has dropped, when the mind disappears, what will happen? Then the real sound of the...

... more and more alert; so the sound relaxes your nervous system, but not you. The sound relaxes your body, but not you. The sound sends your whole body and the physical system into sleep, but not you. Then double process has started: the sound drops your body to a restful state and the awareness helps you to rise to the superconscious. Body moves to the unconscious, becomes a zombie, fast asleep, and...

... you become a superconscious being. Then your body reaches to the bottom and you reach to the peak. Your body becomes the valley and you become the peak. And this is the point to be realized. Repeat and meditate. REPEATING AND MEDITATING ON AUM BRINGS ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ALL OBSTACLES AND AN AWAKENING OF NEW CONSCIOUSNESS. The new consciousness is the fourth - the super-consciousness. But...

... remember, only repetition is not good. Repetition is just to help to meditate. Repetition creates the object, the most subtle object is the sound of aum. And if you can be aware of the most subtle, your awareness also becomes subtle. When you watch a gross thing, your awareness is gross. When you watch a sexual body, your awareness becomes sexual. When you watch something - an object for greed - your...

... Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS BURNING TO ASHES AND BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMANAS, AS SUBJECTIVELY, LETTERS FLOW INTO WORDS AND WORDS INTO SENTENCES, AND AS, OBJECTIVELY, CIRCLES FLOW INTO WORLDS AND WORLDS INTO PRINCIPLES, FIND AT...

... through the egoless gate. Now we will enter the techniques - because these techniques are concerned with being egoless. Very simple techniques, but if you understand this background then you can do them, and much becomes possible through them. The first technique: FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM...

..., FROM THE TOES UP, UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. A very simple technique and very wonderful, very easy to do, but some basic requirements are to be fulfilled beforehand. Buddha liked this technique very much; he initiated his disciples into this technique. Whenever someone was initiated by Buddha, the first thing was this: he would tell him just to go to the burning place and observe a...

... body being burned, a dead body being burned. For three months he was not to do anything, but just sit there and watch. So the seeker would go to the burning place of the village. He would stay there for three months, day and night, and whenever a dead body would come there he would just sit and meditate. He would just look at the dead body; then the fire would be created and then the body would start...

... burning. And for three months continuously he would not do anything else - just look at dead bodies being burned. Buddha said, 'Don't think about it. Just look at it." And it is difficult not to come upon the thought that sooner or later your body is going to be burned. Three months is a long time, and continuously, day and night, whenever there was a body to be burned, the seeker was to meditate...

.... Sooner or later he would start seeing his own body on the burning pyre. He would start seeing himself being burned. It will be helpful; if you want to do this technique, go to the burning place. Watch - not for three months - but at least watch one body being burned; observe it. Then you can do this technique easily with yourself. Don't think: simply watch the phenomenon, watch what is happening...

... very intensity of inhalation creates a tension. And the normal, ordinary emphasis is always on inhalation. If I tell you to take deep breaths, you will always start with inhalation. Really, we are afraid of exhaling. That's why breathing has become shallow. You never exhale, you go on inhaling. Only the body goes on exhaling, because the body cannot exist with inhalation alone. It needs both: life...

... and death. Try one experiment. The whole day, whenever you remember, exhale deeply and don't inhale. Allow the body to inhale; you simply exhale deeply. And you will feel a deep peace, because death is peace, death is silence. And if you can pay attention, more attention, to exhalation, you will feel egoless. With inhalation you will feel more egoistic; with exhalation you will feel more egoless...

.... Pay more attention to exhalation. The whole day, whenever you remember, exhale deeply and don't inhale. Allow the body to inhale; you don't do anything. This emphasis on exhalation will help you very much to do this experiment, because you will be ready to die. A readiness is needed, otherwise the technique will not be of much help. And you can be ready only if you have tasted death in a certain way...

... thrown away, purged, only then can you enter the technique. This will help: pay more attention to exhalation. And really, if you can pay all attention to exhalation and forget inhaling.... Don't be afraid that you will die; you will not die - the body will take inhalation by itself. The body has its own wisdom: if you deeply exhale, the body will take a deep inhalation by itself. You need not interfere...

.... Then a very deep relaxation will spread all over your consciousness. The whole day you will feel relaxed, and an inner silence will be created. You can deepen this feeling more if you do another experiment. Just for fifteen minutes in the day exhale deeply. Sit in a chair or on the ground, exhale deeply, and while exhaling close the eyes. When the air goes out, you go in. And then allow the body to...

.... When ripples are not there the lake is there. And the lake can exist without the ripples, but the ripples cannot exist without the lake. Life cannot exist without death. Death can exist without life, because it is the source. Then you can do this technique. FOCUS ON FIRE RISING THROUGH YOUR FORM FROM THE TOES UP... Just lie down. First conceive of yourself as dead; the body is just like a corpse. Lie...

... down, and then bring your attention to the toes. With closed eyes move inwards. Bring your attention to the toes and feel that the fire is rising from there upwards, everything is being burned. As the fire rises, your body is disappearing. Start from the toes and move upwards. Why start from the toes? It will be easier, because the toes are very far away from your I, from your ego. Your ego exists in...

.... The fire is rising upwards, and the parts it has passed are no more there; they have become ashes. Go on upwards, and lastly the head disappears. Everything has become... the dust has fallen unto dust... UNTIL THE BODY BURNS TO ASHES BUT NOT YOU. You will remain just a watcher on the hill. The body will be there - dead, burned, ashes - and you will be the watcher, you will be the witness. This...

... witness has no ego. This technique is very good to reach the egoless state. Why? - because so many things are implied in it. It appears simple; it is not so simple. The inner mechanism is very complex. First thing: your memories are part of the body. Memory is matter; that's why it can be recorded. It is recorded in the brain cells. They are material, part of the body. Your brain cells can be operated...

... transplanted into a child, and that child will have all the memories of Albert Einstein without going through all those experiences. It is part of the body, memory is part of the body, and if the whole body is burned and has become ashes, you will not have any memory. Remember, this is the point to understand: if the memory is still there, then the body remains and you have been playing tricks. If really you...

... go deep in the feeling that the body is dead, burning, and the fire has completely destroyed it, you will not have any memory in that moment. In that moment of watching, there will be no mind. Everything will have stopped - no movement of thought, just watching, just seeing what has happened. And once you know this, you can remain in this state continuously. Once you have known that you can...

... separate yourself from the body.... This technique is just a method to separate yourself from the body, just to create a gap between you and the body, just for a few moments to be out of the body. If you can do this, then you can remain in the body and you will not be in the body. You can go on living as you were living before, but you will not be the same again. This technique will take at least three...

... months. Go on doing it. It is not going to happen in one day, but if you go on doing it every day for one hour, within three months, some day suddenly your imagination will have helped and the gap will be created, and you will actually see the body gone to ashes. Then you can watch. In that watching you will realize a deep phenomenon - that the ego is a false entity. It was there because you were...

... identified with the body, with the thoughts, with the mind. You are neither - neither the mind nor the body. You are different from all that surrounds you; you are different from your periphery. Apparently the technique seems simple, but it can bring you a deep mutation. But first go and meditate on the burning ghat, on the burning ground, so you can see how the body burns, how the body turns to dust again...

... - so you can imagine easily. Then start from the toes and move very slowly. And before doing this technique, pay more attention to exhalation. Right before entering the technique, for fifteen minutes exhale and close the eyes; allow the body to inhale and open the eyes. For fifteen minutes feel a deep relaxation and then enter into it. The second technique: MEDITATE ON THE MAKE-BELIEVE WORLD AS...

... BURNING TO ASHES, AND BECOME BEING ABOVE HUMAN. If you can do the first, the second will be very easy. If you can come to imagine that your body is burning, it is not difficult to imagine that the whole world is burning - because your body is the world, and through your body you are related to the world. Really, only for your body are you related to the world - the world is extended body. If you can...

... think and imagine that your body is burning, there is no difficulty in imagining it with the whole world. And the sutra says it is a make-believe world - just because you believe, it is there. The whole world is burning, disappearing. But if you feel the first is very difficult, you can even start with the second. The second is very easy if you can do the first. And there is no need really to do the...

... second if you have done the first. With your body, everything disappears automatically. But you can do the second directly also, if the first is very difficult. I said start with the toes because they are very far away from the head, from the ego, but you may not even feel like starting from the toes. Then move still further away: start with the world, and then move nearer and nearer towards yourself...

