Silence of the mind. How thoughts obscure reality

Silence I understand this word as meaning not the absence of noise, but the absence of meaning. Therefore, I believe that there can be silent noise and noisy silence. For example, the sound of the wind or the silence of the sea. Silence is what remains when we fall silent, that is, it is all that exists.

"The main task of the human intellect is, first of all, to collect and accumulate all kinds of information coming from the sense organs of the physical body and from the desires of the emotional body. Thus, the intellect is primarily a memory. And since the intellect is just a memory, it does not can manage otherwise than relying on past, already registered experience. He is only able to recreate the experience of the past. "

“However, instead of using memory to simply remember experiences and events that happened, human beings have chosen to believe that their experience is reality. And instead of simply sending this experience into memory and referring to it as needed, a person , in whose physical or emotional world a certain painful incident has taken place, ascribes special importance to it: "It is impossible that this incident be repeated, so I will not forget it."

"You make a discovery: a balanced person, in harmony with himself, controls his intellect and does not allow the intellect to control him. The intellect is not at all created to control a human being; he does not even know how to do it. This is not is part of its function. Do not forget: the intellect was created in order to remember information and in this way help us to analyze, philosophize, judge. For all this, we need memory. "

"The greatest manipulator that we allow to prevent us from being free is our human intellect. It was created as a tool, as a means of serving man. But we went in the opposite direction: the power that we ourselves gave to the intellect is so great that it became our master, and this does not allow us to become completely free.

An excessively active intellect alienates a person from his true essence and does not allow him to understand that his true "I" knows and can do everything that a person needs. A person must discipline his intellect and force it to give up its claims to the comprehension of spiritual development. "

"The intellect, trying to maintain its leading role, tries, of course, to convince you that, obeying your essence, you will no longer be able to freely manage your life and will forever become an object of manipulation. Do not believe him!"

"If you watch your thinking well, you will find that your thoughts are either in the past or in the future. It seems that living in your present time is one of the habits that are given to a person with the greatest difficulty. The one who lives in the past or in the future, inevitably distorts reality.So most people worry about what happens at home, with children or at work, when they themselves went on vacation.They actually do not live in the present: during the holidays they think about home, and when they return home they will think about vacation! They will look at vacation pictures and remember with sadness the wonderful trip, although they were not really aware of it at the time. They failed to accept and appreciate their vacation exactly when it was. Their physical bodies, of course, were in vacation, but thoughts remained at home or at work. In order for a person to live in the present, his body and thoughts must be in the same place! "

"Every minute you've avoided present time (no matter how) is a minute not lived."

“Every time we make some kind of judgment, we thereby distance ourselves from acceptance, from true love, for to love means to accept events and people as they are. This means simply recognizing that such and such a situation manifested itself in such and such way that such and such a person behaves like this. Deciding that such and such a character or such and such actions are bad is already a level of intelligence. As soon as you notice that you use adjectives: "good", "bad", "correct", "wrong", "intended", "unexpected", "normal", "abnormal" - you can be sure that your intellect has taken control, that it judges your behavior, and you allow it to control you. "

Liz Burbo: "Listen to Your Body - Again and Again"

Deepak Chopra and the Silence of the Mind

Silence of Mind and Peace of Mind

"What happens when you fall into silence? At first, your internal dialogue becomes even more violent. You feel an urgent need to say something.

I knew people who literally lost their minds in the first day or two of voluntary long silence. They were suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of unease and an urgent need to do something.

But as the experience continues, the internal dialogue begins to calm down. And soon there is a deep silence. This is because the mind gives way over time. He realizes that there is no point in wandering around if you - the higher self, the spirit, the decision maker - are not going to speak. And then, when the internal dialogue stops, you begin to feel peace of mind. "

“Complete silence is the first requirement for the manifestation of your desires, because it is in it that your connection with the space of pure potentialities lies, which can open all its infinity to you. the ripples diverge.A little later, when the ripples calm down, you throw the next pebble.That is what you do when you enter the space of pure silence and bring your intention into it.In this silence, even the slightest intention will cause ripples on the surface of the universal consciousness that binds everything. But, if you have not achieved stillness of consciousness, if your mind is like a stormy ocean, throw even a skyscraper there, you will not notice anything. There is a saying in the Bible: "Stop and know that I am God." This can only be achieved through meditation .

Judgment is a constant evaluation of whether it is good or bad, right or wrong. When you constantly evaluate, classify, analyze, label, your internal dialogue becomes very stormy, turbulent. This turbulence restricts the flow of energy between you and the field of pure potentiality. It is the state of pure consciousness that is the silent space between thoughts, this inner stillness that connects you to true power. "

"The third way to deal with karma (your stigma, suffering, misfortune) is to go beyond it. To go beyond karma means to become independent of it. The way to go beyond karma is to continue to experience a pause, your Self, Spirit. It is like washing dirty clothes in a stream. Whenever you dip it in water, you wash off a few stains. Whenever you do, your clothes become a little cleaner. You wash—or go beyond your karma—by going into a pause and then back again. This, of course, is achieved through meditation."

Deepak Chopra: "7 spiritual laws of success"

On the Silence of the Mind Eckhart Tolle

The Voice in the Head and the Power of Silence

"The mind, when used correctly, is a perfect and unsurpassed tool. When used incorrectly, it becomes extremely destructive. To put it more precisely, it's not that you misuse your mind - usually you don't use it at all. He uses you. It's a disease. You believe that you are your mind. It's a delusion. The instrument is turned upside down."

“If someone comes to the doctor and says: “I hear a voice in my head,” then most likely he or she will be referred to a psychiatrist. The fact is that in a very similar way, virtually each of us constantly hears in ourselves a voice in your head, or even several voices: these are unintentional, unconscious thought processes, and you don’t even realize that you have the power to stop them.These are continuous monologues and dialogues.

Perhaps, sometime on the street, you passed by "crazy" incessantly muttering and talking to themselves. Well, well, it's not really that different from what other "normal" people do, the only difference being that they don't do it out loud. The voice in your head is constantly commenting, reasoning, judging, comparing, complaining, likes, dislikes, and so on. Having a voice is not necessarily essential or significant in a situation where one day you find yourself absorbed in this process; perhaps he is bringing to life recent events of the past, or speaking or imagining possible future situations. Here, options for a negative development of events and their possible consequences are often drawn; this is what is called anxiety. Sometimes this sound track is complemented by visual images or "mental cinema".

