Mahaveer Vani #9

About tapas, about the process of transmuting the human vital energy, a few scientific facts must be understood.
Dharma too is a science—or say, the supreme science. Because science can touch only matter; dharma touches even that consciousness whose touch seems impossible. Science can only change matter, give it new forms; dharma transforms that very consciousness which can neither be seen nor touched. Hence it is the supreme science.
Science means to know the how—how a thing can be done. Science means to know the process, the method, the arrangement by which something becomes possible. Buddha used to say that truth means that by which something can be done. If a truth is impotent, sterile—only a doctrine from which nothing follows—it is useless. Truth is that which can do—some change, some revolution, some transformation. And dharma is precisely such truth. Therefore dharma is not speculation, not thought; dharma is a radical mutation. Tapas is the primary formula of dharma—the process of transformation that dharma is. Now let us understand upon what bases tapas stands, by what processes a man is changed.
The first thing: whatsoever appears in this world is not as it appears. What appears looks like solid, still, compact substance. But now science says: in this world there is nothing solidly fixed. All that is, is kinetic, dynamic. The chair you are sitting on is not a stationary thing; it is as dynamic as a river in flow. The walls all around that you see are not solid. Science says: there is nothing like solidity in existence. Those walls that stand around are liquid, a flow. Only the flow is so fast that your eyes cannot catch the gaps, the intervals, the hollows within the flow. If you run an electric fan very fast, so fast that you cannot count the blades, it will look like a circular disc; the empty spaces between the blades will not be seen.
Scientists say: a fan can be run so fast that if you fire a bullet, it will not pass through the gap; it will pierce a blade and go through. And it can be run so fast that if you sit upon the moving fan you will not fall through the gaps. For, in the time it takes to fall, a new blade will have arrived beneath you. Then the fan will appear solid, no longer moving.
If speed becomes very great, things appear at rest—not for lack of movement, but because of excess of speed. The chair you sit on is moving immensely. Each atom of it is revolving around its nucleus at a speed equal to that of light—186,000 miles per second. Because of such tremendous speed you do not fall through the chair; otherwise you would fall at any time. That very speed is supporting you.
And this movement is multi-dimensional. The first movement of the chair is that its atoms are revolving within themselves—each atom circling its nucleus. Second, the chair rests on the Earth, and the Earth is rotating on its axis; hence a second movement belongs to the chair. A third: while rotating on its axis, the Earth is also orbiting the Sun; so the chair participates in that movement too. Fourth: the Sun rotates on its own axis, and with it the entire solar family moves. Fifth: scientists say the Sun orbits some great Sun—a vast orbit that takes some two hundred million years to complete. The chair participates in this fifth movement as well. Sixth: the great Sun around which our Sun circles is not stationary; it too revolves on its axis. Seventh: scientists infer that that great Sun, revolving on its axis, is moment to moment receding from other solar families—some further vast Sun or a great void signals this seventh movement. Scientists say: these seven are the movements of matter.
In man there is also an eighth movement—in prana, in life. A chair cannot walk; life can move: the eighth begins. A ninth movement, dharma says, is in man: not only can man move, but the energy within him can either go downward or upward. Tapas pertains to this ninth movement. Up to eight movements science can work; upon the ninth—the supreme movement by which consciousness goes up or down—rests the entire process of dharma.
The energy within man can go downwards or upwards. When you are filled with sex-desire, the energy goes down. When you are filled with the search for the Atman, the energy goes upwards. When you are filled with life, the energy turns inward—and inward and upward, in the vision of dharma, are one direction. And when you are filled with death, when death comes near, the energy moves outward. Till just ten years ago scientists were unwilling to accept that, in death, some energy goes out of man; but the photography of Russia’s Davidovich Kirlian has changed the whole notion.
