43 The seventh sound technique:
WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH."
Mind can be focused anywhere in the body. Ordinarily, we have focused it in the head, but it can be focused anywhere. And with a change of the focus, your qualities change. For example, in many Eastern countries -- Japan, China, Korea -- traditionally it has been taught that mind is in the belly, not in the head. And because of this, those who thought that mind is in the belly had different qualities of mind. You cannot have those qualities because you think mind is in the head.
Really, the mind is nowhere. The brain is in the head; the mind is not there. "Mind" means your focusing. You can focus it anywhere, and once focused it is very difficult to remove it from that point.
For example, now psychologists and workers who are doing in depth human research say that when you are making love your mind must move from the head to the genital area; otherwise your sex will be a frustration. If it remains in the head, you cannot go deep into sex. No orgasm will result, the experience will not be orgasmic. It will not give you a peak. You may produce children, but you will not have known what is the highest peak of love.
You have not known that about which tantra talks or Khajuraho depicts, you cannot. Have you seen Khajuraho? Or if you have not seen Khajuraho, you might have seen pictures of the Khajuraho temple. Then look at the faces, at couples making love. Look at the faces, the faces look divine. They are in the act of sex, but the faces are as ecstatic as any buddha's face. What is happening to them? This sex is not cerebral. They are not making love through the head; they are not thinking about it. They have dropped down from the head. Their focusing has changed.
Because of this dropping from the head, the consciousness has moved to the genital area. The mind is no more. The mind has become no-mind. Their faces have the same ecstasy as a buddha has. This sex has become a meditation. Why? Because the focus has changed. If once you can change the focus of your mind, if you can remove it from the head, the head is relaxed, the face is relaxed. Then all tensions have dissolved. You are not there, the ego is not there.
That is why the more mind becomes intellectual, rational, the less capable it becomes of love, because love needs a different focusing. In love you need a focusing near the heart; in sex you need a focusing near the genital center. If you are doing mathematics, the head is okay. But love is not mathematics and sex is absolutely not. And if the mathematics continues in the head and you are making love, you are simply wasting energy. Then this whole effort will be disgusting.
But mind can be changed. Tantra says there are seven centers, and mind can be changed to any center. Each center has a different functioning. If you concentrate on a particular center, you become a different man.
In Japan there has been a military group, which is just like the KSHATRIYAS in India, known as the SAMURAI. They are trained to be soldiers, and their first training is to bring the mind down to just two inches below the navel. In Japan this center is called the HARA. The samurai are trained to bring the mind to the hara. Unless a soldier can bring his mind's focusing to the hara, he is not allowed to go to fight, and this is right. The samurai are the greatest fighters the world has ever known, the greatest warriors; in the world there is no comparison with a samurai. He is a different man, a different being, because his focusing is different.
They say that when you are fighting there is no time. Mind needs time to function; it calculates. If you are attacked and your mind thinks about how to protect, you have missed the point already, you have lost. There is no time. You must function timelessly and mind cannot function timelessly, mind needs time. Howsoever short, mind needs time.
Below the navel there is a center, the hara, which functions timelessly. If the focusing is at the hara and the fighter is fighting, then this fight is intuitive, not intellectual. Before you attack him, he knows. It is a subtle feeling in the hara, not in the head. It is not an inference, it is a psychic telepathy. Before you attack him, before you think of attacking him, the thought has reached him. His hara is hit and he is ready to protect himself. Even before you have attacked, he is in defense, he has protected himself.
Sometimes, if two persons are fighting and both are samurais, defeating the other is a problem. Neither can defeat the other; it is a problem. No one can be declared the winner. In a way it is impossible because you cannot attack the man -- before you attack, he knows.
There was one Indian mathematician... The whole world was wonderstruck because he would not calculate. Ramanujam was his name. You would give him the problem and he would give you the answer immediately. One of England's best mathematicians, Hardy, visited Ramanujam. Hardy was one of the best mathematicians ever born, and he had to work with a particular problem for six hours. But Ramanujam was given the same problem and he answered immediately. There was no possibility for the mind to function in this way, as the mind needs time.