If the voice in the current situation becomes significant and important, then he interprets it in terms of the past tense. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the product of all your previous history and also a reflection of your inherited social and cultural mentality. So you see and judge the present by looking at it through the eyes of the past, and you get a completely distorted image of it. And it's not much different than what you might hear from your worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them, draining and squandering their life energy. This is the cause of unspeakable poverty and dramatic misfortune, as well as the cause of disease. "

"When you listen to this voice in your head, listen to it impartially. Do not judge. Do not judge or curse what you hear, for this will mean that the same voice has come back to you through the back door. Soon you will understand: there - the voice, and here - I am, listening to it and observing it. The awareness of this I am - this sense of my own presence - is not a thought. It rises from beyond the mind. "

"When the thought subsides, there is a feeling of breaks in the continuous stream of thoughts - intervals, gaps of "no-thoughts." At the beginning, the breaks will be short, perhaps a few seconds, but gradually they will become longer. When such a break happens, you feel a spiritual peace from the presence of a sense of oneness with Existence, which the mind usually closes from you. As you progress in practice, the feeling of calm and peace will deepen. In fact, in fact, its depth has no limit. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy rising from the inner depths: - the joys of Being. "

“The deeper you go into this realm of “no-thoughts,” as it is sometimes called in the East, the deeper you enter into a state of pure consciousness. While in this state, you feel your presence with such intensity and joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body, as well as the whole world around you, become relatively unimportant in comparison. It takes you far beyond what you previously considered “yourself.” This presence, in essence, is you, and at the same time unimaginably more than you. What I want to convey here may sound paradoxical, or even contradictory, but I cannot express it in any other way. "

"Your mind is a tool, a tool of labor. It exists and is intended for you to use it to solve certain problems, and when the problem is solved, you put it back. And if so, then I would say that from about 80 to 90 percent of thought flow is not only repetitive and useless, but due to its dysfunctional and often negative nature, most of it is also harmful. "

"You identify with it, which means that you get a sense of yourself from the content and direction of your consciousness. Because you think you will cease to exist if you stop the flow of thoughts. As you grow older, you form a mental image of who you are there is, based on your personal and cultural attitudes. We can call this phantom of the self - the ego."

"The present moment holds the key to liberation. But you cannot find the present moment as long as you are your mind."

"One of the main tasks of the mind is the struggle to eliminate emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can achieve is only temporarily cover it. In fact, the harder the fight to get rid of pain, the stronger it is. The mind can't find a solution on its own, nor let you find a solution, because itself is a significant and integral part of this "problem."

"All cravings are means of salvation or fulfillment that the mind seeks in external conditions or in the future, as a substitute for the joy of Being. Insofar as I am my mind, then I am also my desires, my needs, my desires, my affections , my dislikes and beyond all this there is no “me” except nothing more than a possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted In this state, even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another desire for fulfillment or achieve it in the future. So, don't strive to become desire-free or "achieve" enlightenment. Become present. Be there as an observer of the mind."

"People have been in the grip of pain for eternity, even since they fell out of the state of mercy and holiness, since they entered the realm of time and reason, and also since they lost the ability to realize Being. Since then, they began to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in a living universe, disconnected from the Source and from each other.

Pain is inevitable as long as you identify yourself with your mind, or to put it another way, as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking. Here I am talking primarily about emotional pain, which is also main reason physical pain or physical illness. Resentment and resentment, hatred, self-pity, guilt, anger, depression, jealousy, and so on, even mild annoyance, are all forms of pain. And every pleasure or emotional upsurge contains the seeds of pain: that is, the opposite is inseparable, which will manifest itself over time. "

"The saturation, the intensity of the pain depends on the degree of your resistance to the present moment, and this, in turn, depends on how strongly and deeply you identify yourself with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now moment and strives to get rid of it. In other words, the more you identify with your mind, the more suffering you experience.Or you can say this: The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free from pain, from suffering - the more you are free from the egoistic mind.

Why is the mind so habitually denying or resisting the Now? Because he cannot function and remain in control outside of time, which is past and future, because he perceives the timeless Now as a threat. Time and mind are in fact inseparable from each other. "

Eckhart Tolle: "The Power of Now"

Sun Light

“If a person himself, consciously, does not give his brain the necessary work, he will think about anything, caring not about the value or quality of his thoughts, but only about their variety and quantity. Due to this, our mind is extremely fickle, capricious and scattered, and in addition very does not like to linger on any one topic for reflection.Most often, our thoughts flutter from subject to subject, like a butterfly from flower to flower.

Most people can't focus on anything in particular even for the shortest amount of time. From where a person's thoughts are directed, his whole fate depends. Or it will grow, develop and improve, or degrade. "

"Therefore, the question of controlling one's thoughts is for us a matter of paramount importance and the most urgent need."

Sun Light: "Matrix of Happiness"

The Upanishads say that when our thoughts are directed to external objects, to the world, this gives rise to confusion, bondage, bondage. When thought does not go towards external objects, but starts moving inward, that same energy becomes liberation. To purify thought, to become its witness means to enter the path leading to freedom.

The concept of non-attachment is very important and fundamental to all who seek the truth. The mind has the ability to create attachment to anything, and as soon as the mind creates any attachment, it itself becomes that attachment. When your mind is on the sexual object and attachment is created in you, the mind becomes sex; when the mind is drawn to power and attachment to it is created in you, the mind becomes power, the mind becomes politics.

The mind is exactly like a mirror: whatever you become attached to is imprinted in the mirror, and then the mind starts acting like a film. Then the mind is no longer just a mirror, it becomes a film. Then he clings to everything that comes to him. These are two possibilities, or two aspects of the same possibility. The mind can create attachment to anything, identify with anything.

This is very clear in the case of hypnosis. If you have seen any experiments with hypnosis... or if you have not seen them, you can try some experiments yourself; it will be very helpful to understand. Hypnosis is not difficult, it is a very simple process. Let the person who agrees to cooperate with you lie down, take a comfortable position and relax. Ask him to focus his eyes on something sparkling - an electric lamp or any light source will do for this. Let him concentrate and look without blinking. After two or three minutes you will see that his gaze becomes meaningless, empty, sleepy.

Then start offering. Say simply, "Your eyelids are getting very heavy, you won't be able to open your eyes even if you try." And he must try to keep his eyes open, he must make an effort to keep them open. Continue suggesting: “Your eyelids are getting heavy, getting heavier and heavier… now it’s already difficult, almost impossible to keep your eyes open, you can’t do anything, your eyes are closing by themselves… neither your will nor your efforts can keep them open…” And this person will begin to feel as if a weight is pressing on his eyelids, as if they have become heavy. He will try, he will make every effort to keep them open, and you will inspire him with the opposite.

