CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE
VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ”LIVINGNESS” IN YOU. OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING. FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.
Man can be considered in three ways: in terms of the normal, the abnormal and the supernormal. Western psychology is basically concerned with the abnormal, the pathological, with the man who has fallen down from the normal, who has fallen down from the norm. Eastern psychology, tantra and yoga, consider man from the standpoint of the supernormal – of the one who has gone beyond the norm. Both are abnormal. One who is pathological is abnormal because he is not healthy, and one who is supernormal is abnormal because he is MORE healthy than any normal human being. The difference is of negative and positive.
Western psychology developed as part of psychotherapy. Freud, Jung, Adler and other psychologists were treating the abnormal man, the man who is mentally ill. Because of this the whole Western attitude towards man has become erroneous. Freud was studying pathological cases. Of course, no healthy man would go to him – only those who were mentally ill. They were studied by him, and because of that study he thought that now he understood man. Pathological men are not really men, they are ill, and anything based on a study of them is bound to be deeply erroneous and harmful. This has proved harmful because man is looked at from a pathological standpoint. If a particular state of mind is chosen and that state is ill, pathological, then the whole image of man becomes disease-based. Because of this attitude, the whole Western society has fallen down –
because the ill man is the base, the perverted has become the foundation. And if you study only the abnormal, you cannot conceive of any possibility of supernormal beings. A buddha is impossible for Freud, not conceivable. He must be fictitious, mythological. A buddha cannot be a reality. Freud has only come in contact with ill men who are not even normal, and whatsoever he says about normal man is based on the study of abnormal man. It is just like a physician who is doing a study. No healthy man will go to him, there is no need. Only unhealthy people will go. By studying so many unhealthy people, he creates a picture in his mind of man, but that picture cannot be of man. It cannot be because man is not only illnesses. And if you base your concept of man on illnesses, the whole society will suffer.
Eastern psychology, particularly tantra and yoga, also has a concept of man, but that concept is based on the study of the supernormal – Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Kabir, Nanak – on persons who have reached to the peak of human potentiality and possibility. The lowest has not been considered, only the highest. If you consider the highest your mind becomes an opening; you can grow because now you know higher reaches are possible. If you consider the lowest, no growth is possible. There is no challenge. If you are normal you feel happy. It is enough that you are not perverted, that you are not in a mental asylum. You can feel good, but there is no challenge. But if you seek the supernormal, the highest possibility that you can become, if someone has become that possibility, if that possibility has become actual in someone, then a possibility for growth opens. You can grow. A challenge comes to you, and you need not be satisfied with yourself. Higher reaches are possible and they are calling you. This must be understood deeply. Only then will the psychology of tantra be conceivable. Whatsoever you are is not the end. You are just in the middle. You can fall down, you can rise up. Your growth has not finished. You are not the end product; you are just a passage. Something is constantly growing in you.
Tantra conceives of and bases its whole technique on this possibility of growth. And remember, unless you become that which you can become, you will not be fulfilled. You MUST become that which you can become – it is a must! Otherwise you will be frustrated, you will feel meaningless, you will feel that there is no purpose in life. You can carry on, but there can be no joy in it. And you may succeed in many other things, but you will fail with yourself. And this is happening. Someone becomes very rich and everyone thinks that now he has succeeded. Everyone except himself thinks that he has succeeded. He knows his failure. Wealth is there, but he has failed. You are a great man, a leader, a politician. Everyone thinks that they have succeeded, but they have failed. This world is strange: you succeed in everyone’s eyes except your own.
People come to me daily. They say they have everything, but now what? They are failures, but where have they failed? As far as outward things are concerned they have not failed, so why do they feel this failure? Their inner potentiality has remained potent. They have not flowered. They have not achieved what Maslow calls ”self-actualization.” They are failures – inner failures, and ultimately, what others say is meaningless. What you feel is meaningful. If you feel that you are a failure, others may think that you are a Napoleon or an Alexander the Great, but it makes no difference. Rather, it depresses you more. Everyone thinks that you are a success, and now you cannot say that you are not – but you know you are not. You cannot deceive yourself. As far as self-actualization is concerned you cannot deceive. Sooner or later you will have to call upon yourself and look deeply into yourself at what has happened. The life is wasted. You have given up an opportunity and gathered things which mean nothing.
Self-actualization refers to the highest peak of your growth, where you can feel a deep content, where you can say, ”This is my destiny, this is for what I was meant, this is why I am here on earth.” Tantra is concerned with that self-actualization – with how to help you grow more. And remember, tantra is concerned with you, not with ideals. Tantra is not concerned with ideals; it is concerned with you as you are and as you can become. The difference is great. All teachings are concerned with ideals. They say become like Buddha, become like Jesus, become like this or that. They have ideals, and you have to become like those ideals. Tantra has no ideal for you. Your unknown ideal is hidden within you; it cannot be given to you. You are not to become Buddha, there is no need. One Buddha is enough, and no repetition is of any value. Existence is always unique, it never repeats; repetition is boredom. Existence is always new, eternally new, so even a Buddha is not repeated – such a beautiful phenomenon left unrepeated.
Why? Because even if a Buddha is repeated it will create boredom. What is the use? Only the unique is meaningful; copies are not meaningful. Only if you are firsthand is your destiny fulfilled. If you are secondhand, you have missed. So tantra never says be like this or that; there is no ideal. Tantra never talks about ideals; hence, the name ”tantra.” Tantra talks about techniques – never about ideals. It talks of HOW you can become; it never says what. It exists because of that how. Tantra means technique; the very word tantra means technique. It is concerned with ”how” you can become, it is not concerned with what. That
”what” will be supplied by your growth. Just use the technique, and by and by your inner potentiality will become actual. The uncharted possibility will become opened, and as it opens you will realize what it is. And no one can say what it is. Unless you become it, no one can predict what you can become.
So tantra gives you only techniques – never ideals. This is how it is different from all moral teachings. Moral teachings always give ideals. Even if they talk about techniques, those techniques are always for particular ideals. Tantra gives no ideal to you; you ARE the ideal, and your future is unknown. No ideal from the past can be of any help because nothing can be repeated, and if it is repeated it is meaningless. Zen monks say to remember and be alert. If you meet Buddha in your meditation, kill him immediately; don’t allow him to stand there. Zen monks are Buddha’s followers, and yet they say kill Buddha immediately if you meet him in your meditation, because the personality, the ideal of Buddha may become so hypnotizing that you may forget yourself, and if you forget yourself you have missed the path. Buddha is not the ideal; you are the ideal, your unknown future. That has to be discovered. Tantra gives you techniques of discovery. The treasure is within you. So remember this second thing: it is very difficult to believe that you are the ideal – difficult for you to believe because everyone is condemning you. No one accepts you, not even you yourself. You go on condemning yourself. You always think in terms of being like someone else, and that is false, dangerous. If you go on thinking like that you will become a fake and everything will be phoney. Do you know from where the word ‘phoney’ comes? It comes from telephone. In the early days of the telephone, the transmission
was so false, so unreal, that a real voice and a phoney voice were heard from the telephone – a phoney voice that was mechanical. The real voice was lost – just in those beginning days. From there comes the word phoney. If you are imitating someone else, you will become phoney, you will not be real. A mechanical device will be there all around you, and your reality, your real voice, will be lost. So don’t be phoney, be real,
Tantra believes in you. That is why there are so few believers in tantra – because no one believes in himself. Tantra believes in you and says that you are the ideal, so don’t imitate anyone. Imitation will create a pseudo personality around you. You can go on moving with that pseudo personality thinking it is yourself, but it is not. So the second thing to remember is that there is no fixed ideal. You cannot think in terms of the future; you can only think in terms of the present – just the immediate future in which you can grow. No fixed future is there, and it is good that there is no fixed future; otherwise there would be no freedom. If there were a fixed future, man would be a robot. You have no fixed future. You have multi possibilities; you can grow in many ways. But the only thing that will give you ultimate contentment is that you grow – that you grow in such a way that every growth produces further growth. Techniques are helpful because they are scientific. You are saved from unnecessary wandering, unnecessary groping. If you don’t know any techniques, you will take many lives. You will reach the goal because the life energy within you will move unless it comes to
the point where no movement is possible. It will go on moving to the highest peak, and that is the reason why one goes on being born again and again. Left to yourself you will reach – but you will have to travel very, very long, and the journey will be very tedious and boring. With a master, with scientific techniques, you can save much time, opportunity and energy. And sometimes within seconds you can grow so much that within lives even you will not be able to grow that much. If a right technique is used growth explodes, and these techniques have been used in millions of years of experiments. They were not devised by one man; they were devised by many, many seekers, and only the essence is given here. In these one hundred and twelve techniques, all techniques from all over the world have been covered. Nowhere does there exist any technique which has not been covered in this one hundred and twelve; they are the whole spiritual search in
essence. But all the techniques are not for everyone, so you will have to try them out. Only certain
techniques will be helpful to you, and you will have to find them out. There are two ways: either by your own trial and error, until you stumble upon something which starts working and you start growing, and then you move in it; or you surrender to some teacher and he finds out what will suit you. These are the two ways. You can choose. Now the technique.
