|
Vigyan
Bhairav Tantra :
"Techniques
to penetrate the inner centers" |
15. Closing the
seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your
eyes becomes all inclusive.
16. Blessed
one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the
lotus.
17. Unminding
mind, keep in the middle -- until.
Man is as if he is a circle without
a center. His life is superficial; his life is only on the
circumference. You live on the outside, you never live within. You
cannot, unless a center is found. You cannot live within, really you
have no within. You are without a center, you have only the without.
That is why we go on talking about the within, about how to go in,
how to know oneself, how to penetrate inwards, but these words do
not carry any authentic meaning. You know the meaning of the words,
but you cannot feel what they mean because you are never in. You
have never been in.
Even
when you are alone, in your mind you are in a crowd. When no one is
there outside, still you are not within. You go on thinking of others;
you go on moving outwards. Even while asleep you are dreaming of
others, you are not within. Only in very deep sleep, when there is no
dreaming, are you within; but then you become unconscious. Remember
this fact: when you are conscious you are never within, and when you
are within in deep sleep you become unconscious. So your whole
consciousness consists of the without.
And
whenever we talk about going within, the words are understood but the
meaning is not -- because the meaning is not carried by the words, the
meaning comes through experience.
Words
are without meaning. When I say 'within', you understand the word --
but only the word, not the meaning. You do not know what within is,
because consciously you have never been within. Your mind is
constantly outgoing. You do not have any feel of what the inner means
or what it is.
That is
what I mean when I say that you are a circle without a center -- a
circumference only. The center is there, but you drop into it only
when you are not conscious. Otherwise, when you are conscious you move
outwards, and because of this your life is never intense; it cannot
be. It is just lukewarm. You are alive as if dead, or both
simultaneously. You are deadly alive -- living a dead-like life. You
are existing at the minimum -- not at the maximum peak, but at the
minimum. You can say, "I am," that is all. You are not dead;
that is what you mean by being alive.
But
life can never be known at the circumference. Life can be known only
at the center. On the circumference only lukewarm life is possible. So
really, you live a very inauthentic life, and then even death becomes
inauthentic -- because one who has not really lived cannot really die.
Only authentic life can become authentic death.
Then
death is beautiful: anything authentic is beautiful. Even life, if it
is inauthentic, is bound to be ugly. And your life is ugly, just
rotten. Nothing happens. You simply go on waiting, hoping that
something will happen somewhere, someday.
At
this very moment there is just emptiness, and every moment has been
like that in the past -- just empty. You are just waiting for the
future, hoping that something will happen someday, just hoping. Then
every moment is lost. It has not happened in the past, so it is not
going to happen in the future either. It can happen only in this
moment, but then you will need an intensity, a penetrating intensity.
Then you will need to be rooted in the center. Then the periphery will
not do. Then you will have to find your moment. Really, we never think
about what we are, and whatsoever we think is just hokum.
Once
I lived with a professor on a university campus. One day he came and
he was very upset, so I asked, "What is the matter?"
He
said, "I feel feverish."
I
was reading something, so I said to him, "Go to sleep. Take this
blanket and rest."
He went
to the bed, but after a few minutes he said, "No, I am not
feverish. Really, I am angry. Someone has insulted me, and I feel much
violence against him."
So
I said, "Why did you say that you are feeling feverish?"
He
said, "I couldn't acknowledge the fact that I was angry, but
really I am angry.
There
is no fever." He threw off the blanket.
Then I
said, "Okay, if you are angry then take this pillow. Beat it and
be violent with it. Let your violence be released. And if the pillow
is not enough, then I am available. You can beat me, and let this
anger be thrown out."
He
laughed, but the laughter was false -- just painted on his face. It
came on his face and then disappeared, it never penetrated in. It
never came from within; it was just a painted smile. But the laughter,
even false laughter, created a gap. He said, "Not really... I am
not really angry. Someone said something before others, and I felt
very much embarrassed. Really, this is the thing."
So I
said to him, "You have changed your statement about your own
feelings three times within half an hour. You said you were feeling
feverish, then you said you were angry, and now you say that you are
not angry but just embarrassed. Which one is real?"
He
said, "Really, I am embarrassed."
I
said, "Which? When you said you were feverish, you were also
certain about that. When you said you were angry, you were also
certain about that. And you are also certain about this. Are you one
person or many persons? For how long a time is this certainty going to
continue?"
So
the man said, "Really, I do not know what I am feeling. What it
is, I do not know. I am simply disturbed. Whether to call it anger or
embarrassment or what, I do not know.
And
this is not the moment to discuss it with me." He said,
"Leave me alone. You have made my situation philosophical. You
are discussing what is real, what is authentic, and I am feeling very
much disturbed."
This is
not only with some other person -- X, Y or Z -- it is with you. You
are never certain, because certainty comes from being centered. You
are not even certain about yourself. It is impossible to be certain
about others when you are never certain about yourself. There is just
a vagueness, a cloudiness; nothing is certain.
Someone
was here just a few days ago, and he said to me, "I am in love
with someone, and I want to marry her." I looked into his eyes
deeply for a few minutes without saying anything. He became restless
and he said, "Why are you looking at me? I feel so awkward."
I continued looking. He said, "Do you think that my love is
false?" I didn't say anything, I just continued looking. He said,
"Why do you feel that this marriage is not going to be
good?" He said by himself, "I had not really thought it over
very much, and that is why I have come to you. Really, I do not know
whether I am in love or not."
I
had not said a single word. I was just looking into his eyes. But he
became restless, and things which were inside began to come up, to
bubble up.
You
are not certain, you cannot be certain about anything; neither about
your love, nor about your hate, nor about your friendships.
There
is nothing which you can be certain about because you have no center.
Without a center there is no certainty. All your feelings of certainty
are false and momentary. One moment you will feel that you are
certain, but the next moment the certainty will have gone because in
each moment you have a different center. You do not have a permanent
center, a crystallized center. Each moment is an atomic center, so
each moment has its own self.
George
Gurdjieff used to say that man is a crowd. Personality is just a
deception because you are not a person, you are many persons. So when
one person speaks in you, that is a momentary center. The next moment
there is another. With every moment, with every atomic situation, you
feel certain, and you never become aware that you are just a flux --
many waves without any center. Then in the end you will feel that life
has been just a wastage. It is bound to be. There is just a wastage,
just a wandering -- purposeless, meaningless.
Tantra,
yoga, religion... their basic concern is how first to discover the
center, how first to be an individual. They are concerned with how to
find the center which persists in every situation. Then, as life goes
on moving without, as the flux of life goes on and on, as waves come
and go, the center persists inside. Then you remain one -- rooted,
centered.
These
sutras are techniques to find the center
The
center is already there, because there is no possibility of being a
circle without a center. The circle can exist only with a center, so
the center is only forgotten. It is there, but we are not aware. It is
there, but we do not know how to look at it. We do not know how to
focus the consciousness on it.
The
third technique about centering:
Closing the seven
openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes
becomes all inclusive.
( The
15th Meditation technique)
