Actually, death and birth are not two events, they are two ends of the same phenomenon — just like two sides of the same coin. If a man can have one side of a coin in his hand, the other side will be in his hand automatically. It’s not possible to have one side of a coin in my hand and then wonder how to get the other side — the other side becomes available automatically.
Death and birth are two sides of the same phenomenon. If death occurs in a conscious state, then birth inevitably takes place in a conscious state. If death occurs in an unconscious state, then birth happens in a state of unconsciousness too. If a person dies fully conscious at the time of his death, he will be filled with consciousness at the moment of his next birth also.
Since we all die in a state of unconsciousness and are born in a state of unconsciousness, we remember nothing of our past lives. However, the memory of our past lives always remains present in some corner of our minds, and this memory can be revived if we so desire.
With birth we cannot do anything directly; whatsoever we can do is possible only in relation to death. Nothing can be done after death; whatsoever is to be done must be done before death. A person dying in an unconscious state cannot do anything until he is born again — there is no way; he will continue to remain unconscious. Hence, if you died before in an unconscious state, you will have to be born again in an unconscious state. Whatsoever is to be done must be done before death, because we have lots of opportunities before death, the opportunity of a whole lifetime. With this opportunity an effort can be made towards awakening. So, it will be a great mistake if someone keeps waiting until the moment of death to awaken. You can’t awaken at the time of death. The sadhana, the journey towards awakening, will have to begin long before death; a preparation will have to be made for it. Without preparation one is sure to remain unconscious in death. Although, in a way, this unconscious state is for your own good if you are not yet ready to be born in a conscious state.
Around 1915, the ruler of Kashi had an abdominal operation. This was the first such operation ever performed in the world without the use of anesthesia. There were three British physicians who refused to perform the operation without giving anesthesia, saying it was impossible to have a man’s stomach open for one-and-a-half to two hours during a major operation without making the patient unconscious. It was dangerous — the danger was that the patient might scream, move, jump or fall because of the unbearable pain; anything might happen. Hence the doctors were not ready.
But the ruler maintained there was no cause for concern as long as he remained in meditation and said he could easily remain in meditation for one-and-a-half to two hours. He was not willing to take the anesthetic; he said he wished to be operated upon in his conscious state. But the physicians were reluctant; they believed it was dangerous to have someone go through such pain in a conscious state. However, seeing no other alternative, the physicians first asked him, as an experiment, to go into meditation. Then they made a cut in his hand — there was not even a tremor. Only two hours later did he complain that his hand hurt; he did not feel anything for two hours. Subsequently, the operation was performed.
That was the first operation to be performed in the world where physicians worked on a patient’s open stomach for an hour-and-a-half without giving anesthetic. And the ruler remained fully conscious throughout the operation. Deep meditation is required to be in such awareness. The meditation has to be so deep as to make one totally aware, without an iota of doubt, that the self and the body are separate. Even the slightest identification with the body can be dangerous.
Death is the biggest surgical operation there is. No physician has ever performed an operation as big as this — because in death there is a mechanism to transplant the entire vital energy, the prana, from one physical body into another physical body. No one has ever performed such a phenomenal operation, nor can it ever be done. We may sever one part of the body or another, or transplant one part or another, but in the case of death, the entire vital energy has to be taken from one body and entered into another.
Nature has kindly seen to it that we become fully unconscious at the occurrence of this phenomenon. It is for our own good; we might not be able to bear that much pain. It is possible that the reason why we become unconscious is because the pain of death is so unbearable. It is in our own interest that we become unconscious; nature does not allow us to remember passing through death.
In every life we repeat almost the same mistakes we have repeated in our past lives. If we could only recall what we did in our past lives, we might not fall into the same ditches again. And if we could only remember what we did throughout our previous lives, we could no longer remain the same as we are now. It is impossible we could remain the same, because time and time again we have amassed wealth and every time death has made all that wealth meaningless. If we could recall this, we might not carry, any longer, the same craze for money within us as we did before. We have fallen in love a thousand times, and time and time again it has ultimately proven to be meaningless. If we could recall this, our craze for falling in love with others and for having others fall in love with us would disappear. Thousands upon thousands of times we have been ambitious, egoistic; we have attained success, high position, and in the end all of it has turned out to be useless, all of it has turned to dust. If we could recall this, perhaps our ambition would lose its steam, and then we would not remain the same people we are now.
Since we do not remember our past lives, we keep moving in almost the same circle. Man does not realize that he has gone through the same circle many times before, and that he is going through it once again in the same hope he carried with him so often before. Then death ruins all hopes, and once again the cycle begins. Man moves in circles like an ox on a water-wheel.
One can save oneself from this harm, but it requires great awareness and continuous experimentation. One cannot start waiting for death all at once, because one cannot become suddenly aware during such a big operation, under such a great trauma. We will have to experiment slowly. We will have to experiment slowly with small miseries to see how we can be aware while going through them.
For example, you have a headache. At one and the same time you become aware and begin to feel that you have a headache, not that the head is in pain. So one will have to experiment on the little headache and learn to feel that, “The pain is in the head and I am aware of it.”
When Swami Ram was in America people had great difficulty following him in the beginning. When the president of America paid him a visit, he was puzzled too. He asked, “What language is this?” — because Ram used to speak in the third person. He would not say, “I am hungry,” he would say, “Ram is hungry.” He would not say, “I have a headache,” he would say, “Ram has a severe headache.”
In the beginning people had great difficulty following him. For example, he once said, “Last night Ram was freezing.” When asked who he was referring to, he replied that he was referring to Ram. When he was asked, “Which Ram?” he said, pointing to himself, “This Ram — the poor guy was freezing cold last night. We kept laughing and asked, ‘How’s the cold Ram?’”
He would say, “Ram was walking on the street and some people began swearing at him. We had a belly laugh and said, ‘How do you like the swearing, Ram? If you seek honor, you are bound to meet with insult.’” When people asked, “Who are you talking about, which Ram?” he would point to himself.
You will have to start experimenting with minor kinds of miseries. You encounter them every day in life; they are present every day — not only miseries, you will have to include happiness in the experiment also, because it is more difficult to be aware in happiness than it is to be in misery. It is not so difficult to experience that your head and the pain in it are two separate things, but it is more difficult to experience that, “The body is separate and the joy of being healthy is separate from me too — I am not even that.” It is difficult to maintain this distance when we are happy because in happiness we like to be close to it. While in misery, we obviously want to feel separate, away from it. Should it become certain that the pain is separate from us, we want it to stay that way so we can be free of it.
You will have to experiment on how to remain aware in misery as well as in happiness. One who carries out such experiments often brings misery upon himself, of his own free will, in order to experience it. This is basically the secret of all asceticism: it is an experiment to undergo voluntary pain. For example, a man is on a fast. By remaining hungry he is trying to find out what effect hunger has on his consciousness. Ordinarily, a person who is on a fast hasn’t the slightest notion of what he is doing — he only knows that he is hungry and looks forward to having his meal the next day.
