WHAT IS THE INTRODUCTION & DESCRIPTION OF THE 98 & 99 th TECHNIQUE(TWO TECHNIQUES CONCERNED
THE INTRODUCTION OF THE 98 & 99 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION;-
98- ''In any position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace''.
99- ''Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near''.
07 FACTS;-
1-Life on the outside is a cyclone — a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the surface.For example on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant struggle. But this is not all of life. Deep down there is also a center ..soundless, silent, no conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with no struggle, with no fight, no violence Towards that inner center is the search.You can get identified with the surface, with the outer. Then anxiety and anguish follows. This is what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle that goes on there.The surface is bound to be disturbed, nothing is wrong in it. And if you can be rooted in the center, the disturbance on the surface will become beautiful. If you can be silent within, then all the sounds without become musical. Then nothing is wrong; it becomes a play.
2-But if you don’t know the inner core, the silent center, if you are totally identified with the surface, you will go mad. And everyone is almost mad.All religious techniques, techniques of yoga, meditation, Zen, are basically to help you to be again in contact with the center; to move within; to forget the periphery; to leave the periphery for a time being and to relax into your own being so deeply that the outer disappears completely and only the inner remains.Once you know how to move backwards, how to step down into yourself, it is not difficult. For example a Sufi fakir was traveling. It was a dark night and he lost his way. It was so dark he couldn’t even see where he was moving — then suddenly he fell into an abyss. He was terrified. He didn’t know what was down there in the darkness or how deep the abyss was. So he caught hold of a branch and started praying.
3-The night was cold. He cried but there was no one to listen, only his own voice echoed back. And the night was so cold that his hands were becoming frozen and he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave the branch ; it was going to be difficult to keep on holding it. Death was absolutely near. Any moment he would fall and die. And then the last moment came. You can understand how terrified he was.Then the last moment came and he saw the branch slipping out of his hand.But the moment he fell he started dancing ..there was no abyss, he was on clear ground. And he had suffered all night. This is the situation. You go on clinging to the surface, afraid that if you leave the surface you will be lost. Really, clinging to the surface you are lost. But deep down there is darkness and you cannot see anything else than the surface. All these techniques are to make you courageous, strong, adventurous, so that you can stop the holding on and fall within yourself. That which looks like an abyss, dark, bottomless, is the very ground of your being.
4-Once you leave the surface, the periphery, you will be centered.This centering is the aim. Once you are centered you can move to the periphery but you will be totally different. The quality of your consciousness will have changed altogether. Then you can move to the periphery but you will never be the periphery again .. you will remain at the center. And remaining centered at the periphery is beautiful. Then there is no conflict; it is a game. If any moment that it becomes too heavy on you, you can go back to the original source ... you can have a dip. Then you will be refreshed, rejuvenated, and you can move to the periphery again. Once you know the way…. And the way is not long. The only barrier is your holding to the periphery, afraid that if you leave it you will be lost. The fear feels just as if you are going to die.
5-Moving to the inner center is a death -death in the sense that your identity with the periphery will die, and a new image, a new feeling of your being will arise. You are always tense, that is the holding, the clinging. You are never relaxed, never in a state of let-go. You are always doing something: that doing is the problem. You are never in a state of non-doing, when things are happening and you are just there not doing anything. Breath comes in and goes out, the blood circulates, the body is alive and throbbing, the breeze blows, the world goes on spinning around — and you are not doing anything.Actually,you are not a doer. When things are happening and you are not a doer, you are totally relaxed. When you are a doer and things are not happening but are being manipulated by you, you are tense.You relax partially while you are asleep, but it is not total. Even in your sleep you go on manipulating, even in your sleep you don’t allow everything to happen.