I have spoken to you earlier of Kirlian. One point from that is useful here today. When Kirlian photographed living persons, the images showed around the body a ring of energy, an energy field. In highly sensitive photography, around you appears a ring of energy. But if he photographs a person just dead, no ring appears. Instead, clusters of energy are seen moving away from the body, fleeing. For three days after death, clusters of energy continue to exit from the body—first day more, second less, third still less. When the exodus of energy-clusters completely ends, only then is the man fully dead. Scientists say: as long as energy is still leaving, some method to revive him may be discovered sooner or later.
In death, energy goes out of you, yet the body’s weight does not decrease. Certainly there is a kind of energy upon which gravitation has no effect. Weight means nothing but the Earth’s pull. Do not think your weight is ‘yours’; it is the measure of the ground’s attraction. Go to the moon and your weight becomes one quarter, because the moon’s gravitation is a quarter. If you weigh a hundred pounds, twenty-five remain on the moon. Understand it thus: if you can jump six feet on Earth, you will jump twenty-four feet on the moon. And in space, within the capsule, the astronaut becomes weightless. Because there is no gravitation there. Hence the astronaut must be strapped to his seat; loosen the strap and he will bump against the ceiling like a gas-filled balloon, for there is no weight to pull him down. Weight is from the Earth’s gravity. But Kirlian’s experiments prove that energy leaves a person without any loss of weight. Surely that energy is unaffected by gravitation. Yoga’s levitation—raising the body from the ground—uses that very energy.
In the West there was a most wondrous dancer, Nijinsky. His dance was extraordinary—perhaps the Earth has never known such a dancer. He would rise from the ground higher than is ordinarily possible. Still more amazing: as he came back down, he would descend so slowly that it defied the Earth’s pull; such slowness is not permitted by gravity. This was the miraculous part. He married; his wife, herself a dancer, was astonished when she saw him dance.
She writes in her autobiography: one day I said to my husband, ‘What a shame that you cannot see yourself dancing.’ Nijinsky said, ‘Who said I cannot see? I do. I always do. I am always outside. I make myself dance from the outside.’ He said, ‘I always see, because I am always outside; from outside I make my body dance. And if I do not remain outside, I cannot go so high; if I do not remain outside, I cannot return so slowly to the ground. When I dance from within, I have weight; when I dance from outside, the weight is lost.’
Yoga says: whenever the anahata chakra of a person becomes active, the Earth’s gravitation affects him less—and certain special dances impact the anahata. Nijinsky, dancing, unknowingly activated the anahata chakra. The other quality of anahata is that one whose anahata awakens enters out-of-body experiences. He can stand outside his body and see. But when you are outside the body, that which is outside is your vital energy—your prana. That, in truth, is you. That energy Mahavira called life-fire; to awakening that energy, Vedic culture gave the name yajna.
When that energy awakens, a new warmth fills life—a new heat that is very cool. This is the difficulty to understand: a heat that is utterly cool. The tapasvin is the coolest of all—though we call him one of tapas. Tapasvin means one filled with fire. Yet the more this inner fire awakens, the cooler the center becomes. All around, force arises; at the center, coolness descends.
Scientists first thought the Sun is a burning furnace—and it is. But now they say: at its center the Sun is utterly cool—the coldest spot in the universe. Astonishing! A ring of such fire all around, and at the center the coldest point. The reason now begins to be understood: where there is so much fire, to balance it there must be as deep a coolness at the core—otherwise balance would break.
Just so in the life of a tapasvin. All around, energy becomes incandescent; to balance that blazing energy, the center becomes utterly cool. Therefore there is no point in existence more cool than a man of tapas—not even the Sun. Balance is essential in this cosmos. Without balance, things scatter.
If you have seen a whirlwind rise in the hot months—dust whirling—go later to the marks it leaves upon the sand. You will see the whorl traced all around, but in the middle a point with no mark—there was void. The whirlwind had spun around a hub of emptiness. The bullock-cart moves, its wheel turns, but its axle stands still. How strange: upon a still axle a moving wheel runs. If the axle also moved, the cart would collapse. Balance by the opposite—this is life’s formula: balance through the opposite.