The fundamental purpose of fasting is to experience that, “Hunger is there, but it is far away from me. The body is hungry, ‘I’ am not.” So by inducing hunger voluntarily, one is trying to know, from within, if hunger is there. Ram is hungry — ‘I’ am not hungry. I know hunger is there, and this has to become a continuous knowing until I reach a point where a distance occurs between me and the hunger — where ‘I’ no longer remain hungry — even in hunger I no longer remain hungry. Only the body stays hungry and I know it. I simply remain a knower. Then the meaning of fasting becomes very profound; then it does not mean merely remaining hungry.
Normally, one who goes on a fast keeps repeating twenty-four hours a day that he is hungry, that he has not eaten any food that day. His mind continues to fantasize about the food he will eat the next day and plans for it. This kind of fasting is meaningless. Then it is merely abstaining from food. The distinction between abstaining from food and fasting, upvasa, is this: fasting means residing closer and closer. Closer to what? It means coming closer to the self by creating a distance from the body.
The word upvasa does not imply going without food. Upvasa means residing closer and closer. Closer to what? It means closer to the self, residing closer to the self and further away from the body. Then it is also possible that a man may eat and yet remain in the state of fasting. If, while eating, he knows from within that eating is taking place elsewhere and the consciousness is totally separate from the act, then it is upvasa. And it is also possible that a man may not really be fasting even though he may have denied himself food; for he may be too conscious of being hungry, that he is dying of hunger. Upvasa is a psychological awareness of the separation of the self and the physical state of hunger.
Other pains of a similar type can also be created voluntarily, but creating such voluntary pain is a very deep experiment. A man may lie on thorns just to experience that the thorns only prick the body and not his self. Thus a misery can be invited in order to experience the disassociation of consciousness from the physical plane.
But there are already enough uninvited miseries in the world — no need to invite any more. Already much misery is available — one should start experimenting with it. Miseries come uninvited anyway. If, during the uninvited misery, one can maintain the awareness that “I am separate from my suffering” then the suffering becomes a sadhana, a spiritual discipline.
One will have to continue this sadhana even with happiness which has come on its own. In suffering, it is possible we may succeed in deceiving ourselves because one would like to believe that “I am not pain.” But when it comes to happiness, a man wants to identify himself with it because he already believes that “I am happy.” Hence the sadhana is even more difficult with happiness.
Nothing, in fact, is more painful than feeling that we are separate from our happiness. Actually, a man wants to drown himself completely in happiness and forget that he is separate from it. Happiness drowns us; misery disconnects us and sets us apart from the self. Somehow, we come to believe that our identification with suffering is only because we have no other choice, but we welcome happiness with our whole being.
Be aware in the pain which comes your way; be aware in the happiness which comes your way — and occasionally, just as an experiment, be aware in invited pain also, because in it, things are a little different. We can never fully identify ourselves with anything we invite upon ourselves. The very knowledge that it is an invited thing creates the distance. The guest who comes to your home does not belong there — he is a guest. Similarly, when we invite suffering as our guest, it is already something separate from us.
While walking barefoot a thorn gets into your foot. This is an accident and its pain will be overwhelming. This unfortunate accident is different from when you purposely take a thorn and press it against your foot — knowing every moment that you are piercing the foot with the thorn and watching the pain. I am not asking you to go ahead and torture yourself; as it is, there is enough suffering already — what I mean is: first be alert in going through both suffering and happiness; then later, one day, invite some misery and see how far away from it you can set your consciousness.
Remember, the experiment of inviting misery is of great significance, because everyone wants to invite happiness but no one wants to invite misery. And the interesting thing is that the misery we don’t want comes on its own, and the happiness we seek never comes. Even when it comes by chance, it remains outside our door. The happiness we beckon to never comes, while the happiness we never ask for walks right in. When a person gathers enough strength to invite misery, it means he is so happy that he can invite suffering now. He is so blissful that now there is no difficulty for him to invite suffering. Now misery can be asked to come and stay.
But this is a very deep experiment. Until we are prepared to undertake such an experiment, we must try to become aware of whatever suffering comes our way on its own. If we go on becoming more and more aware each time we come across misery, we will gather enough capability to remain conscious even when death arrives. Then nature will allow us to stay awake in death too. Nature, as well, will figure that if the man can stay conscious in pain, he can also remain conscious in death. No one can stay conscious in death all of a sudden, without having had a previous experience of the kind.
A man named P.D. Ouspensky died some years ago. He was a great mathematician from Russia. He is the only person in this century who has done such extensive experiments in relation to death. Three months before his death, he became very ill. The physicians advised him to stay in bed, but in spite of this, he made such an incredible effort it is beyond imagination. He would not sleep at night; he traveled, walked, ran, was always on the move. The physicians were aghast; they said he needed complete rest. Ouspensky called all his close friends near him but did not say anything to them.
The friends who stayed with him for three months, until his death, have said that for the first time they saw, before their eyes, a man accepting death in a conscious state. They asked him why did he not follow the physicians’ advice. Ouspensky replied, “I want to experience all kinds of pain, lest the pain of death be so great that I might become unconscious. I want to go through every pain before death; that can create such a stamina in me that I can be totally conscious when death comes.” So for three months he made an exemplary effort to go through all kinds of pain.
His friends have written that those who were fit and hearty would get tired, but not Ouspensky. The physicians insisted that he must have complete rest, otherwise it would cause him great harm — but to no avail. The night he died, Ouspensky kept walking back and forth in his room. The physicians who examined him declared that his legs had no more strength left to walk — and yet he kept walking the whole night.
He said, “I want to die walking, lest I might die sitting and become unconscious, or I might die sleeping and become unconscious.” As he walked, he told his friends, “Just a little bit longer — ten more steps and all will be over. I am sinking, but I shall keep walking until I have taken the last step. I want to keep on doing something until the very end, otherwise death may catch me unawares. I may relax and go to sleep — I don’t want this to happen at the moment of death.”
Ouspensky died while taking his last step. Very few people on this earth have died walking like this. He fell down walking; that is, he fell only when his death occurred. Taking his last step, he said, “That’s it; this is my last step. Now I am about to fall. But before departing let me tell you I dropped my body long ago. You will see my body being released now, but I have been seeing for a long time now that the body has dropped and still I exist. The links with the body have all been broken and yet, inside, I still exist. Now only the body will fall — there is no way for me to fall down.”
At the time of his death, his friends saw a kind of light in his eyes. A peace, joy and radiance were visible which shine through when one is standing on the threshold of the world beyond. But one needs to make preparations for this, a continuous preparation. If a person prepares himself fully, then death becomes a wonderful experience. There is no other phenomenon more valuable than this, because what is revealed at the time of death can never be known otherwise. Then death looks like a friend, for only at the occurrence of death can we experience that we are a living organism — not before that.