6-Watch a man sleeping: you will see that he is very tense, his whole body will be tense. Watch a small child sleeping, he is very relaxed. Or watch an animal, a cat — a cat is always relaxed. You are not relaxed even while asleep; you are tense, struggling, moving, fighting with something. On your face there are tensions. In dreams you may be fighting, protecting — doing the same things as when you were awake, repeating them in an inner drama. You are not relaxed; you are not in a deep let-go.That’s why sleep is becoming more and more difficult. And psychologists say that if the same trend goes on, soon the day will come when no one will be able to sleep naturally. Sleep will have to be chemically produced because no one will be able to fall naturally into sleep. The day is not very far.
7-Meditation is the deepest sleep. It is total relaxation plus something more; you are totally relaxed and yet alert. Awareness is there. Total sleep with awareness is meditation. Fully alert, things are happening but you are not resisting, not fighting, not doing. The doer is not there. The doer has gone into sleep. Only a witness is there a `non-doer alertness’ is there. Then nothing can disturb you.If you know how to relax then nothing can disturb you. If you don’t know how to relax then everything will disturb you. You have a tendency to get disturbed. If you are prone to be disturbed that shows only one thing: that you are existing near the periphery . It is an indication that you have made your abode near the surface. And this is a false abode because your real home is at the center, the very center of your being.
Now we will enter the techniques.
THE DESCRIPTION OF 98 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION ;-
14 FACTS;-
1-LORD SHIVA REPLIES;-
''In any easy position gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace''.
2-This is a very simple method but it works miraculously . And anyone can try it, there is no danger. The first thing is to be relaxed in a position that is easy for you. Don’t try a particular position or ASANA. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be in a relaxed state.So just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs — feel whether there is some tension or not. If you feel there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel there is some tension in the right leg, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak ; then suddenly relax so that you can feel how the relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just looking everywhere for some tension.
3-Wherever you feel the tension make it more so, because it is easy to relax when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. So if you feel some tensions in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as possible, create tension and bring it to a peak... then suddenly relax. In this way see that all parts of the body, all the limbs are relaxed.And be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety per cent of the tensions — the rest of the body carries only ten per cent. All your tensions are in the mind so the face becomes the storage. Do it for five minutes so that you can feel that every limb in the whole body is relaxed. This is an easy posture for you.
4-You can do it sitting, or lying in bed or howsoever you feel is easy for you.The second thing: when you feel that the body has got to an easy posture, don’t make much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body. Because really, remembering the body is a sort of tension. Forgetting is relaxation. Relax it and forget it. Whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body.You may not have observed this, but there is a very easy experiment to try. Put your hand on your pulse and count it. Then close your eyes, bring your attention to your pulse for five minutes, and then count. The pulse will now be beating faster because the attention for five minutes gives tension to it.
5- Whenever you bring your consciousness to any part of the body, that part becomes tense. You become tense when someone observes you; the whole body becomes tense. When you are alone you are different. When someone enters the room you are not the same. So for five minutes simply relax and your forgetting will bring a deeper relaxation to the body.Close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, your chest. First feel it just between the two armpits with your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, remember just the heart area between the two armpits, the chest, and feel it filled with great peace. The moment the body is relaxed, peace automatically happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious.
6-There are areas in the body, particular centers, where particular feelings can be created consciously. Between the two armpits is the heart center, and the heart center is the source of all the peace that happens to you. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace;the love arises from somewhere near the heart. Whenever you think of love you think of the heart. So peace and love have become joined, associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love.So you can do two things. You can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But this path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. And the other is the other, and you are becoming in a way dependent.
7-So love will give you peace sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish and anxiety, because the other has entered. Whenever another enters there is bound to be some disturbance, because you can meet with the other only on your surface. The surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict, only then will you sometimes be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.
So love can only give you glimpses of peace but nothing really established, rooted. No eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred and anger.