The first technique:
”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS RISING FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE
VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.”
Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is; then the application. The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh. The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is SAHASRARA, the seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called PRAKRATI – the earth, the material. From the last center, or the second pole, SAHASRAR, in the head, you are in contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second is the SAHASRAR. There is no word for SAHASRAR in English. These are the two poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or SAHASRAR oriented. Either your energy will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be released from the SAHASRAR into the cosmos. From the SAHASRAR you flow into the BRAHMAN, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only glimpses – and very illusory ones. When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. And once it reaches the SAHASRAR and is released from there, you will have the absolute bliss with you. That is NIRVANA. Then there is no glimpse; you become the bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts have felt this – that the moment they move beyond the earth’s gravity they don’t feel much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears.
The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts.
Like the astronauts, you have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth’s
gravitation is broken. It can be broken! The techniques for how it can be broken are here – for how the energy can move vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. And the moment the energy is released from your SAHASRAR, the opposite pole of sex, you are no more man. Then you don’t belong to this earth; you have become divine. That is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like yours – their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die – everything happens in their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is happening to
you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern. But that you cannot see, it is not visible to your eyes. But sometimes when you are sitting by the side of a Buddha, you can feel this. Suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy within you, and your energy starts moving upwards. Only then do you know that something has happened. Just by being in contact with a buddha your energy begins to move upwards towards the SAHASRAR. A buddha is so powerful that even the earth is less powerful; it cannot pull your energy downwards. Those who have felt this around a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, have called them God. They have a different source of energy which is stronger than the earth. How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all you must have observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your sex center starts functioning. Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with someone it functions better – because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love it is very difficult. It will not function. This is the reason why male prostitutes were not found in the old days, only women prostitutes. It is difficult for a male prostitute if he has no love, and how can he have love just because of money? You can pay a man to have intercourse with you, but if he has no imagination for you he cannot function. Women can function because their sex is passive. Really, their functioning is not needed.
They can be totally detached; they may not be feeling anything at all. Their bodies can just be there like corpses. With a prostitute you are not making love with a real body – only with a dead corpse. But women can easily be prostitutes because their sex is passive. The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will sex. For sex will is impotent. If you try to love
someone, you will feel you have gone impotent. So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can change its direction.
This sutra says, ”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS” – think of yourself, your being, as light rays – ”FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE” – up your spine – ”AND SO
RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” Yoga has divided your spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is SAHASRAR, and between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, some into four. Division is not very meaningful, you can make your own division. Just five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, SAHASRAR, is just on the peak of your head. These five will do. This sutra says, CONSIDER YOURSELF...”, which means imagine yourself – close your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that everything consists of light particles – and you also. That is why the Koran says that God is light. YOU are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and light rays are moving in an upsurge – upwards towards the navel center. Division is needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the SAHASRAR. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the life force will rise up as light towards the SAHASRAR. But divisions will be more helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily. So just feel that the energy – just the light rays – is rising up from your sex center to your navel like a river of light. immediately you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. Through your imagination the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go on upwards. ”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” And as you will feel warmth, just side by side you will feel a ”livingness,” a new life coming to you, an inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In your body everything has two parts. Just like
your body and mind, everything within you has two parts – one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise – but that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for that psychic part, the spinal passage is used – the spinal passage and its centers. But that has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead. I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did she was not feeling, but thinking about feeling – and that is a different thing. So the therapist put his hand on the woman’s hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes and relate what she felt. She said immediately, ”I
feel your hand.” But the therapist said, ”No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you are not. This is inference. What
do you feel?” So she said, ”I feel your fingers.” The therapist again said, ”No, this is not feeling. Don’t infer anything. Just close your eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel.”
Then she said, ”Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth.” When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is why people come to me and say, ”You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing happens.” They have tried, but they are missing a dimension – the feeling dimension. So first you will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try. You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to every corner; he will touch everything – not only touch, he will taste everything, he will smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing. You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not intellectualizing, he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that corner from where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped, the world is no more there – only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child is not – only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so enriching, you will become again a child. Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at the world as a child looks – from the feeling dimension. When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the warmth – and just by innocently following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You have simply forgotten.
The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow – the coldness. Just turn onto it; play with the pillow. Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic or of the clock or anything. Just listen. Don’t label, don’t say anything. Don’t use the mind. Just live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that now sleep has gone, don’t start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child – innocent, fresh. Don’t start thinking. Don’t
think about what you are going to do and when you are starting for the office and what train you are going to catch. Don’t start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few moments just listen to the noise. A bird is singing or the wind is passing through the trees or a child is crying or the milkman has come and is making sounds or the milk is being poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow. When taking a shower, feel it all over the body – every drop of water touching you. Feel the touch, the coldness, the warmth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the chance, and everywhere there is a chance – everywhere! When just breathing, feel the breath – its movement within and its going out – just feel it! Just feel your own body. You have not felt it. We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving
way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a loving way your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so.
Touch your eyes with your palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your body all over. Feel your lover’s body, your friend’s body. Massage is good. Two friends can massage each other and feel each other’s bodies. You will become more sensitive. Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and then you will feel ”livingness” arising in you. Don’t leave this energy anywhere. Allow it to come to the SAHASRAR. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don’t leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening.
In India we have pictured SAHASRAR as a lotus – as a thousand- petalled lotus. ‘SAHASRAR’ means a thousandpetalled – an opening of a thousand petals. Just conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals, opened, and from every petal this light energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act – not with nature now, but with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm. There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, and then the sex act becomes tantra SADHANA; it becomes meditation. But don’t leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don’t leave the energy in any center. Otherwise that center where you leave the energy will become a wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise don’t do this. This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there. You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come up from
the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, ”What is this?” They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But you don’t know life’s functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there alive. Now it needs movement. So don’t become scared and don’t think that something is wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation the sex center will become more sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any sexual excitement – but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you will feel energy flowing up. As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited. When the energy will really move to the SAHASRAR, there will be no sensation at the sex center.
