Vigyan Bhairav Tantra - Meditation Technique 84

 

 

 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS

 

 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE, REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE. ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS. Many points have to be understood. First: TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE. There is a deep attachment to the body -- bound to be, it is natural. You have been living in the body for many, many lives, from the very beginning. Bodies have changed, but you were always with a body, you were always embodied.

 

There have been certain moments and times when you were not embodied, but then you were not conscious. When you die from one body, you die in unconsciousness and then you remain unconscious. Then you are born again in a new body, but then too you are unconscious. The gap between one death and another birth is unconscious, so you don't know how you will feel when not embodied. You don't know who you are when you are not in a body. You know only one phenomenon, and that is of embodiment; you have always known yourself in the body.

 

This has been so long, so continuous, that you have forgotten that you are different from it. This is a forgetfulness -- natural, bound to happen in the circumstances -- hence the attachment. You feel you are the body -- this is the attachment. You feel that you are not anything other than the body, not anything more than the body. You may not agree with me at this point, because many times you think that you are not the body, you are the soul, the self. But this is not your knowing; this is simply what you have heard, what you have read, and what you have believed without knowing.

 

So the first thing to be done is that you have to realize the fact that really this is your knowing -- that you are the body. Don't deceive yourself, because deception will not help. If you think that you already know that you are not the body, then you cannot toss aside the attachment, because really for you there is no attachment, you already know. Then many difficulties arise which cannot be solved. A difficulty has to be solved at the beginning. Once you lose the beginning, you can never solve it; you have to come back again to the beginning. So remember well, and realize well that you don't know yourself as anything other than the body. This is the first basic realization.

 

This realization is not there. Your mind is befogged by whatsoever you have heard; your mind is conditioned by the knowledge of others -- it is borrowed, it is not real. Not that it is false -- those who have said it, they have known it -- but for you it is false unless it becomes your own experience. So whenever I say something is false, I mean it is not your experience. It may be true for someone else, but it is not true for you. And truth is individual in this sense -- that truth is truth only when experienced; not experienced, it is untrue. There are no universal truths. Every truth has to be individual before it becomes true.

 

You know, you have heard; this is part of your knowledge, part of an inheritance -- that you are not the body -- but it is not real for you. First toss aside this unreal knowledge. Face the fact that you know yourself only as the body. That will create a great tension in you -- it was just to hide that tension that you gathered this knowledge. You go on believing that you are not the body and you go on living as the body, so you are divided, and your whole being becomes non-authentic, pseudo.

 

Really this is a paranoid condition. You live as the body and you think and talk as the soul -- then there is a struggle and a conflict and then you are constantly in an inner turmoil, a deep unease which cannot be bridged. So first encounter the fact you don't know anything about the soul, the self -- all that you know is about the body.

 

This will release a very uneasy condition in you. All that is hidden will come up to the surface. In realizing this fact that you are the body, you will literally start perspiring. In realizing this fact that you are the body, you will feel very uneasy, strange, but that feeling has to be gone through; only then can you know what attachment to the body means.

 

Teachers go on saying that you should not be attached to your body, but the basic thing -- what the attachment to the body is -- is unknown to you. Attachment to the body is a deep identification with the body, but first you have to realize what this identification is. So put aside all your knowledge that has given you an illusory sense that you are the soul. Realize that you know only one thing, and that is the body. How does this create and how does this release hidden turmoil and a hidden hell within you?

 

The moment you realize you are the body, for the first time you realize the attachment. For the first time you grip the fact in your consciousness that this body which is born, and this body which is gong to die, is you. For the first time you realize the fact that these bones, this bones -- this is you. For the first time you realize the fact that this sex, this anger -- this is you. So all the false images fall. You become real.

 

The reality is painful, very painful -- that's why we go on hiding it. It is a deep trick. You go on thinking about yourself as the self, and everything that you don't like, you throw on the body. So you say sex belongs to the body, love belongs to you. Then you say greed and anger, they belong to the body; compassion belongs to you. Compassion belongs to the self, and cruelty belongs to the body. Forgiveness belongs to the self, and anger belongs to the body. So whatsoever you feel is wrong, ugly, you throw to the body, and whatsoever you feel is beautiful, you go on being identified with. You create a division.