So the tapasvin’s effort is to create so much fire around himself that, in proportion to that fire, within arises a point of coolness. He rouses such dynamic forces all around that the inner point of shunya is found. He sets such a fierce circumambulation of energy around that his axle becomes still, upright.
Because this sequence appears inverted, great mistakes happen. It seems the tapasvin is keen on heat. The tapasvin is keen on coolness. But the method to create coolness is to kindle heat around. And this heat is not outer. Lighting a brazier around the body will not do. The heat is inner. Therefore Mahavira forbade a tapasvin to light fires around himself—because that heat is outer; inner coolness will not be born of it. Remember: only inner heat gives birth to inner coolness; outer heat produces only outer coolness. If the journey is inward, do not seek outer substitutes. They deceive; they are dangerous.
What inner heat can be created? Kirlian has studied, through photography, people who by mere meditation can emit flames from the hands. There is a Swiss man who can light a five-candle bulb in his palm—just by meditation. He simply meditates that the life-fire is flowing through his hand, and within minutes the bulb glows.
Some fifteen years ago, a Dutch court granted a divorce—and on an unprecedented ground. A woman had fallen in a car accident; after that, whoever touched her received an electric shock. Her husband said, ‘I will die. I cannot touch her.’ The court had to allow it—law had no clause for this. Somewhere in that woman’s inner circuitry a leakage had occurred.
Your body too is a circuit of positive and negative bio-electricity. If a break occurs, anyone touching you may get a shock. Sometimes you suddenly feel a jerk in some limb—that is an accidental leakage. Sometimes you are lying at night and suddenly you twitch; there is no other cause. In sleep, your energy should settle with your slumber; it doesn’t—an obstruction arises, and you get a shock.
Hypnosis has done great work upon this inner energy. By hypnosis your inner energy can be decreased or increased. Those who walk on burning coals—Sufi fakirs, yogis—their secret is simply this: they rouse their inner energy so much that the heat of the embers is relatively less. Heat is a relative experience. Their inner current flows so intensely that, relatively, the outer fire feels cool. Hence no blisters.
Make a little experiment. Take your temperature. Put the thermometer aside. Sit with eyes closed for ten minutes, and only imagine—intensely—that great heat is arising in the body. Then measure again. You will be astonished: by imagination alone you have compelled the mercury to rise. If it can rise one degree, why not ten? Then it is a matter of effort. And if ten up, why not ten down?
In Tibet, for thousands of years seekers have sat naked upon ice rocks in meditation for hours. They awaken their surrounding life-energy field through bhava, through intent. The University of Lhasa, before the Chinese invasion, would not grant a medical degree in Tibetan medicine until the physician could stand on a night of snowfall and produce sweat from his body. Because if one has no influence over his own life-energy, how will he influence another’s? Those who were award-winners, gold medalists, could produce sweat not once but twenty times in one night; each time they were bathed with cold water, and each time they produced sweat again—only through idea, through thought, through resolve.
In Kirlian photography, when someone resolves energy, the halo grows larger. When you are filled with hatred or anger, clusters of energy exit from your body as they do in death. When you are filled with love, the reverse happens. Filled with karuna, with compassion, energy-clusters enter you from the vast Brahman. You will be surprised to know: in love you receive; in anger you give away. Ordinarily we think we give in love and snatch in anger. But remember: in love you receive. In compassion you receive. Your life-energy increases. Hence after anger you feel exhausted; after compassion you are stronger, clearer, fresher. The compassionate one never tires; the angry lives tired.
According to Kirlian photography, what happens in death happens in small measure in anger—energy rushes out. He photographed a flower still on its stem: around it a vibrant ring of energy, and from the vast surrounds rays entering the flower. He then plucked the flower and photographed again—everything changed. The rays that had been entering turned back. An hour later the energy was scattering; when the petals droop and fade, that is the moment energy has nearly departed and emptiness begins.