... your side but right through you. The rustling of the tree will enter in you, and you will feel that from every pore of your body the air is passing. It is really passing through you. It is not only imagination, it is a fact - you have forgotten. You are not only breathing through the nose, you are breathing through the whole body - from every pore of it, from millions of pores. If you are allowed to...

... breathe through your nose, but all the pores of your body are closed, painted, you will die within three hours. You cannot be alive just by breathing through the nose. Every cell of your body is a living organism, and every cell is breathing. The air is really passing through you, but you have lost the contact. So sit under a tree and feel. In the beginning it will look like imagination, but soon it...

... ears, or you can hear through the whole of the body. You can just try it right here, just with a change of the emphasis: you are not hearing my words through the ears only, you are hearing me through the whole of your body. And when you really hear, and when you really listen, it is the whole body that listens. It is not only a part, it is not a fragmented energy that listens, it is the whole of you...

.... The whole of your body is involved in listening - then my words are passing through you; from every cell, from every pore, you are drinking them. They are being absorbed from everywhere. You can do this. Just go and sit in a temple. Many worshippers will be coming and going, and the bell of the temple will be hit again and again. Just listen with the whole of your body. The bell is ringing and the...

... whole temple is agog; every wall of it is reflecting. To reflect this, in order to feel that the sound is converging on you, we created a round shape. So from everywhere the sound is thrown back, it converges upon you from everywhere, and you can listen to it through your whole body - every pore, every cell, listening, drinking, absorbing it, and it is passing through you. You have become porous...

... into two parts: the sun part and the moon part. Even one breath is known as the sun breath and another breath is known as the moon breath. And, really, this is one of the deepest findings. If you stop the moon breath and just breathe from the sun breath, your body will become hot. And such a great heat can be created simply by using only one kind of breath that it seems inconceivable in physiological...

..., your nostrils change, and you begin to take your breath from the other nostril; then again it changes. When you need more heat in the body - for example, if suddenly you become angry - your sun breath starts. Yoga says that when you are angry, if you use your moon breath and stop the sun breath, you cannot be angry at all, because the moon breath creates a deep coolness inside. The whole body is...

... world. You can be born again and again only if there is an imbalance. If the balance comes to a totality, if the balance becomes total, it is impossible to be born again. You disappear from the world; the body cannot exist any more. Then you cannot re-enter a body again. So first we will try to understand what this inner sun is and what this inner moon is, and how they are balanced. This sutra says...

... the innermost unconscious activities, you become Enlightened. The very cells of your body become conscious; you become light. Your consciousness reaches to the very pores of your body. Just like the rays of the sun reach into the earth, your inner awareness, once awakened, begins to work in every cell of the body and every fibre, every nerve of the body. Your whole body is filled with light. But...

... body and it is the center. The solar family is the body and the earth belongs to the body as a cell. The heat goes to the solar family, it spreads. But the sun in itself is a cold thing, absolutely cold, and at its deepest center, it is the coldest spot in existence. It should be so because reality exists in polarities. If the sun is the hottest thing, it must have something inside it which balances...

... circumference. Each cell of your body will become heated, warm, because of the awareness penetrating. The second counterpart will be that your center of being will become cooler and cooler and cooler. That is the moon working. The sun is the warmth spreading, the light spreading. And you must know that light has two qualities - light and warmth. Heat is just concentrated light; light is nothing but dispersed...

... heat. So when light travels to your body, every cell will become warm, enlightened, aware. Sleep is a cold thing, night is a cold thing. That is why we sleep in the night: it is a cold time. And in the morning, with the rising sun, everything becomes warm, alive. Then it is difficult to sleep and easy to be awake. When your circumference is cold, when each body cell is cold. asleep, your center will...

... nearer and nearer to them they will become death-giving, because then they will not be warm: then they will be just pure fire. As it is, the whole body structure is just cold. You feel heat only in anger, in sex, in desire, in passion. That is not light, but simply a feverish phenomenon. Because of this, sex is felt as a release - because you lose a certain quantity of heat, and you are relieved; you...

... help! It releases energy. For persons who are well fed, it helps to delay heart disease. It releases energy, but it is not a solution. It is just a temporary arrangement. It just creates a leakage in your system from which energy is released. Any day that you are angry your whole body is heated. It becomes feverish. The center releases anger: energy comes to the periphery. Ordinarily it is cold. The...

... house. It helps! Then before the husband is back, the wife is released. If you make everything unbreakable, it will break families. Breakable things help families to continue. Now these are proven facts. If you have energy in the center which is feverish, not transferred to the periphery, not used as light for the whole body and for your whole being, this is bound to happen. Every day you will...

... accumulate it What sort of life is this? A vicious circle! With awareness the whole mechanism changes. With awareness, every moment your inner center is sending its energy to every pore of your body. And your body is not a small thing. It is a miniature universe: as above, so below. Everybody is a small universe. And when I say "small", I feel guilty - because, really, it is not small. It is as...

... vast as the universe. But because of our language, there are problems. The universe appears vast and your body appears small. What is the difference between the two? They say that if we can throw out all space from the earth, if we can compress it and throw out the space, if the vacant space in it is thrown out, our earth will be just like a small ball. If we can throw out all the empty space from...

... the Himalayas, they can be put into a match box. The material is not much, the matter is not much. The matter is very small, only the emptiness in it is vast. So how to judge whether a thing is big or small? A very small thing can be blown up to any bigness if we put space in it. If we put as much space into your body as there is in the earth, you will be like the earth. So all the differences are...

... food for the Divine. Then you are naivedya. Then the offering can be accepted. But you cannot offer your body as the food. It will be food, but for the vultures, not for the Divine. This cannot be offered as food for the Divine. Your body comes out of the earth and goes back to the earth. It can only be eaten by the earth again: "Dust unto dust.'It can only return to dust, so this body cannot be...

... offered to the Divine. One young seeker came to Gautam Buddha. He said, "I have come to offer myself to you. Accept me" Buddha asked him, "What are you offering - your body? But that is already offered and the earth will claim it, so how can you offer it to me? What are you offering? Tell me exactly!" The man was confused. He said, "Whatsoever I have I offer to you " Buddha...

... asked him, "What do you have? What is it that belongs to you? Do your thoughts belong to you? They belong to the society; your mind belongs to the society. Your body belongs to your parents, to the earth, to the sky, to water, to fire, to many things to the five elements. What do you have that you can offer to me?" The man could not answer because he had nothing else. He could not think of...

... touched. For the first time you are above yourself: you are the inner self. Now you can look down at yourself - at your sun, your moon, your body, your soul, your positivity, your negativity, your male, your female. Now you can look down at yourself - at the whole world of duality, at multidimensional duality - and now you can become naivedya, the food offering. But now there is no need even to offer...

... neither moves out to the object of anger, nor is It suppressed back to the original source. With observation this energy becomes diffused. It moves to the periphery of your body as light. When diffused, it moves as light, and the very anger becomes ojas, the very anger becomes a light, an inner light. So do not be disturbed and disappointed if you have much anger. That only shows you have much energy. A...

... developed than old Egypt. The real thing is that these bodies were preserved not by any outer chemical process, but by inner alchemy. If your sex energy, which is the source of life, can be transformed inwardly, then your body can be preserved for any length of time very easily. If your sex energy is transformed, then your body can be preserved even for a million years. If the cells of your body lose sex...

... then the body can be preserved, because birth comes through sex and death comes through sex. Your freshness, the youngness of the body, comes through sex, and then deterioration comes through sex. These mummies were preserved not just as historians say or as Egyptologists say, that man has always been thinking in terms of ego to preserve himself. With the kings, the emperors, for example, that is not...

... the case. Totally different is the secret. They were preserved only so that they would be recognized when their souls would be born again. When a man is born again in another body, if his old body is preserved it helps to further his inner progress. But the old body will be useful only if it was transformed by alchemy; otherwise it is of no use. If you change your body inwardly, your body then...

... becomes a laboratory. It is a lab; it is not just a body. If you have been working inside, experimenting inside, then you know this body from the inside, not only from the outside. We know our bodies only from the outside. Whatsoever the mirror tells is our only knowledge - it is from the outside.Our knowledge is as if someone goes around a house and looks at it, and then says, "I know it." He...