 

This division will not allow you to know what attachment is, and unless you know what attachment is and unless you suffer the misery of it and the hell of it, you cannot put it aside. How can you put it aside? You can put something aside only when it proves a disease, when it proves a heavy burden, when it proves a hell; only then can you put it aside.

 

Your attachment has not proved a hell yet. Whatsoever Buddha says and Mahavir says is irrelevant. They may go on saying that attachment is hell, but this is not your feeling. That's why you again and again ask how to be detached, how to be not attached, how to go beyond attachment. You go on asking this `how' only because you don't know what attachment is. If you know what attachment is, you will simply jump out of it. You will not ask `how'.

 

If your house is on fire you will not ask anyone, you will not go seeking a master to ask how to come out of it. If the house is on fire you will simply get out of it. You will not lose a single moment. You will not search for the teacher, you will not consult the scriptures. And you will not try to choose in what ways one has to come out, what means have to be adopted, and which door is the right door. These things are irrelevant when the house is on fire. When you know what attachment is, the house is on fire. You can put it aside.

 

To enter in this technique, first you have to throw the false knowledge of the self so that attachment with the body is revealed in its totality. It is going to be very difficult; it is going to be a deep anxiety and anguish to face it. It is not going to be easy, it is arduous, but once you face it, you can put it aside. And there is no need to ask how. It is absolutely a fire, a hell. You can jump out of it.

 

This sutra says:

 

TOSS ATTACHMENT FOR BODY ASIDE,

 

REALIZING I AM EVERYWHERE.

 

And the moment you toss aside the attachment, you will realize you are everywhere. Because of this attachment you feel you are limited by the body. It is not the body which is limiting you; it is your attachment to it. It is not the body which is making a barrier between you and the reality; it is your attachment to it. Once you know what the attachment is not there, there is no body to you. Rather, the whole existence becomes your body; your body becomes a part of the total existence. Then it is not separate.

 

Really, your body is nothing but existence comes to you, existence reached to you. It is the nearest existence to you, that's all -- and then it goes on spreading. Your body is just the nearest corner of it, and then the whole existence is there -- it goes on spreading. Once your attachment is not there, there is no body to you; or, the whole existence has become your body. You are everywhere.

 

In the body you are somewhere; without the body you are everywhere. In the body you are confined to a particular space; without the body you have no confinement. That's why those who have known, they say the body is the imprisonment. Not that the body is the imprisonment; really, the attachment to it is the imprisonment. Once your eyes are not focused on the body, you are everywhere.

 

This looks absurd. To the mind who is in the body, this looks absurd, a madness -- how can one be everywhere? To a Buddha, whatsoever we say -- that `I am here' -- really looks like madness. How can you be somewhere? Consciousness is not a space concept. That's why if you close your eyes and try to find out where in your body you are, you will be at a loss. You cannot find out where you are.

 

There have been many religions and many sects which have preached that you are in the navel. Some say that you are in the heart, some say that you are in the head, some say that you are in this center and that center, but Shiva says you are nowhere. That's why if you close your eyes and try to find out where you are, you cannot say. You are, but there is no `where' to you. Simply you are.

 

In deep sleep you are not aware of the body. YOu are. In the morning you will say that the sleep was very deep, very blissful. You were aware of a deep bliss running throughout, but you were not aware of the body. In deep sleep where are you? When you die, where do you go? Continuously people ask, `When someone dies, where does he go?' But the question is absurd, foolish. It is related to our embodied consciousness -- because we think that we are somewhere, so then when we die, where do we go? -- nowhere.

 

When you die, you are not somewhere, that's all. You are not confined to a space, that's all. But if you have a desire to be confined, you will be confined again. Your desire leads you to new confinements. But when you are not in the body, you are nowhere, or, everywhere -- this depends on which word appeals to you.

 

If you ask Buddha, he will say you are nowhere. That's why he chooses the word `nirvana'. Nirvana means you are nowhere. Just like a flame which has gone out -- how can you say where the flame is then? He will say it is nowhere. The flame has simply ceased to be. Buddha uses a negative term -- nowhere. That's what nirvana means. When you are not attached to the body you are in nirvana, you are nowhere.

 

Shiva chooses a positive term -- he says everywhere -- but both the terms mean the same. If you are everywhere, you cannot be somewhere. If you are everywhere, it is saying almost the same thing as saying that you are nowhere.

