Jo Ghar Bare Aapna #5

Keeping the eyes open, fixed, without a blink, is first of all an experiment in resolve: not allowing the eyes to close. To not let the eyes close is an experiment in resolve, in will-power. And if you can keep the eyes open for forty minutes, there will be very broad results. Forty minutes is the span of the human mind’s capacity; that is why in school and college we keep a forty-minute period. Whatever can be done for forty minutes can then be carried much further. If you can keep the eyes open for forty minutes—if this small resolve can be fulfilled—it will have many consequences.

First, the result of keeping the eyes open for forty minutes will be that if the eyes have remained open and you have continued to keep them open for that long, your mind’s susceptibility to hypnosis will end at once. You will no longer be hypnotizable. In fact, the capacity to be hypnotized depends upon your eyes’ tendency to blink quickly. You will also not be able to faint. And keeping the eyes open, unblinking, for forty minutes will greatly help awaken the power of consciousness within you that has been asleep.

For example, if someone lies down with eyes closed for forty minutes, the likelihood of sleep increases. If one lies with eyes open, the likelihood of sleep decreases. After all, why does closing the eyes increase the possibility of sleep? By closing the eyes the outer world is shut; we remain only within. And when there is nothing to do within, no work appears except sleep, and we fall asleep. If the eyes are kept utterly open for forty minutes, the possibility of sleep is absolutely not there; you will become fully aware. There will be a chance for an awakening, an awareness.

And I have asked you to look toward me for a purpose. Those who have gathered here are seekers. Many experiences of which they are not aware can become known to them; things that had not occurred to them can come into their awareness. Even today one seeker—and many seekers—came and reported to me: many things can be seen that ordinarily do not come to mind.

If for forty minutes you are looking at me unblinkingly, an inner relationship is established between you and me—one that is not of speech, that is psychic, that is mental. And what I cannot tell you in words can also be communicated to you in that moment of mental connection. And ordinarily you are seeing me—the gross, flesh-and-bone body; but if you have looked at me unblinkingly for forty minutes, you will also be able to experience that which is not visible to the ordinary eye. And once, in any one person, that which is not the body becomes visible—even a glimpse of it, its radiance, its aura—then you will be able to see it in other people as well.

This body that appears to us on the surface is not our totality; it is only a shell. Within, we are something else. But with ordinary eyes we can see only this body. Forty minutes of unblinking eyes takes you into the state of an extraordinary eye. Those friends who have kept their eyes open unblinkingly for forty minutes have felt—must have felt—that a strong pressure begins at the point between the two eyes. In fact, what we call the third eye, the Shiv-netra, it too exists. But it is not in this body. When you bring these two eyes to complete stillness, the arrangement for that third eye to become active begins. When the eyes become utterly still, pressure begins on the third eye and it becomes active. Through that third eye much will be seen that never becomes visible to these eyes. This experiment is for that.

Absolutely appropriate. Absolutely essential. In fact, samadhi is available only in relaxation. But most of us have forgotten how to relax; we know only tension. So for us there is just one path to relaxation: to pass through total tension, to the point beyond which no further tightening is possible. Go to the climax of tension where there is simply no way to stretch any farther. Then, suddenly, you will find that looseness has come and relaxation has happened. If I go on clenching this fist, tighter and tighter, with all my strength, there will come a point where the fist opens by itself. Precisely where my strength is exhausted, the fist will relax.

Samadhi will be found only in relaxation. But to enter relaxation you will have to pass through total tension. Tension is our habit. It is like a person who cannot stop—then you must make him run; let him run until he is exhausted, until there is no option left but to stop—and then stopping happens. Exactly so. This method is relaxation through tension. This experiment is the experiment of arriving at relaxation by way of tension. Perhaps one in a hundred is in such a state that he can go directly into relaxation. Ninety-nine are not. They are so tense that even the attempt to relax will itself become another tension, and nothing else will happen.

Consider someone who cannot sleep at night. He has two options. One is to try to bring sleep. What will he do in trying? Lie in bed, close his eyes, toss and turn, switch off the light—this and that. From such trying, sleep rarely comes. Sleep never comes by effort; all effort becomes a hindrance to sleep. In fact, sleep means that when you are no longer capable of making any effort, then sleep comes. As long as you can try, sleep will not come. So that is not the way.