... has never come in; he has never looked from the inside. We look at our bodies from the outside, never from the inside. If you begin to transform your anger, your sex, you will begin to look at your body from the inside. Then your body is a great experiment, a great laboratory, very complex, and then you will want to preserve it for further growth. When one enters another body, one can learn much...

... from the old body. It was a great experiment in old Egypt, and many things were done with the body. They were successful in some things, failures in some things. If you have again a new body, a new laboratory, then if the old is preserved you will not have to begin again from ABC. If the old is preserved, this is a record. Death had interrupted, but now you can proceed. You are not to proceed from...

... the beginning again; you can proceed from the point where death interrupted in the last life. So only Egyptians and Tibetans have preserved bodies for this reason, but only those bodies which were undergoing deep inner experiments. Otherwise it is useless to preserve your old body. Other vise you will not even be able to recognize it. Lenin's body is preserved in Moscow, but he would not even...

... recognize it. If he were born again, he would not even recognize it! His body was never used as a laboratory; he never knew it. He was just acquainted with it in the mirror, never with the body itself. This process is alchemical: observe anger, and anger is transformed into light; observe sex, and sex is transformed into light. Observe any inner phenomenon which creates heat. Observe it, and through...

... observation it becomes light. And if your every heat phenomenon is transformed into light, you will come to feel the inner moon. And when there is no heat left, then you have accumulated the nectar of the full moon. And through this nectar you become immortal. Not in this body, not with this body: you become immortal because you transcend life and death both. Then you are naivedya: then you are a food...

... thorn pricks your foot and gives you pain, the pain, the thorn and your body are all natural phenomena. And then when you pull out the thorn with your hand, the hand which is pulling the thorn out is natural; the happiness, the disappearance of pain that you feel after removing the thorn, that is natural - there just isn't anything unnatural, cannot be. All natural means is that which can happen, that...

... of no-sex. Try to understand its evolvement, because this is where the mystic is going to return to. The second step is auto-erotic: the child loves himself, plays with his own body, is blissful for no reason; there is no companion, he is having fun lying there on his own, smiling. Mothers think the child is enjoying recollections from his previous life. He is simply absorbed in auto-eroticism; he...

.... And if your doings bring you happiness and health, it means you are walking hand-in-hand with nature. To go against is unhappiness, to go with is happiness. But if you become blissful, you are neither with nor against nature, you are one with nature. Oneness is bliss. Question BELOVED OSHO, AS LONG AS WE ARE IDENTIFIED WITH THE BODY, WE DO NOT CARE FOR IT. INSTEAD WE USE IT AS A TOOL TO SATISFY THE...

... EGO. BUT AS OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH THE BODY STARTS DIMINISHING, THERE ARISES SLOWLY A NEW ACQUAINTANCE, A NEW SENSE OF FRIENDSHIP WITH THE BODY. WHY THIS PARADOX? As one starts becoming peaceful, all feelings of enmity begin to drop away. Enmity towards whom is also not the point; the very feeling of enmity begins to drop from within. A blissful person can have only the feelings of friendliness. As...

... your meditation will deepen you will find that you have become friendly to everybody. Those who were yours are still yours, but those who were strangers have also become yours. The ignorant person, no matter how much identified he may be, treats the body not as his own, and no matter how much he may be living in the body he lives in enmity with it. It does not matter how much you decorate your body...

..., but from within you have an enmity with your body. You may not have recognized the fact but you are an enemy to your body. This enmity can be expressed in two ways. One way to express it is to use the body as a vehicle for indulgence... because then you are destroying the body and giving birth to all kinds of illnesses and sorrows in the body. So one way of manifesting enmity with the body is that...

... of the indulgent person; he rots. The other way is of the renouncer. He does not destroy the body through indulgence, he tortures it. He makes the body sleep on a bed of thorns, he keeps it hungry, he whips it - he tortures the body directly. The pleasure seeker tortures the body indirectly, but both torture the body and both are enemies to the body; neither is a friend. One of the disciples of...

... in two days. If other bhikshus would walk on the road, Shrona would walk on the rocky and thorny path. While other bhikshus kept at least one piece of cloth to cover themselves, Shrona would stay naked. Other bhikshus would rest under the shadow of some tree at noon, but Shron would be standing out in the sun. "You see," said Buddha, "he was torturing his body before he became a...

... bhikshu, and he is torturing it even now. Previously he was torturing it in the form of indulgences, now he is torturing it in the form of penances, but the torture, the enmity continues." Within six months nothing remained of Shrona's beautiful body but dry bones, wrinkled and dried up, his eyes sunken, his feet full of wounds and blisters; nobody could have recognized that this was prince Shrona...

... him a guest, because his reproach is of assistance to you. Now you see friendship even in the one who reproaches you. You will see the friendship of your body too, and then you will be able to thank it. A sannyasin is one who can thank his body too ... because it has not harmed you in any way, but rather has supported and been like a shadow to you. If you wanted to go to the whorehouse, your body...

... took you there - but it was you who wanted to go. But we are very strange people: we say this body is the enemy, it took us to the whorehouse! When you wanted to go to the temple, it took you to the temple... This body has followed you like a shadow, has accomplished what you wanted, and yet you blame it. When you commit a sin you say it is the body that is making you sin; when you are angry it is...

... the body that is making you to do it. When you are overwhelmed by sexual desire, you say it is the body that is driving you into it. Our habit of blaming the other is so old that when we cannot find anything else to blame, we impose it on the body. So if a sannyasin is condemning the body, understand well that he has not yet known the fragrance of sannyas; otherwise he would see that his body is a...

... temple, a wonderful gift of nature. Nature has given you so much in this body, if only you could use of some of it. In the body is hidden not sexual desire alone, there are also other centers higher than the sex, which contain in them other dimensions. Your body also contains that sahasrar from where opens the door to samadhi. Your lowest center is that of sexual intercourse from where opens the door...

... to nature. Your seventh center is that of meditation from where opens the door to the divine. In the body is hidden everything. So do not blame the body; the body opens the door you knock at. But our habits are such that we do not want to blame ourselves, somebody else is needed to take the blame. And if you cannot find anybody, then you take it on your own poor body. The so-called religions have...

... taught a lot of nastiness towards the body, and have made you an enemy of your body, and an idea has developed in you that you can be self-realized only through torturing your body. There can be no more foolish an idea than this. The spiritual man will not torture anybody, never mind torturing his own body. How can a torturer become spiritual? Torture is violence, brutality, sick. Torture is the nature...

... of a sick mind. Don't torture, know this body. So as meditation will arise in you, you will come to a new recognition of your body. For the first time you will see that the body is unique, very mysterious, with so many doors to it and a world full of unique mysteries hidden within it. You have not searched for its treasures at all. What you have searched for is what you have got. You are like a...

... stronger becomes our insistence on keeping our back towards him. If your enemy comes you don't look at him, you start looking somewhere else; you will turn your back to him. To turn your back on your enemy comes very naturally, and if your body is your enemy, then you ignore, you neglect this palace. True, people travel the path to hell through this body, but they also travel to heaven through the body...

.... The same ladder can be used to take you heavenwards or hellwards and the ladder does not ask you to climb upwards or downwards, this is entirely up to you. Even if a small glimpse of meditation starts happening to you, a deep sense of friendliness will arise in you towards your body, because you will discover that it is this very body that is making meditation possible. And the day samadhi happens...

..., you will see that this too has become possible because of the body. A liberated individual is full of immense gratitude and thankfulness towards his body even at the time of his death. Saint Francis was dying and at the very last moment he opened his eyes and said, "Thank you so much! You have been my constant companion - nobody else would have done so much. Whether I traveled to heaven or to...

... are you talking? You are not looking at any of us, nor does your conversation appear to be addressed to us. And none of us has been with you in all the situations the way you just described, so it does not make sense anyway if the conversation was addressed to any of us - so to whom are you talking? Are you talking to the void?" Saint Francis said, "I am talking to my body. In my ignorance...

... I have many times reproached and scolded it. Today I am offering my thanks to the body because there will be no opportunity again; this is the last chance for me to thank it and then I will be separated from the body forever. This body has gone through many troubles for me." This will be the feeling of the meditator. Enmity will drop, friendship will crystallize, and a gratitude will be felt...

