---
section: Library
booktitle: "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "VBT2"
dategiven: "02 July 1973 pm"
place: " in Bombay, India"
chapternum: "Chapter #21"
chaptertitle: "Techniques to become one with the whole"
acode: "7307025"
shorttitle: "VBT221"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "79mins"
displaytitle: "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2: Chapter #21"
---

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.sutra {
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  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
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<p class="sutra">EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING.
THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING.
PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN.</p>
<p class="sutra">BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET, MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.</p>


I have heard one anecdote. In a conservative party rally, Lord Mancroft was invited to speak. He came right on time, reached the rostrum and said to the public -- he was looking a little flustered -- he said, 'Forgive me for shortening my speech a little, but the fact is that my house is on fire.'


And that fact is everybody's fact. Your house is also on fire, but you don't even seem a little flustered.


Everybody's house is on fire, but you are not aware -- not aware of death, not aware that your life is just passing through your hands. Every moment you are dying, every moment you are losing an opportunity which cannot be regained. The time that is lost, is lost: nothing can be done to regain it, and your life becomes shorter and shorter every moment.


This is what I mean when I say that your house is also on fire. But you don't seem even a little flustered. You don't even seem to be worried about it. You are not aware of the fact that the house is on fire. The fact is there, but your attention is not there. And everybody thinks that there is enough time to do something. There is not enough time, because whatsoever has to be done is so much that the time is never enough.


Once it happened that the Devil was waiting for years and years and nobody was coming to hell. He was waiting to welcome people, but the earth was running so well and people were so good that no one was coming to hell. Of course he became very worried. He called an emergency council.  His greatest disciples gathered together to discuss the situation. Hell was passing through a great crisis and this could not be tolerated. Something had to be done. So he asked for advice: 'What should we do?'


One disciple suggested, 'I would go to the earth and I would talk to people and try to convince them that there is no God and religions are false, and whatsoever the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas say is nonsense.'


The Devil said, 'This won't do, because we have been doing this since the very beginning and it has not influenced people very much. Through such teaching you can convince only those who are already convinced. So it is of no use; it is not of much use.'


Then the second disciple, subtler than the first, said, 'I will go and teach people and try to convince people that whatsoever the Bible, the Koran and the Vedas say is right. There is heaven, there is God, but there is no Devil and no hell, so don't be afraid. And if we can make them less afraid, they will not bother about religion at all, because all religion is based on fear.'


The Devil said, 'Your proposal is a little better. You may be able to, you may succeed in convincing a minority, but the majority will not listen to you. They are not as much afraid of hell as they are greedy of heaven. Even if you convince them that there is no hell, they will still want to enter into heaven, and they will try to be good for that. So this also won't do much.'


Then the third disciple, the subtlest of them all, said, 'I have an idea. Give me a chance to try it. I will go and say that whatsoever religion says is absolutely true -- there is God and there is Devil and there is heaven and there is hell -- but there is no hurry.'


And the Devil said, 'Right? You have the right system. You go!'


And it is said that since then there has never been a crisis in hell. Rather, they are worried about the over-population.


This is how our minds are functioning: we always think there is no hurry. These techniques we are talking about will be of no use if your mind thinks there is no hurry. Then you can go on postponing and death will come first. That day will not come when you think there is a hurry, when you think that now the moment has come. You can go on postponing. This is what we have been doing with our lives.


You have to be decisive to do something. You are in a crisis -- the house is on fire. Life is always on fire because death  is always there hidden behind it; any moment and you may not be any more. And you cannot argue with death. You cannot do anything. When death happens, it happens. Time is very short. Even if you live for seventy years or for a hundred years, it is very short. What you have to do with yourself to transform, to mutate, to  become a new  being, is such a great work. Don't go on postponing.


Unless you feel it as an emergency, a deep crisis, you will not do anything. Unless religion becomes a very critical process for you, and you feel that unless something is done to transform you, your whole life is just wasted.... If you feel this very keenly and deeply and honestly, only then will these techniques be of any help. Because you can understand them -- understanding is of no use unless you do something about it. Really, unless you do something about it, you have not understood them, because understanding must become action. If it is not becoming action then it is only acquaintance, not understanding.