If a person cannot sleep, it is better that he go out and run four miles; give total tension. Tire yourself so completely that there is no energy left even to try; when you lie down you don’t even feel like turning over—then sleep will come. To bring sleep directly is difficult. The indirect way is to get tired.

So the first three stages of the meditation are of tension, and the fourth stage is of relaxation. Therefore I say: the one who runs totally in the first three and is totally exhausted will enter the fourth deeply. Those who are miserly in the first three will not be tired enough to be available to relaxation in the fourth. Therefore, in the first three, wear yourself out completely.

No one remains unconscious. Meditation simply does not lead to unconsciousness. Yes, you may see some people lying there as if unconscious. Someone is lying down, not getting up. No, they are not unconscious. And please do not try to make them get up. They are fully aware, but they have no wish to get up—they do not want to. They are experiencing a certain bliss they have no desire to leave.

Today many people have complained to me that others try to make them get up. The one you are trying to rouse is perfectly aware; they are not unconscious. Today a girl came and told me that some people were bringing a bucket of water to pour on her face, because they thought she had fainted and would not get up unless water was poured on her.

She knows they have gone to fetch a bucket; she knows they are bringing water; she knows what they are thinking. She is not at all unconscious. Therefore, after meditation, please, those who have returned from the meditation should quietly go out—morning, noon, and evening. And those who are still lying there, let them lie. Do not crowd around them, and do not try to bring them round. No one is unconscious. When their own moment comes, they will get up of their own accord and go on their way. Keep this in mind from tomorrow—indeed, from tonight itself.

This process of meditation is so active that unconsciousness is impossible.

There is absolutely no similarity. Not just a difference—there is opposition, a fundamental contrast. What is being called “transcendental meditation” is simple mantra-yoga, name-chanting. If you repeat any word inside the mind, a stupor arises, hypnosis arises, sleep arises, and you get lost in deep sleep. Unconsciousness can come from it—and does. The process of meditation taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is like a tranquilizer, like a sleep-inducing drug.

The process I call meditation is like an activator—something that awakens, that breaks unconsciousness. Because in the three stages you exert yourself so much—your blood circulation increases, the oxygen in your body increases, your bodily activity increases, the dormant energy within you awakens—that sleep becomes impossible. In these three stages you are so active, and inwardly you must remain totally aware, a witness, to whatever is happening. When you are breathing, you are a witness to the breath; when you are dancing, you are a witness to the dance; when you are asking “Who am I?” you are a witness to that; and when you come to the fourth stage, you are a witness to whatever happens—of light, of bliss, of the divine. You have to remain a witness in all four stages. Therefore there is no possibility of your becoming unconscious or hypnotized. Yes, if you do not remain a witness, then this experiment—this one, or any experiment in which you do not remain a witness—will take you into hypnosis, into hypnotism; you will swoon into unconsciousness.

Keeping alertness is essential. The indispensable element of meditation is awareness. It should be there the whole time. If it is lost even for a single moment, understand that you have veered away from the process of meditation. There is no need for it to be lost.

It is never going to stop. You are not to become unconscious so that you don’t hear sounds. No—meditation will not come by the stopping of sounds. Sounds are there, and within you no reaction, no response arises—meditation is concerned only with this much. A man is shouting next door; nothing happens to you: you hear, and nothing happens.

A sister came to me today and said that in the last fifteen minutes of the afternoon silence her heartbeat increased a lot. So many sounds became audible that she got frightened; she felt like getting up and running away.

Not hearing sounds would be a swoon. Hearing sounds and reacting by running away—that is the ordinary state. Hearing sounds and simply listening, remaining only the witness, the watcher—that is meditation.

You are not to become stupefied. Whatever is happening, you will know it all—but it will become dreamlike. As long as we react, only then does something appear real to us. The moment we stop reacting, everything becomes dreamlike.

For example, someone is insulting you. His insult seems real only so long as, in reply, you are filled with the urge to insult him back. If within you his abuse is simply heard—echoes, passes—and no reaction is produced; you only know, listen, see and do nothing, then the insult will feel as if heard in a dream, and the person abusing will appear deranged. There is then no question of being angry with him.

Meditation is not unconsciousness. Meditation is to descend into non-reaction with total awareness. Then the world will go on as it is—birds will sing, people will shout, someone will pass on the road—you remain the listener, the knower, the watcher, the witness.

This is the difference. In transcendental meditation you get lost—there may be a sound on the road, and you won’t hear it. In the meditation I am speaking of, you do not get lost; you awaken.