 

But in the body we are attached, and we feel that we are confined. This confinement is a mental act; it is your own doing. And you can confine yourself to anything. You have a valuable diamond. Your being can be confined to it, and if the diamond is stolen you may commit suicide or you may go mad. What has happened? There are so many persons without a diamond: no one is committing suicide, no one is feeling any difficulty without a diamond, but what has happened to you?

 

Once you were also without a diamond; there was no problem. Now you are again without a diamond, but there is a problem. How is this problem created? It is your own doing. Now you are attached, confined. The diamond has become your body. Now you cannot live without it; it is impossible to live without it.

 

Wherever you get attached, it becomes a new imprisonment. And whatsoever we are doing in life is this: we go on creating more and more imprisonments, bigger and bigger jails to live in. Then we go on decorating those jails so that they look like home, and then we forget completely that they are jails.

 

This sutra says that if you toss aside the attachment with the body, realization happens that I AM EVERYWHERE. You have an oceanic feeling, your consciousness exists without any location. Your consciousness exists without being tethered anywhere. You become just like a sky, enveloping all; everything is in you. Your consciousness has expanded to the infinite possibility. And then the sutra says:

 

ONE WHO IS EVERYWHERE IS JOYOUS.

 

Confined to a place you will be in misery, because you are always bigger than where you are confined. This is the misery -- as if you are forcing yourself into a small bowl; the ocean is being forced into a small pot. The misery is bound to be there. This is the misery, and whenever this misery has been felt, the search for enlightenment arises, the search for the Brahma. Brahma means the infinite one. The search for moksha means the search for freedom. In a limited body you cannot be free; somewhere you will be a slave. Nowhere or everywhere you can be free.

 

Look at the human mind: whatsoever the direction, it is always for freedom, searching for freedom. It may be political, it may be economic, it may be psychological, it may be religious -- whatsoever the direction, but the human mind is always groping for freedom. Freedom seems to be the deepest need. Wherever human mind finds any barrier, any slavery, any limitation, it fights against t. The whole human history is a fight for freedom.

 

Dimensions may be different. A Marx, a Lenin, they are fighting for economic freedom. A Gandhi, a Lincoln, they are fighting for political freedom. And there are thousands and thousands of slaveries, and the fight goes on. But one thing is certain -- that somewhere, deep down, man is searching continuously for more and more freedom.

 

Shiva says, and all the religions say, that you can become politically free, but the struggle will not cease. Only one type of slavery will be no more, but there are other types of slaveries there, and when you are politically free then you will become aware of other slaveries. Economic slavery can cease, but then you will become aware of other slaveries -- sexual, psychological. This struggle cannot cease unless you begin to feel and know that you are everywhere. The moment you feel you are everywhere, freedom is attained.

 

This freedom is not political, this freedom is not economical, not sociological. This freedom is existential. This freedom is total. That's why we have called it moksha, total freedom. And then only can you be joyous. Joy or bliss is possible only when you are totally free.

 

Really, to be totally free means joy. The joy is not a consequence, it is the very happening. When you are totally free you are joyous, you are blissful. This bliss is not happening as an effect. Freedom is bliss, slavery is misery. The moment you feel limited you are miserable; wherever you feel limited you feel miserable. When you feel unlimited, misery disappears. So misery exists in barriers, and bliss exists in a no-barrier land, in a no-barrier existence.

 

Whenever you feel this freedom, joy happens to you. Even now, whenever you feel a certain freedom, even if it is not total, joy comes to you. You fall in love with somebody: a certain joy, a certain bliss happens to you. Why does it happen? Really, whenever you are in love with somebody, you have tossed aside your own attachment to the body. In a deep sense, now the other's body has also become your body. You are not confined to your own body now; somebody else's body has also become your body, it has also become your home, it has also become your abode. You feel a freedom Now you can move into the other and the other can move into you. In a limited way a barrier has fallen You are more than before.

 

When you love someone you are more than you ever were; your being has increased, expanded. Your consciousness is not limited like it was before; it has reached a new realm. You feel a certain freedom in love. It is not total, and sooner or later you will feel again confined. You feel extended, but still finite. So those who really love, are sooner or later bound to fall into prayer.