Try to understand this distinction. Acquaintance is not understanding. Acquaintance will not force you to actions. It will not force you to any change. It will not force you to do something about it. You will gather it in the mind; it will become information. You will become more knowledgeable. But at death  everything stops. You go on collecting many things, never doing anything about them. They become just a burden on you.


Understanding means action. When you understand a thing, immediately you start working on it, because if it is right and you feel it is right, you have to do something about it. Otherwise everything remains borrowed, and borrowed knowledge cannot become understanding. You can forget that it is borrowed -- you would like to forget that it is borrowed, because to feel that it is borrowed means that your ego is hurt. So you go on forgetting that it is borrowed. By and by you start feeling that it is your own. That is very dangerous.


I have heard an anecdote. The congregation of a church was very bored by the minister. A point came when the members of the church said directly to the minister, 'Now you have to  leave.'


The minister said, 'Give me one more chance, only one chance, and if then you say so, I will leave.'


So next Sunday the whole town gathered in the church to see what that minister was going to do now that only one chance was given to him. They never suspected, they never  imagined, that such a beautiful sermon was going to  be delivered on that day. They had never heard such a  thing.


Surprised, delighted, they enjoyed it, and when the sermon was finished they gathered around the minister and they said, 'You need not leave. You remain here. We have never heard such a thing before -- never in our lives. Be here and  remain here, and of course, with an increase in your stipend.'


But then one man, a very prominent member of the congregation, asked, 'Tell me  one thing  only. When you  started your lecture you raised your left hand with two fingers raised, and when you closed your lecture you raised your right hand, again with two fingers raised.  So what is the meaning of this symbol?'


The minister said, 'The meaning is easy. Those fingers are symbolic of quotation marks. That sermon was not mine -- it  was borrowed.'


Always remember those quotation marks. It is very good to forget them, you feel good, but all that you know is within quotation marks; it is not your own. And you can drop those quotation marks only when something has become your own experience.


These techniques are to change knowledge into experience. These techniques are to change acquaintance into  understanding. That which belongs to a Buddha or to a Krishna or to a Christ, through these techniques can belong to you -- that can become your own. And unless it becomes your own, no truth is true. It may be a grand lie, a beautiful lie, but no truth is true unless it becomes your experience -- individually, authentically your own.


Three things. First: always remember that your house is on fire. Second: don't listen to the Devil. He will constantly say to you that there is no hurry. And thirdly: remember, acquaintance is not understanding.


Whatsoever I am saying here will make you acquainted. It is needed, but it is not enough. It starts you on a journey, but it is not the end. Do something so that knowledge doesn't remain knowledge, doesn't remain as memory, but becomes your experience and your life.

Now the first technique:
<p class="sutra">EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING.
THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING.
PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND  KNOWN.</p>


Whenever you know something, it is known through knowing. The object comes to your  mind through the faculty of knowledge. You look at a flower. You know this is a rose flower. Thew rose flower is there and you are inside. Something from you comes to the rose flower, something from you is projected on the rose flower. Some energy moves from you, comes to the rose, takes its form, color and smell, and comes back and informs you that this is a rose flower.


All knowledge, whatsoever you know, is revealed through the faculty of knowing. Knowing is your faculty. Knowledge is gathered through this faculty. But knowing reveals two things: the known and the knower. Whenever you are knowing a rose flower, your knowledge is  half if you  forget the knower who is knowing it. So while knowing a rose flower there are three things: the rose flower -- the known; and the knower -- you; and the relationship between the two -- knowledge.


So knowledge  can be divided into three points: knower, known and knowing. Knowing is just like a bridge between two points -- the subject and the object. Ordinarily your knowledge reveals only the known; the knower remains unrevealed. Ordinarily your knowledge is one-arrowed: it points to the rose but it never points to you. Unless it starts pointing to you, that knowledge will allow you to know about the world, but it will not allow you to know about yourself.