Ramanujam was asked again and again, "How do you do it?" He would say, "I don't know. You give me the problem, and the answer comes to me. It comes from somewhere below. It is not from my head." It was coming from the hara. He was not aware, he was not trained, but this is my feeling: he must have been a Japanese in his previous birth because in India we have not worked much upon the hara.
Tantra says, focus your mind on different centers and the results will be different. This technique is concerned with focusing on the tongue, in the middle of the tongue. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN -- as if you are going to speak. Not closed, but slightly open as if you are going to speak; not like when you are speaking, but like when you are just going to speak.
Then keep the mind in the middle of the tongue. You will have a very strange feeling, because the tongue has a center just in the middle which controls your thoughts. If you suddenly become aware and you focus on that, your thoughts will stop. Focus as if your whole mind has come to the tongue -- just in the middle. Let the mouth be slightly open as if you were going to speak, and then focus the mind as if it is not in the head. Feel it as if it is in the tongue, just in the middle.
The tongue has the center of speech, and thought is speech. What are you doing when you are thinking? Talking within. Can you think anything without talking within? You are alone; you are not talking to anyone, you are thinking. What are you doing while you are thinking? Talking within, talking to yourself. Your tongue is involved. Next time, while you are thinking, be aware: feel your tongue. It is vibrating as if you are talking to someone else. Then feel it again, and you can feel that the vibrations are centered in the middle. They arise from the middle and then they spread all over the tongue.
Thinking is talking within. If you can bring your total consciousness, your mind, to the center of the tongue, thinking stops. So those who have been practicing silence, they are simply practicing not talking. If you stop talking outwardly, then you will become very deeply aware of talking inside. And if you remain completely silent for one month or two months or one year, not talking, you will feel your tongue vibrating violently. You are not feeling it because you go on talking and the vibrations are released. But even now, if you stop and become conscious while thinking, you will feel your tongue vibrating a little. Stop your tongue completely and then try to think -- you cannot think. Stop your tongue completely as if it is frozen; do not allow it to move. You cannot think then.
The center is just in the middle, so bring your mind there. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH."
This is the second technique. It is just similar: OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH."
With the first technique your thinking will stop, you will feel a solidity within -- as if you have become solid. When thoughts are not there you become immovable; thoughts are the inner movement. And when thoughts are not there and you have become immovable, you have become part of the eternal, which only appears to move but which is immovable, which remains unmoved.
In thoughtlessness you become part of the eternal, the unmoved. With thought you are part of the movement, because nature is movement. The world is movement, that is why we have called it the SANSAR, the wheel -- it is moving and moving and moving. The world is movement and the hidden, the ultimate, is unmoved, unmoving, immovable.
It is just like a wheel that is moving, but a wheel is moving on something which never moves. A wheel can move only because in the center there is something which never moves, which remains unmoved. The world moves and the transcendental remains unmoved. If your thoughts stop, suddenly you drop from this world to the other. With the movement stopped inside, you become part of the eternal -- that which never changes.
OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH." Open your mouth slightly, as if you are going to speak. Then inhale, and be aware of the sound which is created by inhaling. It is just "HH" -- whether you are exhaling or inhaling. You are not to make the sound, you are just to feel the incoming breath on your tongue. It is very silent. You will feel "HH." It will be very silent, very slightly audible. You have to be very alert to be aware of it. But do not try to create it. If you create it, you have missed the point. Your created sound will be of no help, it is the natural sound that happens when you inhale or exhale.
But the technique says while inhaling, not exhaling -- because while exhaling you will go out, and with the sound YOU will go out, while the effort is to go in. So while inhaling, hear the sound "HH." Go on inhaling and go on feeling the sound "HH." Sooner or later you will feel that the sound is not being created only at the tongue, it is being created in the throat also. But then it is very, very inaudible. With very deep alertness you can become aware of it.
Start from the tongue, then by and by be alert; go on feeling it. You will hear it in the throat, then you will start hearing it in the heart. And when it reaches the heart, you have gone beyond mind. All these techniques are just to give you a bridge from where you can move from thought to no-thought, from mind to no-mind, from the surface to the center.
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