With that flower Kirlian did another unique experiment, of great implication for tapas. He cut off half the flower: of six petals he removed three. He photographed three petals—and was astonished: the petals were three, but the aura around the flower remained whole, as with six. He removed two more; only one petal remained, yet the aura remained whole—though rapidly dissolving.
Thus, under anesthesia or hypnosis, if your hand is cut off, you do not know—because your actual experience of the body is via the energy-body. Even when the hand is cut, the energy-hand remains whole. Only when you awaken and see the hand missing does pain begin. In deep sleep, even if you are killed, you do not suffer—because in deep sleep, hypnosis, anesthesia, your identification with this gross body loosens; you remain identified with the energy-body, in which the experience stays whole. Hence even if you become lame, inside you do not feel something has diminished. Outwardly there is trouble, but inwardly you feel no lack. Even in old age, inwardly you do not feel old—because the energy-body functions as it is.
The American psychologist and scientist Dr. Green cut away many parts of the brain and was astonished: even with parts removed, the mind’s functioning continued. From this Green concluded: the brain is only an instrument; the real owner is behind. That aura around the body is not radiation of this body; on the contrary, Kirlian states, this body only mirrors the inner body. Through this body it appears; it does not originate here.
As if a lamp is lit within, and around it a transparent glass casing: outside, a ring of light appears. If we think it is coming from the glass, we err. It is passing through the glass; it comes from the lamp within. The energy that radiates from us is not of the gross body—because in a dead body all physical elements remain, yet the aura is gone. Yoga calls that aura the sukshma sharira—the subtle body. Tapas works upon that subtle body; all its techniques address its centers.
But ordinarily those we call tapasvins are people busy torturing the gross body. That has nothing to do with it. The real work is upon the second, hidden body—energy-body. The chakras yoga speaks of are nowhere in this gross body; they are in the energy-body.
Therefore when physiologists dissect the body they say, ‘Where are your chakras? Where is anahata, swadhisthana, manipura—nothing is found.’ They will not be found. They are points of the energy-body—though there are corresponding locations in this body, but they are not the chakras.
For example, when you are filled with love you place the hand upon the heart. If the scientist dissects where you place your hand, he finds nothing but the pump—the apparatus for circulating blood. This can be replaced—even by plastic. Scientists say soon it will work better than the organic—no decay. But a strange fact: even in a plastic heart there will be heart-attacks. There should not be—what connection between plastic and a heart-attack? Surely heart-attacks arise from deeper; otherwise a plastic heart could not have one. A plastic organ may crack, puncture—but a lover dies and you get a heart-attack? How will a plastic heart know the beloved has died? Even the heart you have now does not know; the impact is upon the heart chakra in the other body. Its effect mirrors instantly in this body.
Yogis have long been able to stop the heartbeat and yet not die, because life’s source is deeper. The instruments cannot catch where life throbs when the heart is still. This body is an instrument. The inner and surrounding aura is our real body—the body of tapas. Its centers are where the whole technology of tapas works.
I said earlier: Chinese acupuncture holds there are about seven hundred points where the energy-body touches this body. You may not have noticed, but try: sit bare-backed and ask someone to prick needles at various spots along your back. You will be amazed—at some places you feel nothing; at others, a slight prick is immediately felt. There are blind spots where your energy-body does not touch; there are sensitive spots where it is in contact. When you are given anesthesia, the connection between this body and the energy-body is interrupted. In local anesthesia, only the links of the particular limb with the energy-body are cut; then cut or hammer the hand—nothing is felt. Only where the energy-body is connected can feeling be.
Do not make this mistake: sometimes people die in their sleep. Never die in sleep. If one dies in deep sleep it can take days for him to realize he is dead—because in deep sleep the links loosen; if they snap suddenly, he cannot feel the breaking. Understanding dawns only when the breaking is experienced.