8-The other way is to find peace not through love, but directly. If you can find peace directly ..and this is the method for it ..your life will become filled with love. But now the quality of love will be different. It will not be possessive; it will not be centered around one. It will not be dependent and it will not make any one dependent on you. Your love will become just a lovingness, a compassion, a deep empathy. And now no one, not even a lover, can disturb you, because your peace is already rooted and your love comes as a shadow of your inner peace. The whole thing has become reversed. If you love you will suffer the presence of love. if you don’t love you will suffer the absence of love .Because you are on the surface and whatsoever you do can only give you momentary satisfaction ..then again the dark valley.
9-First be established in peace on your own, then you are independent. Then you will never feel imprisoned,a sort of dependence, a slavery or a bondage when you are in love .Then it will be just a giving with no idea of return; it will be unconditional. And it is one of the secrets that the more you give and share, the more it becomes your own. The deeper you enter into the treasury, which is infinite, the more you can go on giving to everybody. It is inexhaustible. Become aware of the area between the armpits and feel that it is filled with great peace. Just feel peace there and you will feel it is filled but you have never been alert about it.When you feel this peace you are farther away from the surface. This is the miracle. The children will be playing, someone will be listening to the radio, someone will be quarrelling and the whole world will be going around, but you feel that a great distance has come between you and everything.
10-That distance comes because you have retreated from the periphery. You are not involved. Nothing disturbs you so you have transcended. This is the transcendence.And the heart is naturally the source of peace. You are not creating anything. You are simply coming to a source which is always there. This imagining will help you become aware that the heart is filled with peace but it is not that the imagining will create the peace. You are simply becoming attuned to something that is already there. Because whatsoever you can create by imagination cannot be permanent and you are creating a hallucination. Reality has to shatter all illusions;which are on the periphery ..only a greater reality cannot be shattered.
11-That is why Aadi Shankara and others say that the world is unreal, illusion. Not that the world is illusion, but they have come to know a higher reality and from that altitude this world looks dreamy.Penetration is the proportion of reality. If someone throw a stone at you it hits you. The hit penetrates you..the body will be hurt and that penetration makes the stone real. But If someone throw a stone at a enlightened one; the body will be hurt as your body will be hurt, but he is not on the periphery, he is rooted in the center. And the distance is so great that he will hear the thud of the stone without being hurt. The being will remain untouched, unscarred. This unscarred being will feel the stone as if it is something thrown in a dream... it is illusory. So Gautam Buddha says that the world is empty of substance — which is the same thing as Aadi Shankara saying that the world is illusory.
12-Whenever you are able to feel the peace between your two armpits filling you, pervading your heart center, the world will look illusory. This is a sign that you have entered meditation . Don’t think that the world is illusory, there is no need to think it ..you will feel it. The world has suddenly gone dreamy. It looks so real, just like a film on the screen. It can even be three dimensional. It looks like something, but it is a projected thing. The world is real but you create the distance, and the distance gets more and more. That is a meditative criterion. If the world has become unreal, you are not identified.This technique is very easy and will not take much time if you try it. With this technique it sometimes even happens that with the very first effort you will feel the beauty and the miracle of it. But if you don’t feel anything with the first effort, don’t be disappointed. Wait. And go on doing it. And it is so easy that you can go on doing it any time.
13-Just lying on your bed at night you can do it; just in the morning when you feel that you are now awake you can do it. Do first and then get up. Even ten minutes will be enough.The body is relaxed after the whole night and is feeling fresh and alive. And in the morning it is beautiful because you are so fresh, your whole energy is vibrating. It is because you are coming back to the periphery from the center.Bring your consciousness to the heart just between the two armpits: feel it filled with deep peace. For ten minutes remain in that peace, then open the eyes. The world will look totally different because that peace will also be radiated from your eyes. And the whole day you will feel different. Not only will you feel different but you will feel that people are behaving differently with you. To every relationship you contribute something.
