WHAT IS THE INTRODUCTION & THE DESCRIPTION OF THE 96 & 97 th TECHNIQUE(CONCERNed WITH

THE INTRODUCTION OF THE 96 & 97 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION; 96-''Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. thence comes the end of mind pressures''. 97-''Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss''. Man is born alone and dies alone, but between these two points he lives in society, he lives with others. 07 FACTS;- 1-This technique is concerned with loneliness.Aloneness is our basic reality; society is just accidental. And unless man can live alone, can know his aloneness in its total depth, he cannot be acquainted with himself. All that happens in society is just outer ;it is just your relations with others. You remain unknown. From the outside you cannot be revealed.But we live with others. Because of this, self-knowledge is completely forgotten. You know something about yourself, but indirectly . It is strange that others should tell you about yourself. Whatsoever identity you carry is given to you by others; it is not real, it is just a labelling. A name is given to you as a label because it will be difficult for society to be related to a nameless person. Not only is the name given, the very image that you think yourself to be is given by society that you are good or bad, beautiful or normal, intelligent or fool , moral or a saint, or whatsoever. 2- This lack of knowledge about oneself is the ignorance, and this ignorance cannot be destroyed by any knowledge which others can give to you. Unless you come to yourself directly, you will remain in ignorance and ignorance creates anxiety. You are not only afraid of others, you are afraid of yourself — because you don’t know who you are and what is hidden in you. What is possible, what will erupt out of you the next moment, you don’t know. There are many problems which create anxiety, but those problems are secondary. If you penetrate deeply, then every problem will ultimately reveal that the basic anxiety, the basic anguish, is that you are ignorant of yourself ,of the source from where you come, of the end to where you are moving, of the being whom you are right now. 3-Hence every religion says to move into solitude, into aloneness, so that you can for a time leave society and all that society has given to you, and face yourself directly.For example some saints and even Pandavas lived for twelve years alone in the forest to find out who he was.. He would not speak during those days, because the moment you speak you have moved into society. Language is society. When you don’t speak you are deeply alone and you cut the basic bridge. There is no way to move to the other. For twelve long years he was throwing away all the garbage that society had given.The same is happening with the mind ..your total mind is not accepted.You cannot open your mind to your deepest friend because he will judge.So you have to hide the mind and suppress it. 4- That hidden part creates many diseases and it takes years before the person is healed. But the psychoanalyst is simply bringing the suppressed part out. Just to bring it out becomes a healing force.It means the suppression is the illness ,a heavy burden. You wanted to confess to someone; to tell, to express; to accept you in totality. That;s why love is the greatest healing force, because you will not be rejected. Whatsoever you are ...good, bad, saint, sinner; someone will accept you in your totalness, he will not reject any part of you. Whenever you love a person you are open to him .And just by being open, your cut, divided parts are brought together ;you become one. 5-But even love has become impossible. Even with your closed ones you cannot tell the truth ;cannot be totally authentic. Because even his or her eyes are judging and also wants an image to be followed, an ideal .Actually your reality is less important than the ideal . You fear that if you express your totality you will be rejected, not be loved. And because of this fear love becomes impossible. Psychoanalysis brings the hidden part out, he is simply sitting there listening to you. No one is ready to listen to you. No one has the time or much interest in you. So professional help has come into being ...you are paying someone to listen. And just by telling, you will be healed because it becomes a part of the conscious. 6- When you cut off something, deny something, prohibit something, suppress something, you are creating a division between the conscious and the unconscious, the accepted and the rejected. This division has to be thrown.The saints move into aloneness so that no one would judge him and say, :You are not allowed to be like this. Leaving society means leaving the situation where suppression has become inevitable. Whatsoever you think you are is the accidental part. For example, You speak Hindi, someone speaks Gujarati, someone speaks French — these are accidents. Language is accidental. Silence is essential; language is accidental. Your soul is essential; your self is accidental. And to find the essential is the only search. 7-Loneliness becomes the mirror. Society is the deception. That is why you are always afraid of being alone — because you will have to know yourself . Whenever you are alone, you immediately start doing something so you are not alone. You may start reading the newspaper, or you may put on the T.V., or you may go to some club to meet some friends, or you may go to visit some family — but you must do something. Because the moment you are alone your identity melts, and all that you know about yourself becomes false and all that is real starts bubbling up.All religions say that man must move into solitariness to know himself. One need not be there forever, that is futile, but one has to be in solitude for a time, for a period. And the length of the period will depend on each individual. Mohammed was in solitude for a few months; Jesus for only a few days; Mahavir for twelve years and Buddha for six years. It depends. But unless you come to the point where you can say, “Now I have know the essential,” it is a must to be alone. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; THE DESCRIPTION OF 96 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION ;- 21 FACTS;- 1-LORD SHIVA REPLIES;- ''Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. thence comes the end of mind pressures.'' 