All the techniques of meditation are to reveal the knower. George Gurdjieff used a particular technique just like this. He called it self-remembering. He said that whenever you are knowing something, always remember the knower. Don't forget it in the object. Remember the subject. Just now you are listening to me. When you are listening to me, you can listen in two ways. One: your mind can be focused towards me -- then you forget the listener. Then the speaker is known but the listener is forgotten.


Gurdjieff said that while listening, know the speaker and also know the listener. Your knowledge must be double-arrowed, pointing to two points -- the knower and the known. It must not only flow in one direction towards the object. It must flow simultaneously towards two directions -- the known and the knower. This he called self-remembering.


Looking at a flower, also remember the one who is looking. Difficult, because if you do try it, if you try to be aware of the knower, you will forget the rose. You have become so fixed to one direction that it will take time. If you become aware of the knower, then the known will be forgotten. If you become aware of the known, then the knower will be forgotten.


But a little effort, and by and by you can be aware of both simultaneously. And when you become capable of being aware of both, this Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. This is one of the oldest techniques that Buddha used, and Gurdjieff again introduced it to the western world.


Buddha called is samyak smriti -- right-mindfulness. He said that your mind is not in a right-mindfulness if it knows only one point. It must know both. And then a miracle happen: if you are aware of both the known and the knower, suddenly you become the third -- you are neither. Just by endeavoring to be aware of both the known and the knower, you become the third, you become a witness. A  third possibility arises immediately -- a witnessing self comes into being -- because how can you know both? If you are the knower, then you remain fixed to one point. In self-remembering you shift from the fixed point of the knower. Then the knower is your mind and the known is the world, and you become a third point, a consciousness, a witnessing self.


This third point cannot be transcended, and that which cannot be transcended is the ultimate. That which can be transcended is not worthwhile, because then it is not your nature -- you can transcend it.


I will try to explain it through an example. In the night you sleep and you  dream. In the morning you wake and the dream is lost. While you are awake there is no dream; a different world comes into your view. You move in the streets, you work in a factory or in an office. Then you come back to your home, and again you fall asleep at night. Then this world that you knew while you were awake disappears. Then you don't remember who you are. Then you don't know whether you are black or white, poor or rich, wise or foolish. You don't know anything. You don't know if you are young or old. You don't know if you are man or woman. All that was related with the waking consciousness disappears; you enter the world of dreams. You forget the waking world; it is no more. In the morning, again the dreaming world disappears. You come back.


Which is real? -- because while you are dreaming, the real world, the world that you knew when you were awake, is no more. You cannot compare. And while you are awake, the dreaming world is no more. You cannot compare. Which is real? Why do you call the dreaming world unreal? What is the criterion?


If you say, 'Because it disappears when I am awake,' this cannot be the criterion, because your waking world disappears when you are dreaming. And really, if you argue this way, then the dreaming world may be more real, because while you are awake you can remember the dream, but while you are dreaming you cannot remember the waking consciousness and the world around it. So which is more real and more deep? The dreaming world completely washes away the world that you call real. Your real world cannot wash away the dreaming world so totally; it seems more solid, more real. And what is the criterion? How to say? How to compare?


Tantra says that both are unreal. Then what is real? Tantra says that the one who knows the  dreaming world and the one who knows the waking world, he is real -- because he is never transcended. He is never cancelled. Whether you dream or whether you are awake, he is there, uncanceled.


Tantra says that the one who knows the dream, and the one who  knows that now the dream has stopped, the one who knows the waking world, and the one who knows that now the waking world has disappeared, is the real. Because there is no point when it is not; it is always there. That which cannot be cancelled by any experience is the real. That which cannot be transcended, beyond which you cannot go, is your self. If you can go beyond it, then it was not your self.


This method of Gurdjieff's, which he calls self-remembering, or Buddha's method, which he calls right-mindfulness, or this tantra sutra, lead to one thing. They lead within you to a point which is neither to known nor the knower, but a witnessing self which knows both.