After five or six minutes, the eyes will close, and the moment the eyes close, that person will begin to feel that something is happening that he cannot control - he cannot keep his eyes open. Keep suggesting: "You are going into a deep sleep, you will become unconscious of everything except my voice." You need to say: "Only my voice will be heard, and everything else will disappear." Keep giving. In ten minutes, this person will be sound asleep, but his sleep will be completely different from usual, because in his dream he will nevertheless remain in contact with you. He sleeps for the whole world, he cannot hear anything; if someone else speaks, he cannot hear him, but if you speak, he will hear you. His conscious mind has switched off, but his unconscious mind is connected to you - now he is suggestible.

Now try some experiment. You can prick him with a pin and tell him there will be no pain; you can stick deeper, but he won't feel the pain. Then you can be sure that he is under the power of suggestion. Or offer him to eat an onion, saying that it is an apple, and he will think: “Very sweet, very tasty. I like it". He eats an onion, but if you suggest to him that it is an apple, he will feel that it is an apple. Now he has become even more suggestible.

Put a stone in his hand and say that it is hot coal. He will immediately throw it away, as if he had burned his hand - and this is an ordinary cold stone. But he will feel like he is hot. Moreover, the place on the hand where the skin touched the stone will look as if hot coal was applied to it. The skin is burned, it happened; the body reacted because the mind accepted the thought.

This is how fakirs, monks, who are called bhikkhus in India, Burma and Ceylon, walk on fire. They believe so totally that the body has only to follow. Remember: the body always follows the mind. If you think of a cold stone as a hot coal and your mind becomes attached to that thought, then the body reacts accordingly. The opposite is also true. You can put a hot coal to your hand and say that it is a cold stone, and the hand will not be hurt.

Whatever the attachment, your life follows it. The Upanishads say that in this world we behave as if we were hypnotized; we are in deep hypnosis. We hypnotized ourselves, no one else did. For millions of lifetimes we have remained attached to certain objects of desire; they left a deep imprint. So whenever you see a woman, your body immediately starts behaving sexually.

One day I was sitting on the banks of the Ganges with my friend. Suddenly I felt that he was embarrassed and asked: "What's the matter?"

He said, "In that woman!"

There was a woman bathing in the river, and we could only see her back - long wavy hair, beautiful back - and he got so excited that he said: “I'm sorry, excuse me, we will return to our discussion later. I have to go and see - her body is so beautiful."

And so he left, and then came back very disappointed, because it was not a woman, but a sadhu, a Hindu monk, a sannyasin; his body was beautiful and he looked like a woman. There was no woman, but attachment, fixation arose in the mind, and immediately a whole chemical process began in the body.

Attachment creates this life; life is created around everything you are attached to. Therefore, the Upanishads say that, first of all, it is necessary to rid the mind of attachment; only then will the illusory world that you have created around you disappear. Otherwise, you will remain in a dream.

The world is not a dream, remember. This is a complete misunderstanding. This has been completely misunderstood in the West; there it is believed that Indian mystics call the world illusory. They call the non-real world illusory, they call the world that you create around you illusory. Everyone creates a world around him that is not real; it's just your projection. You become attached to certain things and then project your dreams onto reality. Reality will not be destroyed by detachment; only your dreams will be destroyed, and reality will be revealed to you as it is. So non-attachment becomes the main step, the fundamental step.

The Upanishads say that the seeker should "set his mind unshakable." This is the first thing necessary for detachment, because a wavering mind cannot become detached. Only out of hesitation can the mind become detached. Why? Look at your mind, watch it: it fluctuates constantly. He cannot stop on one object even for a second, every moment there is a flow; one thought comes, then another, then another - a series of thoughts.

You cannot stay with one thought even for one moment, and if you cannot stay with one thought even for one moment, how can you penetrate it? How can you realize its full reality? How can you see the illusion it creates? You are moving so fast that you cannot watch -- watching is impossible. It is as if you ran into this hall, and before you had time to run into one door, you immediately run out through another. You have only glimpsed this hall, and therefore you will not be able to find out later whether it was a reality or a dream. You didn't have time to learn, to penetrate, to analyze, to observe, to realize.

Thus, fixing the mind on one thought is one of the basic requirements for any seeker - he must remain with one thought for a long time. When you can stay with one thought for a long time, you will see for yourself that this thought creates attachment. This thought creates a whole world around itself, this thought is the primary source of all illusions. And if you can hold a thought for a long period of time, you become its master. Now the mind is not the master and you are not the slave.

And one more thing: if you can stay with one thought for a long period of time, you become able to drop it. You can say to the mind, "Stop!" - and the mind stops; you can say to the mind, "Move!" - and the mind will move. Now you cannot; you want to stop the process, but the mind goes on working, the mind never listens to you. The mind is the master and you just follow it like a shadow. The instrument (and the mind is only an instrument) has become the soul, and the soul has become the servant. This is the perversion and misfortune of human beings.

Try to get the mind fixed on one thing, anything will do. Sit on the ground in the yard, look at a tree and try to stay with that tree. Whatever happens, stay with that tree. The mind will try many times to distract itself, it will hesitate, it will give you many options to move on. The mind will say, “Look! What is this tree? What is it called?" Don't listen to it, because even if you have gone to the name, you have gone from the tree itself. If you start thinking about a tree, you have moved away from that tree. Don't think about it, stay with the fact that the tree exists.

It will seem difficult at first because you are not so alert. You are sleeping so soundly that you will soon completely forget that you were looking at the tree. A dog barks and you look at the dog; a cloud will appear in the sky and you will shift your attention to it; someone will pass by and you will forget about the tree. But keep coming back to the tree again and again. When you once again remember that you forgot and fell asleep, go back to the tree. Do it.

If you keep working, after three to four weeks you will be able to hold one thought in your mind for at least a minute. And that's a lot! It's phenomenal! - because you don't know, it seems to you that one minute is not much. One minute is too long for the mind because the mind moves in seconds. Your mind lingers on one subject even for less than a second. It fluctuates - fluctuations are inherent in the nature of the mind, it constantly creates waves. And thus the attachment is maintained.

You love a woman. Even if you love a woman, you cannot keep the thought of that woman in your mind. If you look at this woman, you will start thinking about her - and you will go away. You can think of her clothes, you can think of her eyes, you can think of her face and figure, but you have left this woman. Just let the fact be a fact, don't think about it, because thinking means hesitation. Keeping one mind content means not thinking, just looking. Thinking means movement, vibration. Just watch -- watching means freedom from hesitation.

This is the meaning of concentration, and all the religions of the world have resorted to it in one way or another. Their methods may differ, but the point is to train the mind to hold on to one thing longer and longer. What will happen? Once you acquire this ability, you don't have to do anything. Everything will become transparent, and your eyes will become penetrating. The gaze itself and the energy moving in it will become deeper.