2-Before we enter this technique three other points about loneliness must be understood. One: to be alone is basic, foundational ..that is how your being is. In the mother;s womb you are totally alone, and psychologists say that the hankering for nirvana, for enlightenment, for salvation, for paradise, is really a deep imprinted memory of the experience of the mother;s womb. You have known it .. the total aloneness and the bliss of it.You were alone, you were God. No one else was there. No one disturbed you, no one interfered. Alone, you were the master. With no conflict the peace was intrinsic. Silence was there, no language. You were deep in yourself. You are not consciously aware of the fact but it is deeply imprinted, it is there hidden in the unconscious. 2-Because of this, psychologists say that everyone thinks that life in childhood was beautiful. And ever country and every race thinks that somewhere in the past was the Golden Age ...somewhere in the past, life was blissful. Hindus call it SATYA-YUG, age of truth. In the past, somewhere, the very, very past, before history began, everything was beautiful and blissful. There was no conflict, no strife, no violence. Only love prevailed. That was the Golden Age. Christians say that Adam and Eve lived in Eden, in the garden, in absolute innocence and blissfulness. Then came the fall. So the Golden Age is before the fall. Every country, every race, every religion, believes that the Golden Age was somewhere in the past. And the strangeness is that howsoever deeply into the past you move, this was always believed to be so, always. 3-In Mesopotamia a stone has been found which is six thousand years old. There is an inscription on it. The inscription says that this age is the age of sin. Everything has gone wrong. The son doesn’t believe in the father, the wife doesn’t believe in the husband. Darkness has set. Where are those days, the days of the past, those golden days? This is a six thousand-year-old inscription! Ii is said that in the days of the ancients, everything was beautiful. Then there was nothing wrong, and because there was nothing wrong, to be changed, transformed, and there was no priest, no preacher, no moral leaders, because everything was so right. There were no sages then, because there were no sinners. . 4-Psychologists say that this past never existed. This past is just the deep memory within every individual of the womb... It existed. Completely unaware of the world, the child is moving in bliss. The situation of the child in the womb is just as it is for sri Vishnu on his SHESHNAGA. Hindus believe that sri Vishnu is lying on his couch, a serpent couch, floating on the ocean of bliss. Really, that is the child’s position in the womb. The child floats. The mother’s womb is just like the ocean. And you may be surprised to know that the water in which the child floats in the mother’s womb has the same constituents as the ocean water .. very similar, the same salts, everything. And the womb always keeps the right temperature for the child. The mother may be shivering with cold, that makes no difference.

5-For the child it is always the same temperature in the womb. He is warm, blissfully floating, with no worries, no anxieties, no responsibilities, alone. He is not aware of the mother; mother doesn’t exist for him. This SANSKAR, this imprint, is carried on by you. This is the basic reality, how you were before you entered society, and this will be the reality again when you go out of society and die. You will again be alone.And between these two points of loneliness your life is filled with many events. But those events are accidental. Deep down you remain alone because that is your basic reality. Around that aloneness many things happen: you get married, you become two, then you have children and you become many. Everything goes on happening ..but just on the periphery. The deep stratum remains totally alone. That is your reality. You may call this your ATMA, your essence. 6-In deep solitude this essence has to be recaptured. So when Gautam Buddha says that he has achieved nirvana, really he has achieved this loneliness, this basic reality. Mahavir says he has achieved KAIVALYA. The very word KAIVALYA, means loneliness, the alone. Just below the turmoil of events that aloneness is there. It runs through you like a thread running in a mala. The beads are apparent, but the thread is not. But the beads are hanging on the thread, and the beads are many and the thread is one. Really, the mala is a symbol of this reality. The thread is the reality and the beads are just the events which go on hanging on it. And unless you penetrate and come to the basic thread, you will be in anguish, you will be in suffering.You are born on a certain date, to certain parents, in a certain society, in a certain age. You are educated in a certain way. Then you enter a particular profession, you fall in love with and you have children. 7- These dramas are beads, events, history, but deep down you are always alone. And if you forget yourself completely because of these events you have missed the very purpose of being here. Then you have lost yourself in the drama and you have forgotten the actor who was not part of it, who was just playing the role. All these things are roles.We are concerned with the thread and not with the beads ;the beads are irrelevant. But the West is more oriented towards events, facts — temporal things than to the essential and the eternal. In India, we say that sri Ramas and sri Krishnas go on being born in every age. They have been repeated many times before and they will be repeated many times afterwards. So there is no need to carry on the records. When they are born is irrelevant. We are concerned with the being itself and whether anything happens to it or not. 8-When you move into solitude you are moving to the thread and moving into nature. Right now you are attuned to society. If you fall from this attunement to society, you will be attuned to nature. When the rains come, you cannot understand the language of the rains, the rain has no personality for you. But if you leave society for a time and remain in aloneness, you will start feeling a new phenomenon: the rains