Meditation for Beginners

In life, nothing is certain except death.

Secondly: death is not going to happen in the end; it is already happening. It is a process. Just as life is a process, death is a process. We create the now, but life and death are just like your two feet, your two legs. Life and death are both one process. You are dying every moment.

Let me put it in this way: whenever you inhale, it is life, and whenever you exhale, it is death.

Always remember, no matter what you are doing, observe whether your center is involved in it or not, because if it is not involved it is better not to do a thing. Don't do it! No one is forcing you to do anything.

Preserve your energy for the moment when something real happens to you; then do it. Don't smile, preserve the energy. The smile will come, and then it will change you completely. Then it will be total. Then every cell of your body will smile. Then it will be an explosion – nothing painted.

Wherever your attention alights,
At this very point,
Experience.

In this technique, firstly you have to develop attention. You have to develop a sort of attentive attitude, only then will this technique become possible, so then wherever your attention alights you can experience – you can experience yourself. Just by looking at a flower you can experience yourself. Then looking at a flower is not looking at the flower only, but at the looker also – but only if you know the secret of attention.

When you feel anxious, anxiety-ridden, what is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is there? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of anxiety.

This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert!

Raman used to give a technique to his disciples: they were just to enquire, “Who am I?” In Tibet they use a similar technique, but better than Raman’s. They don’t ask, “Who am I?” They ask, “Where am I?” – because the who can create a problem. When you enquire, “Who am I?” you take it for granted that you are; the only question is to know who you are. You have presupposed that you are. That is not contested. It is taken for granted that you are. Now the only question is who you are.

You are sitting here. Just feel that you have become weightless, there is no weight. You will feel that somewhere or other there is weight, but go on feeling the weightlessness. It comes. A moment comes when you feel that you are weightless, that there is no weight. When there is no weight you are no more a body, because the weight is of the body – not of you. You are weightless….

First thing in the morning, imagine yourself tremendously happy. Get out of bed in a very happy mood – radiant, bubbling, expectant – as if something perfect, of infinite value, is going to happen today. Get out of the bed in a very positive and hopeful mood, with the feeling that this day is not going to be an ordinary day – that something exceptional, extraordinary, is waiting for you; something is very close by. Try and remember it again and again for the whole day. Within seven days you will see that your whole pattern, your whole style, your whole vibration, has changed.

Every night sit comfortably in a chair and rest your head back, like you do at the dentist. You can use a pillow. Then release your lower jaw. Just relax it so the mouth opens slightly, and start breathing from the mouth, not from the nose. Don’t change your breathing – let it be natural.

The first few breaths will be a little hectic. By and by your breathing will settle down and become very shallow. It will go in and out very slightly. Keep your mouth open, eyes closed, and rest.

Close your eyes and feel the whole universe filled with sound. Feel as if every sound is moving toward you and you are the center. This feeling that you are the center will give you a very deep peace. The whole universe becomes the circumference and you are the center, and everything is moving toward you, falling toward you.

The center is without sound, that is why you can hear sounds – a sound cannot hear another sound. The center is absolute silence. That is why you can hear sounds entering you, coming to you, penetrating you, encircling you.

Love is always new. It never becomes old because it is non-accumulative, non-hoarding.

It knows no past; it is always fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops. It lives moment to moment, it is atomic. It has no continuity, it knows no tradition. Each moment it dies and each moment it is born again. It is like breath: you breathe in, you breathe out; again you breathe in and you breathe out. You don’t hoard it inside.