This witnessing self is the ultimate, you cannot go beyond it, because now whatsoever you do will be witnessing. Beyond witnessing you cannot move. So witnessing is the ultimate substratum, the basic ground of consciousness. This sutra will reveal it to you.
<p class="sutra">EACH THING IS PERCEIVED THROUGH KNOWING.
THE SELF SHINES IN SPACE THROUGH KNOWING.
PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN.</p>


If you can perceive in yourself one point which is both knower and known, then you have transcended object and subject both. Then you have transcended the matter and mind both; then you have transcended the outer and inner both. You have come to a point where the knower and the known are one. There is no division.


With the mind, division will remain. Only with the witnessing self, division disappears. With the witnessing self you cannot say who is the known and who is the knower -- it is both. But this has to be based on experience, otherwise it becomes a philosophical discussion. So try it, experiment.


You are sitting near a rose flower: look at it. The first thing to do is be totally attentive, give total attention to the rose, so that the whole world disappears and only the rose remains there -- your consciousness is totally attentive to the being of the rose. If the attention is total then the world disappears, because the more the attention is concentrated on the rose, the more everything else falls away. The world disappears; only the rose remains. The rose becomes the world.


This is the first step -- to concentrate on the rose. If you cannot concentrate on the rose, it will be difficult to move to the knower, because then your mind is always diverted. So concentration becomes the first step towards meditation. Only the rose remains; the whole world has disappeared. Now you can move inwards; now the rose becomes the point from where you can move. Now see the rose, and start becoming aware of yourself -- the knower.


In the beginning you will miss. When you shift to the knower, the rose will drop out of consciousness. It will become faint, it will go away, it will become distant. Again you will come to the rose, and you will forget the self. This hide-and-seek play will go on, but if you persist, sooner or later a moment will come when suddenly you will be in between. The knower, the mind, and the rose will be there, and you will be just in the middle, looking at both. That middle point, that balancing point, is the witness.


Once you know that, you have become both. Then the rose -- the known, and the knower -- the mind, are just two wings of you. Then the object and the subject are just two wings; you are the center of both. They are extensions of you. Then the world and the divine are both extensions of you. You have come to the very center of being. And this center is just a witness.
<p class="sutra">PERCEIVE ONE BEING AS KNOWER AND KNOWN.</p>


Start by concentrating on something. When the concentration has come to be total, then try to move inwards, become mindful of yourself, and then try to balance. It will take time -- months, even years. It depends on how intense is your effort, because it is the most subtle balancing to come between the two. But it happens, and when it happens you have reached the center of existence. In that center you are rooted, grounded, silent, blissful, in ecstasy, and duality is no more. This is what Hindus have called samadhi. This is what Jesus called the kingdom of God.


Just understanding is verbally will not be of much help, but if you try, from the very beginning you will start to feel that something is happening. When you concentrate on the rose, the world will disappear. This is a miracle -- when the whole world disappears. Then you come to understand that it is your attention which is basic, and wherever you move your attention, a world is created, and from wherever you remove your attention, the world drops. So you can create worlds through your attention.


Look at it  in this way. You are sitting here. If you are in love with someone, then suddenly only one person remains in this hall; everything else disappears, it is not there. What happens? Why does only one person remain when you are in love? The whole world drops really; it is phantom-like, shadows. Only one person is real, because now your mind is concentrated on one person, your mind is totally absorbed in one person. Everything else becomes shadow-like, a shadow existence -- it is not real for you.


Whenever you can concentrate, the very concentration changes the whole pattern of your existence, the whole pattern of your mind. Try it -- on anything.  You can try it on a Buddha statue or a flower or a tree or anything. Or just on the face of your beloved or your friend -- just look at the face.


It will be easy, because if you love some face it is very easy to concentrate. And really, those who tried to concentrate on Buddha, on Jesus, on Krishna, they were lovers; they loved Buddha. So it was very easy for Sariputta or for Modgalayan or for the other disciples to concentrate on Buddha's face. The moment they looked at Buddha's face they were easily flowing towards it. The love was there; they were infatuated.


So try to find  a face -- any face you love will do -- and just look in the eyes and concentrate on the face. Suddenly the whole world drops; a new dimension has opened. Your mind is concentrated on one thing -- then that person or that thing becomes the whole world.