There are two ways for the mind. The first path is linear, from one thought to another - "A", "B", "C", "D" - the mind moves linearly. The mind has energy. When it goes from "A" to "B", the energy dissipates; when it goes from "B" to "G", the energy has already dissipated. If you keep only "A" in your mind and don't let it go to "B", "C", "D" and so on, what will happen? The energy that should have been dissipated in the movement will continue to work hard on fact "A", and then a new process will begin - you will begin to go deeper into "A". The transition will not be from "A" to "B", but from "A1" to "A2", "A3", "A4". Now the energy will move directly, intensely, towards one fact. Your eyes will become discerning.

As recently as yesterday, one of the seekers came to me. She works well, she makes progress, but right after the meditation, when she was standing here in front of me, I looked into her eyes, and she was trembling, she began to cry. Then she came up to me, crying all the time, and said: “Why did you look at me so penetratingly? Could you look at me a little softer?" She said, "I got scared and thought I must have done something wrong, and that's why you looked at me with such a piercing look."

We have completely forgotten about the penetrating gaze. We only know the superficial look, going from "A" to "B", from "B" to "C", which only touches and moves on, touches and moves on. If someone looks at you, looks deeply, not going from "A" to "B", but from "B" to "C", then you will be afraid - but this is a real look. And you will be afraid because such a look goes deep inside you; it does not move on the surface, it moves deep, it moves deep. You will be afraid because you are not familiar with it.

With the "establishment" of the mind, you will have an eye that can see penetratingly, looking deep. This eye was known in the occult world as the third eye. When you start moving to one point, and not along a straight line, you gain strength, and this strength acts. All over the world those who practice mesmerism, hypnosis, various types parapsychologists have known this for centuries. You can try it yourself. Someone you don't know is walking down the road. Just follow him and look at the back of his head, at the bottom of the back of his head. Look closely. He will immediately look back at you, the energy will reach him as soon as you look.

At the base of the occiput there is a center which is very sensitive. Stare directly at this center and the person is sure to turn around because he will start to feel uneasy, as if something is entering there. Your eyes are not just windows for looking out through them, they are energy centers. Through the eyes you not only absorb impressions, you emit energy - but you are not aware of it. You don't realize it, because your energy is dissipated in motion, fluctuating, fluctuating, moving from one to another, from second to third, from third to fourth - this happens all the time, and each segment takes energy from you.

So, first it is necessary to try to "fix the mind unshakably" on the objects, then on the meaning of the great scriptures. This is a completely different science. You are reading a book. Reading is linear: you go from one word to another, from another to a third - you keep moving along the lines. You may not have noticed that in different countries write differently. English people write from left to right because English language- this is a technical language, not very poetic; masculine, not feminine. Words in Arabic or Urdu are written from right to left. They are more poetic because the left side is poetry and the right side is mathematics; the right side is male, the left side is female.

Chinese speech is written from top to bottom; not from right to left, not from left to right, but from top to bottom, because the Chinese language was created on the basis of Confucian ideology, and Confucius says: “You should strive for the middle; the middle is precious… the golden mean.” Therefore, the Chinese do not write from left to right or right to left, they write from top to bottom. This is not a male or female path, it is the middle, it is the center.

English is a masculine language, Urdu is a feminine language, that's why Urdu is so poetic. Urdu is the most poetic language in the world. In any other language of the world, you need hundreds of lines, but even then you will not be able to express yourself poetically. In Urdu, two lines are enough - and the heart stops from them. Urdu moves from right to left, from masculine to feminine, the goal is feminine.

Everywhere in the world God is represented as a father. There are religions in the East and in some primitive tribes which still represent God in the form of a mother. But the Sufis present God as the beloved. Beloved, not mother. The goal is feminine. From the masculine they move towards the feminine, towards the feminine; but they all move.

Chinese writing moves from top to bottom, so Chinese characters can express things that no other language can, because other languages ​​are linear and Chinese develops in depth. So, if you have read Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in translation, you know that all translations are different. If you read ten translations, they will all be different; you cannot tell who is right and who is wrong, because the Chinese language has so much meaning and depth that you can make not ten, but even a hundred translations. More and more meanings are revealed in the depths.

In India, they say that sacred texts like the Vedas, the Upanishads, or the Gita should not be read in a linear fashion. You should focus on every word. Read the word and move on; look at this word, close your eyes and wait until its meaning is revealed to you. This is a completely different way of studying things, which is why Westerners sometimes cannot understand a person who reads the Gita every day - all his life. This seems absurd. If you've read it once, you're done with it! Why read the Gita every day? If you've already read it, what's the point of reading it again?

But Hindus say that the Gita is a non-linear book. Each word should be looked at with a "set" mind; one has to go deep into each word - so deep that the word disappears and only silence remains. And remember that the word is devoid of meaning - the meaning is hidden in yourself. The word is just a technical support tool that helps to reveal the meaning that is inside you. Thus, the word is a mantra or yantra, something designed to evoke a meaning hidden in the depths of your soul.

Understand the difference. In the West, if you read something, the word has meaning; in the East, the word has no meaning - the meaning lies in the reader. The word is just a way to lead the reader to his own inner meaning, to meet with the inner meaning. The word will only provoke you from within, so that inner meaning can blossom through it. The word must be forgotten and the inner meaning retained, but you will have to wait; because first it will be necessary to fix the mind; concentration of the mind is required - only then it will be possible to reveal the inner meaning. Therefore, it is necessary to continue to read the same thing every day - although it is not the same, because you change.

If the Gita is read by a twelve-year-old boy, the meaning will be boyish, immature, childish. Then the Gita will be read by a young man of thirty years old - the meaning will change, he will become more romantic. In this meaning sex will be involved, in this meaning love will be projected, in this meaning the young man will project his youth. And then the Gita will be read by a sixty year old man. There were ups and downs in his life, he saw suffering and fleeting happiness, he experienced a lot. He will see something else in the Gita and it will have to do with death, in the Gita there will be death everywhere.

And a man who is a hundred years old, for whom even death has lost its importance, for whom even death has become an established fact, and not a problem, who does not fear death, but rather, on the contrary, simply waits for it so that the soul can free itself from the shackles of the body and take off - he will look into the Gita, and it will be completely different. Now it will be transcendent to life, meaning will be transcendent to life.

The meaning depends on your state of mind. Thus, the meaning of the word is not in the dictionary, the meaning of the word is in the reader, and words are used as a means to reveal this meaning. But if you continue to rush into reading, it will not help. In the West, more and more techniques are constantly being created for reading quickly, in order to finish the book as soon as possible, because there is not enough time. And there are techniques that allow you to read very quickly; whatever your speed is right now, it can easily be doubled, and even doubled again if you try a little. And if you're really persistent, then you can double that speed again.