will come and they will talk to you. Then you will feel their moods ..some day the rain is very angry and some day it is very soothing and loving. Some day the whole sky is depressed, and some day it is dancing. Some day the sun rises as if without any will of its own, forced, doing the work; and some day on its own ... now it is not a work but a play. 9-You will feel all the moods around you. Nature has its own language but it is silent, and unless you are silent you cannot understand it.The first layer of attunement is with society, the second layer of attunement is with nature, and the third layer, the deepest, is with Dharma. That is the pure existence. Then the tree, then the rains, then the clouds, they are also left behind. Then, just existence…. Existence has no moods ... always the same;festive, exploding with energy. But one has first to move from society to nature then from nature to existence. When you are attuned with existence you are totally alone, but this aloneness is different from that of the child in the womb. 10-The child is alone, but it is not that he is really alone, he is unaware of anything else. He is enclosed in darkness, that’s why he feels alone. The whole world exists around him but he is not aware of it. His aloneness is that of ignorance. When you become consciously silent, one with existence, your aloneness will not be surrounded by darkness, it will be surrounded by light. When you reach the deepest being you are alone again because the ego is lost, your ego starts disappearing because it is always in relationship. Look at this phenomenon: with every individual your ego changes. If you are talking to your servant, look inside, look at the ego, see how it is. If you are talking to your friend, look within, see how the ego is. You are talking to your beloved, look within, see whether the ego is or is not.

11-If you are talking to an innocent child, look within ..the ego will not be there because you will feel that this would be stupid.So while playing with children you become a child. They bring you back to your own childhood. When you are talking with a dog, or playing with a dog, the ego that the society has given to you cannot exist because with a dog there is no question of ego.If you move into a forest the ego disappears. Hence the insistence of all religions to move, at least for a time, into the world of nature.This sutra is simple: ABIDE IN SOME PLACE ENDLESSLY SPACIOUS — on some hilltop from where you can see endlessly, from where the vision never comes to any end. If you can see endlessly and there is no end to your vision, the ego will dissolve. Ego needs limits, boundaries. The more defined the boundaries, the easier it is for the ego to exist. 12-Mind is very subtle. You can live on a hilltop where there is no one, but if you can see a cottage deep down in the valley you will start talking with that cottage, you will be in relationship with it ..the society has come. You don’t know who lives there, but someone lives there, and that becomes the boundary ..you will start dreaming about who lives there and your eyes will search each day to see who lives there. The cottage will become a symbol of humanity. So the sutra says WITHOUT HABITATIONS — even without trees, because it has been known that people who live alone start talking with trees. They make friendships, they create a dialogue. You cannot understand the difficulty of a man who has gone to be lonely. He wants someone so he will say “Hello” to the tree and “How are you?” And trees are beings. If you are really honest, they will start replying, there will be a response. So you can create a society. 13- So this is the emphasis: move to such a place but have it in your mind that you are not going to create any relationship. Leave all relationship and the world of relationship behind, and be alone there. In the beginning it is going to be very difficult because your mind is created by society. You can leave society but can't leave the mind. The mind will start torturing you. Faces will come in your dreams ...they will try to pull you. You will try to meditate but thoughts will not cease. You will start thinking of your house, you will start thinking of your family...it is human.And it does not happen to you only .. it has happened to to everyone. Even a Buddha is bound to think of Yashodhara during six long years of loneliness. Only by and by, after a long struggle, would he have been able to throw off the mind. 14-But mind will persist because it is nothing but society has entered into you . You can escape from society, the outer reality, but the inner will follow you. So it is not going to be easy. It is written in the lives of all the seers that Satan,the Devil comes, to seduce. No one comes ...only your mind. Your mind is the only Devil and no one else. It will try in every way. It will say to you, “I will give you the whole world, come back.” It will make you depressed, “You are a fool ...the whole world is enjoying and you have come to this hilltop. You are mad. All this religious stuff is humbug, come back. Look, the whole world is not insane and they are enjoying.” And the mind will give such beautiful pictures of everyone who is enjoying and the whole world will be more attractive to you than ever. All that you have left behind will pull you backwards. 15-On the hilltop the mind will feel like hell - nothing is good there, everything is wrong. The mind will create negativity all around you .But if you persist and you remain aware that this is what the mind is doing, and if you don’t get identified with the mind, a moment comes when the mind leaves you, and with it all the pressures. When the mind leaves you, you are unburdened, because it is the only burden. Then there is no worry, no thought, no anxiety, you have entered the womb of existence. Unworried, you float. A deep silence explodes within you.The sutra says, THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES. In such solitude, in such loneliness, one thing more has to be remembered: the crowd exerts a deep pressure on you, whether you know it or not.After working on animals, scientists have come to a very basic law that every animal has a certain space around him and will not allow anybody to enter,.And if someone enters the territory a fight will ensue.