It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy will move, the sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the head. You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes you may even feel nausea because for the first time energy has come to the head and your head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don’t become afraid. Sometimes you may immediately become unconscious, but don’t be afraid. This happens. If so much energy moves suddenly and explodes
in the head, you may become unconscious. But that unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don’t be afraid. If you do become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep. Yoga calls it by a special name – YOGA TANDRA: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you move to your deepest center. But don’t be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a good sign. Release the
energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower – as if energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely.
The second technique:
”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.”
This is a very similar method with a slight difference: ”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS
AS LIGHTNING.” Between one center and another, as rays are coming, you can feel it like lightning
– just a jump of light. For some people the second will be more suitable and for others the first. This is why there is a modification. There are people who cannot imagine things gradually and there are people who cannot imagine in jumps. If you can think and imagine gradually, then the first method is good. But if you try the first method and you suddenly feel that from one center the rays jump directly to the second, then don’t do the first method. The second is better for you. ”FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING” – like a spark of light jumping from one center to the next. And the second is more real because, really, light jumps. There is no gradual step-by-step growth. Light is a jump. Look at the electric light. You think it is constant, but that is illusory. There are gaps, but the gaps are so small that you cannot detect them. Electricity comes in jumps. One jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. Another jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. But you never feel the gap because the jump is so fast. Otherwise, every moment there is darkness. Again there is a jump, light comes, then again darkness. Light jumps, it never travels. For those who can conceive of jumps,
the second modification is best. ”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.”
Just try it. If you feel good with the rays coming gradually, it is okay. If you don’t feel good and rays are jumping, then forget about rays. Think of this as lightning in the sky, in the clouds, just jumping from one place to another. For women the first technique will be easier and for men the second. The feminine mind can
conceive of gradualness more easily and the male jumps more easily. The male mind is ”jumpy”; it jumps from one thing to another. There is a subtle uneasiness in the male mind. The female mind has a gradual process, it is not jumpy. That is why female and male logic are very different. A man goes on jumping from one thing to another, and for women this is inconceivable. For them there must be growth – gradual growth. But choose. Try these, and choose whichever you feel is good for you.
Two or three things more about this method. With lightning you may feel such hotness that it may seem unbearable. If you feel that, don’t try it. Lightning can give you much heat. If you feel this, that it is unbearable, then don’t try this. Then with the first method, if you are at ease, then it is good. Otherwise with uneasiness don’t try it. Sometimes the explosion can be so great that you may become afraid of it, and once afraid you will never be able to do it again. Then fear enters. So one has to be aware always not to become afraid of anything. If you feel that fear will come and it is too much for you, don’t try it. Then the first method with light rays is best. If you feel that even with light rays too much hotness is coming to you – and it depends because people differ – then conceive of the rays as cool, imagine them as cool. Then instead of feeling warmth you will feel a coldness with everything. That too will be effective. So you can decide; try and decide. Remember, with this technique, and with others also, if you feel very uneasy or anything unbearable, don’t do it. There are other methods, and this one may not be for you. With unnecessary disturbance inside,
you will create more problems than you will solve. In India, because of this, we have developed a particular yoga which we call SAHAJ YOGA. SAHAJ means spontaneous, easy, natural. Always remember SAHAJ. If you feel any technique spontaneously coming to you, if you feel more affinity with it, if you feel better with it – more healthy, more alive, more at home – then that is the method for you. Move with it; you can trust it. Don’t create unnecessary problems. And the inner mechanism is very complex. If you do something which is too much for you, you may destroy many things. So it is better to move with something which feels harmonious to you.
The third technique:
”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.”
This again is concerned with light: ”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING
PRESENCE.” If you have taken any drugs such as LSD or some such thing, the whole world around you becomes a light phenomenon of colors that are translucent, alive. This is not because of LSD. The world is such, but your eyes have become dull. The LSD is not creating a colorful world around you; the world is already colorful, nothing is wrong with the world. It is a rainbow of colors – a mystery of colors and translucent light. But your eyes have become dull. That is why you can never feel it in such colorfulness. LSD is just clearing your eyes. It is not making the world colorful; it is just helping your dullness to go chemically, and then the whole world erupts before you. It is a new thing. Even an ordinary chair becomes a marvelous phenomenon. Just a shoe on the floor takes on new colors, a new youth. Ordinary traffic noise becomes musical. Trees you have always seen but never looked at are born anew though you have always passed them by and you know you have seen them. Every leaf of a tree is a miracle. And this is how reality is. It is not LSD which is creating this reality. LSD is just destroying your dullness, your insensitivity, and you look at the world as one should really look. But LSD can give you only a glimpse, and if you depend on it, sooner or later even LSD will not be able to remove your dullness. Then you will need greater doses, and then you will become immune to greater doses. And, really, if you then leave LSD or other drugs, the world will be duller than it has ever been. Then you will become even more insensitive. Just a few days ago a girl came to see me. She said she could not feel any orgasm in the love act. She has tried many men, but she cannot feel any orgasm. The peak never comes, and she has become frustrated. So I asked her to tell me her whole love and sex life – the whole story. Then I discovered that she had been using an electric vibrator. Now in the West they are using these. Once you use an electric vibrator as a male penis, then no male can satisfy you because an electric vibrator is, after all, an electric vibrator. Then your vagina and clitoris will go dead, dull, and then orgasm will become impossible. Then there won’t be any possibility of any orgasm. You will now
need a more powerful electric vibrator, and this can go to such an extreme that your total sexual mechanism will become stony. And this is happening to our every sense. If you use any outer device, you will become dull. LSD will make you dull ultimately because with it you are not growing. If YOU grow, then it is a
different process. Then you become more sensitive, and as you become more sensitive the world becomes different. Now you can sense many things you never sensed before because you were not sensitive. This technique is based on inner sensitivity. First grow in sensitivity. Just close your doors, make the room dark and light a small candle. Sit near the candle with a very loving attitude – rather, with a prayerful attitude. Just pray to the candle, ”Reveal yourself to me.” Take a bath, throw cold water on your eyes, then sit in a very prayerful mood before the candle. Look at it and forget everything else. Just look at the small candle – the flame and the candle. Go on looking at it. After five minutes you will feel that many things are changing in the candle. They are not changing in the candle, remember; your eyes are changing. With a loving attitude, with the whole world closed out, with total concentration, with a feeling heart, just go on looking at the candle and the flame. Then you will discover new colors around the flame, new shades which you were never aware were there. They are there; the whole rainbow is there. Wherever light is, the rainbow is there because light is all color. You need a subtle sensitivity. Just feel it and go on looking at it. Even if tears start flowing, go on looking at it. Those tears will help your eyes to be more fresh. Sometimes you may feel that the flame, the candle, has become mysterious. It is not the ordinary candle you brought with you; it has taken on a new glamor, a subtle divineness has come into it. Go on doing this. You can also do this with many other things.
One of my friends was telling me that a group of five or six persons had been experimenting with rocks. I had told them how to experiment, and then they reported to me. They were experimenting with rocks on the bank of a lonely river. They were trying to feel them with their hands, with their faces, touching the rocks with their tongues, smelling the rocks. In every way possible they were feeling the rocks – just ordinary rocks which they found on the bank. They tried this for a whole hour, everyone with a rock. And then, my friend reported, there was a miracle. Everyone said, ”Could I keep this rock? I have fallen in love with it!” An ordinary rock! If you have a sympathetic relationship with it, you will fall in love. And if you don’t have that sensitivity, then even with a very beautiful person you are with a rock; you cannot fall in love. Sensitivity must grow. Your every sense must become more alive. Then you can experiment with this technique. ”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.” Everywhere light is – in many, many shapes, forms, light is happening everywhere. Look at it! And everywhere light is because the whole phenomenon is based on the foundation of light. Look at a leaf or a flower or a rock, and sooner or later you will feel rays coming out of it. Just wait patiently. Don’t be in a hurry because nothing is revealed when you are in a hurry. In a hurry you are dull. Wait silently with anything, and you will discover a new phenomenon which was always there, but of which you were not alert – not aware of it.
