Can imagination be used to reach the infinite and the absolute?

It is our imagination, through auto-suggestions, that has established us in the world of the finite, in the world of names and forms, in the world of pains and pleasures. Can the same instrument be used to reach the infinite, the absolute, the blissful? The same instrument in the reverse order?

Hitler used every proportion. He had an expert committee to measure how much distance from the audience and how much height was needed so that the eyes are correctly at a tension where they become easily hypnotized and sleepy. And then all the lights would be put off -- in Hitler's lecture hall the only lights would be on Hitler. Nobody could see anywhere else, and so you were forced to look only at him. In a particular situation a particular tension was created. In this tension he would go on saying something for a while. The things that he wanted to put into you would be said later on, when the whole audience had become sleepy. Then the words would simply move into the unconscious and start functioning. Now they have invented subliminal advertisements in films. As you watch a film, between two scenes, just for a fraction of…

Image spirit simultaneously within and around you until the entire universe spiritualizes.

WITH YOUR ENTIRE CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE VERY START OF DESIRE, OF KNOWING, KNOW. O SHAKTI, EACH PARTICULAR PERCEPTION IS LIMITED, DISAPPEARING IN OMNIPOTENCE. IN TRUTH FORMS ARE INSEPARATE. INSEPARATE ARE OMNIPRESENT BEING AND YOUR OWN FORM. REALIZE EACH AS MADE OF THIS CONSCIOUSNESS. You are here listening to me. This very listening can become a transformation. If you are entirely here, this very moment here and now, if listening is your entirety, that listening will become a meditation: you will enter a different realm of ecstasy, a separate reality. But you are not entire. That is the problem with the human mind, it is always partial. A part is listening. Other parts may be somewhere else, or may be asleep, or may be thinking about what is being said, or arguing inside. That creates a division and division is a dissipation of energy. So when doing anything bring your entire…

Kalpana means imagination and deva means divine -- divine imagination. And that you have to remember: that your path will go through imagination. You have a tremendous capacity to imagine. If you can use it, it can be an immense help. If you don't use it, it can become a barrier. If one has some capacity, one has to use it, otherwise it becomes like a rock on the path. One has to step over it and transform it into a stepping stone. You have a very deep potentiality for imagination. So use it. Start three things. One is -- imagine yourself as happy as possible. Within a week you will start feeling that you are becoming very happy -- for no reason at all. That will be proof of your dormant capacity. So the first thing to do in the morning is to imagine yourself tremendously happy.

Yesterday while sitting in zazen I felt myself get hit with a stick on my head. But pradeepa that time had not hit me. Also today during the lecture I got hit twice on the head but no stick-hitter was around. Is this magicless magic?

There are stories of Hindu seers that when they reach to the final step of their meditation they are distracted by Indra. He sends beautiful maidens, APSARAS, to distract them. But why should anybody distract these poor saints? Why? They are not doing anybody any harm. They have left the world, they are sitting under their trees or in their caves in the Himalayas, why send beautiful maidens to them? Nobody is sending anybody. There is no agency like that. Imagination is playing the last tricks, and when your meditation goes deep, deeper layers of imagination are provoked. Ordinarily, when meditation is not there, you live on the surface of the mind. Of course, your imagination is also superficial then. The deeper you move in meditation, the more the deeper layers of imagination will be revealed to you, they will be more real. They will be so real that you…

Sometimes I feel that all my inner journey is only imagination. Sometimes I know it is true. Is going inward just moving back from the outside business, moving down in the deeper caverns of body into the heartbeat and down into the joy of being and behind the body, behind the feelings, shifting the me behind until it is just somehow that I am watched and felt by that which lives -- me? You say that the power of imagination deludes. In front of you I feel like such a schmuck when I don't feel that I am god.

But I can understand Padma Sambhava's difficulty too. I myself go on saying to you "Start the inner journey". I have to use words, you have to use words, and all words are inadequate. And if you go on stretching a word to its extreme, logical end, it becomes absurd. They have to be used only in a hypothetical way. They have to be used in a utilitarian sense. When I use the words 'inner journey', I simply mean that you have looked at one aspect of the journey in your life called 'outer', now try to look at another aspect of the journey called 'inner'. YoU have been running after money, now run after meditation. You have been running after power, now run after God. Both are running. Once you start running after meditation then one day I will tell you, "Now drop meditation too. Now stop running." And…