14-Ten minutes at night just before falling asleep, do it. Make the world unreal, and your sleep will be so deep that you may not have slept like that before. If the world becomes unreal just before falling asleep, dreaming will be less. Because if the world has become a dream then dreams cannot continue and you are totally relaxed.This technique is very helpful for those people who suffer from insomnia. Peace is the magnet. When you are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. A person who has inner turmoil, conflict, anguish, anxiety, tensions, repels persons. Whosoever come near becomes afraid because you don't have a life-giving source, you have a destructive energy within you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever comes near wants to be nearer to you. So not only will you feel you are different, others will also feel that you are different.Your whole life-style can change if you move a little closer to the center. If you are peaceful the whole world becomes peaceful to you. It is just a reflection. Whatsoever you are is reflected all over. Everyone becomes a mirror.
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THE DESCRIPTION OF 99 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION ;-
12 FACTS;-
1-LORD SHIVA REPLIES;-
''Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near''.
2-Tantra and yoga both think that your narrowness is the problem. Because you have made yourself so tightly narrow, you feel always in bondage. The bondage is coming from your narrow mind and it goes on being narrower and narrower. That confinement gives you the feeling of bondage. You have an infinite soul but that infinite being feels imprisoned. So whatsoever you do, you feel limitations everywhere. Wherever you move, a point of cul de sac (a street or passage closed at one end) comes.You cannot move beyond it. Everywhere there is a boundary. There is no open sky to fly. But that boundary is created by you . You have created it for certain reasons: for security, safety. And the narrower the boundary, the more you feel secure.
3-If you have a very large boundary you cannot watch over all of it, you cannot be alert and watchful everywhere. It becomes vulnerable. Narrow the boundary and you can watch it, you can remain closed, you are not vulnerable, you feel safe. The safety, the security has created the boundary. But then you feel a bondage.This is how the mind is paradoxical. You go on asking for more safety and you go on asking for more freedom. Both cannot be together. If you want freedom you will have to lose safety, security which is just illusory. All your safety, security, is just a facade, nothing will help. But afraid of insecurity you create boundaries, you create big walls around you and then the open sky is closed. And then you suffer! And then you say, “Where is the open sky?” and “I want freedom and I want to move!” But you have created these boundaries.
4-So this is the first thing to remember before you do this technique otherwise it will not be possible to do it. Unless you stop creating boundaries you will not be able to feel or do it.
No boundaries, becoming infinite, becoming one with infinite space…. This will be impossible with your mind. First you will have to stop doing certain things.The first thing is that if you are too concerned about security and safety then remain in bondage. Really, prison is the most secure place. No one can harm you there. No one out of prison is as secure, as guarded, as the prisoners. He is more guarded than a king. To live out of a prison is dangerous, it is full of hazards. Anything can happen. So we have created mental prisons , psychological prisons around us, and we carry those prisons with us, they are portable. You need not remain with them, they move with you. Wherever you go, your prison goes with you.
5-You are always behind a wall. Only sometimes, rarely, you stretch your hand out of it to touch someone. But only a hand ...you never come out of your prison. So whenever we meet, it is simply meeting hands out of prisons. Out of windows we stretch a hand, afraid, scared, and ready any moment to withdraw the hand. Both the parties are doing the same ..no hand is ungloved.
The other will look like an enemy if you are so armored. With an armored person there can be no friendship. Friendship is impossible, love is impossible, communion is impossible. You are afraid. Someone may make you a possession, someone may overpower you, someone may make you a slave… afraid of this, you have created a prison, a safety wall around you. Life becomes a drudgery, a boredom.
6-If you are too cautious, life cannot be an adventure. If you are protecting yourself too much, you are already dead.So remember one basic law: life is insecurity. And if you are ready to live in insecurity, only then will you be alive. Insecurity is freedom. If you are ready to be constantly insecure, you will be free. And freedom is the door to the Divine.Afraid, you create a prison ..you become dead, more and more dead. And then you call, “Where is God?” And then you question, “Where is life? What does life mean? Where is bliss?” Life is there waiting for you, but you have to meet it on its own terms. You cannot have your own terms . And the basic term is: remain insecure. Nothing can be done about it. You can only create an illusion and in that illusion you can waste your life. Whatsoever you do is just a deception.