”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE,” and your mind will
become completely silent as you feel the presence of the ever-living existence. You will be just a part in it, just a note in the great symphony. No burden, no tension... the drop has fallen into the ocean. But great imagination will be needed in the beginning, and if you are also trying with other sensitivity training it will be helpful.
You can try many ways. Just take someone’s hand into your hand. Close your eyes and feel the life in the other. Feel it, and allow it to move towards you. Feel your own life and allow it to move towards the other. Sit near a tree and touch the bark of the tree. Close your eyes and feel the life arising in the tree, and you change immediately. I have heard about one experiment. A doctor was experimenting with people to see whether their feelings changed their biochemistry. Now he has reported that feeling changes biochemistry
immediately. He experimented with a group of twelve persons. He collected their urine before the experiment, and the urine was ordinary, normal.Each person was put under a different stress. One was shown a film of horror, anger, violence, cruelty – it was just a film – for thirty minutes he was shown a film of horror. Of course, with the film his emotions changed. He felt stress. To another a very joyful film was shown. He felt happy. And so on went the experiment for twelve persons. Then their urine was taken again and the urine analysis showed that everyone’s urine was different now. The chemicals had changed in the body. The person who felt horror was ill now; the person who felt hope, happiness, joy, was healthy now.
His urine was different, the chemicals of the body were different. You are not aware of what you are doing with yourself. When you go to see a murder film, you don’t know what you are doing. You are changing your body chemistry. If you are reading a detective novel, you don’t know what you are doing. You are killing yourself. You will become excited, you will become afraid, a tension will come to you. That is how you enjoy the detective novel. The more tense you become, the more you enjoy it. The more the suspense over what is going to happen, the more you get excited – and you are changing your body chemistry. All these techniques also change your body chemistry. If you feel the whole world as filled with life, light, then you are changing your body chemistry. And this is a chain reaction. When your body chemistry changes, you can look at the world and it will look more alive. And if it looks more alive, your body chemistry will change again, and then it becomes a chain. If this method is done for three months, you will be living in a different world because you will be different now.
VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ”LIVINGNESS” IN YOU. OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING. FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.
Man can be considered in three ways: in terms of the normal, the abnormal and the supernormal. Western psychology is basically concerned with the abnormal, the pathological, with the man who has fallen down from the normal, who has fallen down from the norm. Eastern psychology, tantra and yoga, consider man from the standpoint of the supernormal – of the one who has gone beyond the norm. Both are abnormal. One who is pathological is abnormal because he is not healthy, and one who is supernormal is abnormal because he is MORE healthy than any normal human being. The difference is of negative and positive.
Western psychology developed as part of psychotherapy. Freud, Jung, Adler and other psychologists were treating the abnormal man, the man who is mentally ill. Because of this the whole Western attitude towards man has become erroneous. Freud was studying pathological cases. Of course, no healthy man would go to him – only those who were mentally ill. They were studied by him, and because of that study he thought that now he understood man. Pathological men are not really men, they are ill, and anything based on a study of them is bound to be deeply erroneous and harmful. This has proved harmful because man is looked at from a pathological standpoint. If a particular state of mind is chosen and that state is ill, pathological, then the whole image of man becomes disease-based. Because of this attitude, the whole Western society has fallen down –
because the ill man is the base, the perverted has become the foundation. And if you study only the abnormal, you cannot conceive of any possibility of supernormal beings. A buddha is impossible for Freud, not conceivable. He must be fictitious, mythological. A buddha cannot be a reality. Freud has only come in contact with ill men who are not even normal, and whatsoever he says about normal man is based on the study of abnormal man. It is just like a physician who is doing a study. No healthy man will go to him, there is no need. Only unhealthy people will go. By studying so many unhealthy people, he creates a picture in his mind of man, but that picture cannot be of man. It cannot be because man is not only illnesses. And if you base your concept of man on illnesses, the whole society will suffer.
Eastern psychology, particularly tantra and yoga, also has a concept of man, but that concept is based on the study of the supernormal – Buddha, Patanjali, Shankara, Nagarjuna, Kabir, Nanak – on persons who have reached to the peak of human potentiality and possibility. The lowest has not been considered, only the highest. If you consider the highest your mind becomes an opening; you can grow because now you know higher reaches are possible. If you consider the lowest, no growth is possible. There is no challenge. If you are normal you feel happy. It is enough that you are not perverted, that you are not in a mental asylum. You can feel good, but there is no challenge. But if you seek the supernormal, the highest possibility that you can become, if someone has become that possibility, if that possibility has become actual in someone, then a possibility for growth opens. You can grow. A challenge comes to you, and you need not be satisfied with yourself. Higher reaches are possible and they are calling you. This must be understood deeply. Only then will the psychology of tantra be conceivable. Whatsoever you are is not the end. You are just in the middle. You can fall down, you can rise up. Your growth has not finished. You are not the end product; you are just a passage. Something is constantly growing in you.
Tantra conceives of and bases its whole technique on this possibility of growth. And remember, unless you become that which you can become, you will not be fulfilled. You MUST become that which you can become – it is a must! Otherwise you will be frustrated, you will feel meaningless, you will feel that there is no purpose in life. You can carry on, but there can be no joy in it. And you may succeed in many other things, but you will fail with yourself. And this is happening. Someone becomes very rich and everyone thinks that now he has succeeded. Everyone except himself thinks that he has succeeded. He knows his failure. Wealth is there, but he has failed. You are a great man, a leader, a politician. Everyone thinks that they have succeeded, but they have failed. This world is strange: you succeed in everyone’s eyes except your own.
People come to me daily. They say they have everything, but now what? They are failures, but where have they failed? As far as outward things are concerned they have not failed, so why do they feel this failure? Their inner potentiality has remained potent. They have not flowered. They have not achieved what Maslow calls ”self-actualization.” They are failures – inner failures, and ultimately, what others say is meaningless. What you feel is meaningful. If you feel that you are a failure, others may think that you are a Napoleon or an Alexander the Great, but it makes no difference. Rather, it depresses you more. Everyone thinks that you are a success, and now you cannot say that you are not – but you know you are not. You cannot deceive yourself. As far as self-actualization is concerned you cannot deceive. Sooner or later you will have to call upon yourself and look deeply into yourself at what has happened. The life is wasted. You have given up an opportunity and gathered things which mean nothing.
Self-actualization refers to the highest peak of your growth, where you can feel a deep content, where you can say, ”This is my destiny, this is for what I was meant, this is why I am here on earth.” Tantra is concerned with that self-actualization – with how to help you grow more. And remember, tantra is concerned with you, not with ideals. Tantra is not concerned with ideals; it is concerned with you as you are and as you can become. The difference is great. All teachings are concerned with ideals. They say become like Buddha, become like Jesus, become like this or that. They have ideals, and you have to become like those ideals. Tantra has no ideal for you. Your unknown ideal is hidden within you; it cannot be given to you. You are not to become Buddha, there is no need. One Buddha is enough, and no repetition is of any value. Existence is always unique, it never repeats; repetition is boredom. Existence is always new, eternally new, so even a Buddha is not repeated – such a beautiful phenomenon left unrepeated.