Remember, the darker the night, the brighter the stars. The flash of lightning stands out like a silver strand, the darker the clouds are. Similarly, when, in its full form, death surrounds us from all sides, at that moment the very center of life manifests in all its glory — never before that. Death surrounds us like darkness, and in the middle, that very center of life — call it atman, the soul, shines in its full splendor; the surrounding darkness makes it luminous. But at that moment we become unconscious. At the very moment of death, which could otherwise become the moment to know our being, we become unconscious. Hence one will have to make preparations towards raising one’s consciousness. Meditation is that preparation.
Meditation is an experiment in how one attains to a gradual, voluntary death. It is an experiment in how one moves within and then leaves the body. If one meditates throughout his life, he will attain to total meditation at the moment of death.
When death happens in full consciousness, the soul of the person takes its next birth in full consciousness. Then the very first day of his new life is not a day of ignorance but of full knowledge. Even in the mother’s womb he remains fully conscious. Only one more birth is possible for one who has died in a conscious state. There is no other birth possible for him after that — because one who has experienced what birth is, what death is and what life is, attains liberation.
One who has taken birth in awareness, we have called him avatara, tirthankara, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna. And the thing that distinguishes them from the rest of us is awareness. They are awakened and we are asleep. Having taken conscious birth, this becomes their final journey on earth. They have something we don’t have, which, painstakingly, they continue to bring to us. The difference between the awakened ones and us is simply this: their previous death and the birth thereafter happened in a state of awareness — hence they live their entire life in awareness.
People in Tibet do a little experiment called bardo. It is a very valuable experiment, carried out only at the time of death. When someone is about to die, people who know gather around him and make him do Bardo. But only he who has meditated in his life can be made to go through Bardo — not otherwise. In the experiment of Bardo, as soon as a person dies, instructions are given from the outside that he should remain fully awake. He is told to keep watching whatever follows next, because in that state, many times things happen which the dying person can never understand. New phenomena are not so easy to follow right away.
If a person can stay conscious after death, for a while he will not know that he is dead. When people carry his dead body and start burning it at the cremation ground only then will he come to know for certain that he is dead — because nothing actually dies inside, just a distance is created. In life, this distance has never been experienced before. The experience is so novel it cannot be grasped through conventional definition. The person merely feels that something has separated. But something has died, and that he only understands when people all around him start weeping and crying, falling over his body in grief, getting ready to carry the body away for cremation.
There is a reason why the body is brought for cremation so soon. The reason for burning or cremating the body as soon as possible is to assure the soul that the body is dead, that it is burned to ashes. But this a man can know only if he has died in awareness; a man dying in an unconscious state cannot know this. So in order for a man to see his body burning in Bardo, he is prompted, “Take a good look at your burning body. Don’t run or move away in haste. When people bring your body for cremation, make sure you accompany them and be present there. Watch your body being cremated with perfect attention, so that next time you do not get attached to the physical body.”
Once you see something burning to ashes, your attachment for it disappears. Others will, of course, see your body being cremated, but if you also see it, you will lose all your attachment for it. Normally, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, the man is unconscious at the time of death; he has no knowledge of it. On the one occasion when he is conscious, he moves away from watching his burning body; he escapes from the cremation ground. So in Bardo he is told, “Look, don’t miss this opportunity. Watch your body being cremated; just watch it once and for all. Watch that which you have been identifying your self with all along being destroyed totally. Watch it being reduced to ashes for certain, so that you may remember in your next birth who you are.”
As soon as a person dies he enters into a new world, one we know nothing about. That world can be scary and frightening to us because it is neither like nor unlike any of our experiences. In fact it has no connection with life on earth whatsoever. Facing this new world is more frightening than it would be if a man were to find himself in a strange country where everyone was a stranger to him, where he was unacquainted with their language, with their ways of living. He would obviously be very perturbed and confused .
The world we live in is a world of physical bodies. As we leave this world the incorporeal world begins — a world we have never experienced. It is even more frightening, because in our world, no matter how strange the place, how different its people and their ways of living, there is still a bond between us and them: it is a realm of human beings. Entering into the world of bodiless spirits can be an experience frightening beyond imagination.
Ordinarily, we pass through it in an unconscious state, and so we don’t notice it. But one who goes through it in a conscious state gets into great difficulty. So in Bardo there is an attempt to explain to the person what kind of a world it will be, what will happen there, what kind of beings he will come across. Only those who have been through deep meditation can be taken through this experiment — not otherwise.
Lately, I have often felt that those friends who are practicing meditation can be taken into the Bardo experiment in some form or other. But this is possible only when they have gone through deep meditation; otherwise, they would not even be able to hear what is being said to them. They would not be able to hear what is being said at the moment of death, or follow what is being told to them. In order to follow what is being said, a very silent and empty mind is needed. As the consciousness begins to fade and disappear, and as all earthly ties start being severed, only a very silent mind can hear messages given from this world; they cannot be heard otherwise.
Remember, it can be done only in respect to death, if anything; nothing can be done with respect to birth. But whatsoever we do with death, it consequently affects our birth as well. We are born in the same state in which we die.
An awakened one exercises his choice in selecting the womb. This shows that he never chooses anything blindly, unconsciously. He chooses his parents just as a rich man chooses his house. A poor man cannot have a house of his choice. You need a certain capacity to choose. One needs a capability to buy a house. A poor man never chooses his house. One should say that actually the house chooses the poor man; a poor house chooses a poor man. A millionaire decides where he should reside, what the garden should look like, where the doors and windows should be fixed — the sunlight should enter from the east or west; how the ventilation should be, how spacious the house should be — he chooses everything.
An awakened one chooses a womb for himself; that is his choice. Individuals like Mahavira or Buddha are not born anywhere and everywhere. They take birth after considering all possibilities: how the body will be and from which parents it will be conceived; what the energy will be like, how powerful he will be; what kind of facilities will be available to him. They take birth after looking into all of this. They have a clear choice of what to choose, where to go; hence, from the very first day of their birth they live the life of their own choice.
The joy of living a life of one’s own choice is altogether different, because freedom begins with having a life of one’s own choice. There cannot be the same kind of joy in a life which is given to you because then it becomes servitude. In such cases one is merely pushed into life and then whatever happens, happens — the person has no role to play in it.
If such an awakening becomes possible then the choice can definitely be made. If the very birth happens out of our choice, then we can live the rest of our lives in choice. Then we can live like a jeevan-mukta. One who dies in an awakened state is born in an awakened state and then he lives his life in a liberated state.
We often hear the word jeevan-mukta, although we may not know what the word means. Jeevan-mukta means: one who is born in an awakened state. Only such a person can be a jeevan-mukta; otherwise he may work his whole life for liberation, yet he can attain freedom only in his next life — he will not be free in this life. In order to be a jeevan-mukta in this life a man must have the freedom to choose from the very first day of his birth. And this is possible only if one has attained to full consciousness in the dying moment of one’s previous life.
But at this point that is not the question. Life is here, death has not arrived yet. It is sure to come; there is nothing more certain than death. There can be doubt regarding other things, but about death nothing whatsoever is in doubt. There are people who have doubts about God, there are others who have doubts about the soul, but you may never have come across a man who has doubts about death. It is inevitable — it is sure to come; it is already on its way. It is approaching closer and closer every moment. We can utilize the moments which are available before death for our awakening. Meditation is a technique to that effect. My effort in these three days will be to help you understand that meditation is the technique for that very awakening.