Why do we cremate or bury the body immediately the world over? Not merely for sanitation. The deeper concern is to make the consciousness see: the body you took to be yours is gone. Burn it before his witnessing so that the certainty settles. If a body were preserved intact, that consciousness might not realize it is dead; it may hover around, obstructing a new birth.
If one wants to keep a consciousness hovering, the Egyptians made mummies for this very purpose—treating the body with chemicals so it would not decay, in the hope of future revival. The pharaoh’s wives—even living—were buried with him, and all he loved—garments, couches, cups—so that upon revival, the old milieu is at once found. It would not be surprising if, for those whose mummies remain, rebirth has become very difficult; many of their souls may still be wandering around their pyramids.
In this land the Hindus explored prana most deeply; hence we chose the fastest destruction by fire, not even burial—because burial still takes months. In those months the soul may hover. Burn immediately—so that, in that very interval, the soul realizes: the body is gone; I am dead. Until this is felt, the new search does not begin.
Those seven hundred points of acupuncture—Russia’s scientist Adamenko has made a machine: you stand inside it, thousands of bulbs surround you; wherever your prana flows, the bulbs light up. Seven hundred bulbs glow. Thus each person’s sensitive points can now be mapped.
But yoga does not speak of seven hundred points; it speaks of seven chakras. Its grasp is deeper: the points are peripheral; the chakras are centers. Around each chakra there are a hundred points on the periphery of the body. Touch the center and the hundred are affected. Hence yoga speaks of seven chakras. For example: the sex center—swadhisthana—has a hundred peripheral points, erotic zones over the body. When you engage in love you unawares touch certain parts—those are erotic zones. Different cultures discovered different points. Scientists have now charted them. You may not know that the length beneath the ear is as erotic as the breast.
You must have heard of ear-split sadhus; you may never have wondered why split the ear? To influence a sex-related sensitive point. You may have noticed images of Mahavira—the lobes touch the shoulders; the same for Buddha; all the twenty-four Tirthankaras. That elongated ear was taken as a sign—that this person’s sex-energy is abundant. That very energy is to be transformed, to rise as Kundalini, to become tapas. The long ear is symbolic—an erotic zone indicating sensitivity to kama. The body carries many such points.
Around each chakra there are a hundred bodily points. Some points, when massaged, can influence your intelligence—because they correspond to centers of buddhi. Others influence other chakras. All yogasanas are experiments of pressing these points; different asanas activate different chakras. Where pressure falls, activation happens.
Acupuncture has a simple method—piercing the sensitive point with a needle. The energy is stirred and moves. They say any illness can be treated by acupuncture. A remarkable book has just been published about Hiroshima. An American researcher is astonished: we have no remedy for radiation damage from the atom bomb, but acupuncture’s simple needle helps even the radiation-sick. What happens? When the atom explodes, so much energy is released outside that it pulls your inner energy outward—a tremendous gravitation of atomic energy draws the energy of the tapas-body out. If from the legs, you become lame; from the heart, you fall and die; from the brain, you become idiotic. Acupuncture re-activates the circulation of your energy through the mere touch of a needle.
Similarly, yogasanas apply pressure to special points. Continuous pressure activates energy; counter-pressure draws energy from other centers. For example, shirshasana (headstand) inevitably affects sex—because in shirshasana the flow reverses toward the head. Your habit is to let energy flow downward; when you invert, you continue to flow ‘downward’—but now downward is upward. This asana became valuable for tapasvins for channeling sex-energy to the head by using an old habit.
Two years ago, near Prague, on a roadside, a unique experiment took place, witnessed by many European scientists. A man, Bretislav Kafka, has done deep work with hypnosis—perhaps today the greatest expert on the subject. He trained many people for many directions. One man of his: if you lift your eyes and tell him ‘drop that bird,’ the bird flying in the sky drops—instantly. A hundred birds on a branch: point to number one, he glances, and that bird falls. Say, ‘kill and drop,’ and the bird dies and falls. Two hundred scientists saw this in Prague. Many birds, at others’ choice, were dropped—alive when asked, dead when asked.