For example, if you can now read sixty words in a minute, with enough effort, you can read two hundred and forty words a minute - but you will still be moving in a linear fashion. And if you are moving fast, then your unconscious begins to read, and consciousness only gives clues. Subconscious reading becomes possible, but you are unable to grasp the essence.

The question is not to read a lot, the question is to read very little, but deeply. Depth is important because quality is hidden in depth. If you read quickly, the quantity will be great, but the quality will no longer be there, reading will become a mechanical process. You will not absorb what you read, you will not be changed by what you read; it will be just a memory.

In Sanskrit, every word has many meanings. The scientist will decide that this is bad; a word must mean one thing, a word must have only one meaning. Only then is the science of language possible, only then can the language become technical, scientific, so there should be only one meaning per word. But Sanskrit is not a scientific language, it is a religious language. And if people who spoke Sanskrit claimed that he was divine, these are not empty words. Every word has many meanings; no word is fixed, frozen, it is liquid, flowing. Many values ​​can be extracted from it - at your discretion. It has many nuances, many shades; it is not a dead stone, it is a living flower.

If you come in the morning, the flower will look different than in the daytime, because the whole atmosphere, the whole environment has changed. If you come in the evening, another poetry will open in the same flower. In the morning he was happy, alive, dancing, full of many desires, hopes, dreams; maybe he was thinking about how to conquer the whole world. In the afternoon, desires are gone, deep disappointment has appeared, the flower is no longer so filled with hopes, it is a little depressed, a little sad. In the evening, life turned out to be an illusion, the flower found itself on the threshold of death, it shrank, closed itself - without dreams, without hopes.

Sanskrit words are like flowers - they have different moods; therefore Sanskrit can be interpreted in millions of ways. The Gita has a thousand interpretations. It is impossible to imagine that the Bible has a thousand interpretations - it is impossible! You cannot imagine that the Qur'an has a thousand interpretations - there is not a single interpretation. The Quran has never been interpreted. There are a thousand interpretations of the Gita, and still it is not enough. With each century there will be more and more of them, and as long as human consciousness exists on earth, more and more new interpretations will be added. The Gita is inexhaustible, it cannot be exhausted, because every word has many meanings.

Sanskrit is a fluid and iridescent language with many moods, which is good because it gives you freedom. The reader is free, he is not a slave; words are not forced on him, he can play with these words. With these words he can change his mood; and his mood he can change these words. The Gita is alive, and all living things are subject to mood swings; moods do not change only in the dead. In this sense, English is a dead language. It will seem paradoxical: English scholars repeat that Sanskrit is a dead language because no one speaks it. They are right about something - since no one speaks it, it is a dead language, but in fact modern languages ​​are dead.

Now no one speaks Sanskrit, but it is a living language, its very quality is alive and vital; each word has a life of its own and changes, moves, flows like a river. Much can be said in Sanskrit by wordplay; they are arranged in such a way that if you concentrate on them, many universes of meaning will open up before you.

The Vedas, the ancient scriptures, are not just books. There was no other motive in their writing, except for one: they were written to reveal some deep secret. They are not meant to be read, enjoyed, and thrown away like novels; they are meant for contemplation, they are meant for contemplation, they are meant for meditation. You will have to dive deep into them so that diving into the depth becomes something natural for you. And they were not written by writers, not by those people who know nothing and write, guided only by their egoistic feeling.

George Gurdjieff divided all books into two types: he calls some subjective and others objective. Vedas, Upanishads are objective, not subjective. All the literature that we create today is subjective - the writer brings his own subjectivity into it. A poet, a modern poet, or a painter, a modern Picasso, or a novelist, a storyteller - they write whatever is in their mind. They don't care about the person who will read, remember, they care more about themselves. For them, it's a catharsis. Inside they are crazy, they are overwhelmed - they want to express themselves.

You can read a good novel, but don't try to meet the author - it's possible that you will be disappointed. You can read a good poem, but don't try to meet the poet; you will be disappointed, because poetry can give you a glimpse into higher realms, it can ennoble you, but if you meet a poet, you will see a completely ordinary person - you may even be better than him. This man has not changed with his poem, how can this poem change you? This man did not know these heights; perhaps he dreamed about them, or he took LSD.

A couple of days ago, a girl came to me and said: “I was in Goa ... - this is my student; and she said, “I took LSD in Goa and enlightenment happened to me. I have no doubt about it, so I threw your mala* into the sea, because now I do not need to be your student.

* Mala - a rosary of one hundred and eight beads with Osho's medallion, which each sannyasin received during initiation. - Note. ed.

It's kind of crazy. Enlightenment doesn't come cheap. But in the West everything is cheaper. I hear all the time that there are three week enlightenment groups: three weeks and you are enlightened!

Perhaps the poet dreamed and dreamed, perhaps he took hashish. Scientists say that there is some difference between poets and ordinary people, some chemical difference - as it turned out, poets have a certain amount of hashish in their blood, so they have a more developed imagination and rich fantasy, they go into the world of dreams more easily than others. So they write poetry, but their works are based on imagination, they are not objective. They can help them unburden themselves by serving as a means to achieve catharsis.

But there is another, completely different kind of literature, which is objective. The Upanishads were not written for the pleasure of the author, they were written for the sake of those who read them - they are objective. They deliberately have an effect that they will have on you in reflection and contemplation; every word, every sound is planned. If the reader contemplates them, then the state of mind of their author is revealed to him; if he reflects on them, the same thing happens to him as to the author. These texts were called sacred - and that's why.

In the East there is a completely different literature, a literature of a completely different order - which is not for pleasure, but for transformation. And when a person penetrates deeply into the meaning of these scriptures... These scriptures belong to those who have known. It was considered a great sin to write about what you do not know. Therefore, very few books have been written in the past.

Now all over the world ten thousand books are written in a week - ten thousand books every week. And so it goes all the time... Libraries are worried because libraries are not able to accommodate this ever-growing mass of literature, and in order to fit everything, books have to be transferred to the form of microfilms; otherwise there will soon be more libraries than houses. Even if people have no shelter, how can you give shelter to books? It becomes almost impossible.

But in the past, very few books were created, because no one wrote just for the sake of writing something. Modern authors write because authorship is selfish, everyone knows your name because you wrote the book. Your book can be dangerous because it will bear the imprint of your mind...your microbes. If you are sick, then everyone who reads it will become sick; if you are mad... Just read Kafka's books or look at Picasso's paintings. Try applying one method to Picasso's paintings... and you'll go crazy. Just focus on the Picasso painting, keep looking at it for inner meaning. Soon you will feel madness rising in you. Picasso is mad and he puts his madness into the picture. It's good for him because it brings him relief, but it's bad for you. This is dangerous.