When I say this, I mean that if your attention is total towards anything, that thing becomes the whole world. You create the world through your attention. Your world you create through your own attention. And when you are totally absorbed, flowing like a river towards the object, then suddenly start becoming aware of the original source from where this attention is flowing. The river is flowing; now become aware of the origin.


In the beginning you will get lost again and again; you will shift. If you move to the origin, you  will forget the river and the object; the sea towards which it is flowing. It will change: if you come to the object, you will forget the origin. It is natural, because the mind has become fixed to either the object or to the subject.


That's why so many persons go into retreat. They just leave the world. Leaving the world basically means leaving the object, so that they can concentrate on themselves. It is easy. If you leave the world and close your eyes and close all your senses, you can be aware of yourself easily, but again that awareness is false because you have chosen one point of duality. This is another extreme of the same disease.


First you were aware of the object -- the known, and you were not aware of the subject -- the knower. Now you are fixed with the knower and you have forgotten the known, but you remain divided in duality. And this is the old mind again in a new pattern. Nothing has changed.


That's why my emphasis is not to leave the world of the objects. Don't leave the world of the objects. Rather, try to become aware of both the subject and the object simultaneously, the outer and the inner simultaneously. If both are there, only then can you be balanced between them. If one is there you will get obsessed with it.


Those who go to the Himalayas and close themselves, they are just like you standing in a reverse position. You are fixed with the objects, they are fixed with the subject. You are fixed with the outer, they are fixed with the inner. Neither you are free nor they, because you cannot be free with the one. With the one you become identified. You can be free only when you become aware of the two. Then you can become the third, and the third is the free point. With one you become identified. With two you can move, you can shift, you can balance, and you can come to a midpoint, an absolute midpoint.


Buddha used to say that his path is a middle path -- majjhim nikaya. It has not been really understood why he insisted so much  on calling it the middle path. This is the reason: because his whole process was of mindfulness -- it is the middle path. Buddha says, 'Don't leave the world, and don't cling to the other world. Rather, be in between. Don't leave one extreme and move to the other; just be in the middle, because in the middle both are not. Just in the middle you are free. Just in the middle there is no duality. You have come to one, and the duality has become just the extension of you -- just two wings.'


Buddha's middle path is based on this technique. It is beautiful. For so many reasons it is beautiful. One: it is very scientific, because only between two can you balance. If there is only one point, imbalance is bound to be there. So Buddha says that those who are worldly are imbalanced, and those who has renounced are again imbalanced in the other extreme. A balanced man is one who is neither in this extreme nor that; he lives just in the middle. You cannot call him worldly, you cannot call him other-worldly. He is free to move; he is not attached to any. He has come to the midpoint, the golden mean.


Secondly: it is very easy to move to the other extreme -- very easy. If you eat too much you can fast easily, but you cannot diet easily. If you talk too much you can go into silence very easily, but you cannot talk less. If you eat too much, it is very easy not to eat at all -- this is another extreme. But to eat moderately, to come to a midpoint, is very difficult. To love a person is easy; to hate a person is easy. To be simply indifferent  is very difficult. From one extreme you can move to the other.


To remain in the middle is very difficult. Why? Because in the middle you have to lose your mind. Your mind exists in extremes. Mind means the excess. Mind is always extremist: either you are for or you are against. You cannot be simply neutral. Mind cannot exist in neutrality: it can be here or there -- because mind needs the opposite. It needs to be opposed to something. If it is not opposed to anything it disappears. Then there is no functioning for it; it cannot function.


Try this. In any way become neutral, indifferent -- suddenly mind has no function. If you are for, you can think; if you are against, you can think. If you are neither for nor against, what is left to think? Buddha says that indifference is the basis of the middle path. UPEKSHA indifference -- be indifferent to the extremes. Just try one thing: be indifferent to the extremes. A balancing happens.


This balancing will give you a new dimension of feeling where you are both the knower and the known, the world and the other world, this and that, the body and the mind. You are both, and simultaneously neither -- above both. A triangle has come into existence.