Asked the secret, Kafka says: ‘We do nothing. Like a vacuum cleaner that sucks dust—empty within and drawing—we trained him to suck prana. The bird sits; he focuses and resolves to draw the bird’s vitality into himself. If he draws just enough that the bird cannot remain perched, it falls. If he draws it all, the bird dies.’ And they photographed it—when he sucks, clusters of energy stream from the bird toward the man.
Kafka says: this energy can be collected; just as we now give oxygen to the dying, one day we will give prana. Before oxygen, men died from lack of it; soon hospitals will keep cylinders filled with prana-energy, and the dying can be supplied—extending life for a time, perhaps for long.
There was an American scientist I mentioned yesterday—Wilhelm Reich. If you sit by the sea or under the open sky and look, you may see little forms rising and falling—till now taken as eye delusions or spots. Reich proved those forms are prana-energy. If one learns to drink them, he becomes vastly vital. He called it orgone energy—life-energy.
Prana-yoga—pranayama—is not merely inhaling and exhaling air. Superficially one thinks it is a breathing exercise. Those who know—few indeed—know the real issue is not air in and out, but drawing, through the path of breath, those orgone clusters that float all around life. If they enter, it is prana-yoga; otherwise it is vayu-yoga, not pranayama. Tapas uses both one’s own force and the force of life all around—of plants, of matter.
One unique point: Kafkas, Kirlians, Reichs and others have found that gold is the one metal that most strongly attracts prana. This is the secret of its value—nothing else. Ten-thousand-year-old records show emperors forbade commoners to wear gold; only the emperor could. Wearing gold himself while forbidding others, he could live longer—unwittingly drawing people’s prana. When you feel attracted to gold, it is not the gold; your prana begins to flow towards it. Hence emperors used gold and banned it for others.
Gold draws prana most—that is its treasure. Research is ongoing; soon the secrets of precious stones will be found—some attract prana, some resist being drained. Human knowledge is still little; much has been lost.
There is mention in Luqman’s life: he sent a man to India to learn Ayurveda, instructing him to sleep only beneath the babul tree. By the time he reached Kashmir, he was tubercular. The vaidya asked, ‘Have you been sleeping under some special tree?’ He said, ‘Yes, beneath babul, as ordered.’ The vaidya laughed: ‘Do nothing; go back sleeping beneath neem.’ He returned sleeping under neem and arrived as healthy as he had left. Luqman said, ‘Then Ayurveda surely has a secret.’ The man said, ‘But I took no medicine.’ Luqman replied, ‘Because I had sent you under a tree under which no one could return alive. How did you? Did you sleep under another?’ He said, ‘I was told to avoid babul and sleep beneath neem.’ Luqman said, ‘They know too.’
Babul sucks your energy—do not sleep beneath it. Its twig was used for toothbrush because it is rich in life-energy; it helps the teeth—because it drinks. Neem does not drink your energy; it pours its own into you. But do not sleep beneath peepal either—because it pours so much energy that you will fall ill. Peepal is the most power-giving tree; not surprisingly it became the Bodhi tree. It pours force day and night; hence it was called devata—not for any other reason. Only a god can only give and not take.
This prana-energy within you—this is you. So the first formula of tapas: drop your identification with this body. Stop believing ‘I am this body’ that appears and can be touched—the body into which food goes, which drinks water, that gets hungry and tired, that sleeps and wakes. Break this identity. Without this, entry into the world of tapas is impossible. This very identity is bhoga; from it, all indulgence spreads. One who thinks he is the gross body becomes eager to enjoy other gross bodies—sex arises. One who takes this body as himself becomes obsessed with food—because this body is made of food. One who thinks this body is himself becomes a slave of the senses—because they are channels of bodily nourishment.
