Today we shall take up a sutra from Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. In this technique it is advised that you see a subject and then closing your eyes move away from all thoughts relating to the subject and then. Though it looks a simple experiment, but it is not so simple and it results in a very powerful experience of transformation.
Stopping at “and then” means that then whatever happens thereafter, you shall see and experience for yourself. If it is defined for you now, then your mind will start imagining and projecting those things giving you a pseudo experience and you will miss the true experience.
Before going into this experiment, we need to understand a few facts of life that look like possibility but they are actually a certainty and not possibility.
One is that everyone is alone, all his life, his experiences, his successes, his failures, his joys, his sorrows are all his, all belong to him alone. There can be no sharing; one must deal with them alone. Sharing is not possible because the other has not gone through the same conditions. Everybody’s journey is different. Each must find his own way, face his own struggles, harmonize his own within and work for his own peace within himself. Aloneness is a reality that must be understood and accepted.
People form groups to escape this aloneness, even religions have contributed to formation of groups, as they think that together they can proceed into the journey and achieve something great. These groups will not achieve anything unless and until each individual works for himself. Bhagwan Buddha and other Masters of his times then came out with the concept of Sangh, bringing a group of people together all working individually for their growth. When each unit grows, the group also grows.
The other fact is that death is certain, it can happen any moment. Though everybody knows it, but they take it to be just a possibility but never accept it as a certainty for themselves. When you know that death can happen any moment, you begin to value life, you understand how precious it is, and you become more aware and alert to improve the quality of your life without wasting any time. Each and every moment, of life becomes important. Otherwise, people are seen to normally ebb away their time in things that do not contribute in any way in bettering their life.
Now we come to the technique itself, to begin with you can take an object for seeing. You keep looking at the object for some time and then close your eyes when the gross object is gone from your vision but then its subtle form, its thoughts keep lingering within you. You need to free yourself from these too. And when the thoughts relating to the subject are not there, you are thrown into an emptiness, a stillness, a quietude, that is your being.
In earlier times the temples were made with statues for such experiments and not for worship. The only worship that was intended was gratitude for all that you have, for all existential support and cooperation. The form that worship has taken today is only begging for this and that or sing praises.
When you have understood the technique you can experiment with any other subject, it can be any situation, any relationship, any person, whatever you feel like. Irrespective of the subject, it is the withdrawing of all thoughts associated with it that takes you into a realm of thoughtlessness, where only your being remains in your experience.
Now the question comes as to how to get away from the thoughts that keep following? If we observe, we shall find that it is not the thoughts that have caught us but it us who hold on it. When we are holding it, it is we who must let it go. We just loosen our grip, and it leaves us.
It is often found that those who detach become dry and indifferent to life. All their passion for life is lost. But this is not the way, one who is detached is the one who can be passionate in all his dealings, whatever he does, he does with full intensity, full of life and lives it so completely that it does not linger on to him. He lives each moment to its fullest that results in complete detachment. When we don’t live through each experience with full intensity, that thing keeps following us for completion, and we tend to go into that experience again and again, unfulfilled. But once lived fully, it leaves, it drops.
Gratitude Prabhu.
🙏🙏🙏
Naman Gurudev