You may have seen that many occult, secret societies have used the triangle as their symbol. The triangle is one of the oldest occult symbols just because of this -- because the triangle has three angles. Ordinarily you have only two angles, the third is missing. It is not there yet,  it has not evolved. The third angle is beyond both. Both belong to it, they are part of it, and still it is beyond and higher than both.


If you do this experiment you will help to create a triangle within yourself. The third angle will arise by and by, and when it comes then you cannot be in misery. Once you can witness, you cannot be in misery. Misery means getting identified with something.


But one subtle point has to be remembered -- then you will not even get identified with bliss. That's why Buddha says, 'I can say only this much -- that there will be no misery. In samadhi, in ecstasy, there will be no misery. I cannot say that there will be bliss.' Buddha says, 'I cannot say that. I can simply say there will be no misery.'


And he is right, because bliss means when there is no identification of any type -- not even with bliss. This is very subtle. If you feel that you are blissful, sooner or later you will be in misery again. If you feel you are blissful, you are preparing to be miserable again. You are still getting identified with a mood.


You feel happy: now you get identified with happiness. The moment you get identified with happiness, unhappiness has started. Now you will cling to it, now you will become afraid of the opposite, now you will expect it to remain with you constantly. You have created all that is needed for misery to be there and then misery will enter, and when you get identified with happiness, you will get identified with misery. Identification is the disease.


At the third point you are not identified with anything: whatsoever comes and passes, comes and passes; you remain a witness, just a spectator -- neutral, indifferent, unidentified.


The morning comes and the sun rises and you witness it. You don't say, 'I am the morning.' Then when the noon comes, you don't say, 'I have become the noon.' You witness it. And when the sun sets and darkness comes  and the night, you don't say, 'I am the darkness and the night.' You witness it. You say, 'There was morning, then there was noon, then there was evening and now there is night. And again there will be morning and the circle  will go on and I am just an onlooker. I go on witnessing.'


If  the same becomes possible  with your moods -- moods of the morning and moods of the noon and moods of the  evening and the night, and they have their own circle, they go on moving -- you become a witness. You say, 'Now happiness has come -- just like a morning. And now night will come -- the misery. The moods will go on changing around me, and I will remain centered in myself. I will not get attached to any  mood. I will not cling to any mood. I will not hope for anything and I will not feel frustrated. I will simply witness. Whatsoever happens, I will see it. When it comes, I will see; when it goes, I will see.'


Buddha uses this many times. He  says again and again that when a thought arises, look at it. A thought of misery, a thought of happiness arises -- look at it. It comes to  a climax -- look at it. Then it starts falling  down -- look at it. Then it disappears -- look at it. Arising, existing, dying, and you remain just a witness; go on looking at it. This third point makes you  a witness, SAKSHI, and to be a witness is the highest possibility of consciousness.

The second technique:
<p class="sutra">BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET  MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.</p>
<p class="sutra">BELOVED, AT THIS MOMENT LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM, BE INCLUDED.</p>


This technique is a little difficult, but if you can do it, then very wonderful, beautiful. Sitting, don't divide. Sitting in meditation, be inclusive of all -- your body, your mind, your breath, your thinking, your knowing, everything. Be inclusive  of all. Don't divide, don't create any fragmentation. Ordinarily we are fragmenting; we go on fragmenting. We say, 'The body  is not me.' There are techniques which can use  that also, but this technique is totally different; rather, the opposite.


Don't divide. Don't say, 'I am not the body.' Don't say, 'I am not the breath.'  Don't say, 'I am not the mind.' Just say, 'I am all' -- and be all. Don't create any fragmentation within you.  This is a feeling. With closed eyes include everything that exists in you. Don't get yourself centered anywhere -- be uncentered. The breath comes and goes, the thought comes and moves. The form of your body will go on changing. You have not observed this.