16-By many means every animal creates territory: by sound, by singing, by body odor. No other competitor should enter that territory.For example dogs pissing all around to create their territory by pissing. His urine has a particular odor and with it he creates a territory. No one should enter, it is dangerous. He lives secluded in his own territory, master of it. Monkeys in the wild are totally different. When caged in a zoo they start behaving abnormally. In the beginning it was thought that it was the bondage that was creating the problem. Now it is known that it is not the bondage. If you give them the proper space that they need in a cage they are happy. Then there is no problem. But they have an intrinsic feeling of space. When someone enters that space, pressure comes to their minds. Their minds start to be tense, strained; they cannot sleep right, they cannot feed right, they cannot love right. 17-Because of these studies, scientists now say that the whole of humanity is going crazy and mad because of too much over-population. The pressure is so great. You are never left alone: in the train, in the bus, in the office, everywhere, crowds and crowds. Man also has a need of space, to be left alone. But there is no place, you are never alone. When you come to your home, your partener is there, the children are there, and the relatives keep on coming. And they still think that the guest is God! You are already crazy because the pressure is too much all around you. You cannot say to anyone, “Leave me alone.” Mind needs space to be relaxed.This sutra is really beautiful and very scientific. THENCE COMES THE END OF MIND PRESSURES.When you move alone on a solitary hilltop you have space all around you, endless space. The pressure of the crowd, the pressure of others around you, leaves you. You will sleep more deeply. You will have a different quality of awakening in the morning. You will feel free. An inner pressure circle is not there. You will feel unimprisoned, unfettered. 18-This is good. But we have become so addicted to crowds that only for a few days — three or four days the desire will arise to go again to the crowd.You cannot do anything alone because all your life you have been doing something for others. You feel useless.So remember, if you ever try this solitary madness, drop the idea of utility. Be useless. Only then can you be alone. Because really, utility has been forced on your mind by society. Society says, “Be of some utility. Don’t be useless.” Society want you to be an economic unit, a thing, efficient, utilitarian. Society doesn’t want you to be just a flower. No, even if you are a flower then you must be worth being sold. Society needs you to be in the market, you must have some utility. Only then are you of use, otherwise not. Society goes on preaching that use is the goal of life, the purpose of life. This is nonsense because this use is not the goal.You have to live in society, to be useful to it, but to remain capable of being useless at any moment. That capacity must be retained otherwise you become a thing and not a person.Remember, use is for society. Society uses you and you use society. This is a reciprocal relationship.