... coming from all directions. It is the divine grace that is present in all the forms. This is why those who know have said that the body is a temple. It is the ignorant who have said that the body is an enemy. These ignorant people may even have written scriptures, but that makes no difference - they are still ignorant! Those who know have always said this body is a gift from the divine, and the...

... ignorant have always put the body and the divine against one other, as if unless you destroy your body you will never attain to the divine. If the divine was interested in destroying your body there was no need to create it in the first place. And even the divine is not without a body - this whole nature is its body. The whole nature is body of the divine; this is why the five elements of nature have...

... gathered in your body too in a miniature form. Your body is a miniature form of the divine. Out there is a vast sun burning, some sixty thousand times the size of the earth, and having immense heat and flames. In your house is burning a small lamp - very tiny, that can in no way be compared with the sun, but a flame is burning in it too. In this flame too is the same sun - the same rays, the same light...

.... You are a lamp; the form of the lamp is your body, and you are the flame. The divine is the supreme flame, and nature is the lamp for that flame. So when you die your flame will merge into the supreme flame, and your lamp will merge into the ultimate nature. This game is unique, and this leela, the play, is fascinating! Don't move in it with the feeling of enmity. One who becomes inimical to it goes...

.... Question 4: BELOVED OSHO, A CURIOUS THING HAPPENED TO ME ONCE WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL - PERHAPS ELEVEN OR TWELVE YEARS OLD. DURING RECESS TIME AT SCHOOL I WAS IN THE BATHROOM AND I LOOKED INTO THE MIRROR TO SEE IF I LOOKED TIDY. THEN SUDDENLY I FOUND THAT I WAS STANDING HALFWAY BETWEEN MY BODY AND THE MIRROR, WATCHING MYSELF LOOKING AT MY REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR. IT AMUSED ME TO SEE THE THREE I'S, AND...

...; It is true, there is a possibility they may fall down. But that falling down is not going to harm much. But why do children like whirling? While the body is whirling, small children can see it whirling. They are no longer identified with it, because it is such a new experience. With everything they are identified - with walking they are identified, with eating they are identified, with anything...

... they are doing, usually they are identified. This whirling is such an experience that the faster the body moves, whirls, the less is the possibility of their remaining identified. Soon they are lagging behind; the body is whirling but their being cannot whirl. It stops at a point and starts seeing its own body whirling. Sometimes it can come out of the body too. If the whirling child is not staying...

... in the middle; it was the same either way. I would feel so completely tired and the water would take me down with such a force that there would come a time when I would see, "Now there is no possibility of living any more." And that was the moment when I would suddenly see myself above the water and my body in the water. When it happened the first time, it was a very frightening...

... experience. I thought I must have died. I had heard that when you die, the soul goes out of the body: "So I have gone out of the body and I am dead." But I could see the body was still trying to reach the other shore, so I followed the body. That was the first time I became aware of a connection between your essential being and the body. It is connected just below the navel - two inches below the...

... navel - by something like a silver cord, a silver rope. It is not material, but it shines like silver. Each time I reached the other shore, the moment I reached the other shore my being would enter into the body. The first time it was frightening; then it became a great entertainment. When I told my parents, they said, "Someday you are going to die in that river. This is enough of a sign. Stop...

... going into the river when it is flooded." But I said, "I am enjoying it so much... the freedom, no force of gravitation, and seeing one's own body completely away." Then I moved to the university and there it happened once. I have talked about it. Just behind the university campus there was a hillock with three trees. I used to love those trees because it was impossible to sit silently...

... in the hostels. So I used to go and climb up a tree. The middle tree was very comfortable to sit in - the way its branches were - and I would sit there for hours in silence. One day - I don't know what happened - when I opened my eyes I saw my body lying down on the ground. It was the same experience that had happened in the river many times, so there was no fear. But in the river, it used to...

... happen automatically that when the body reached the shore, my being would enter into the body. I had no idea how to enter the body; it had always happened of its own accord. So I was stuck. I had no idea. I could see the cord joining me to the body, but how to enter the body, from where to enter? I had never learned any technique from anybody. I simply waited. There was nothing to do. A woman who used...

... to bring milk to sell to the hostel students came by, and she saw my body lying down. She was puzzled. She just touched my head to see whether I was alive or dead, and the moment she touched my head I entered into my body with such a quick force that I still can not get the idea of how it happens. But one thing became certain: if a man's being is out, a woman's touch to the body will help him to...

... come into the body. And vice versa: if a woman's body is away from her being, then a man's touch - and particularly on the forehead where the third eye is.... It was just by accident that she touched me on my head to see whether I was alive or dead, to see what had happened. She had no idea that I was sitting in the tree seeing everything that she was doing. When I opened my eyes she was shocked. She...

... said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I was going to ask you what you are doing here touching my head." She said, "I was thinking perhaps some accident had happened or something. You looked almost dead." I said, "I was almost dead, and I am grateful to you that you helped me. It was because of your touch that I came into the body." She said, "You mean...

... body fell. You helped me, and I am grateful. And there is nobody who brings such good milk as you, so you cannot stop doing it. If you stop doing it, I will start sitting in the same tree where you have to pass, coming and going - remember! And my body will be lying down, and I will be sitting in the tree." She said, "Don't do it again. I will give you milk - pure milk without water - but...

... poor woman. Don't create any trouble for me." What happened to you was just accidental. If you had pursued it, it would have come back. In fact, to watch in the mirror is one of the methods prescribed by the tantra system - but to watch long enough so that you become so identified with the reflection in the mirror, that when you step back, your body remains in the old position. And for women, it...

...;One was sitting on the mirror for the whole hour; no male can do that. The male was also sitting there once in a while; but the female remained stuck on the mirror." But it is a method prescribed in the scriptures, that you watch in the mirror long enough so that you become identified with the reflection in the mirror. Then you step back. Your body will not step back, but your being will step...

... is a reality. You had walked out of yourself, and what you saw is a kind of awareness outside the body. The same awareness you have to practice from inside the body. They are not different in quality. And the easiest way to find this out-of-body experience is to lie down on a bed, flat on your back. Relax, and when you feel completely relaxed, then just start feeling that you are leaving the body...

..., floating upwards toward the ceiling. In a few days you will be able to float above the body. But make sure that nobody disturbs you while you are in such a position, because if somebody disturbs you and the cord is broken, you are dead. So the best suggestion: ask Kaveesha to be present to help you to relax and suggest to you that your soul is leaving the body and floating in the air. And you will see...

... you lie down, immediately you will be able to float out. But keep alert that nobody disturbs you, that nobody comes into the room and wakes you suddenly. That can be fatal. If the cord is broken, then there is no way to rejoin it. So, first try it with Kaveesha. She can give you post-hypnotic suggestions that you will be able to float out of the body without any disturbance. And tell somebody to...

... wait at the door so that nobody comes in for one hour and you are left alone. When you give the suggestion that your body will be left by the soul for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes, exactly after thirty minutes it will automatically come back to the body. Never forget that - because entering into the body is difficult. And if it happens sometimes... then anybody who is watching the door has to...

... remember: if it is a woman, then a man should touch the third eye, or if it is a man, then a woman should touch the third eye. And the soul will simply rush back to the body. Those opposite energies are needed to attract each other. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... space. Space is everywhere. The space within is known as you self, and the space without is known as the supreme self. The body is just a material barrier - and it is porous, so the outer sky goes on coming in and the inner sky goes on coming out. There is a constant meeting. Your body is just like an earthen pot, porous. You have an earthen pot of the body, it divides, but it cannot divide totally...

...; the space is not broken by it. To know this inner space is the ultimate experience, because once you know this inner space you have know all; the quality of the inner space is the quality of the outer space. Inner and outer are not really two things; inner and outer are just two terms - because of this earthen pot, this body, we call it the inner space and the outer space. When the body drops, the...

... earthen pot melts, and drops, and in and out become one. When one comes to know this inner space as just an extension of the outer space - or vice versa: when one comes to know this outer space as just as an extension of the inner space, then inner and outer become meaningless. They are. To know this while in the body is called the state of jivanmukta - while the body is there, the earthen pot is there...

..., you have realized the inner space and the quality of space. Now there is no inner and outer. Of course the body is there, but now you know that the body never divides - the division is false. But the body will continue for a while..... The UPANISHADS say that even when you become a knower of the inner, a knower of the space - and you have come to realize that nothing can disturb you, nothing can...