If you sit with closed eyes, you will feel that sometimes your body is big, sometimes your body is small; sometimes it is very heavy, sometimes just light, as if you can fly. You can feel this increasing and decreasing of the form. Just close your eyes and sit and you will feel that sometimes the body is very big -- filling the whole room; sometimes it is so small -- just atomic. Why does this  form change? As your attention changes, the form of the body changes. If  you are inclusive, it will become big; if you exclude -- this is not I, this is not I -- then it will become very minute, very small, atomic.
This sutra says:
<p class="sutra">BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH,  FORM,
BE INCLUDED.</p>


Include everything in your being and don't discard anything. Don't say, 'This is not I,' say, 'I am,' and include everything in it. If you can do this just sitting, wonderful, absolutely new happenings will happen to you. You will feel there is no center; in you there is  no center. And with the center gone, there is no self, there is no  ego;  only consciousness remains -- consciousness like a sky covering everything. And when it grows, not only your own breath will be included, not only your own form will be included; ultimately the  whole universe becomes inclusive to you.


Swami Ramteerth used this technique for his own sadhana.  A moment came when he started saying, 'The whole world is in me, and the stars move in me.' Somebody was talking to him and he said, 'It is very beautiful here in the Himalayas.' Ramteerth  was staying in the Himalayas, and the man said to him, 'It is very beautiful here in the Himalayas.' And Ramteerth is reported to have said, 'Himalayas? The Himalayas are in me.'


The man must have thought that he was mad. How could the Himalayas be in him? But if you practise this meditation,  you can feel that the Himalayas are in you. Let me explain how it is possible.


Really, when you look at me you cannot look at the one who is here sitting in the chair. Really, you are looking at a picture of me which is in you, in your mind. How can you know me here on this chair? Your eyes carry just a picture. Not even a picture -- just rays of light enter in  your eyes. And then the eyes don't go themselves to the mind; just rays passing through the eyes go inside. And your nervous system which carries those rays cannot carry them as rays; it transforms them into chemicals. So only chemicals travel, and these chemicals are decoded and you see me in your mind.


You have never been out of your mind. The whole world that you know, you decode it in your mind, you know it in your mind. All the Himalayas and all the suns and the stars and the moons, they are there in your mind in a very subtle existence. If you close your eyes and feel that everything is inclusive, you will know that the whole world is moving within you. And once you feel this -- that the whole world is moving within you -- all your individual misery is lost. You are no more an individual. You have become the absolute, the non-individual. You have become the whole existence.


This technique expands your consciousness. Now in the west, many drugs are being used to expand consciousness -- LSD, marijuana, and other  drugs. In India also, in the old days, they were  used, because they give a false feeling of expansion. All those who use drugs, for them this technique will be beautiful, very helpful, because their hankering is for expansion.


When you take LSD, you are no more confined in yourself, you have become inclusive of all. There have been cases.... One girl jumped from a seven-storey building because she felt that she could not die, death was impossible. She felt that she could fly, and she felt that there were no barriers, there was no fear. She jumped out of a seven-storey building and died, shattered. But in her mind, under the influence of the drug, there was no limitation, no death.


Expansion of consciousness has become a fad, because when you expand you feel high. The whole world, by and by, becomes included in you. You become great, infinitely great, and with greatness, with expansion, all your individual miseries fall. But through LSD or marijuana or other drugs, this is only a false feeling.


Through this technique, this feeling becomes real -- really the whole world comes within you. There are two reasons for this. One: our individual consciousness is  not really individual; deep down it is collective. We look like islands, but all the islands deep down are connected to the earth. We look like islands, different -- I am conscious, you are conscious -- but your consciousness and my consciousness somewhere deep  down is one. It is connected to the earth, the basic ground.


That's why many things happen which look inexplicable. If you meditate alone it will be more difficult to enter into it, but if you meditate with a group it is very easy, because the whole group works as a unit. In meditation camps I have felt and observed that after two or three days your individuality is no more; you become part of a greater  consciousness. And very subtle waves are being felt, very subtle waves start moving, and the group consciousness evolves.


So when you dance, you are not really dancing, but the group consciousness is dancing; you are just a part of it. The rhythm is not only within you, the rhythm is also without you. The rhythm is all around you. In a group you are not. The superficial phenomenon of being islands is forgotten and the deeper phenomenon of being one is realized. In a group you are nearer to the divine; alone you are further away, because again  you become concentrated on the ego, on the superficial difference, on the superficial separation. This technique helps, because really you are one with the universe. It is only a question of how to dig it or how to fall into it and realize it.