 

Prayer means a greater love. Prayer means a love with the whole existence. You now know the secret. You know a key, a secret key -- that you loved a person, and the moment you loved, the doors opened and the barriers dissolved, and at least for one person more your being was expanded, increased. Now you know the secret key. If you can fall in love with the whole existence, you will not be the body.

 

In deep love you become bodiless. When you are in love with someone you don't feel yourself as a body. When you are not loved, when you are not in love, you feel yourself more as a body, you become more aware of the body. The body becomes a burden; you have to carry it. When you are loved, the body has lost weight. When you are loved and you are in love, you don't feel gravitation has any effect on you. You can dance, you can fly really. In a deeper way the body is no more -- but this is in a limited way. The same can happen when you are in love with the total existence.

 

In love, joy comes to you. It is not pleasure. Remember, joy is not pleasure. Pleasure comes to you through the senses; joy come to you through being non-sensuous. Pleasures comes to you through the body; joy comes to you when you are not the body. When for a moment the body has disappeared and you are simply consciousness, then joy comes to you. When you are the body, pleasure can happen to you. It is always through the body. Pain is possible, pleasure is possible through the body. Joy is possible only when you are not the body.

 

It happens ordinarily also, accidentally also. You are listening to music and suddenly gravitation is lost. You are so absorbed in it, you have forgotten your body. You are filled with music and you have become one with music. There is not a listener to it: the listener and the listened have become one. Only music exists; you are no more. You have expanded. Now you are flowing with musical notes, now there is no limit to you. The notes are dissolving into silence, and you are also dissolving into silence with them. The body is forgotten.

 

Whenever the body is forgotten, it is tossed aside unknowingly, unconsciously, and joy happens to you. Through Tantra and Yoga you can do it methodologically. Then it is not an accident; then you are the master of it. Then it is not happening to you; then you have the key in your hands and you can open the door whenever you want. Or, you can open the door forever and throw away the key; no need to close the door again.

 

Joy happens in ordinary life also, but you don't know how it happens. The happening is always when you are not the body -- remember this. So whenever you again feel any moment of joy, become aware of whether you are the body in that moment or not. You will not be. Whenever joy is, the body is not. Not that the body disappears -- the body remains, but you are not attached to it. You are not attached to it, you are not tethered to it. You have jumped out.

 

You may have jumped out because of music, you may have jumped out because of a beautiful sunrise, you may have jumped out because a child was laughing, you may have jumped out because you were in love. Whatsoever the cause, but you have jumped out for a moment -- out of the body. The body is there, but tossed aside; you are not attached to it. You have taken a flight.

 

Through this technique, you know that one who is everywhere cannot be miserable; he is joyous, he is joy. So the more you become confined, the more miserable. Expand, push your boundaries away, and whenever you can, leave the body aside. You look in the sky and clouds are floating: move with the clouds, leave the body here on the earth. And the moon is there: move with the moon. Whenever you can forget the body, don't miss the opportunity -- go on a journey. And then you will become accustomed to what it means to be out of the body.

 

And this is only a question of attention. Attachment is a question of attention. If you pay attention to the body, you are attached. If the attention has moved away, you are not attached.

 

Look, for example: you are playing on the sports-grounds; you are playing hockey or volley-ball or something else. When you are deep in play, your attention is not on the body. Someone has hit your feet and the blood is flowing -- you are not aware. The pain is there, but you are not there. The blood is flowing but you are out of the body. Your consciousness, your attention, may be flying with the ball, may be running with the ball. Your attention is somewhere else. The game finishes: suddenly you come back to the body, and the blood is there and the pain. And you wonder how it happened -- when it happened and how it happened and how you were not aware of it.

 

To be in the body, your attention is needed to be there. So remember it -- wherever your attention is, you are there. If your attention is in the clouds, you are there. If your attention is in the flower, you are there. If your attention is in money, you are there. Your attention is your being. And if your attention is nowhere, you are everywhere.

 

So the whole process of meditation is to be in such a state of consciousness where your attention is nowhere, there is no object to it. When there is no object to it, there is no body to you. Your attention creates the body. Your attention is your body. And when attention is nowhere, you are everywhere -- joy happens to you. It is not good to say that it happens to you -- you are it. It cannot leave you now; it is your very being. Freedom is joy, that's why so much hankering after freedom.

 

-Osho, "Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Vol 2, #17"