Why? Because even if a Buddha is repeated it will create boredom. What is the use? Only the unique is meaningful; copies are not meaningful. Only if you are firsthand is your destiny fulfilled. If you are secondhand, you have missed. So tantra never says be like this or that; there is no ideal. Tantra never talks about ideals; hence, the name ”tantra.” Tantra talks about techniques – never about ideals. It talks of HOW you can become; it never says what. It exists because of that how. Tantra means technique; the very word tantra means technique. It is concerned with ”how” you can become, it is not concerned with what. That
”what” will be supplied by your growth. Just use the technique, and by and by your inner potentiality will become actual. The uncharted possibility will become opened, and as it opens you will realize what it is. And no one can say what it is. Unless you become it, no one can predict what you can become.
So tantra gives you only techniques – never ideals. This is how it is different from all moral teachings. Moral teachings always give ideals. Even if they talk about techniques, those techniques are always for particular ideals. Tantra gives no ideal to you; you ARE the ideal, and your future is unknown. No ideal from the past can be of any help because nothing can be repeated, and if it is repeated it is meaningless. Zen monks say to remember and be alert. If you meet Buddha in your meditation, kill him immediately; don’t allow him to stand there. Zen monks are Buddha’s followers, and yet they say kill Buddha immediately if you meet him in your meditation, because the personality, the ideal of Buddha may become so hypnotizing that you may forget yourself, and if you forget yourself you have missed the path. Buddha is not the ideal; you are the ideal, your unknown future. That has to be discovered. Tantra gives you techniques of discovery. The treasure is within you. So remember this second thing: it is very difficult to believe that you are the ideal – difficult for you to believe because everyone is condemning you. No one accepts you, not even you yourself. You go on condemning yourself. You always think in terms of being like someone else, and that is false, dangerous. If you go on thinking like that you will become a fake and everything will be phoney. Do you know from where the word ‘phoney’ comes? It comes from telephone. In the early days of the telephone, the transmission
was so false, so unreal, that a real voice and a phoney voice were heard from the telephone – a phoney voice that was mechanical. The real voice was lost – just in those beginning days. From there comes the word phoney. If you are imitating someone else, you will become phoney, you will not be real. A mechanical device will be there all around you, and your reality, your real voice, will be lost. So don’t be phoney, be real,
Tantra believes in you. That is why there are so few believers in tantra – because no one believes in himself. Tantra believes in you and says that you are the ideal, so don’t imitate anyone. Imitation will create a pseudo personality around you. You can go on moving with that pseudo personality thinking it is yourself, but it is not. So the second thing to remember is that there is no fixed ideal. You cannot think in terms of the future; you can only think in terms of the present – just the immediate future in which you can grow. No fixed future is there, and it is good that there is no fixed future; otherwise there would be no freedom. If there were a fixed future, man would be a robot. You have no fixed future. You have multi possibilities; you can grow in many ways. But the only thing that will give you ultimate contentment is that you grow – that you grow in such a way that every growth produces further growth. Techniques are helpful because they are scientific. You are saved from unnecessary wandering, unnecessary groping. If you don’t know any techniques, you will take many lives. You will reach the goal because the life energy within you will move unless it comes to
the point where no movement is possible. It will go on moving to the highest peak, and that is the reason why one goes on being born again and again. Left to yourself you will reach – but you will have to travel very, very long, and the journey will be very tedious and boring. With a master, with scientific techniques, you can save much time, opportunity and energy. And sometimes within seconds you can grow so much that within lives even you will not be able to grow that much. If a right technique is used growth explodes, and these techniques have been used in millions of years of experiments. They were not devised by one man; they were devised by many, many seekers, and only the essence is given here. In these one hundred and twelve techniques, all techniques from all over the world have been covered. Nowhere does there exist any technique which has not been covered in this one hundred and twelve; they are the whole spiritual search in
essence. But all the techniques are not for everyone, so you will have to try them out. Only certain
techniques will be helpful to you, and you will have to find them out. There are two ways: either by your own trial and error, until you stumble upon something which starts working and you start growing, and then you move in it; or you surrender to some teacher and he finds out what will suit you. These are the two ways. You can choose. Now the technique.
The first technique:
”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS RISING FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE
VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.”
Many yoga methods are based on this. First understand what it is; then the application. The vertebrae, the spine, is the base of both your body and mind. Your mind, your head, is the end part of your spine. The whole body is rooted in the spine. If the spine is young, you are young. If the spine is old, you are old. If you can keep your spine young, it is difficult to become old. Everything depends on your spine. If your spine is alive, you will have a very brilliant mind. If the spine is dull and dead, you will have a very dull mind. The whole yoga tries in many ways to make your spine alive, brilliant, filled with light, young and fresh. The spine has two ends: the beginning is the sex center and the end is SAHASRARA, the seventh center at the top of the head. The beginning of the spine is attached to the earth, and sex is the most earthly thing in you. From the beginning center in your spine you are in contact with nature, with what Sankhya has called PRAKRATI – the earth, the material. From the last center, or the second pole, SAHASRAR, in the head, you are in contact with the divine. These are the two poles of your existence. First is sex and second is the SAHASRAR. There is no word for SAHASRAR in English. These are the two poles. Either your life will be sex oriented or SAHASRAR oriented. Either your energy will be flowing down from the sex center back to the earth, or your energy will be released from the SAHASRAR into the cosmos. From the SAHASRAR you flow into the BRAHMAN, into the absolute Existence. From sex you flow down into the relative existence. These are the two flows, the two possibilities. Unless you start flowing upwards, your misery will never end. You may have glimpses of happiness, but only glimpses – and very illusory ones. When the energy starts moving upwards you will have more and more real glimpses. And once it reaches the SAHASRAR and is released from there, you will have the absolute bliss with you. That is NIRVANA. Then there is no glimpse; you become the bliss itself. So the whole thing for yoga and tantra is how to move energy upwards through the vertebrae, through the spinal column, how to help it move against gravity. Sex is very easy because it follows gravitation. The earth is pulling everything down, back; your sex energy is pulled by the earth. You may not have heard it, but astronauts have felt this – that the moment they move beyond the earth’s gravity they don’t feel much sexuality. As the body loses weight, sexuality dissolves, disappears.
The earth is pulling your life energy down and this is natural, because the life energy comes from the earth. You eat food and you are creating life energy within you; it comes from the earth, and the earth is pulling it back. Everything goes to its source. And if it continues to move in this way, life energy going back again and again, and you are moving in a circle, you will go on moving for lives and lives. You can go on moving this way infinitely unless you take a jump just like the astronauts.
Like the astronauts, you have to take a jump and move beyond the circle. Then the pattern of earth’s
gravitation is broken. It can be broken! The techniques for how it can be broken are here – for how the energy can move vertically and rise up within you, reaching new centers; for how new energies can be revealed within you, making you a new person with every move. And the moment the energy is released from your SAHASRAR, the opposite pole of sex, you are no more man. Then you don’t belong to this earth; you have become divine. That is what is meant when we say Krishna is God or Buddha is God. Their bodies are just like yours – their bodies will have to fall ill and they will have to die – everything happens in their bodies as it happens to you. Only one thing is not happening in their bodies which is happening to
you: the energy has broken the gravitation pattern. But that you cannot see, it is not visible to your eyes. But sometimes when you are sitting by the side of a Buddha, you can feel this. Suddenly you feel an upsurge of energy within you, and your energy starts moving upwards. Only then do you know that something has happened. Just by being in contact with a buddha your energy begins to move upwards towards the SAHASRAR. A buddha is so powerful that even the earth is less powerful; it cannot pull your energy downwards. Those who have felt this around a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, have called them God. They have a different source of energy which is stronger than the earth. How can the pattern be broken? This technique is very useful for breaking the pattern. First understand something basic. One, if you have observed at all you must have observed that your sex energy moves with imagination. Just through imagination your sex center starts functioning. Really, without imagination it cannot function. That is why if you are in love with someone it functions better – because with love imagination enters. If you are not in love it is very difficult. It will not function. This is the reason why male prostitutes were not found in the old days, only women prostitutes. It is difficult for a male prostitute if he has no love, and how can he have love just because of money? You can pay a man to have intercourse with you, but if he has no imagination for you he cannot function. Women can function because their sex is passive. Really, their functioning is not needed.