Being with a friendly group always gives you energy. Being with someone who is antagonistic, you always feel that your energy has been drained out. Why? If you are with a friendly group, in a family, and you are sitting, relaxing, just being together, you feel energized, vitalized. Meeting a friend, you  feel more alive than you were before. Just passing an enemy, you feel that you have lost some energy, you feel tired. What happens?


When you are meeting a friendly sympathetic group, you forget your individuality; you drop down to the basic level where you can meet. When someone is antagonistic, you become more individual, egoistic; you cling to your ego. Because of that clinging you feel tired. All energy comes from the roots; all energy comes with the feeling of a collective being.


In the beginning, doing this meditation you will feel a collective being arising, and then ultimately a cosmic consciousness arises. When all differences are lost, all boundaries disappear and existence remains as one piece, one unit, one whole;  then everything is included. This effort to include everything starts from your own individual existence. Include.
<p class="sutra">BELOVED,
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.</p>


The basic point  is to remember inclusiveness. Don't exclude. This is the key for this sutra -- inclusiveness, include. Include and grow. Include and expand. Try it with your body, and then try it with the outside world  also.


Sitting under a tree, look at the tree, then close your eyes and feel that the tree is within you. Look at the sky, then close your eyes and feel that the sky is within you. Look  at the rising sun, then close your eyes and feel that the sun is rising within you. Feel more inclusive.


A tremendous experience will happen to you. When you feel that the tree is within you, immediately you will feel more young, more fresh. And this is not imagination, because the tree and you both belong to the earth. You both are rooted in the same earth and ultimately rooted in the same existence. So when you feel that the tree is within you, the tree IS within you -- this is not an imagination -- and immediately you will feel the effect. The tree's aliveness, the greenery, the freshness, the breeze passing through it, will be felt within you  in  your heart. Include more and more existence and don't exclude.


In many ways, many world teachers have been teaching this. Jesus says, 'Love your enemy as yourself.' This is an experiment in inclusiveness. Freud used to say, 'Why should I love my enemy as myself? He is my enemy, so why should I love him as myself? And how can I love?' His question seems relevant, but he is not aware of why Jesus says to love your enemy as yourself. It is not for any social politics, not for any change in society, not to create a better society, but to give you an expanded feeling of being and consciousness.


If you can include the enemy within yourself, he cannot harm you. That doesn't mean that he cannot kill you: he can kill you, but he cannot  harm you. The harm comes when you exclude him. The moment you exclude him, you become the ego, separate, alone, cut off from existence. If you include the enemy within you, then everything is included. When the enemy can be included, then why not the tree and why not the sky?


The emphasis for the enemy is that if you can include the enemy in your being, you can include everything; then there is no need to exclude anything. If you feel that your enemy is included within you, then even your enemy will give you vitality, energy. He cannot be harmful to you. He can kill, you, but even while he is murdering you, he cannot harm you. That harm comes from your own mind when you exclude.


But the case with us is totally diametrically opposite -- even friends are not included. Enemies are excluded, and even friends are not included. Even your lover, your beloveds, are not included. While being with your lover, you are not merging in him or her. You remain separate, you control yourself. You don't want to lose your identity. Because of this, love has become impossible.


Unless you lose identity how can you love? You want to remain yourself, and your lover wants to remain himself, and no one is ready to  merge, no one is ready to include. Both exclude, both are  bracketed in themselves: there is no meeting, no merging, no communion. If even lovers are  not included, then it is bound to be that your existence is the poorest possible. You are alone, poor, a beggar. With the whole existence included, you are the emperor.


So remember this: make it a style of life to include. Not only meditation, but a style of life, a way of living. Try to include more and more. The more you include, the more you expand, the more your boundaries recede to the very corners of existence. One day only you are; the whole existence is included. This is the ultimate of all religious experience.
<p class="sutra">BELOVED
AT THIS MOMENT
LET MIND, KNOWING, BREATH, FORM,
BE INCLUDED.</p>
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
>