I heard a joke...

Somehow it happened that a valuable painting was stolen from Picasso. When the thief came and took the painting, Picasso was at home and he saw the thief. The police asked for a detailed description of what the thief looked like, and he replied: "It's hard to say, I'll draw you better."

And so, he painted a picture. The police detained twenty people. Of these twenty, one turned out to be a professor, another was a politician, the third was a musician - all kinds of people. Not only that, they say, in addition to people, objects were also detained: several cars, and in the end - even the Eiffel Tower!

... And all because it is impossible to understand what Picasso is painting, it is difficult to determine what the picture is talking about; she says nothing, or she says so much that confusion is created.

So, don't try this method on modern art or you'll go crazy. Kafka, Sartre or Picasso paintings - don't try this method on them. Only objective literature can be penetrated deeply, because it has the opposite effect. Objective texts are created by those who have known, who have become enlightened, and they have put their mind into these scriptures - this mind is hidden in them. If you penetrate the essence, this mind will open before you.

Biologists say that a person could become a person because he began to stand straight, his spine straightened. The spines of animals are parallel to the earth, only in humans the spine is not parallel to the earth, but makes an angle of ninety degrees with it. This changed the whole being of man, this right angle in relation to the force of gravity made it possible for the development of the mind. Today, biologists say that the animal turned into a man simply because it stood on two legs - that changes everything. Less blood flows to the head, so the head and nervous system can become more sensitive and perfect. When more blood flows to the head, the delicate tissues are destroyed, they cannot grow.

The more intelligent a person is, the more pillows he will need. It may not be very good for health, but for the development of intelligence a certain mental mechanism is required, a very subtle mechanism. And the mind is very complex; there are seventy million cells in it, very delicate - extremely delicate, since there are seventy million of them in such a small head. They are very delicate and very small, and when there is a lot of blood and it flows quickly, it destroys them, it kills them. So from a biological as well as a scientific point of view, the spine is the most important thing in a person. Your head is nothing but the pole of the spine; you exist as a spine: on one pole of it is the sex center, on the other is your mind, and the spine itself connects them like a bridge.

Yoga has worked a lot with the spine, because yogis have realized its importance, they have realized the fact that the spine is your life. This ninety-degree angle will be more accurate if you keep your spine straight, which is why yogis say to sit with a straight back. They developed many postures, asanas; at the heart of all these asanas is a straight, straightened spine. The more direct it is, the more chances for the development of the mind, awareness.

Perhaps you have not noticed: if you are listening to me with interest, you are sitting with a straight back; if you are not interested, you can relax. If you are watching a movie in a cinema, when something interesting starts, you immediately sit up straight, because more intelligence is needed. When an interesting scene ends, you can relax in your chair again.

When a person experiences suffering, we say that he is "lying on a stone bed." There are many blocks in your body and mind; they must be destroyed, and the destruction of the block is painful. Until these blocks are broken, you cannot flow, you cannot become the highest center of your own being. There are so many things to destroy, and every habit has a complex structure, its own system - it takes time. To be truly happy, you first need to drop all suffering, you need to experience it - this is the stage of growth. You will only be able to experience bliss when all suffering is behind you; then you can be happy for the first time. And there is no other way. You will have to go through a lot of suffering.

This does not mean that you have to create this suffering, that you have to be a masochist. There will also be many pleasures. Remember, this is how our mind works: we either become attached to pleasure and demand pleasure, or we can even become attached to pain and say we don't want any pleasure. We begin to enjoy suffering, and this is dangerous. This is the approach of a masochist - to torture yourself and enjoy it. This phenomenon is very deeply rooted in the human soul, and it happened because of a certain interdependence. Any pleasure is accompanied by some pain, so if the pleasure becomes strong, you feel pain, and vice versa: any pain is accompanied by a little pleasure, and if the pain becomes strong, you will feel pleasure. In fact, pain and pleasure are not two different things; the difference is only in degree.

You love a woman. To be with her for a few hours is wonderful, to be with her for a few minutes is simply divine; if you are with her for a few seconds, you will feel as if you are in nirvana. But being with her twenty-four hours a day will be difficult, being with her for several months in a row will be boring, and if you have to be with her all your life, you will want to commit suicide. Every pleasure is accompanied by pain, and every pain is accompanied by pleasure. They are inseparable. They differ in intensity, degree, but do not differ qualitatively.

There is another, deeper relationship. When you make love... Naturally, love is the most pleasant thing in the world... There are pleasures, there are bliss beyond the natural, natural, but among the natural, biological pleasures, love is the sweetest. Sex is one of the most pleasurable things nature has given you, but sex also involves pain. When you make love, you do a lot of things that hurt a little, but that's good. Even a kiss is slight pain. You are playing with each other's body, and by playing with each other's body you also cause a certain amount of pain. Vatsayana gave many hints and suggestions in the Kama Sutra. He says that when you really love a woman, you will do many things - bite her, stick your nails into her body - and she will enjoy it. Under other circumstances it would be painful, but if there is love, it turns into pleasure. However, this can go to the extreme, you can become a Marquis de Sade.

The word "sadism" is derived from the surname de Sade. De Sade had many tools to torture his lovers, his mistresses. The nails were no good, so he used thorns; the nails are not hard enough, so he had iron tools to penetrate the body. Blood flowed, he beat women with a whip. He always traveled with a bag containing all these devices. Every time he found a woman ready to love him, he closed the door. First he beat and tortured this woman, and then he made love to her. And you will be surprised: he loved many women, and these women - any of those whom he loved - subsequently declared that no one else loved them like that. De Sade gave them the greatest pleasure, he really loved them. Even torture can be pleasurable, because when you hit a person, more energy spreads throughout the body, the whole body becomes sexual. When you hit a person, the whole body becomes excited - and then you make love. There is a sudden transition to love from the excitement of torture. It's a very pleasant feeling... as if you were first hungry, starving, and then good food appeared - a contrast.

Every pleasure is accompanied by some torment, some pain. You can go to the other extreme, you can start hurting yourself and enjoy it. Travel to Benares and you will see monks lying on a bed of thorns. They like it, it's a kind of sexual pleasure. They moved away from pleasure, retaining pain.

You should neither make yourself suffer, nor be a sadist, nor torture yourself. You must simply decide to break with old habits; there is no need to look for pain, and if pleasure comes, you can enjoy it. This is good. You should be grateful for them.

Pleasures come, sweet moments come; enjoy them and forget about them. There is no need to demand them again, no need to say: “Now I cannot live without these pleasures.” Whatever existence brings with it should be thanked, but should never be demanded. Then one can acquire such a clarity of vision in which reality is visible. You can experience a glimpse of enlightenment.