19-But life is not for use. It is non-utilitarian, purposeless, it is a play, a celebration. So when you move into solitariness to do this technique, be prepared from the very beginning that you are going to be useless, and enjoy it .Mind will bring beautiful arguments; mind is the great arguer. It is the Devil ... it will try to persuade you, it will convince you that you are wasting time. But don’t listen to it. From the very beginning be prepared, “I am going to waste time. I will not be of any use. I will simply enjoy being here.”Don’t be bothered about the world.You simply be yourself and enjoy your solitariness, just like a rock or a tree or a river. That rock remains there whatsoever happens to the world. It is not worried. It is always in meditation.”Unless you are really prepared to be useless, you cannot be in solitude. And once you know the depth of it you can come back to society. You must come back because solitariness is not a style of life ... it is just a training. It is just a deep relaxation to change the perspective...just medicinal. 20-Many have made it a style of life. They are absolutely in error. They have made a medicine food. Without being concerned, you can become an observer, a witness from the hilltop. So note it, this is not a way of life. Shiva is not saying leave the world and become hermits somewhere in the Himalayas . But sometimes leave, relax, be useless, be alone, exist like a rock, be independent, free from the world, be a part of nature and you will be rejuvenated, reborn.Then come back and move in society and in the crowd again. And try to carry that beauty, that silence that happened to you when you were alone; don’t lose contact with it. Move deep into the crowd but don’t become a part of it. Let the crowd be there outside you ...you remain alone. And when you become capable of being alone in the crowd, you have achieved real aloneness.

21- It is easy to be alone on a hilltop. The whole of nature helps you, and nothing is a barrier. To be back in the market-place, in the shop, in the office, in the family, and to remain alone ..that is an achievement. Now the quality of consciousness has changed. So remain alone in the crowd. The crowd will be there outside but don’t allow it to enter in. Protect whatsoever you have gained. Defend it, don’t allow it to be disturbed. And whenever you feel that the feeling has become dull, fall out of society to renew it, to make it alive again. Then come back and move in the crowd. And then a moment will come when that original spring will remain fresh and no one will be able to pollute it or contaminate it. Then there is no need to move anywhere.So this is just a technique, not a style of life. Don’t become a monk or a nun ;who is living there forever. That is nonsense. If you live forever;you will never be able to know whether you have attained or not. ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// THE DESCRIPTION OF 97 th TECHNIQUE OF MEDITATION ;- 05 FACTS;- 1-LORD SHIVA REPLIES;- ''Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss''. 2-This second technique is concerned with the first. Consider space to be your own body of bliss. Meditating on a hilltop with endless space before you, you can do it. Consider it to be filled with your own body of bliss. There are seven bodies. The bliss body is the last body, so the more you enter within, the more you feel yourself to be blissful. You are nearing the bliss body, the layer of bliss. It is just around your essential soul, which is the first body from within outwards, or the last body from without inwards. Just around your being, the essential soul, is the layer of bliss. It is called the bliss body. Sitting on a hilltop, looking at the endless sky, feel that the whole space, the whole plenum, is filled with your bliss body. Feel that your bliss body has increased and the whole space is filled with it. 3-Actually,you don’t know what bliss is so can't imagine it. It will be better to try first to feel that the whole space is filled with silence, not with bliss.Nature will be helpful about it because in nature even noises are silent. In cities even silence is noisy. Natural sounds are silent because they don’t disturb. They are harmonious. So don’t think that silence is necessarily soundlessness. A musical sound can be silence because it is so harmonious that can't disturb you. Rather, it deepens your silence. So when you move into nature, the breeze blowing, the stream, the river, the wind or whatsoever sounds there are, are harmonious, they make a whole. They are not disturbing. You can listen to them and the very listening will deepen your silence. So first feel that the whole space is filled with silence.

4-Feel deeply that it is growing more and more silent, that the sky has become silence around you. And when you feel that the sky has become silence, only then should you try to be filled with bliss. As silence deepens you will have the first glimpse of bliss. As tension increases, you have the first glimpse of misery, strain; as silence deepens you will feel at ease, at home, relaxed, and the first glimpse of bliss will come to you. And when that glimpse comes, then you can imagine that the whole space is now filled with that bliss. CONSIDER THE PLENUM TO BE YOUR OWN BODY OF BLISS. The whole sky becomes your body of bliss.There is no need to join it to the first, but the same requirements are needed ...endless space, silence, no human beings around you.

5-If you don’t see human beings you forget that you are human, and to forget that you are human, part of society, is good. You don’t belong to anybody, to any society, to any group, to any religion. This non-belonging will be helpful.So it will be good if you move alone somewhere and do this practise. Alone this technique will be helpful, but don’t jump into something which is absolutely unknown to you because then you cannot feel it and you cannot imagine it. ”Remember this as a basic law that always start with something you can feel. Because only then can the unknown enter through it.“Don’t think of God.God is everywhere, but one can't feel .Simply feel deep compassion. Feel sympathetic, create a love… because love you know, howsoever little.Feel that the whole world is filled with your compassion.Then everything else will follow. ....SHIVOHAM....