Remember, transcendental meditation is a state of absorption—engrossment. The meditation I call meditation is a state of awareness, not absorption. I am strongly opposed to trance-like absorption. Whoever is getting absorbed, forgetting, becoming oblivious, is slipping into a kind of stupor. Whoever is awakening, filling with alertness, becoming heedful, whose inner consciousness is seeing, becoming the seer, becoming the witness—that person is stepping toward meditation.

If you become the watcher, there will be the journey of meditation and the attainment of samadhi. If you become absorbed, there will be the journey of hypnosis and the attainment of sushupti—ultimately you will be lost in deep sleep. Deep sleep has its own pleasure. If someone cannot sleep, then transcendental meditation can be helpful. Sleep has its own pleasure; it also has medical uses. That is why meditations like transcendental meditation are becoming very effective in the West—because sleep has vanished there. There is no greater reason. Sleep has diminished; people are troubled; they cannot sleep without tranquilizers. So all right—if it can happen through meditation, so much the better. But meditation is not such a small thing that it can be turned into a sleeping pill. Meditation is something immense—it is the door to the deathless. It cannot be reduced to merely a medicine for sleep.

It is not that sexual desire disappears; through meditation your energy begins to move in another dimension and direction. If someone says that by digging canals the river no longer floods, it does not mean floods stop coming because of the canals; floods still come, but their force is carried off through the canals, and the villages along the banks no longer need to be submerged.

Meditation does not throw your sexual desire out. You have only one power—whether you expend it in sex or in meditation. Your energy is one; use it however you will—into anger or into forgiveness, into love or into hate—the power is the same. All expressions are uses of that one power. Meditation makes your energy upward-moving. It starts traveling on a higher path. Its outlets change. Where sex was the outlet, love becomes its path. If the energy flows downward—degrades—it finds sex as its path; if it flows upward, love is its path. Flowing downward, the path is cruelty; flowing upward, it becomes compassion. Meditation simply gives your energy a new momentum, a new direction, a new dimension. Meditation does not abolish sex; it transforms it. Your sex becomes divine. In Meera too there was sexual energy, but it became divine. In Mahavira too there was sexual energy, but it became celibacy. In Buddha too there was sexual energy, but it became compassion. In Jesus too there was sexual energy, but it became love.

Sex is not to be destroyed. Whoever tries to destroy it will end up destroying himself, because sex is energy, it is power. The question is how we use it. For one who has found no other use, sex remains the only outlet for energy. If we discover new uses, higher uses, the journey begins in that direction. In truth, the higher the door we open, the more the flow through the lower doors ceases.

Therefore, do not brood directly over sex. Attend to meditation. As your movement in meditation deepens, transformation in relation to sex will keep happening.

Do not remain in the delusion that you have no ghosts and spirits within. That they haven’t yet been shaken out—this may be. That the time for shaking them out has not yet come—this may be. But we all have our own ghosts. And within all of us are states that should be released. If you don’t bring them out yourself, then some other “ghost” has to enter you and force them out. There’s no real difference.

Certainly, what happens in a state of possession is almost the same as what happens in meditation. But there is a difference. From the outside the processes may look similar; inside there is a very fundamental difference. A person afflicted by possession is out of control, under another’s power; whatever happens within him is as if someone else is making it happen. In your case, whatever is happening, you are doing it; no one else is making it happen. You are its master; it is in your control. And if this whole ghostly condition shakes out of you, then someday no ghost will find an entry into you. Otherwise the opportunity is always there. And in those within whom ghosts can enter, it becomes very difficult for the Divine to enter. The day we free ourselves from all these morbidities—these are all diseases.

Now today, in meditation, one friend became obsessed with the urge to kill someone. Violence was inside, but it came out; he even came and bit my leg. If you have the capacity to look a little deeper, the moment I saw him biting my leg, I felt it was good that he bit—because the matter got settled very cheaply. He could have murdered someone. Now he won’t. He became lighter; the matter washed away.

In this regard it is necessary to tell you: as far as meditation is concerned, do whatever you wish with your own body. Please do not do it with another’s body. Not that doing it with someone else’s body is somehow “bad,” but other bodies are not yet prepared to receive it. With me, there isn’t much harm, but don’t do it with anyone else. Complete it with your own body. Throw punches in the air. That releases violence just as much as hitting someone would.