... scar you, nothing can touch you, your virginity is absolute - even then your past karmas will continue to have their effects. The body will continue; the body will continue to feel pleasure and pain, the body will become old, diseased, the body will die - this will continue. Knowledge of the inner self is not the cessation of all karmas. The past karmas will drop only when they have reached their...

...;This is my body." He says, "This is my past karma's body." He never says, "I am ill and I am suffering." He only says, "This is a long procession of karmas and their effect; my past karmas reaching to their target - past reaching into the future. I am just a witness to it, unrelated." Because of this, because of this experience, observation, this realization that...

... attained to the inner sky, inner space, but still he will have to live in the body. He will have to be a witness to all the past karmas and their consequences. When all the consequences are finished, and the past karmas have dropped, the body will drop. Then a jivanmukta becomes a mukta; then MOKSHA, total freedom is attained. A jivanmukta attains freedom from the past, freedom from the future - but he...

... you pedaling it. It will go a little while and then it will drop. The same happens with your body, your mind. It is just a cycle, just a mechanism. It will move, but without you it cannot move far. Unless it is fed continually, fueled continually, it cannot move very far; it will drop. Buddha was dying. Ananda asked him, "Cannot you be with us a little more? Cannot we have you a little more? I...

..., I stopped pedaling long before - forty years. Really, I have been dead for forty years as far as I am concerned. I have not been in the body for these forty years; it was only for you that it has appeared I have been in this body. For me, I have been beyond; I have gone out of it long before. But the body had to continue, and now this is impossible. The momentum is just in its last flicker, the...

... dead - of course, the body is alive, and then moksha is attained and body also falls. Now get ready for the meditation. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... Available: N.A. Length: N.A. [NOTE: This discourse is in the process of being edited for publication. It is for reference use only.] Ashtavakra said; "O SON, LONG HAVE YOU BEEN CAUGHT IN THE NOOSE OF BODY-CONSCIOUSNESS. CUT THIS NOOSE WITH THE SWORD OF KNOWING 'I AM AWARENESS' AND BE HAPPY. THAT WHICH IS BORN, REMAINS, INCREASES, CHANGES, DETERIORATES AND PERISHES: YOU ARE NOT THAT. YOU ARE ALONE...

...;KNOW THAT WHICH HAS FORM IS FALSE, AND KNOW THE FORMLESS AS UNCHANGEABLE AND EVERLASTING. FROM THIS TEACHING OF THE TRUTH IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO BE BORN IN THE WORLD AGAIN. JUST AS A MIRROR IS THE SAME INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE IMAGE REFLECTED IN IT, GOD IS THE SAME INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THIS BODY. JUST AS THE ONE ALL-PERVADING SKY IS THE SAME INSIDE AND OUTSIDE A POT, THE ETERNAL EVERLASTING BRAHMA IS THE...

... SAME IN ALL THINGS." The first sutra: Ashtavakra said, "O son, long have you been caught in the noose of body- consciousness. Cut this noose with the sword of knowing 'I am awareness' and be happy." In Ashtavakra's vision - and this is the purest vision, the ultimate vision - bondage is only a belief, bondage is not real. There is an episode in Ramakrishna's life.... For his whole life...

... dream has become manifest, then it is very difficult to renounce it. The world is like a nightmare. A dream of devotion, a dream of feeling is not a nightmare, it is a very sweet dream. How to drop it? how to break it? Tears would start flowing from his eyes and he became ecstatic... his body would begin shaking. But he didn't raise his sword - he would completely forget about it. Finally Totapuri...

... was neither hungry nor thirsty - there was no consciousness of the outside, no awareness. All was forgotten. And when he opened his eyes six days later, the first thing he said was, "The last barrier has fallen!" This first sutra says, "O son, long have you been caught in the noose of body-consciousness." You have started believing this noose is your being. "I am the body, I...

... am the body, I am the body!" - you have repeated this, life after life. From this repetition we have become the body. But we are not the body. This is our misperception, this is our habit. This is our self-hypnosis, and we have believed it so deeply we have become it. There is another episode in Ramakrishna's life.... He did the sadhanas, the spiritual practices, of all religions. He is the...

....... He did the sadhana of the Sakhis for six months and after three months his breasts started to swell, his voice changed, he began walking like a woman, and his voice became sweet like a woman's. His breasts were growing, becoming the breasts of a woman's; the male structure of his body began to change. This much is possible, because man too has breasts though undeveloped - women's are developed. So...

... it is possible that undeveloped breasts become developed, the seed does exist. Up to this point nothing great has happened. Many men's breasts become enlarged - this is not such a great surprise. But when six months were nearly over he started menstruating. This was a miracle! To menstruate is completely against the science of the body. This had never happened to any man. What happened during these...

... six months? The belief "I am a woman" - this idea became so strong, this feeling echoed so deep in his being, in every pore.... In every cell of the body it echoed: "I am a woman." No opposing feeling remained, he completely forgot about being a man; then it happened. Ashtavakra is saying we are not bodies; it is just that we believed we were and we became bodies. Whatever we...

... believed we became. The world is our belief. And the moment we drop beliefs we can immediately be transformed. To drop it, nothing real has to be changed, only an idea must be dropped. If we were really the body, transformation would be very difficult. We are not really the body. In reality we are hidden inside the body as consciousness - the witness, the observer. "O son, long have you been caught...

... in the noose of body-consciousness. Cut this noose with the sword of knowing 'I am consciousness' and be happy." Raise the sword of awareness. "I am consciousness" - raise this sword of understanding, chop away the idea that "I am the body," and you are happy. All suffering is of the body. Birth, illness, old age, death - all are of the body, and when there is...

... identification with the body there is identification with all the pains of the body. When the body is worn out then we think "I have become worn out." When the body becomes ill we think "I have become ill." When the body approaches death we are frightened that we are dying. Beliefs... only beliefs. I have heard that one night Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were lying in bed.... They had no...

... body one more time, that will fix the color" - and he lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank the contents. They say the nurse passed out and fell over: she thought the man was drinking urine. And he had said, "... I will pass it through my body one more time and the color will be corrected, it will be put right." What kind of man is this? But it was only orange juice. If she had...

... known it was orange juice she would not have passed out. But her becoming unconscious was real, though it came from belief. In life you can find thousands of such incidents around you where belief has done something, where belief becomes actualized. "I am the body" - we have believed this for many lives, and believing it we have become the body. Believing it we have become small. Believing...

... it we have become limited. Ashtavakra's fundamental premise is that this is self-hypnosis, auto-hypnosis. You have not become the body, you cannot become the body. There is no way to do it - how can you become what you are not? What you are, you are right now; you only have to cut away false beliefs. "Cut this noose with the sword of knowing 'I am awareness' and be happy." Right now...

... awaken in joy... because all our miseries are parasites of the belief that we are the body. Buddha also dies, but does not suffer at death. Ramakrishna dies, but does not suffer at death. Raman dies, but does not suffer at death. When Raman died he had cancer. The doctors were very surprised: it was a a very difficult illness and it caused much suffering but Raman remained the same as ever, as if the...

... illness made no difference. It made no change at all. The doctors were disturbed. It was not possible; how could it happen? Death was at the door and the man was relaxed, unwavering. We can understand the discomfort of the doctors: so much suffering but the man was calm, unwavering. We can understand their discomfort, their reasoning, because the body appears to be all to us. One who knows that "I...

... am not the body... death is coming but it is the death of the body. And pain is coming, that too comes to the body...." A new consciousness has manifested that stands back and watches. And this distance between the body and consciousness is as the distance between earth and sky. There is no greater distance than this. In your inner world the most distant things in existence are meeting. You...

... projections of the mind will become quiet. Without knowing your being, projections cannot be stilled. Mental projections arise because the being is not known. If you think you are the body, desires of the body arise. If you think you are the mind, desires of the mind arise. The desires of whatever you identify with will shadow you, will reflect in you. The color of whatever you sit next to reflects on you...

... - become released from it. Remember Ashtavakra's sutra: You are free of action, how can you do anything? Ashtavakra says there are six life waves. These six waves are hunger and thirst, sadness and happiness, birth and death. Hunger and thirst are waves of the body. If there is no body there is neither hunger nor thirst. These are needs of the body. When the body is healthy hunger increases. When the...