Question 2
A FRIEND HAS ASKED: WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN MEDITATION AND JATI-SMARAN, PAST LIFE REMEMBERING?
Jati-smaran means: a method of recalling past lives. It is a way to remember our previous existences. It is a form of meditation. It is a specific application of meditation. For example, one might ask, “What is a river, and what is a canal? Our answer would be that the canal is a specific application of the river itself — well planned, but controlled and systematic. The river is chaotic, unrestrained; it too will reach somewhere, but its destination is not certain. The destination of the canal is assured.
Meditation is like a big river — it will reach to the ocean; it is sure to reach. Meditation will surely bring you to God. There are, however, other intermediary applications of meditation also. Like small tributaries these can be directed into canals of meditation. Jati-smaran is one such auxiliary method of meditation. We can channelize the power of meditation towards our past lives also; meditation simply means the focusing of attention. There can be applications where one’s attention is focused on a given object, and one such application is jati-smaran — focusing on the dormant memories of past lives.
Remember, memories are never erased; a memory either remains latent or it arises. But the latent memory appears to be erased. If I ask you what you did on January 1, 1950, you will not be able to answer — which does not mean that you might not have done anything on that day. But suddenly the day of January 1, 1950 feels like a total blank. It could not have been blank; as it passed, it was filled with activity. But today it feels like a blank. Similarly, today will become blank tomorrow as well. Ten years from now there will be no trace left of today.
So it is not that January 1, 1950 did not exist, or that you did not exist on that day — what is implied is that since you are unable to recall that day, how can you believe it ever existed? But it did exist and there is a way to know about it. Meditation can be focused in that direction as well. As soon as the light of meditation falls on that day, to your surprise you will see that it looks more alive than it ever was before.
For example, a person enters a dark room and moves around with a flashlight. When he turns the light to the left, the right side becomes dark — but nothing disappears on the right side. When he moves the light to the right, the right side becomes alive again, but the left side remains hidden in the dark.
Meditation has a focus, and if one wants to channel it in a particular direction then it has to be used like a flashlight. If, however, one wants to turn it towards the divine, then meditation has to be applied like a lamp. Please understand this carefully.
The lamp has no focus of its own; it is unfocused. A lamp merely burns and its light spreads all around. A lamp has no interest in lighting up one direction or the other; whatsoever falls within the radius of light is lit up. But the form of a flashlight is like a focused lamp.
In a flashlight we keep all the light and shine it in one direction. So it is possible that under a burning lamp things may become visible, but hazy, and in order to see them clearly we concentrate the light on one place — it becomes a flashlight; then the thing becomes clearly visible. However, the remaining objects are lost to view. In fact, if a man wants to see an object clearly he will have to focus his total meditation in one direction only and turn the rest of the area into darkness.
One who wants to know the truth of life directly will develop his meditation like a lamp — that will be his sole purpose. And, in fact, the lamp’s only objective is to see itself; if it can shine this much it is enough — that’s the end of it. But if some special application of the lamp has to be made — such as remembering past lives — then meditation will have to be channeled in one direction.
I will share with you two or three clues as to how meditation can be channelized in that direction. I won’t give you all the clues because, most likely, hardly any of you have any intention of using them, and those who have can see me personally. So I will mention two or three clues which, of course, won’t really enable you to experiment with remembering past lives, but will give you just an idea. I won’t discuss the whole thing because it’s not advisable for everyone to experiment with this idea. Also, this experiment can often put you in danger.
Let me tell you of an incident so that what I am saying becomes clear to you. For about two or three years, in respect to meditation, a lady professor stayed in touch with me. She was very insistent on experimenting with jati-smaran, on learning about her past life. I helped her with the experiment; however, I also advised her that it would be better if she didn’t do the experiment until her meditation was fully developed, otherwise it could be dangerous.
As it is, a single life’s memories are difficult to bear — should the memories of the past three or four lives break the barrier and flood in, a person can go mad. That’s why nature has planned it so we go on forgetting the past. Nature has given us a greater ability to forget more than you can remember, so that your mind does not have a greater burden than it can carry. A heavy burden can be borne only after the capacity of your mind has increased, and trouble begins when the weight of these memories falls on you before this capacity has been raised. But she remained persistent. She paid no heed to my advice and went into the experiment.
When the flood of her past life’s memory finally burst upon her, she came running to me around two o’clock in the morning. She was a real mess; she was in great distress. She said, “Somehow this has got to stop. I don’t ever want to look at that side of things.” But it is not so easy to stop the tide of memory once it has broken loose. It is very difficult to shut the door once it crashes down — the door does not simply open, it breaks open. It took about fifteen days — only then did the wave of memories stop. What was the problem?
This lady used to claim that she was very pious, a woman of impeccable character. When she encountered the memory of her past life, when she was a prostitute, and the scenes of her prostitution began to emerge, her whole being was shaken. Her whole morality of this life was disturbed.
In this sort of revelation, it is not as if the visions belong to someone else — the same woman who claimed to be chaste now saw herself as a prostitute. It often happens that someone who was a prostitute in a past life becomes deeply virtuous in the next; it is a reaction to the suffering of the past life. It is the memory of the pain and the hurt of the previous life that turns her into a chaste woman.
It often happens that people who were sinners in past lives become saints in this life. Hence there is quite a deep relationship between sinners and saints. Such a reaction often takes place, and the reason is, what we come to know hurts us and so we swing to the opposite extreme.
The pendulum of our minds keeps moving in the opposite direction. No sooner does the pendulum reach the left than it moves back to the right. It barely touches the right when it swings back to the left. When you see the pendulum of a clock moving towards the left, be assured it is gathering energy to move back to the right — it will go as far to the right as it has gone to the left. Hence, in life it often happens that a virtuous person becomes a sinner, and a sinner becomes virtuous.
This is very common; this sort of oscillation occurs in everyone’s life. Do not think, therefore, that it is a general rule that one who has become a holy man in this life must have been a holy man in his past life also. It is not necessarily so. What is necessarily so is the exact reverse of it — he is laden with the pain of what he went through in his past life and has turned to the opposite.
I have heard….
A holy man and a prostitute once lived opposite each other. Both died on the same day. The soul of the prostitute was to be taken to heaven, and that of the holy man, however, to hell. The envoys who had come to take them away were very puzzled. They kept asking each other, “What went wrong? Is this a mistake? Why are we to take the holy man to hell? Wasn’t he a holy man?”
The wisest among them said, “He was a holy man all right, but he envied the prostitute. He always brooded over the parties at her place and the pleasures that went on there. The notes of music which came drifting to his house would jolt him to his very core. No admirer of the prostitute, sitting in front of her, was ever moved as much as he — listening to the sounds coming from her residence, the sounds of the small dancing bells she wore on her ankles. His whole attention always remained focused on her place. Even while worshipping God, his ears were tuned to the sounds which came from her house.