First sutra of tapas: ‘This body I am not.’ How to break this identity? Mahavira has given six ways; we will talk of them tomorrow. But it must be broken—this resolve is indispensable. By resolve alone it breaks, because by resolve it was made—lifetimes of resolve have crystallized as ‘I am the body.’
You will be surprised—the old children’s tales say: a king’s life is hidden in a parrot; kill the parrot and the king dies. We think: how can this be? Yet it is possible—scientifically. If you want to protect a king from death, put him in deep hypnosis and suggest again and again that his life is not in his body but in this parrot. Make the conviction absolute. Then he goes into battle unafraid, knowing none can kill him—his life is in the parrot. When one knows one cannot be killed, he is almost invulnerable. But if before him you wring the parrot’s neck, he will die at once—because thought itself is life; resolve is life.
Hypnosis has proved this. If, under hypnosis, you are told, ‘This paper holds your prana; the day we tear it, you will fall bedridden,’—after thirty sittings of suggestion—you sit fully awake, they tear the paper, and you collapse, paralyzed. What happened? Resolve became reality. Our conviction of ‘I am the body’ is of the same kind as ‘I am the paper’ or ‘I am the parrot.’ Without breaking this conviction there is no journey of tapas. With it, the journey of bhoga continues; we made it precisely to journey into indulgence. Without it, indulgence cannot proceed.
If I know this hand is not me, what relish remains in touching a beautiful body? The hand becomes like a stick; with a stick if you touch, what joy is there? The tapasvin’s hand becomes like a staff—disidentified. With such a hand, touching or not touching is alike; the value falls away. The very basis of bhoga begins to crumble.
Bhoga’s sutra: ‘This body I am.’ Tapas’ sutra: ‘This body I am not.’ But note: the bhoga sutra is positive—‘I am this body.’ If tapas remains only ‘I am not this body,’ tapas will lose and bhoga will win, because ‘not’ is negative; you cannot stand long in a negation. You need a positive ground. When you say ‘I am this body,’ something is graspable. When you say ‘I am not this body,’ nothing is graspable. Therefore the second sutra of tapas: ‘I am the energy-body.’ The first—‘I am not the body’—is half; the second must immediately stand behind it—‘I am the prana-body, the energy-body.’ Without this, you will go on saying ‘I am not the body’ and continue living as the body. People say it every morning and live all day as if the body is truth. A negative resolve cannot defeat a positive; a greater positive is needed. ‘I am not this body’—right, but only half. ‘I am the prana-body’ makes it whole.
So do two things: drop identity with the gross body, and establish identity with the prana-body—be identified with it. I am not this; I am that—and let the emphasis be on the positive: ‘I am the energy-body.’ If emphasis remains here, ‘I am not the gross body’ becomes a mere corollary, a shadow. If you emphasize ‘I am not the body,’ you err—because that ‘I’ cannot become a shadow; it is the root and must be rooted. I have explained first ‘I am not the body’ because understanding begins there; but when you resolve, let the second be first and the first be second. Emphasize ‘I am the energy-body’—that is why I have spoken so much about it—so that ‘I am not the gross body’ follows of itself. This is the preface to tapas. From tomorrow we will discuss its limbs.
Mahavira spoke of two forms of tapas—inner and outer. Inner tapas he divided into six parts—six sutras; outer tapas too into six. Tomorrow we will begin with outer tapas, then inner. If the process of tapas sinks into your resolve, life moves upon the path without which there is no taste of amrit. Where we are, there will be again and again the taste of death—because we have joined ourselves to what we are not. Again and again we will break, dissolve, be destroyed—and the more we shatter the more we cling again to what we are not. To join with what I am not is to open the gates of death; to join with what I am is to open the gates of amrit.
Tapas is the staircase to the gate of amrit—twelve steps. From tomorrow, we begin with them.
Enough for today.
Now we will sit for five minutes; the sannyasins will do the humming—join in…!