... body is ill hunger decreases. If the body is out in the sun, thirst increases because sweat will evaporate. There is more thirst in hot weather, less thirst in cold. These are needs of the body, these are waves of the body. Hunger and thirst are of the body; sadness and happiness are of the mind. When someone leaves you there is unhappiness because the mind grabs hold, makes attachments. When you...

..., then goes out. You will begin to see a gap. In this very gap you will find that you are: this coming and going of the breath is the play of life force. And if you become capable of watching the coming and going of the breath, then the seer is separate from the breath, is other than the breath. Our body is the outermost circumference, mind is a circle within, and life, a circle deeper within. It is...

... possible for the body to be crippled, broken, destroyed, and still man goes on living. The mind can be split, insane, idiotic, and still man goes on living. But without breath man will not live. Remove a man's entire brain, still he will go on living - lying in a coma, but still alive. Limbs can be cut off so only breathing remains, man goes on living. If the breath stops, even if everything else is okay...

..., the man will die. These are the six waves, and the observer is beyond these six. "You are alone." No one is your companion. The body is not your companion, the breath is not your companion, thoughts are not your companions. You are alone. There is no companion within - what to say of outside! Husband-wife, family, friends, beloveds: none are companions. There is none who is near, none who...

...?," Ashtavakra will say, "You have never done them. Out of hunger the body may have done something. Out of vital energy life may have done something. Out of its own needs the mind may done something. You have never done anything. You are ever aloof, in non-doing. Doing has never happened through you; you are the observer of all actions. Liberation is possible right now." Consider it: if...

.... There is no hell anywhere, there is no heaven. You have never done anything; you have only seen dreams, you only thought you were doing. You were sleeping within - the body was doing. Those bodies that did things are long gone: how can the fruit of their actions be yours? You were sleeping inside - the mind acted. The mind that acted is disappearing every second. I have heard that a former maharaja...

... saw that his drawing room was dirty. He scolded his servant, Junko, saying, "There are spider webs all over the drawing room. What have you been doing all day long?" Junko said, "Some spider must have made those webs - I have been dozing in my room." You were dozing inside, some spider must have made the webs! The body spun webs, the mind spun webs, the life energy spun webs...

... body on a stretcher to the burning grounds: they go on switching shoulders. Tired of carrying the weight on one shoulder, they shift to the other shoulder. They get a few minute's relief; then the other shoulder starts to hurt, and again they switch. You are doing this life after life. You only find a short relief from this, you never find the ultimate rest from it. Drop this carrying of dead bodies...

... by nature, do not be small-minded." Why be involved with trivial things? Sometimes you are involved with, "This house is mine, this body is mine, this money is mine, this business is mine...." What trivial things the mind gets involved in! "THIS UNIVERSE IS PERMEATED BY YOU, IT IS STRUNG ON THE THREAD OF YOU. IN REALITY...." This whole existence is infused by you. The whole...

... our life are only waves. "Just as a mirror is the same inside and outside the image reflected in it, God is the same inside and outside this body." You have seen that when you stand in front of a mirror it makes a reflection. Does something happen in the mirror? A reflection made means that nothing happens. Move aside and the reflection is gone - the mirror remains just as it was. Your...

... reflective mirrors are surrounding you; outside, inside, mirrors are reflecting in mirrors, and there is nothing at all. In just the same way God exists inside and outside of this body. God is within, God is without, God is above, God is below, God is in the west, God is in the east, God is in the south, God is in the north - in every direction that same one. We are small whirlpools, small waves rising in...

.... You live in this, you don't live in the walls. The walls are only a boundary. In reality we live in the sky. We all exist as digambaras, sky-clad. What difference do the walls make? We remain in the sky, inner or outer. Today the wall exists, tomorrow it will fall - the sky always exists. If you mistakenly take the house as the walls, take the pot as layers of clay and take yourself as a body, it...

... there is so much written in the bus. Which of them should I do?" Nasruddin said. "Look at this: it says here, 'Always wear Handloom Saris!'" One need only be a little careful to avoid such mistakes. The body is very close - to read the language of the body is very easy. And the body is so close that its shadow falls on the inner mirror and is reflected. You are in the body, but you are...

... not the body. The body is yours, you are not the body's. The body is your means, you are the end. Use the body, don't lose your mastership. Though living in the body, remain beyond the body - like a lotus in the water. Hari Om Tat Sat. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... be aloof or apart from the whole. The echo of everything that arises in him reaches everyone else. His life is part and parcel of the life that flows around him. I LOVE BEAUTY - THE BEAUTY THAT LIES DEEP BENEATH THE BODY. The body, with its beautiful thoughts and its beautiful sensations, is only the protective frontier, but there is also the deep and perfect beauty of inner emptiness, free of...

... thought, free of sensation. So do not stop at the body. Stopping is death. Wade through the deep water. You will only find pebbles and shells on the shore. You have to go far out to sea to dive for pearls. THE ATTAINMENT OF KNOWLEDGE is not an end to the mystery of life. In fact, it is only when one has acquired knowledge that the true mystery is revealed. And then, only mystery remains. Knowledge is...

... outgrowth of having accepted the initial misconception. And those who misunderstand birth will also be afraid of death. What we know as life is really a living death. The man who is not aware that he is separate from his body is not alive in the real sense of the word. The man who does not know that he existed before the birth of his body and will exist after its death is not alive at all. The phenomenon...

... never know the real panorama of life. What a terrible fate, being cut off from the sky by these old walls! How self-destructive it is, being isolated from the soul by this old mind! THE PHYSICAL BODY GROWS OLD NATURALLY, but be careful your mind does not grow old along with it. It is a sure sign that you have successfully completed life's pilgrimage if your mind has kept the perfect simplicity of a...

... newborn child when your body has arrived at the threshold of death. DO NOT SEEK NIRVANA AS OPPOSED TO LIFE. Rather, make life itself nirvana. This is what those who know do. Do not strive for salvation but let all your actions bring salvation to you. I assure you this is possible. I speak from my own experience. The day this becomes possible for you, your life will become as rich as the most beautiful...

... intense attacks of diarrhea and vomiting that within two weeks his whole body was transformed. The madness left him and be became well again. He had been confined to the madhouse for six months, and although his sanity returned at this point - after he had been there only three months - they kept him there the full term. When he was finally sent home he told me of the incredible agony he had had to bear...

... only the physical is akin to a man mistaking the outer wall of a palace for the palace itself, like a man who sleeps on the outer parapet and thinks he is sleeping in the maharajah's bedroom. Those whose whole understanding of life centers around the body are just like that ignorant man. They bed down on the parapet and think they are guests in the palace. We are the same. We only know the outer...

... aspect of the body; we know nothing of the inner. We only know the outer circle of the body; we know nothing of what is inside, of the spirit. We do not even know the interior of the parapet, let alone the inside of the palace, and we think the outer portion of the wall that surrounds it is the palace itself. We only know the body from the outside. We have never tried to enter it and to see it from...

... within. If you and I are sitting inside this room we are seeing it from inside but a man who is wandering around outside is only able to see the exterior of this house. Similarly, man is unable to see his body from inside. He only knows it from outside. What we know is just an outer covering, a sort of outer garment draped over the body. It is like the outside wall of a house. The real owner of the...

... and his consciousness begins to shrink away from the body and to move inside, anyone looking on from the outside will say the man is dead. And the man himself will feel that he is dying because his consciousness will begin to move inside, to move away from what he has known as life. His consciousness starts to leave behind the surface existence he thought of as life. And this preparation for the new...

... journey makes his spirit cry out because everything he knew as life is being engulfed, swallowed up. People on the outside will take him for dead, and in this moment of supreme transformation even the man himself thinks he is dying or that he is dead and will be gone forever. This body is not our authentic being. Our true inner being is of an absolutely different nature; our real essence is a complete...

... chance to spring forth. The fact is that when the seed sprouts the outer shell has to disappear. It has to break open, to fall apart and vanish into the earth. It is really only when the outer wrapping, when the external wall of the seed is gone that the true nature of the seed manifests itself. Our physical body is just an outer wrapping. The consciousness of life is inner; the awakening of the spirit...

... because he has confined all his efforts to perfecting the seed alone. He can only know life when the tree has risen out of the tiny seed. And quite apart from being ignorant of the tree that grows out of the seed of life, we neither know, remember or are willing to believe that anything separated and distinct from the physical body exists. Man has concentrated all his attempts to perfect himself on the...