7-One who never loves anybody is never afraid that anyone will leave him. The whole world can leave him, he is not afraid. You cannot harm him ;he is secure.If you fall in love you become afraid . The moment you love someone, insecurity has entered because life has entered. And with life, death has entered and insecurity has entered with it.The moment you love you have become afraid: this person can die, this person can leave, this person can love somebody else! Now to make things secure, you must do something ..you must get married. So a legal bondage is made so that it is now difficult for this person to leave you.Now society will protect you, the law will protect you, the policeman, the judge, will all protect you.
8-Now if this person wants to leave, you can drag him to the court, and if he wants a divorce he will have to prove something against you. Even then it will take three or five years. Now you have created safety around you. But the moment the relationship is not alive. Now it has become a law, not a relationship. Marriage is definable, love is indefinable. Now you have come under the world of definitions.But the phenomenon is already dead. The moment you wanted it to be secure, the moment you wanted to enclose it so that no new thing happens to it, you are imprisoned in it. And then you fight because you have each become an imprisonment for the other. Now love has disappeared, there is only conflict. That is what happens because of the hankering for securityand the basic is..'' life is insecure''. This is the very nature of it.
9- Really, if man were immortal, love would be impossible. It would be so dangerous to fall in love. Death is there and life is just like a dew drop on a trembling leaf. Any moment the breeze will come and the dew drop will fall and disappear. Life is just a wavering. Because of that wavering, because of that movement, death is always there. It gives intensity to love. Love is possible,becomes intense only because there is death. Just imagine … if you know your beloved is going to die the next moment, all meanness will go, all conflict will go. And this one moment will become eternity. And there will be so much love that your whole being will be poured into it. But if you know the beloved is going to live, there is no hurry. You can fight and you can postpone the loving for later on. If life is eternal, if the body is immortal, you cannot love.The aliveness exists against death. A man is alive because death is there constantly, fighting. Against the background of death life exists.
10-In heaven there cannot be love because there is no life really. Life exists here on earth, where death exists. Whenever you make anything secure, life disappears. Remain insecure, that is the very quality of life itself. Nothing can be done about it and it is beautiful.Just think if your body was immortal -it would be ugly. You will start finding ways and means of committing suicide. Immortality is a very long thing. Now the law is thinking about euthanasia because people are now living longer. So a person who reaches the age of a hundred wants the right to kill himself.
So think of immortality;Life will be totally meaningless. The meaning comes with death.
11-So first, withdraw your efforts to create a secure life. Just by withdrawing, your walls around you will fall. For the first time you will feel rains coming to you directly, the wind blowing at you directly, the sun rising to you directly. You will be under the open sky. It is beautiful. You will have to get accustomed to this new freedom. This freedom will make you more alive, more flowing, more open, more rich, more radiant.You can rise only against the valley of death. The peak of life and the valley of death are always near and in proportion. Don’t create walls around you. Then you can do this technique.''Feel yourself as pervading all directions, far, near''. If walls are not there, you will already be feeling yourself pervading everywhere. Then there is no point at where you end. You simply begin in the heart and end nowhere. You have a center and no periphery. T
12-The periphery goes on expanding on and on. The whole space is surrounded by it. Stars move in it. Earths are born and dissolve. Planets arise and set. The whole cosmos becomes your periphery. In this vastness where will your ego and your suffering be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can exist only in a narrow field where it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. The encapsulation is the problem.And peace happens only to those who are alive; peace is not a dead thing. Remain alive, live dangerously, live a vulnerable life ; so that everything can happen to you. The more that happens to you the richer you will be.Then you can practise this technique. This technique is then very easy, you will not even need to practise it. Just think, and you will be pervading the whole space.
.....SHIVOHAM....