“And the prostitute? While she languished in the pit of misery, she always wondered what unknown bliss the holy man was in. Whenever she saw him carrying flowers for morning worship, she wondered, ‘When will I be worthy to take flowers of worship to the temple? I am so impure that I can hardly even gather enough courage to enter the temple.’ The holy man was never as lost in the incense smoke, in the shining lamps, in the sounds of worship as the prostitute was. The prostitute always longed for the life of the holy man, and the holy man always craved for the pleasures of the prostitute.”
Their interests and attitudes, so totally opposite each other’s, so totally different from each other’s, had completely changed. This often happens — and there are laws at work behind these happenings.
So when the memory of her past life came back to this lady professor, she was very hurt. She felt hurt because her ego was shattered. What she learned about her past life shook her, and now she wanted to forget it. I had warned her in the first place not to recall her past life without sufficient preparation.
Since you have asked, I shall tell you a few basic things so that you can understand the meaning of jati-smaran. But they won’t help you to experiment with it. Those who wish to experiment will have to look into it separately.
The first thing is that if the purpose of jati-smaran is simply to know one’s past life, then one needs to turn one’s mind away from the future. Our mind is future-oriented, not past-oriented. Ordinarily, our mind is centered in the future; it moves toward the future. The stream of our thoughts is future-oriented, and it is in life’s interests that the mind be future-oriented, not past-oriented. Why be concerned with the past? It is gone, it is finished — so we are interested in that which is about to come. That’s why we keep asking astrologers what is in store for us in the future. We are interested in finding out what is going to happen in the future. One who wants to remember the past has to give up, absolutely, any interest in the future. Because once the flashlight of the mind is focused on the future; once the stream of thoughts has begun to move towards the future, then it cannot be turned back towards the past.
So the first thing one needs to do is to break oneself completely away from the future for a few months, for a certain specific period of time. One should decide that he will not think of the future for the next six months. If a thought of the future does occur, he will simply salute it and let it go; he will not become identified with and carried away by any feeling of future. So the first thing is that, for six months, he will allow that there is no future and will flow towards the past. And so, as soon as future is dropped, the current of thoughts turns towards the past.
First you will have to go back in this life; it is not possible to return to a past life all at once. And there are techniques for going back in this life. For example, as I said earlier, you don’t remember now what you did on January 1, 1950.
There is a technique to find out. If you go into the meditation which I have suggested, after ten minutes — when the meditation has gone deeper, the body is relaxed, the breathing is relaxed, the mind has become quiet — then let only one thing remain in your mind: “What took place on January 1, 1950?” Let your entire mind focus on it. If that remains the only note echoing in your mind, in a few days you will all of a sudden find a curtain is raised: the first of January appears and you begin to relive each and every event of that day from dawn to dusk. And you will see the first of January in far more detail than you may have seen it, in actuality, on that very day — because on that day, you may not have been this aware. So, first, you will need to experiment by regressing in this life.
It is very easy to regress to the age of five; it becomes very difficult to go beyond that age. And so, ordinarily, we cannot recall what happened before the age of five; that is the farthest back we can go. A few people might remember up to the third year, but beyond that it becomes extremely difficult — as if a barrier comes across the entrance and everything becomes blocked. A person who becomes capable of recalling will be able to fully awaken the memory of any day up to the age of five. The memory starts to be completely revived.
Then one should test it. For example, note down the events of today on a piece of paper and lock it away. Two years later recall this day: open the note and compare your memory with it. You will be amazed to find that you have been able to recall more than what was noted on the paper. The events are certain to return to your memory.
Buddha has called this alaya-vigyan. There exists a corner in our minds which Buddha has named alaya-vigyan. Alaya-vigyan means the storehouse of consciousness. As we store all our junk in the basement of a house, similarly, there is a storehouse of consciousness that collects memories. Birth after birth, everything is stored in it. Nothing is ever removed from there, because a man never knows when he might need those things. The physical body changes, but, in our ongoing existence, that storehouse continues, remains with us. One never knows when it might be needed. And whatsoever we have done in our lives, whatsoever we have experienced, known, lived — everything is stored there.
One who can remember to the age of five can go beyond that age — it is not very difficult. The nature of the experiment will be the same. Beyond the age of five there is yet another door which will lead you to the point of your birth, to when you appeared on earth. Then one comes across another difficulty, because the memories of one’s stay in the mother’s womb never disappear either. One can penetrate these memories too, reaching to the point of conception, to the moment when the genes of the mother and father unite and the soul enters. A man can enter into his past lives only after having reached this point; he cannot move into them directly. One has to undertake this much of the return journey, only then is it possible to move into one’s past life as well.
After having entered the past life, the first memory to come up will be of the last event that took place in that life. Remember, however, that this will cause some difficulty and will make little sense. It is as if we run a film from the end or read a novel backwards — we feel lost. And so, entering into one’s past life for the first time will be quite confusing because the sequence of events will be in the reverse order.
As you go back into your past life, you will come across death first, then old age, youth, childhood, and then birth. It will be in reverse order, and in that order it will be very difficult to figure out what is what. So when the memory surfaces for the first time, you feel tremendously restless and troubled, because it is difficult to make sense; it is as if you are looking at a film or reading a novel from the end. Perhaps you will only make heads or tails of an event after rearranging the order several times. So the greatest effort involved in going back to the memories of one’s past life is seeing, in reverse order, events which ordinarily take place in the right order. But, after all, what is the right or reverse order? It is just a question of how we entered the world and how we departed from it.
We sow a seed in the beginning, and the flower appears in the end. However, if one were to take a reverse look at this phenomenon, the flower would come first, followed in sequence by the bud, the plant, the leaves, the saplings and in the end the seed. Since we have no previous knowledge of this reverse order, it takes a lot of time to rearrange memories coherently and to figure out the nature of events clearly. The strangest thing is that death will come first, followed by old age, illness, and then youth; things will occur in the reverse order. Or, if you were married and then divorced, while going down memory lane the divorce will come first, followed by the love and then the marriage.
It will be extremely difficult to follow events in this regressive fashion, because normally we understand things in a one-dimensional way. Our minds are one-dimensional. To look at things in opposite order is very difficult — we are not used to such an experience; we are accustomed to moving in a linear direction. With effort, however, one can understand the events of a past life by following, in sequence, the reverse order. Surely, it will be an incredible experience.
Going through memories in this reverse order will be a very amazing experience, because seeing the divorce first and then the love and then the marriage, will make it instantly clear that the divorce was inevitable — the divorce was inherent in the kind of love that happened; the divorce was the only ultimate possible outcome of the kind of marriage that took place. But at the time of that past life marriage we hadn’t the faintest idea it would eventually end in divorce. And indeed, the divorce was the result of that marriage. If we could see this whole thing in its entirety, then falling in love today would become a totally different thing — because now we could see the divorce in it beforehand, now we could see the enmity around the corner even before making the friendship.