... because death is in the order of things. If he looks inside he sees that his body grows weaker and weaker every day, the youth is fading and giving way to old age. The body is slipping through is fingers, and yet he goes on preaching that the soul is deathless, eternal. He tries to bolster his faith and muster his courage by telling himself again and again not to be nervous, not to be afraid. He knows...

... will move closer to the lamp itself and we will finally be enveloped in total darkness. In the same way, the light of life, the spirit of life which has permeated every nook and cranny of the physical body, begins to shrink, slowly and imperceptibly, until it finally returns to its origin. And then it becomes the seed, the atom for its journey into a new and fresh life. It is shrinking that makes a...

... man realize that death is approaching, that he is dying, that what he thought was life is slipping away from him. His hands and feet grow numb, his breathing becomes difficult, his eyes no longer see and his ears no longer hear the sound of life. His limbs, his senses, his entire body functioned because of this unseen but potent connection with the spirit. And now the spirit is returning to its...

... origin. The body is only a physical entity and now that the spirit has departed, it becomes dead, lifeless. The master of the house is going to leave his abode, and so the house is becoming forlorn and gloomy. At this crucial moment of death a man feels himself going. He feels he is drowning, that he is finished forever. This sense of drowning; of dying, of everything ending, brings on such a flood of...

... the effort is his own and only an experiment, he suffers no anxiety. He simply endeavors to redirect his life-force inside. And he accomplishes this in a tranquil frame of mind. Then he is able to understand that the body and the spirit are two different things. The electric bulb is quite distinct from the electricity that illuminates it. The bulb is lifeless, a piece of matter, and when the...

... electric current is withdrawn there is no spark, no light, no current flowing through it. The human body is nothing more than a light bulb. Life is the electricity, the energy which keeps the physical body alive, glowing with vitality. In the culmination of meditation, in SAMADHI, the meditator dies of his own free will he realizes the truth - that his inner self is separate form his physical body. Once...

.... Yes, I do say both things. And I say them in the same breath because only one who knows how to die knows how to live life as it should be lived. And so, religion is both the art of dying and the art of living. If you really want to understand the true meaning of life and death, then you must, by your own effort, learn the art of withdrawing your life-force from the exterior body and focusing it on...

... hour every day concentrate on diverting your life-force to your inner being. If you make up your mind to dive, to drown in yourself, and you withdraw your energies from the outside you will achieve what you wish. But this requires consistent, daily practice. Then you will find that your energy, your life-force has begun to move inward. You will feel that the physical body has relinquished its hold on...

... you and that it is quite separate from you. If you follow this technique continuously for three months, you will find one day that your body is lying outside of you, separated from you. This you can see. At first this is perceived from inside, but after more practice, after the application of more courage you can bring the inner spirit out and from the outside you can see your own body lying outside...

... you, quite separated from you. Let me tell you about a remarkable experience that happened to me. Up to now I have never mentioned it anywhere. I have suddenly recalled it, so please listen carefully. Some twelve or thirteen years ago I had the habit of meditating at night while sitting in a tree. When ever I meditated on the ground I felt that my body was the more powerful, that it had the upper...

... hand. This is perhaps because the body is made of earth. The fact that yogis go to mountain peaks or high up in the Himalayas to meditate is certainly not without reason. It is definitely based on scientific principles. The greater the distance between the body and the earth, the less the force of the physical body is and the greater the power of the inner force becomes. That is why I used to climb a...

... tall tree to meditate for hours every night. One particular night I became so lost in deep meditation that I did not notice when my body fell out of the tree. I looked around me with mistrust when I finally notice my body lying on the ground. I was quite surprised. How it had happened that I was still sitting in a tree and my body was lying on the ground I could not comprehend at all. It was a very...

... strange experience. A bright line, a glittering silver cord running from the navel of my body was joined to me where I was perched in the tree above. I was at a loss to understand this or to foresee what would happen next. I was worried how I could return to the body. How long this experience lasted I do not know. But nothing like this had ever happened to me before. That day, for the first time, I saw...

... my own body from outside and since then the idea that my life was merely the physical existence of my body has finished for me. From that day on death also ceased to exist for me. That day I experienced that the body and the spirit are two different things, quite separate form each other. This was the most important moment in my realization of the spirit that dwells within every human body. It is...

... really very difficult to say how long that experience lasted. As morning dawned two women carrying milk cans from some nearby village passed and noticed my body lying there. From the top of the tree where I was sitting I saw them looking at my body. They approached the body and sat down beside it. They touched my forehead with the palms of their hands and in a moment, as if by some tremendous force of...

... attraction, I returned to my body and opened my eyes. After that experience I had another. I began to see that a woman could create an electrical charge in a man's body and that a man could do the same thing in the body of a woman. I pondered over the touch of the woman on my forehead and my instantaneous return to the body - how and why had this happened. Many more experiences of this sort happened to me...

... and then I understood why those Indian yogis who experiment in the realms of SAMADHI and death enlist the aid of women. If, in deep and profound SAMADHI, the spiritual self has left the man's physical body it cannot return without the help and cooperation of a woman. In the same way, if it has left a woman's body it cannot return without the assistance of a man. As soon as the bodies of a man and a...

.... And the experiences of these six months were extraordinary! The hair on my chest even turned white! Yet I failed to grasp the full meaning of what had happened. After much thought I finally realized that whatever connection or link there is between the physical body and the spiritual being had been interrupted, that the natural adjustment between them had been broken. And then I understood why...

... Shankaracharya died at the age of thirty-three and Swami Vivekananda at thirty-six. Their deaths took on a different meaning for me. If there is a disruption between the two, between the visible body and the invisible spirit, it is difficult for the body to remain alive. I also understood Ramakrishna Paramahansa's being afflicted with so many diseases, and saw that Shree Ramana Maharshi's dying of cancer was...

... not due to physical causes but this break in the adjustment between body and spirt. People seem to think yogis and sages are hale and hearty but the opposite is true. In fact most yogis die young, and when they are alive they are usually unwell because the adjustment has been disturbed and a discord has been created as a result. Once the spirit escapes the body and leaves it, it can never re-enter...

... the body properly, never as fully as before. Of course then there is no need, no reason for a proper re-entry of the spirit into the yogi's physical body. Determination - strong and unfailing determination - can force the energy to turn in, to direct itself inside. The thought, the desire to go in, to return to the center can definitely enable you to reach to the source. The urge must be so intense...

... that it permeates every fiber of your being, every breath you take. And then it may happen any time. One day, in a flash, you may reach your innermost core and perceive your body from within. What they say in yoga about veins and arteries is not in agreement with the science of physiology because it has no connection with this science. If you study physiology you will find that the veins and arteries...

... yoga talks about have nothing to do with this science at all. The are perceived from inside. And where are the seven chakras they describe in yoga? They are not to be found in the body because we try to locate them from outside. There exists a specific science that deals with the body from inside - an inner physiology. It is a very subtle science and it acquaints you with a number of separate and...

... distinct circuits and centers which cannot be found when the body is viewed from the outside. These centers are fields of energy formed where the body contacts the inner soul. The most important of the fields of contact is the navel. If your are driving a car and there is about to be an accident - or even if you are nervous - you will notice that first thing to be affected is your navel. In the upheaval...

... of precipitated by an impending disaster the navel becomes very perturbed because it is the most intimate contact between the physical body and the inner soul. The prospect of approaching death will even throw the circuits out of balance and they will lose their harmony with the centers of the entire body. There is an internal arrangement by which the inner body and the outer physical body retain...

... their mutual contact. The chakras, talked about so much in yoga, are the energy fields of these points of contact. To get to know your body from within is like getting to know an entirely different world, a world about which we have never before had knowledge or information. Medical science knows nothing of this inner body at all, nor will it ever be able to fathom it. Once the complete realization...

... that the inner self is distinct and different from the outer body happens, death ceases to exist. When there is no death one can very easily leave the shell of the body and view things as a disinterested spectator. The way to probe into the facts of life and death is not by thinking about philosophy or the scriptures - and those who pursue these avenues will uncover nothing worthwhile. My approach is...

... has undertaken the human body can be made to survive for one hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years - but the mere continuance of the physical body will not be proof there is no soul. The soul must change residences frequently, and this will only show that science has been able to repair the old house. No scientist should indulge in the fantasy that because he can preserve the human body for...