They can be totally detached; they may not be feeling anything at all. Their bodies can just be there like corpses. With a prostitute you are not making love with a real body – only with a dead corpse. But women can easily be prostitutes because their sex is passive. The sex center functions through imagination. That is why even in dreams you can get erections and ejaculations. They are actual. Dreams are just imagination. It has been observed that every man, if physically fit, will have at least ten erections in the night. With every movement of the mind, with only a slight thought of sex, the erection will come. Your mind has many energies, many faculties, and one is will. But you cannot will sex. For sex will is impotent. If you try to love
someone, you will feel you have gone impotent. So never try. Will never functions with sex; only imagination will function. Imagine, and the center will start to function. Why am I emphasizing this fact? Because if imagination helps the energy to move, then you can move it upwards or downwards just by imagination. You cannot move your blood by imagination; you cannot do anything else in the body by imagination. But sex energy can be moved by imagination. You can change its direction.
This sutra says, ”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS” – think of yourself, your being, as light rays – ”FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE” – up your spine – ”AND SO
RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” Yoga has divided your spine into seven centers. The first is the sex center and the last is SAHASRAR, and between these two there are five centers. Some systems divide into nine, some into three, some into four. Division is not very meaningful, you can make your own division. Just five centers are enough to work with; the first is the sex center, the second is just behind the navel, the third is just behind the heart, the fourth is behind your two eyebrows, just in between, in the middle of the forehead. And the fifth, SAHASRAR, is just on the peak of your head. These five will do. This sutra says, CONSIDER YOURSELF...”, which means imagine yourself – close your eyes and imagine yourself just as if you are light. This is not just imagination. In the beginning it is, but it is reality also because everything consists of light. Now science says that everything consists of electricity, and tantra has always said that everything consists of light particles – and you also. That is why the Koran says that God is light. YOU are light! Imagine first that you are just light rays; then move your imagination to the sex center. Concentrate your attention there and feel that light rays are rising upwards from the sex center, as if the sex center has become a source of light and light rays are moving in an upsurge – upwards towards the navel center. Division is needed because it will be difficult for you to connect your sex center with the SAHASRAR. So smaller divisions will be of help. If you can connect, no divisions are needed. You can just drop all divisions from your sex center onwards, and the energy, the life force will rise up as light towards the SAHASRAR. But divisions will be more helpful because your mind can conceive of smaller fragments more easily. So just feel that the energy – just the light rays – is rising up from your sex center to your navel like a river of light. immediately you will feel a warmth rising in you. Soon your navel will become hot. You can feel the hotness; even others can feel that hotness. Through your imagination the sex energy will have started to rise. When you feel that now the second center at the navel has become a source of light, that the rays are coming and being collected there, then start to move to the heart center. As the light reaches the heart center, as the rays are coming, your heartbeat will be changed. Your breathing will become deeper, and a warmth will come to your heart. Go on upwards. ”CONSIDER YOUR ESSENCE AS LIGHT RAYS FROM CENTER TO CENTER UP THE VERTEBRAE, AND SO RISES ‘LIVINGNESS’ IN YOU.” And as you will feel warmth, just side by side you will feel a ”livingness,” a new life coming to you, an inward light rising up. Sex energy has two parts: one is physical and one is psychic. In your body everything has two parts. Just like
your body and mind, everything within you has two parts – one material and the other spiritual. Sex energy has two parts. The material part is semen; it cannot rise upwards, there is no passage for it. Because of this, many physiologists of the West say that tantra and yoga methods are nonsense and they deny them completely. How can sex energy rise up? There is no passage and sex energy cannot rise. They are right and still wrong. Semen, the material part, cannot rise – but that is not the whole of it. Really, it is only the body of sex energy, it is not the sex energy. The sex energy is the psychic part of it, and the psychic part can rise. And for that psychic part, the spinal passage is used – the spinal passage and its centers. But that has to be felt and your feelings have gone dead. I remember somewhere that a certain psychotherapist wrote about a patient, a woman. He was telling her to feel something, but the psychotherapist felt that whatever she did she was not feeling, but thinking about feeling – and that is a different thing. So the therapist put his hand on the woman’s hand and pressed it, telling her to close her eyes and relate what she felt. She said immediately, ”I
feel your hand.” But the therapist said, ”No, this is not your feeling. This is just your thinking, your inference. I have put my hand in your hand; you say you are feeling my hand. But you are not. This is inference. What
do you feel?” So she said, ”I feel your fingers.” The therapist again said, ”No, this is not feeling. Don’t infer anything. Just close your eyes and move to the place where my hand is; then tell me what you feel.”
Then she said, ”Oh! I was missing the whole thing. I feel pressure and warmth.” When a hand touches you, a hand is not felt. Pressure and warmth are felt. The hand is just inference, it is intellect, not feeling. Warmth and pressure, that is feeling. Now she was feeling. We have lost feeling completely. You will have to develop feeling; only then can you do such techniques. Otherwise, they will not function. You will just intellectualize, you will just think that you are feeling, and nothing will happen. That is why people come to me and say, ”You tell us this technique is so significant, but nothing happens.” They have tried, but they are missing a dimension – the feeling dimension. So first you will have to develop that, and there are some methods which you can try. You can do one thing. If you have a small child in your house, follow the child around for one hour every day. It will be better and more fulfilling than following a buddha. Allow the child to move on all fours, and you also move on all fours. Just follow the child moving on all fours, and you will feel for the first time a new life energy coming to you. You will again become a child. Look at the child and just follow. He will go to every corner; he will touch everything – not only touch, he will taste everything, he will smell everything. Just follow, and do whatsoever he is doing. You were also a child once; you have done this. The child is feeling. He is not intellectualizing, he is not thinking. He feels a smell, so he moves to that corner from where it is coming. He sees an apple, so he tastes it. Just taste like a child. Watch when he is eating the apple, look at him: he is totally absorbed in it. The whole world has dropped, the world is no more there – only the apple. Even the apple is not and the child is not – only the eating. Just follow a small child for one hour. That hour will be so enriching, you will become again a child. Your defense mechanisms will drop, your armor will drop, and you will start looking at the world as a child looks – from the feeling dimension. When you feel that now you can feel, not think, you will enjoy the texture of the carpet on which you are moving like a child, the pressure, the warmth – and just by innocently following a child. Man can learn much from children, and sooner or later your real innocence will erupt. You were once a child and you know what it means to be one. You have simply forgotten.