Only a glimpse is not enlightenment itself. In Japan, this glimpse is called satori. Satori is not samadhi, satori is only a glimpse. You have not reached enlightenment, you have not climbed to the top of the mountain, but standing in the valley on a cloudless day under a clear sky, you can look at the snow-capped peak - although it is still very far away. You cannot see it when there are clouds in the sky, you cannot see it at night, you cannot see it if you stand where you cannot see it.

The clouds will disperse and the peak will open to your eyes - but it is a distant glimpse, it is not enlightenment. At a certain stage this glimpse happens, but remember well: you should not think that this is enlightenment. Such a glimpse can happen even with the help of chemicals. It is achievable with LSD or marijuana or other drugs because drugs can create a chemical situation in you, can create a situation in your chemistry where the clouds disappear for a moment and suddenly you are where you can see the top. . But it is not an achievement, because chemistry cannot become meditation, chemistry cannot give you enlightenment. When the effects of the drug wear off, you will be back to the way you were before. You can remember a glimpse, and that memory can hurt you, make you an addict. Then you will have to take LSD again and again, and the more you take it, the less likely even this glimpse will be, as the body gets used to it and the dose needs to be increased. Then you will be on a path that leads only to madness.

So don't try chemical substances. If you've already tried them, be grateful, but don't try them again. Once you become accustomed to chemical support, real growth becomes impossible because the chemicals seem like that. the easy way and real growth seems so difficult. Only real work on yourself, only spiritual discipline will help you grow, will allow you to come to that moment when this glimpse is not forced, but becomes natural. And then it will not be lost - you can look at any moment, and the peak will be in front of you - you know where to look. Going about your daily activities, you can close your eyes at any moment and see the peak, and this will become an internal source of eternal happiness, joy, eternal joy. Whatever you do, whatever happens outside, even if you are miserable -- you have built so many prisons for yourself -- you can close your eyes and the peak is in front of you.

But this glimpse is not the end, it is only the beginning.

Once upon a time there was a man who lost his ax, and he began to suspect the neighbor's boy of stealing.

He looked at his walk ... It was he who stole the ax: the expression on his face, his speech, his behavior, his manners - everything revealed in him a thief.

Some time passed, and one day, while digging the garden, a man found an axe.

The next day he saw the neighbor's boy again. Nothing in his behavior or manner suggested that he had stolen the axe.

Every person - including you - lives a closed life, lives in his own world. There is more than one world around you: how many minds, so many worlds. Every mind is a whole world, and every mind is closed. Sometimes you come into close contact with other worlds, but this is only on the periphery. Your centers remain separate and never go beyond their closed boundaries.

Mind is a wall around you. You are imprisoned in it like a prisoner. But this wall is transparent. Because it is a glass wall of only thoughts, prejudices, theories and scriptures, you cannot touch it, you are not even aware of it. But you live beyond it, and whatever you see, whatever you feel, it is not a fact. This is an interpretation.

You look at a woman and think: “What a beautiful woman!” This is an interpretation. Someone else may disagree with you. And someone else may disagree with you categorically. You consider her the standard of beauty, and someone else thinks that she is not very lucky with her appearance, and just tolerates her. And someone else finds that she is definitely ugly, that she is the ugliest woman he has ever seen; he calls it a nightmare - not a wonderful vision.

What are they talking about? Are they talking about the same woman? Could it be that they were all talking about the same woman and so divergent in their views? They are not talking about the same woman. Only it seems that the woman is one and the same. They talk about different interpretations. The woman is only a screen and they project their own minds onto her. They see what they want to see. They see what they can see. They see what they have been conditioned to see from the very beginning. This is an interpretation, not a fact.

That is why aesthetics has been trying to define beauty for so many centuries. This has not yet been done; and you will never be able to define beauty, because beauty is not a fact. She doesn't belong real world, this is an interpretation - as well as ugliness.

The same is true of all duality, because reality is one. There are no two realities. Reality is neither ugly nor beautiful, it just is, without any beauty and without any ugliness. There can be no question of comparison, because apart from this reality there is no other. This reality is the only one. There is no other reality; how can you compare and talk about beautiful and ugly, good and bad, good and evil? No, there is only one reality. All divisions are of the mind.

You say that one person is good and the other is bad. You think one is a saint and the other is a sinner. All are projections, all are interpretations. Therefore, the Jews considered Jesus a criminal. And Christians consider him the only begotten Son of God, the greatest man of all who have ever walked the earth. And the Jews - they call him the worst of people, the embodiment of sin.

When they crucified Jesus, they didn't crucify him alone. There were criminals on either side of him; crucified three at the same time. He was crucified as a criminal. Moreover, every year the governor who ruled the country, the governor of the Roman emperor, had the right to pardon one person, to save him from the death penalty. Four people were to be crucified - Jesus and three others. The other three were murderers, and when the governor said to the Jews: “I can free one person,” he thought of Jesus, because in his eyes he looked innocent, like a child. It would be simply unfair to kill this man.

The governor was not a Jew, he had a different point of view; he could not project onto Jesus the same idea as the Jews. He could not see any evil in him. He talked to Jesus and found that he was a simple man... Perhaps he is bold, too bold because of his innocence; perhaps he spoke in metaphors, but he never meant evil. The viceroy wanted - in the depths of his heart he hoped so - that the Jews would ask to forgive Jesus.

But no, the Jews did not ask to forgive Jesus. They chose a criminal, a murderer. His name was Barabbas. They decided that they should release him and that Jesus should die. Jesus died like a criminal. What happened? Why are opinions about Jesus so contradictory, so opposite - diametrically opposed?

The problem is not with Jesus, the problem is with the interpretive mind. You call someone good and someone bad, but have you ever thought about what good is? Can you define it? Has anyone ever been able to identify it?

One of the greatest logicians of our century, J. E. Moore, has written a book. This book is called "Principia Ethica", "Ethical Principles" - a book rare in its depth, in its logical coherence - and Moore begins by asking the question: "What is good?" A man of Moore's caliber is not often born. There is scarcely another thinker in this century of the same quality, whose mind is so keenly perceptive.

He begins by asking, "What is good?" And he ends the book by saying that goodness is indefinable. In this book, he works hard, comes from different angles, tries in different ways to penetrate the mystery of good - and fails. And here is the conclusion: the mountain did not even give birth to a mouse; good is indefinable.

But it has always been known - good is indefinable. The question is, why is good indefinable? Why is beauty indefinable? It cannot be defined because it does not exist in the world as a fact, but is an interpretation. It depends on the mind. It's just a matter of taste, likes and dislikes.