The memory of the past life will completely turn this life upside-down, because now you won’t be able to live the way you lived in your past life. In your previous life you felt — and the same feeling exists even now — that success and great happiness were to be found by making a fortune. What you will see first in your previous life is your state of unhappiness before seeing how you made the fortune. This will clearly show that instead of being a source of happiness, making the fortune led, in fact, to unhappiness — and friendship led to enmity, what was thought to be love turned into hatred, and what was considered a union resulted in separation. Then, for the first time, you will see things in their right perspective, with their total import. And this implication will change your life, will change the way you are living now completely — it will be an entirely different situation.
I have heard that a man went to a monk and said, “I would be much obliged if you would accept me as your disciple.” The monk refused. The man asked why he would not make him his disciple.
The monk replied, “In my previous birth I had disciples who later turned into enemies. I have seen the whole thing and now I know that to make disciples means to make enemies, to make friends means to sow the seeds of enmity. Now I don’t want to make any enemies, so I don’t make any friends. I have known that to be alone is enough. Drawing someone close to you is, in a way, pushing the person away from you.”
Buddha has said that the meeting with the beloved brings joy and the parting of the unbeloved also brings joy, that the parting of the beloved brings sorrow and the meeting with the unbeloved brings sorrow as well. This is how it was perceived; this is how it was understood. However, later we come to understand that the one we feel is our beloved can become the unbeloved, and the one we considered the unbeloved can become a beloved. And so, with the recollection of past memories, the existing situations will change radically; they will be seen in an entirely different perspective.
Such recollections are possible, though neither necessary nor inevitable, and sometimes, in meditation, these memories may strike unexpectedly as well. If the memories of past lives ever do come all of a sudden — without being involved in any experiment, but simply keeping on with one’s meditation — don’t take much interest in them. Just look at them; be a witness to them — because ordinarily the mind is incapable of bearing such vast turbulence all at once. Attempting to cope with it, there is a distinct possibility of going mad.
Once a girl was brought to me. She was about eleven years old. Unexpectedly, she had remembered three of her past lives. She had not experimented with anything; but often, for some reason mistakes do happen all of a sudden. This was an error on the part of nature, not its grace upon her; in some way nature had erred in her case. It is the same as if someone had three eyes, or four arms — this is an error. Four arms would be much weaker than two arms; four arms couldn’t work as effectively as two arms could — four arms would make the body weaker, not stronger.
So the girl, eleven years old, remembered three past lives, and many inquiries were made into this case. In her previous life she had lived about eighty miles from my present residence, and in that life she died at the age of sixty. The people she lived with then are now the residents of my hometown, and she could recognize all of them. Even in a crowd of thousands, she could recognize her past relatives — her own brother, her daughters, and her grandchildren — from the daughters, from the sons-in-law. She could recognize her distant relatives and tell many things about them even they had forgotten.
Her elder brother is still alive. On his head there is a scar from a small injury. I asked the girl if she knew anything about that scar. The girl laughed and said, “Even my brother doesn’t know about it. Let him tell you how and when he got that injury.” The brother could not recall when the injury occurred; he had no idea at all, he said.
The girl said, “On the day of his wedding, my brother fell while he was mounting the marriage horse. He was ten years old then.” The elderly people in the town supported her story, admitting that the brother had, indeed, fallen from the horse. And the man himself had no recollection of this event. Then, as well, the girl displayed a treasure she had buried in the house she had lived in during her previous life.
In her last birth she died at the age of sixty, and previous to that birth she had been born in a village somewhere in Assam. Then she had died at the age of seven. She could not give the village name, nor her address, but she could speak as much of the Assamese language as a seven-year-old child could. Also, she could dance and sing like a seven-year-old girl could. Many inquiries were made, but her family from that life could not be traced.
The girl has a past-life experience of sixty-seven years plus eleven years of this life. You can see in her eyes the resemblance to a seventy-five to seventy-eight-year-old woman, although she is actually eleven years old. She cannot play with children of her own age because she feels too old. Within her she carries the memory of seventy-eight years; she sees herself as a seventy-eight-year-old woman. She cannot go to school because, although she is eleven, she can easily look upon her teacher as her son. So even though her body is eleven years old, her mind and personality are those of a seventy-eight-year-old woman. She cannot play and frolic like a child; she is only interested in the kinds of serious things old women talk about. She is in agony; she is filled with tension. Her body and mind are not in harmony. She is in a very sad and painful state.
I advised her parents to bring the girl to me, and to let me help her forget the memories of her past lives. Just as there is a method to revive memories, there is also a way to forget them. But her parents were enjoying the whole affair! Crowds of people came to see the girl; they began to worship her. The parents were not interested in having her forget the past. I warned them the girl would go mad, but they turned a deaf ear. Today she is on the verge of insanity, because she cannot bear the weight of so many memories. Another problem is, how to get her married? She finds it difficult to conceive of marriage when, in fact, she feels like an old woman of seventy-eight. There is no harmony of any kind within her; her body is young but the mind is old. It is a very difficult situation.
But this was an accident. You can also break open the passage with an experiment. But it is not necessary to go in that direction; however, those who still wish to pursue it, can experiment. But before moving into the experiment it is essential they go through deep meditation so their minds can become so silent and strong that when the flood of memories breaks upon them, they can accept it as a witnessing. When a man grows into being a witness, past lives appear to be no more than dreams to him. Then he is not tormented by the memories; now they mean nothing more than dreams.
When one succeeds in recalling past lives and they begin to appear like dreams, immediately one’s present life begins to look like a dream too. Those who have called this world maya have not done so just to propound a doctrine of philosophy. Jati-smaran — recalling past lives — is at the base of it. Whosoever has remembered his past lives, for him the whole affair has suddenly turned into a dream, an illusion. Where are his friends of past lives? Where are his relatives, his wife and children, the houses he lived in? Where is that world? Where is everything he took to be so real? Where are those worries that gave him sleepless nights? Where are those pains and sufferings that seemed so insurmountable, that he carried like a dead weight on his back? And what became of the happiness he longed for? What happened to everything he so toiled and suffered for? If you ever remember your past life, and if you lived for seventy years, then whatever you might have seen in those seventy years, would that look like a dream or a reality? Indeed, it would look like a dream which had come and withered away.
I have heard….
Once a king’s only son lay on his deathbed. For eight days he was in a coma — he couldn’t be saved nor would death claim him. On the one hand the king prayed for his life, while on the other hand, aware of so much pain and suffering all around, he felt the futility of life at the same time. The king could not sleep for eight nights, but then, around four o’clock one morning, sleep overtook him and he began to dream.
We generally dream of those things which we have not fulfilled in life, and so the king, sitting by his only son, his dying son, dreamed that he had twelve strong and handsome sons. He saw himself as the emperor of a large kingdom, as the ruler of the whole earth, with large and beautiful palaces. And he saw himself as extremely happy. As he was dreaming all this….
Time runs faster in a dream; in a dream timing is totally different from our day-to-day time. In a moment a dream can cover a span of many years, and after waking up you will find it difficult to figure out how so many years were covered in a dream that lasted just a few moments! Time actually moves very fast in a dream; many years can be spanned in one moment.