A man was once brought to Jung who was very disturbed and had stopped going to his office. He was scared, agitated—agitated because he constantly felt like taking off his shoe and hitting his boss. So he stopped taking shoes to the office, fearing that in a moment of anger he might take one off and hit him.

He went to the office without shoes. In India, it would pass—we’d think some saintliness had descended, that he’d become simple. But this was Europe; there, going without shoes won’t be taken as simplicity. Simplicity isn’t that cheap in Europe. People asked, “What’s happened? Why no shoes?” He was already afraid someone would ask. He snapped, “Who are you to ask? It’s my wish!” The more he bristled, the more curious people became about what had happened with the shoes. Then he began to feel he might take off anyone’s shoe and hit them. So he took leave. His family took him to a psychologist and said, “Please do something; it’s become very difficult. He’s lost the courage to go to the office.”

The psychologist listened and said, “Do one thing: bring a photograph of your boss, and every morning religiously, with a completely devotional feeling, give the picture five blows with a shoe—and then go to the office.”

The man asked, “What will that do?”

But the moment he asked “What will happen?” a sparkle came into his eyes, happiness spread across his face. This had been his intention for a long time.

The psychologist said, “Don’t worry about what will happen; just start giving five shoe-blows.”

He did it—five shoe-blows! After fifteen days he began to feel compassion for that very boss. He thought, “The poor fellow doesn’t even know he’s getting five shoe-blows every morning.” The boss, too, was surprised, because the man’s whole behavior had changed. One day he asked him, “You seem so good now—calm, less agitated, not anxious. Earlier you were jumpy, fearful, flustered by everything. What’s the matter? What happened? You’ve become so good!”

He said, “Sir, please don’t ask. The trick is such that telling it would be risky. But now I’m perfectly fine. And now I may never be bad again—because I can apply the same trick to others too. I can even keep a photo of my wife.”

So in meditation, whatever freedom there is, it is with your own body. Punch the air, shout, cry, dance—do whatever you must—but do not even touch another body. There are other harms in touching. You may land a punch on someone—no great damage is done; someone deep in meditation might not even notice. But the contact of your body and the other’s body disturbs both of your electrical energies. The electricity that arises in both is harmed. That harm is deep. Therefore do not touch at all. And if a seeker falls, do not touch even then. Let him get up by himself; do not try to lift him.

A few points about the night meditation, and then we will sit for it.

First, since last night was the very first time, you didn’t fully know. Even so, the experiment went very well, and its results increased in this morning’s meditation and also in the afternoon’s silence. Tomorrow is the last day; therefore we should all strive to bring meditation to its utmost peak. To ensure no one leaves empty-handed, it is necessary that in each sitting, in each session, the intensity keeps increasing.

When you sit for the night meditation today, this is an experiment in witnessing. You are to look only toward me; don’t even turn your head here and there. Drop all concern with others. Keep two things in mind: first, your gaze is on me; second, you must not blink, whatever happens. You must stop the eyes—stop them, stop them, stop them. In a little while you will find the eyes have become still. If tears flow, let them flow, but do not close the eyes. If burning begins, let it be, but do not close the eyes. After a little while you will find the burning has gone, the tears have gone, and the eyes are open in their place—open and healthy.

Second, while with your eyes you are looking at me, many movements and activities will begin in your body—the same as have happened in meditation: in the morning, in the afternoon, yesterday, today—all that movement will start within. Do it with your total strength. Keep your eyes fixed on me and carry out the movement with full vigor. Remember, if someone beside you laughs loudly, don’t laugh softly; give a full reply with all your strength. If someone roars loudly, you too roar loudly. In this experiment, take care that no one lags behind anyone else. Let your eyes be on me, and whatever is happening within, do it with total intensity. Whatever is happening next to you, respond with total intensity. Let the whole room become one response, one answering. We will all be answering each other—with the eyes, with the voice, with dance, with rhythm, with shouting. The entire atmosphere of the room should become charged. It will. And seeing how well you have experimented these two days, there is hope that by tomorrow we will reach that point where the happening must happen to each one. Even now, some sixty to seventy percent have had wondrous results. The remaining thirty percent should not be left behind in vain.

Your neighbor knows how; answer him—forget about yourself. Let go of your own worry; answer the neighbor. At least that much you can do! Worry only that much. Then tomorrow morning we’ll see whether it comes to you or not. Once the flow breaks—just once—then it will begin to come to you as well.
Now we will sit for the night’s experiment.
A few questions remain; I will talk with you about them tomorrow.