The feeling center must start functioning; only then will these techniques be of any help. Otherwise you will go on thinking that energy is rising, but there will be no feeling. And if there is no feeling, imagination is impotent, futile. Only a feeling imagination will give you a result. You can do many other things and there is no need to make a specific effort to do them. When you go to sleep just feel your bed, feel the pillow – the coldness. Just turn onto it; play with the pillow. Close your eyes and listen to the noise of the air conditioner, or of the traffic or of the clock or anything. Just listen. Don’t label, don’t say anything. Don’t use the mind. Just live in the sensation. In the morning, in the first moment of waking, when you feel that now sleep has gone, don’t start thinking. For a few moments you can again be a child – innocent, fresh. Don’t start thinking. Don’t
think about what you are going to do and when you are starting for the office and what train you are going to catch. Don’t start thinking. You will have enough time for all that nonsense. Just wait. For a few moments just listen to the noise. A bird is singing or the wind is passing through the trees or a child is crying or the milkman has come and is making sounds or the milk is being poured. With anything that happens, feel it. Be sensitive to it, open to it. Allow it to happen to you, and your sensitivity will grow. When taking a shower, feel it all over the body – every drop of water touching you. Feel the touch, the coldness, the warmth! Try this the whole day whenever you have the chance, and everywhere there is a chance – everywhere! When just breathing, feel the breath – its movement within and its going out – just feel it! Just feel your own body. You have not felt it. We are so afraid of our own bodies. No one touches his own body in a loving way. Have you ever given any love to your own body? The whole civilization is afraid of anyone touching himself because from childhood touching has been denied. It appears to be masturbatory to touch oneself in a loving
way. But if you cannot touch yourself in a loving way your body will go dull and dead. It has gone so.
Touch your eyes with your palms. Feel the touch, and your eyes will feel fresh and alive immediately. Feel your body all over. Feel your lover’s body, your friend’s body. Massage is good. Two friends can massage each other and feel each other’s bodies. You will become more sensitive. Create sensitivity and feeling. Then it will be easy for you to do these techniques, and then you will feel ”livingness” arising in you. Don’t leave this energy anywhere. Allow it to come to the SAHASRAR. Remember this: whenever you do this experiment, don’t leave it in the middle. You have to complete it. Take care that no one disturbs you. If you leave this energy somewhere in the middle, it can be harmful. It has to be released. So bring it to the head and feel as if your head has become an opening.
In India we have pictured SAHASRAR as a lotus – as a thousand- petalled lotus. ‘SAHASRAR’ means a thousandpetalled – an opening of a thousand petals. Just conceive of the lotus with a thousand petals, opened, and from every petal this light energy is moving into the cosmos. Again, this is a love act – not with nature now, but with the ultimate. Again, it is an orgasm. There are two types of orgasms: one is sexual and the other spiritual. The sexual comes from the lowest center and the spiritual from the highest center. From the highest you meet the highest and from the lowest you meet the lowest. Even while actually in the sex act, you can do this exercise; both the partners can do this. Move the energy upwards, and then the sex act becomes tantra SADHANA; it becomes meditation. But don’t leave the energy somewhere in the body at some center. Someone may come and you will have some business, or some phone call will come and you will have to stop. So do it at such a time that no one will disturb you, and don’t leave the energy in any center. Otherwise that center where you leave the energy will become a wound, and you may create many mental illnesses. So be aware; otherwise don’t do this. This method needs absolute privacy and no disturbance, and it must be done completely. The energy must come to the head, and it should be released from there. You will have various experiences. When you will feel that the rays are starting to come up from
the sex center, there will be erections or sensations at the sex center. Many, many people come to me very afraid and scared. They say that whenever they start meditation, when they start to move deep, there is an erection. They wonder, ”What is this?” They are afraid because they think that in meditation sex should not be there. But you don’t know life’s functioning. It is a good sign. It shows that energy is now there alive. Now it needs movement. So don’t become scared and don’t think that something is wrong. It is a good sign. When you start meditation the sex center will become more sensitive, alive, excited, and in the beginning the excitement will be just the same as any sexual excitement – but only in the beginning. As your meditation becomes deeper, you will feel energy flowing up. As the energy flows, the sex center becomes silent, less excited. When the energy will really move to the SAHASRAR, there will be no sensation at the sex center.
It will be totally still and silent. It will have become completely cool, and the warmth will have come to the head. And this is physical. When the sex center is excited, it becomes hot; you can feel that hotness, it is physical. When the energy will move, the sex center will become cooler and cooler and cooler, and the hotness will come to the head. You will feel dizzy. When the energy comes to the head, you will feel dizzy. Sometimes you may even feel nausea because for the first time energy has come to the head and your head is not acquainted with it. It has to become tuned. So don’t become afraid. Sometimes you may immediately become unconscious, but don’t be afraid. This happens. If so much energy moves suddenly and explodes
in the head, you may become unconscious. But that unconsciousness cannot remain for more than one hour. Within one hour the energy automatically falls back or is released. You cannot remain that way for more than one hour. I say one hour, but in fact it is exactly forty-eight minutes. It cannot be more than that. It never has been in millions of years of experiments, so don’t be afraid. If you do become unconscious, it is okay. After that unconsciousness you will feel so fresh that it is as if you have been in sleep for the first time, in the deepest sleep. Yoga calls it by a special name – YOGA TANDRA: yogic sleep. It is very deep; you move to your deepest center. But don’t be afraid. And if your head becomes hot, it is a good sign. Release the
energy. Feel as if your head is opening like a lotus flower – as if energy is being released into the cosmos. As the energy is released, you will feel a coldness coming to you. You have never felt the coldness that comes after this hotness. But do the technique completely; never do it incompletely.
The second technique:
”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.”
This is a very similar method with a slight difference: ”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS
AS LIGHTNING.” Between one center and another, as rays are coming, you can feel it like lightning
– just a jump of light. For some people the second will be more suitable and for others the first. This is why there is a modification. There are people who cannot imagine things gradually and there are people who cannot imagine in jumps. If you can think and imagine gradually, then the first method is good. But if you try the first method and you suddenly feel that from one center the rays jump directly to the second, then don’t do the first method. The second is better for you. ”FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING” – like a spark of light jumping from one center to the next. And the second is more real because, really, light jumps. There is no gradual step-by-step growth. Light is a jump. Look at the electric light. You think it is constant, but that is illusory. There are gaps, but the gaps are so small that you cannot detect them. Electricity comes in jumps. One jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. Another jump, and then there is a gap of darkness. But you never feel the gap because the jump is so fast. Otherwise, every moment there is darkness. Again there is a jump, light comes, then again darkness. Light jumps, it never travels. For those who can conceive of jumps,
the second modification is best. ”OR IN THE SPACES BETWEEN, FEEL THIS AS LIGHTNING.”
Just try it. If you feel good with the rays coming gradually, it is okay. If you don’t feel good and rays are jumping, then forget about rays. Think of this as lightning in the sky, in the clouds, just jumping from one place to another. For women the first technique will be easier and for men the second. The feminine mind can
conceive of gradualness more easily and the male jumps more easily. The male mind is ”jumpy”; it jumps from one thing to another. There is a subtle uneasiness in the male mind. The female mind has a gradual process, it is not jumpy. That is why female and male logic are very different. A man goes on jumping from one thing to another, and for women this is inconceivable. For them there must be growth – gradual growth. But choose. Try these, and choose whichever you feel is good for you.
Two or three things more about this method. With lightning you may feel such hotness that it may seem unbearable. If you feel that, don’t try it. Lightning can give you much heat. If you feel this, that it is unbearable, then don’t try this. Then with the first method, if you are at ease, then it is good. Otherwise with uneasiness don’t try it. Sometimes the explosion can be so great that you may become afraid of it, and once afraid you will never be able to do it again. Then fear enters. So one has to be aware always not to become afraid of anything. If you feel that fear will come and it is too much for you, don’t try it. Then the first method with light rays is best. If you feel that even with light rays too much hotness is coming to you – and it depends because people differ – then conceive of the rays as cool, imagine them as cool. Then instead of feeling warmth you will feel a coldness with everything. That too will be effective. So you can decide; try and decide. Remember, with this technique, and with others also, if you feel very uneasy or anything unbearable, don’t do it. There are other methods, and this one may not be for you. With unnecessary disturbance inside,
you will create more problems than you will solve. In India, because of this, we have developed a particular yoga which we call SAHAJ YOGA. SAHAJ means spontaneous, easy, natural. Always remember SAHAJ. If you feel any technique spontaneously coming to you, if you feel more affinity with it, if you feel better with it – more healthy, more alive, more at home – then that is the method for you. Move with it; you can trust it. Don’t create unnecessary problems. And the inner mechanism is very complex. If you do something which is too much for you, you may destroy many things. So it is better to move with something which feels harmonious to you.