So, just as the king was dreaming about his twelve sons and their beautiful wives, about his palaces and the great kingdom, the ill, twelve-year-old prince died. The queen screamed, and the king’s sleep came to an abrupt end.
He awoke with a shock. Worriedly, the queen asked, “Why do you look so frightened? Why are there no tears in your eyes? Why don’t you say something?”
The king said, “No, I am not frightened, I am confused. I am in a great quandary. I am wondering who I should cry for? Should I cry for the twelve sons I had a moment ago, or should I cry for this son I have just lost? The thing that’s bothering me is, who has died? And the strange thing is that when I was with those twelve sons, I had no knowledge of this son. He was nowhere at all; there was no trace of him, or of you. Now that I am out of the dream, this palace is here, you are here, my son is here — but those palaces and those sons have disappeared. Which is true? Is this true, or was that true? I cannot figure it out.”
Once you remember your past lives, you will find it difficult to figure out whether what you are seeing in this life is true or not. You will realize you have seen the same stuff many times before and none of it has endured forever — everything is lost. Then the question will arise: “Is what I am seeing now just as true as what I saw before? … Because this will run its course too and fade away like all other previous dreams.
When we watch a movie it appears to be real. After the film has ended, it takes us a few moments to come back to our reality, to acknowledge that what we saw in the theater was merely an illusion. In fact, many people who ordinarily are incapable of giving vent to their feelings are moved to tears in a movie. They feel greatly relieved, because otherwise they would have had to find some other pretext for releasing their feelings. They let themselves cry or laugh in the theater. When we come out of the movie, the first thing that occurs to us is how deeply we let ourselves become identified with the happenings on the screen. If the same movie is seen every day the illusion gradually begins to clear. But then we also forget what happened to us during the last movie, and once again, when we go to a new film, we start believing in its events.
If we could regain the memories of our past lives, our present birth would also begin to look like a dream. How many times before have these winds blown! How many times before have these clouds moved in the sky! They all appeared and then they vanished, and so will the ones here now — they are already in the process of disappearing! If we can come to realize this, we will experience what is known as maya. Along with this we will also experience that a}l happenings, all events are quite unreal — they are never identical, but they are transient. One dream comes, is followed by another dream, and is followed by yet another dream. The pilgrim starts from one moment and enters into the next one. Moment after moment, the moments keep disappearing, but the pilgrim continues moving on.
So two experiences occur simultaneously: one, the objective world is an illusion, maya — only the observer is real; second, what appears is false — only the seer, only the witness of it is true. Appearances change every day — they have always changed — only the witness, the observer is the same as before, changeless. And remember, as long as appearances seem real, your attention will not focus on the onlooker, on the witness. Only when appearances turn out to be unreal does one become aware of the witness.
Hence, I say, remembering past lives is useful, but only after you have gone deeper into meditation. Go deep into meditation so you may attain the ability to see life as a dream. Becoming a mahatma, a holy man, is as much of a dream as becoming a thief — you can have good dreams and you can have bad dreams. And the interesting thing is that the dream of being a thief is likely to dissolve soon, whereas the dream of being a mahatma takes a little longer to disappear because it seems so very enjoyable. And so the dream of being a mahatma is more dangerous than the dream of being a thief. We want to prolong our enjoyable dreams, while the painful ones dissolve by themselves. That’s why it so often happens that a sinner succeeds in attaining to God while a holy man does not.
I have told you a few things about remembering your past lives, but you will have to go into meditation for this. Let us start to move within from this very day onward; only then can we be prepared for what follows next. Without this preparation, it is difficult to enter into past lives.
For example, there is a big house with underground cellars. If a man, standing outside the house, wants to enter the cellars, he will first have to step inside the house, because the way to the cellar is from inside the house. Our past lives are like cellars. Once upon a time we lived there, and then we abandoned them — now we are living somewhere else. Nevertheless, we are standing outside the house at this point. In order to uncover the memories of past lives, we shall have to enter the house. There is nothing difficult, bothersome or dangerous about it.
Question 3
ANOTHER FRIEND HAS ASKED: MY FRIEND, WHO IS A YOGI, CLAIMS HE WAS A SPARROW IN HIS PAST LIFE. IS THIS POSSIBLE?
It is possible that in the course of his evolution a man may have once been an animal, but he cannot be born as an animal again. In the process of evolution one cannot fall back; retrogression is impossible. It is possible to move ahead from the previous form of birth, but it is not possible, from an advanced form of birth, to fall back. There is no going back in this world; there is no chance. There are only two ways — either we move ahead or stay where we are; we cannot go back.
It is just as when a child passes first grade he moves on to the second grade — but if he fails he remains in the first grade. There is no way, however, to pull him below first grade. Similarly, if he fails in the second grade we can leave him there, but in no way can we bring him back to the first grade. We may either remain in one species for a very long time or move forward into the next species, but we cannot go back to a species lower than where we are.
It is indeed possible for someone to have previously been an animal or a bird; he must have been. But how long he remained in those species is a different matter. If we delve into our past lives, we will be able to recall the species we have passed through so far. We may have been an animal, a bird, a little sparrow… lower and lower. Once we must have been at such a point of inertness where it is difficult to locate any sign of consciousness.
Mountains are alive as well; however, they contain almost no consciousness. They contain ninety-nine percent inertness and one percent consciousness. As life evolves, consciousness keeps on growing and inertness keeps on decreasing. God is one hundred percent consciousness. The difference between God and matter is of percentage. The difference between God and matter is of quantity, not of quality. That’s why matter can ultimately become God.
It is neither strange nor difficult to accept that a man may have been an animal in his past life. What is really amazing is that in spite of being human we behave like animals! It is not at all surprising that in some past life we have all been animals, but even as humans our consciousness can be so low that we may appear like humans only on the physical level. If we look into our tendencies, it seems that although we are no longer animals we have not yet become human beings either; it seems we are stuck somewhere in between. As soon as an opportunity arises, we don’t lose much time in reverting to the animal level once again.
For example, you are walking along the road like a gentleman and some fellow comes and punches you, swears at you. Instantly, the gentleman in you gives way and you find yourself expressing the same animal in you that you must have been in some past life. Scratch the surface a little and the beast emerges from within — and it comes out so violently that one wonders if the person was ever a human being at all.
Our state of being now contains all we have ever been before. There is layer upon layer of all the states we have been through in the past. If we dig inside a little, we can reach to the inner layers of our being — we can even reach the state when we were a rock; that too constitutes a layer inside. Deep down inside we are still rocks; that’s why when someone pushes us to that layer we behave like a rock, we can act like a rock. We can also behave like animals — in fact, we do. What lies ahead of us are merely our potentialities — they are not layers. Hence, at times, although we take a jump and touch these potentialities, we drop back to earth again.
We can be gods some day, but at present we’re not. We have the potential to become divine; however, what we are now consists of what we have been in the past.