... five hundred or a thousand years that there is no soul, no eternal flame in man. This prolonging of life through advanced scientific research will only go to prove that this machine, this body which the soul must abandon because it has become worn out, can be repaired and so need not be discarded. If the heart can be replaced, if new limbs can be supplied, if new eyes can be provided, then there is...

... no need for the soul to change bodies. If a new heart can be implanted, new hands and feet substituted, then the soul need not relinquish the old body. Now the old house will do. But by no stretch of the imagination does this prove the soul does not exist. Science may also produce a test tube baby, but then scientists will be under illusion that they have created life itself. I would like to clear...

... fulfilled. This will not mean science has created a soul, it will simply mean the soul has found a suitable opportunity for its entry into life. Birth consists of two stages - the physical preparation of the infant's body in the mother's womb and the descent of the soul into it. But the future must seem very dark and gloomy for the soul because scientific research keeps trying to convince mankind it does...

... life. They must be ringing statements saying that whatever man may be he is not just his physical form, not just his bodily existence. Such affirmations must be spontaneous; they must come from a man's own direct experience of the soul that dwells inside the human body, the soul that gives it the spark of life, the soul without which the body is useless. Then perhaps we may be able to save mankind...

... extended my heartiest welcome to him. I would have told him that I am always ready to help a man to go inside and to give him a glimpse of the eternal soul that resides in his body. If you are ready, come forward and I will show you what life is, what death is. The ultimated experience is of God. The ordinary man's experience is confined to the physical body, the yogi's to the invisible body and the...

... experience of the self-realized man is of God himself. God is one; physical bodies are many. The invisible body is the causal body, and energy that is invisible to the mortal eye is constantly flowing from it into the physical body. Electric current can illuminate many light bulbs. The light, the electricity is one, but it spreads its power throughout many bulbs. The physical appearance of the bulbs may...

... differ, but the current is one - just as the spirit is one. The consciousness, the spirit within us is one, but it has two facets - one is the invisible body, and the other is the outer physical body. Man's experience is centered around the exterior body alone, and as a result of this imbalance he suffers. He is in agony, in pain; his life is full of darkness, full of utter darkness. Some men are able...

... to reach only as far as the invisible body, and then they believe there are a number of souls, as many as there are individuals. But those who transcend the invisible body confirm out of their own experience and without a shadow of a doubt that God is one, that the soul is one, that brahman is one. As such, there is no contradiction in either of my statements although they may look contrary to each...

... other on the surface. When I speak about the entry of the soul I mean that particular soul whose invisible body has not yet been discarded. This is the main basis for the assertion that the soul, which is destined for the glory of ultimate liberty, is not bound by the shackles of birth and death, that it is completely free from the cycle of birth and death. The soul experiences neither birth nor death...

... because it is never born and it never dies. When the invisible body perishes there is no longer any birth or any death because it is this invisible body that is the cause of each death and each resulting new birth. The invisible body is the sum total, in seed from, of all our thoughts, desires and aspirations, of all our longings and cravings, of all our knowledge and study, of all our experiments and...

... experiences. It is this invisible body which leads us on new travels, to fresh births. But the man whose thoughts and dreams have ended, whose desires and yearnings have finished, whose emotions and feelings have vanished has no place to go. There is no longer any reason for him to go anywhere. And so no cause remains for him to be reborn. There is a very strange and puzzling incident that occurred in the...

... had predicted would take place exactly three days after he lost interest in food. Ramakrishna Paramahansa stayed alive by holding on to one very small desire, and as soon as that desire also vanished no chain remained to hold him in the world. When that small desire vanished, the insignificant support which caused his physical body to survive also vanished. Those teerthankaras we regard as living...

.... Forget about reaching God for a moment. At present you are only conscious of your physical body, and it is many-sided, with endless facets. If you try to enter your physical body you will come upon another body, an invisible one. If you succeed in going beyond this invisible body you will find your self face to face with something that is not a body, that is nothing physical, that is something you can...

... only feel, sense. This is the soul. Nothing I have said today contains any contradictions whatsoever. A friend has asked me if the soul, when it leaves one body, can enter another that is dead. Yes, it can - but there is no point, no sense to its entering a corpse. That body died because the soul that resided in it could not remain in that particular body any longer. And since that body has become...

... useless for the soul that was in it, then what is the point in a soul leaving another body to occupy this dead one? Yes, it is possible for the soul to enter another body. But the question of how to enter another's body is of no importance at all when you do not even know how the soul that resides in your own body came there. What is the earthly good of wasting our precious time in a futile discussion...

... about entering the body of another when you do not even know how your soul has entered your own? You do not even know your soul lives in your body. You cannot even see your soul. You have no idea how to separate your soul from your body. Although there is no reason for entering another's body, yet from a scientific point of view it can be said that it is possible for the soul to enter another body...

... - because your body is not really yours and neither is anyone else's body his. All bodies are alien to the soul. When the soul enters the mother's womb it enters a body. That body is very tiny, just an atom, but it is a physical body all the same. That tiny atom in the mother's womb is hiding the physical body which will become fully grown in time. After fifty years, your hair will begin to grey - and...

... this potentiality is also hidden in that minute atom. In seed form, that atom contains the color of your eyes, whether your hair will be curly or straight, whether your hands will be long or not, whether you will be healthy or prone to illness, and all the other aspects of physical appearance. That atom is a tiny body and it is into that atom in the womb of the mother that the soul enters. The soul...

... enters that atom according to the particular condition or construction of that atom in that particular situation. The main reason for the deterioration of mankind is that married couples do not create opportunities for higher souls to be born. The situations that are being created invite the entry of lower souls. It is not necessary that the soul should find an opportunity to take birth in a new body...

... all of these masculine and feminine atoms mix together then the first cell that develops is composed of these forty-eight atoms. The life that evolves out of these forty-eight atoms is that of a baby girl and after birth she will grow into a woman. Each side of this body consists of twenty-four atoms. In this body there is perfect balance. The male cell consists of forty-seven atom, twenty-four on...

... one side and twenty-three on the other. And so there is imbalance. Because of this there is also discord in the masculine personality. The harmony is broken. The atoms in the feminine personality are in complete balance and therefore she is beautiful and shapely, full of art and poetry, aglow with a sense of and an appreciation for the aesthetic. In the body of a man there is one less atom. The...

... provided proper directions as far as marriage and family life are concerned. If religion had fully grasped the true meaning and importance of the role of the family in the development of mankind, we would have already give ample consideration to the process of birth and to the quality of the soul being invited to enter the body of the child that is destined to see the light of the world. If real religion...

... loving invitation to a spirit to enter the body of his child, is really committing a great sin. That man is guilty of sin even if his children are born within the state of matrimony. If he has not, with a prayerful and devotional attitude to God, invited a spirit to enter the child he and his wife are conceiving, he is guilty, a condemned man. The type of soul that enters the woman's body ultimately...

... decides the future. We pay great attention to our children's clothes, to their fads, to their education, to their health - but we totally ignore their souls. This will never result in the creation of a sound race of humans on this planet. So, it is of much more importance to discover how your soul has entered your body, rather than how a soul can enter someone else's. In somewhat the same vein, another...

... very reason. She became very upset and said it would be better if I knew nothing about it at all. Finally she admitted that in her past life she had been a prostitute, a devadasi in a temple in the southern part of the country. "I enjoyed sex with countless men," she said, "I gave my body to them. I was prey to their desire and lust. I thought I was loyal to my husband, true to him in...

... body and soul, but knowing my past has thoroughly disillusioned me. I don't want to remember that awful past of mine at all!" I told her that it is easy to remember, but not so easy to forget. To forget the past is very, very difficult indeed. To enter one's past is possible, but those who want to do it must follow certain methods. The greatest contribution of Mahavira and Gautam Buddha to...

... point where you cannot tolerate the repetition of the film one more time. But, if you are given opium after seeing the film each time you will forget what you have seen before and you will be able to watch the same movie again and again. Not only would you be able to watch it, you would enjoy it every time you saw it. When a man discards this body after he dies, the door to all the memories connected...

... with this body and contained in it is permanently shut - and a whole new drama begins all over in the new body. Although it is a new drama it is the same old plot. It is a repetition of the same old story, of the same happenings, of the same goings-on. If the past is remembered somehow, you will realize that it is the same tiresome film you have seen so many times before, that the dialogue is the...