The third technique:
”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.”
This again is concerned with light: ”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING
PRESENCE.” If you have taken any drugs such as LSD or some such thing, the whole world around you becomes a light phenomenon of colors that are translucent, alive. This is not because of LSD. The world is such, but your eyes have become dull. The LSD is not creating a colorful world around you; the world is already colorful, nothing is wrong with the world. It is a rainbow of colors – a mystery of colors and translucent light. But your eyes have become dull. That is why you can never feel it in such colorfulness. LSD is just clearing your eyes. It is not making the world colorful; it is just helping your dullness to go chemically, and then the whole world erupts before you. It is a new thing. Even an ordinary chair becomes a marvelous phenomenon. Just a shoe on the floor takes on new colors, a new youth. Ordinary traffic noise becomes musical. Trees you have always seen but never looked at are born anew though you have always passed them by and you know you have seen them. Every leaf of a tree is a miracle. And this is how reality is. It is not LSD which is creating this reality. LSD is just destroying your dullness, your insensitivity, and you look at the world as one should really look. But LSD can give you only a glimpse, and if you depend on it, sooner or later even LSD will not be able to remove your dullness. Then you will need greater doses, and then you will become immune to greater doses. And, really, if you then leave LSD or other drugs, the world will be duller than it has ever been. Then you will become even more insensitive. Just a few days ago a girl came to see me. She said she could not feel any orgasm in the love act. She has tried many men, but she cannot feel any orgasm. The peak never comes, and she has become frustrated. So I asked her to tell me her whole love and sex life – the whole story. Then I discovered that she had been using an electric vibrator. Now in the West they are using these. Once you use an electric vibrator as a male penis, then no male can satisfy you because an electric vibrator is, after all, an electric vibrator. Then your vagina and clitoris will go dead, dull, and then orgasm will become impossible. Then there won’t be any possibility of any orgasm. You will now
need a more powerful electric vibrator, and this can go to such an extreme that your total sexual mechanism will become stony. And this is happening to our every sense. If you use any outer device, you will become dull. LSD will make you dull ultimately because with it you are not growing. If YOU grow, then it is a
different process. Then you become more sensitive, and as you become more sensitive the world becomes different. Now you can sense many things you never sensed before because you were not sensitive. This technique is based on inner sensitivity. First grow in sensitivity. Just close your doors, make the room dark and light a small candle. Sit near the candle with a very loving attitude – rather, with a prayerful attitude. Just pray to the candle, ”Reveal yourself to me.” Take a bath, throw cold water on your eyes, then sit in a very prayerful mood before the candle. Look at it and forget everything else. Just look at the small candle – the flame and the candle. Go on looking at it. After five minutes you will feel that many things are changing in the candle. They are not changing in the candle, remember; your eyes are changing. With a loving attitude, with the whole world closed out, with total concentration, with a feeling heart, just go on looking at the candle and the flame. Then you will discover new colors around the flame, new shades which you were never aware were there. They are there; the whole rainbow is there. Wherever light is, the rainbow is there because light is all color. You need a subtle sensitivity. Just feel it and go on looking at it. Even if tears start flowing, go on looking at it. Those tears will help your eyes to be more fresh. Sometimes you may feel that the flame, the candle, has become mysterious. It is not the ordinary candle you brought with you; it has taken on a new glamor, a subtle divineness has come into it. Go on doing this. You can also do this with many other things.
One of my friends was telling me that a group of five or six persons had been experimenting with rocks. I had told them how to experiment, and then they reported to me. They were experimenting with rocks on the bank of a lonely river. They were trying to feel them with their hands, with their faces, touching the rocks with their tongues, smelling the rocks. In every way possible they were feeling the rocks – just ordinary rocks which they found on the bank. They tried this for a whole hour, everyone with a rock. And then, my friend reported, there was a miracle. Everyone said, ”Could I keep this rock? I have fallen in love with it!” An ordinary rock! If you have a sympathetic relationship with it, you will fall in love. And if you don’t have that sensitivity, then even with a very beautiful person you are with a rock; you cannot fall in love. Sensitivity must grow. Your every sense must become more alive. Then you can experiment with this technique. ”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE.” Everywhere light is – in many, many shapes, forms, light is happening everywhere. Look at it! And everywhere light is because the whole phenomenon is based on the foundation of light. Look at a leaf or a flower or a rock, and sooner or later you will feel rays coming out of it. Just wait patiently. Don’t be in a hurry because nothing is revealed when you are in a hurry. In a hurry you are dull. Wait silently with anything, and you will discover a new phenomenon which was always there, but of which you were not alert – not aware of it.
”FEEL THE COSMOS AS A TRANSLUCENT EVER-LIVING PRESENCE,” and your mind will
become completely silent as you feel the presence of the ever-living existence. You will be just a part in it, just a note in the great symphony. No burden, no tension... the drop has fallen into the ocean. But great imagination will be needed in the beginning, and if you are also trying with other sensitivity training it will be helpful.
You can try many ways. Just take someone’s hand into your hand. Close your eyes and feel the life in the other. Feel it, and allow it to move towards you. Feel your own life and allow it to move towards the other. Sit near a tree and touch the bark of the tree. Close your eyes and feel the life arising in the tree, and you change immediately. I have heard about one experiment. A doctor was experimenting with people to see whether their feelings changed their biochemistry. Now he has reported that feeling changes biochemistry
immediately. He experimented with a group of twelve persons. He collected their urine before the experiment, and the urine was ordinary, normal.Each person was put under a different stress. One was shown a film of horror, anger, violence, cruelty – it was just a film – for thirty minutes he was shown a film of horror. Of course, with the film his emotions changed. He felt stress. To another a very joyful film was shown. He felt happy. And so on went the experiment for twelve persons. Then their urine was taken again and the urine analysis showed that everyone’s urine was different now. The chemicals had changed in the body. The person who felt horror was ill now; the person who felt hope, happiness, joy, was healthy now.
His urine was different, the chemicals of the body were different. You are not aware of what you are doing with yourself. When you go to see a murder film, you don’t know what you are doing. You are changing your body chemistry. If you are reading a detective novel, you don’t know what you are doing. You are killing yourself. You will become excited, you will become afraid, a tension will come to you. That is how you enjoy the detective novel. The more tense you become, the more you enjoy it. The more the suspense over what is going to happen, the more you get excited – and you are changing your body chemistry. All these techniques also change your body chemistry. If you feel the whole world as filled with life, light, then you are changing your body chemistry. And this is a chain reaction. When your body chemistry changes, you can look at the world and it will look more alive. And if it looks more alive, your body chemistry will change again, and then it becomes a chain. If this method is done for three months, you will be living in a different world because you will be different now.
If you need a dream, or if you need to rediscover a dream you've lost, come here to Sedona. Author Ilchi Lee's fascinating personal stories and profound awakenings in The Call of Sedona are beautifully interwoven in this book. His experiences and messages in various known and unknown vortexes in Sedona are especially inspiring, and they will encourage you to start your own journey of the heart.
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