So there are these two things: if we dig within we come across our various past states of being; and if we are thrown forward in the chain of births, we experience the states which lie ahead of us. However, just as when someone takes a jump — for a second he goes off the ground and into the air, but the very next moment he is back on the ground — at times we jump out of our animal state and become human beings, but then we revert to the same state again. If you observe carefully, you will find that in a twenty-four-hour period, only once in a while, at certain moments, are we truly human beings. And we all know this only too well.
You must have observed beggars. They always come to beg in the morning. They never come in the evening, because by evening the possibility of someone remaining a human being is virtually nonexistent. In the morning, when a man gets up — refreshed by a good night’s rest, fresh and cheerful — the beggar hopes he will be a little humane. He does not expect any charity in the evening because he knows what the man has gone through the whole day — the office, the marketplace, the riots and protests, the newspapers and the politicians — all must have created a mess for him. Everything must have aggravated and activated the animal layers inside him. By evening the man is tired; he has turned into a beast. That’s why you see beasts in nightclubs, displaying beastly tendencies. Man, tired of being a human the whole day, craves for alcohol, for noise, for gambling, for dancing, for striptease — he wants to be among other beasts. The nightclubs cater to the animal in man. This is the reason why mornings are the best for prayer, why the evening is ill-suited for it. In all the temples the bells toll in the morning; at night the doors open to the nightclubs, the casinos, the bars. Prostitutes are unable to invite anyone in the morning, they invite their customers only at night.
After a hard day’s work, man turns into an animal; hence the world of night is different from the world of the day. The mosque gives the call to prayer in the morning, and the temple rings its bells in the morning. There is some hope that the man, up and refreshed in the morning, will turn towards God; there is less hope for this to happen from a man who is tired in the evening.
For the same reason, there is much hope that children will turn towards God, but there is less hope for old people — they are in the twilight of their lives; life must have taken everything away from them by now. So one should start on the journey as soon as possible, as early in the morning as possible. The evening is sure to descend — but before it descends, if we have set out on the journey in the morning it is possible that in the evening we may find ourselves in the temple of the divine as well.
So our friend is right in asking whether it is possible that a man may have been an animal or a bird in his past life. What we need to be aware of, though, is not to continue to be a bird or a beast in this life.
Before we move into the meditation, let us understand a few things. First of all, you have to let yourself go completely. If you hold yourself back even a tiny bit, it will become a hurdle in meditation. Let yourself go as if you are dead, as if you have really died. Death has to be accepted as if it has already arrived, as if all else has died and we are sinking deeper and deeper within. Now only that which always survives will survive. We will drop everything else which can die. That’s why I have said that this is an experiment with death.
There are three parts to this experiment. The first is, relaxation of the body; second, relaxation of breathing; third, relaxation of thought. Body, breathing and thought — all these have to be slowly let go of.
Please sit at a distance from each other. It is possible that somebody may fall, so keep a little distance between yourselves. Move a little back or come a little forward, but just see to it that you don’t sit too close to each other; otherwise the whole time you will be busy saving yourself from falling over somebody.
When the body becomes loose, it may fall forwards or backwards; one never knows. You can be sure of it only as long as you have a hold over it. Once you give up your hold on the body, it automatically drops. Once you loosen your grip from within, who will hold the body? — it is bound to fall. And if you remain preoccupied with preventing it from falling, you will stay where you are — you won’t be able to move into meditation. So when your body is about to fall, consider it a blessing. Let go of it at once. Don’t hold it back, because if you do you will keep yourself from moving inward. And don’t be upset if someone falls on you; let it be so. If someone’s head lies in your lap for a while, let it be so; don’t be bothered by it.
Now close your eyes. Close them gently. Relax your body. Let it be completely loose, as if there is no life in it. Draw all the energy from your body; take it inside. As the energy moves within, the body will become loose.
Now I will begin my suggestions that the body is becoming loose, that we are becoming silent…. Feel the body becoming loose. Let go. Move within just as a person moves inside his house. Move inside, enter within. The body is relaxing…. Let go completely… let it be lifeless, as if it is dead. The body is relaxing, the body has relaxed, the body has completely relaxed…
I take it that you have totally relaxed your body, that you have given up your hold over it. If the body falls, so be it; if it bends forward, let it bend. Let whatever has to happen, happen — you relax. See that you are not holding anything back. Take a look inside to be sure that you are not holding your body back. You ought to be able to say, “I am not holding back anything. I have let myself go completely.”
The body is relaxed, the body is loose. The breath is calming down, the breath is slowing down. Feel it… the breathing has slowed down… let it go completely. Let your breathing go too, just give up your hold on it completely. The breath is slowing down, the breath is calming down…. The breathing has calmed down, the breathing has slowed down….
The breathing has calmed down… thoughts are calming down too. Feel it. Thoughts are becoming silent… let go…. You have let the body go, you have let the breathing go, now let thoughts go as well. Move away… move within totally, move away from thoughts also.
Everything has become silent, as if everything outside is dead. Everything is dead… everything has become silent… only consciousness is left within… a burning lamp of consciousness — the rest is all dead. Let go… let go completely — as if you are no more. Let go totally… as if your body is dead, as if your body is no more. Your breathing is still, your thoughts are still — as if death has occurred. And move within, move totally within. Let go… let everything go. Let go totally, don’t keep anything. You are dead.
Feel as if everything is dead, as if all is dead — only a burning lamp is left inside; the rest is all dead. Everything else is dead, erased. Be lost in emptiness for ten minutes. Be a witness. Keep watching this death. Everything else around you has disappeared. The body is also left, left far behind, far away — we are just watching it. Keep watching, remain a witness. For ten minutes keep looking within.
Keep looking inside… everything else will be dead outside. Let go… be totally dead. Keep watching, remain a witness…. Let everything go as if you are dead and the body on the outside is dead. The body is still, thoughts are still, only the lamp of consciousness is left watching, only the seer is left, only the witness is left. Let go… let go… let go totally…
Whatever is happening, let it happen. Let go completely, just keep watching inside and let the rest go. Give up your hold completely….
The mind has become silent and empty, the mind has become totally empty…. The mind has become empty, the mind has become totally empty. If you are still holding back a little, let that go also. Let go totally, disappear — as if you are no more. The mind has become empty… the mind has become silent and empty… the mind has become totally empty…
Keep looking inside, keep looking inside with awareness — everything has become silent. The body is left behind, left far away; the mind is left far away, only a lamp is burning, a lamp of consciousness, only the light is left burning….
Now slowly take a few breaths. Keep watching your breath…. With each breath the silence will go deeper. Take a few breaths slowly and keep looking within; remain a witness to the breathing also. The mind will become even more silent…. Take a few breaths slowly, then gently open your eyes. If anyone has fallen, take a deep breath first and then get up slowly. Don’t rush if you are unable to rise, don’t rush if you find it difficult to open your eyes…. First take a deep breath, then open your eyes slowly… rise very softly. Don’t do anything with a sudden movement — neither rising nor opening your eyes….
Our morning session of meditation is now over.
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