Someone says, "I like this flower," and you can say that you don't like it. Tastes could not be discussed; We know that everyone has their own preferences. Beauty is likes and dislikes, and goodness is also likes and dislikes. These are not facts that exist in the world. You bring your thought into the fact, and a concept is born between your thought and the fact: you say that it is beautiful. It matches your idea of ​​beauty.

But your thought is not universal, it is peculiar to you personally. That is why the Sufis insist that all knowledge is personal. There is no impersonal knowledge. They insist that all knowledge is partial and biased, there is not and cannot be a complete and impartial knowledge. Only a person like Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed is impartial, but at the same time he is free from knowledge. He has no interpretive mind. He looks at reality, he just looks! He does not bring any ideas into reality. He is passive. His mind is idle. He is alert, he simply perceives without projecting.

This is the difference between the mind of a Buddha and the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind is an active mediator. It doesn't look like a mirror. It doesn't just show things as they are; No, he actively intervenes. He brings his own ideas to reality. It colors reality, it shapes it. It gives reality a form that does not exist, that has been brought in by the mind itself.

Here is a flower; the mind says, "Beautiful." There is only a flower - no beauty, no ugliness. Here are the mountains. Nothing pretty, nothing ugly; they just are. Existence simply is. It is not divided. The mind divides it, brings in its knowledge, and you go on like this, never realizing that you are surrounded by a thin wall. Because of this wall, you cannot penetrate reality. You have to become passive. Remember, alert but passive is my definition of meditation. Alert but passive.

Someone sent me a little comic the other day. I really liked him. Two people are standing - perhaps neighbors, friends - and one says to the other: "I heard that your son has taken up meditation." Another replies, “Yes, he has taken up meditation. And it seems to me that this is much better than just sitting and doing nothing.”

But that's the point of meditation - just sit and do nothing. If you do something, it is no longer meditation.

vigilance and passivity. Zen says, “Sit silently, doing nothing; spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. Nothing should be done, because as soon as you start doing something, you appear. As soon as you do anything, you change reality; she is not the same as before. Don't do anything. Just watch. Be passive but alert. Aware, inactive, silent... And suddenly reality appears. Mind dropped. When the mind is not, you know what is real. The mind will not let you know reality because it goes on creating its own hallucinations.

At one time I worked as a lecturer at a university in a distant corner of India. I lived in a bachelor's apartment and shared a room with a colleague who was very gentle, kind-hearted and common man. But then it was Holi time, and he took some bhang, a psychedelic he had never tried before. And completely crazy. He was found naked in the street. He was detained and had to spend the whole night at the police station. This threw the poor fellow off balance, so much so that he fell into paranoia.

He didn't come back - I had to go and find out where he was. I found it at the site; I convinced the police officer that he was a simple man and a victim of some friends, that he had never taken bhang before, that's why bhang had such a strong effect on him. I brought him home. But from that day on, he began to have fears, and he was so frightened when a car drove by that he jumped on my bed, shouting: “The police are coming!” If at night someone knocked on the next door, he immediately hid under my bed shouting: “The police are coming!” He was so afraid that he could no longer go to university and teach, because a policeman could be stumbled anywhere.

I watched him around the clock, because ordinary human qualities were manifested in him in an exaggerated form. And when something is exaggerated, it becomes easier to observe. He began to fantasize, invent his own nightmares that the government was plotting against him. Why should the government bother with an ordinary university lecturer? There are other worries too.

He was an unsophisticated man, but he imagined - he invented it for himself, and the more he composed, the deeper he got into it - that the whole world was against him, that everyone was watching him, and that they were just waiting for an opportunity to grab him and throw in jail. He stopped leaving the room. Even when I returned home, he first looked out the window to make sure that it was me, and not some other person who would try to deceive him: maybe the police came or someone else - enemies. When I returned, several minutes, sometimes even half an hour, passed before he opened the door for me, and then only if he was absolutely convinced that it was me and no one else.

Then it became too burdensome, because I also could not sleep or rest - neither day nor night! Even when the knock on the door was caused by a gust of wind, he jumped up and down and hid in the closet. So, I needed to do something.

I went to the police station, I convinced these people, “It happened because of you. Now help me - he says that the police have some documents against him. So please come tonight and bring his dossier - just pretend it's on him as there is no paperwork or anything against him, he never did anything wrong except he took bhang once... So bring some folder with his name on the cover and many documents inside - any documents will do, and give him a good beating. A shock is needed, otherwise he will not get out of the vicious circle, he withdraws more and more into himself. So give him a good beating and don't worry. Beat him well. Bring the chains and put them on him. At this point, I will try to convince you and give you a bribe in front of him. Burn this dossier in front of him so that he will calm down and decide that his case is closed.

All this was staged. And it worked. They beat him, they really beat him. But while he was being beaten, he looked at me and said: “You see. Everything, as I said, but no one listened to me! At the same time, he also felt deep satisfaction from the fact that in the end he was right. When they put him in chains, he winked at me and said: "Look at the file: my name is there." But he was shocked. Then I "bribed" the police, the dossier was burned, and the case was closed.

Constantly watching him for a month, I realized that he is no different from ordinary people. There is no qualitative difference, the difference is only in quantity, in degree. It is possible that he is at the top of the ladder, you are in the middle, and someone else is at the very beginning, but the difference is only in degree, not in quality. Anyone who has intelligence is insane in one way or another. Mind is and there is madness. But you can be insane and not know it, because everyone else is just as insane. You are similar to each other, so there is no problem.

There is one ancient Sufi story. One day a witch came to the capital of a certain kingdom. She threw something into the well, chanted a mantra and said, "Whoever drinks from this well will go mad." There were only two wells in the capital: one was intended for ordinary people, and the other, palace, for the king and prime minister.

Of course, people had to drink, knowing full well that they would go crazy. But there was no way out - there was only one well. They were not allowed to come to the palace for water.

Therefore, by evening, by sunset, the whole city went crazy. But no one was aware of it, because when everyone is going crazy, how can you be aware? Everyone began to mind their own business, as the hippies say. People danced naked, shouted, yelled; naked women ran through the streets. People were doing all sorts of yoga... some were standing on their heads, some were taking other asanas - the whole city was in a nightmare. The wild fun continued. People celebrated, jumped and shouted - the whole city did not sleep!

Only the king and the prime minister were sad, very sad: “What to do? The whole city has gone mad, and the poor fellows don't even know it, because when everyone goes mad, how can you tell?" In fact, the prime minister and the king themselves began to doubt their mental health. Maybe it was their madness, because the whole city seemed to be in blissful ignorance: thousands of people, each of whom had gone mad and did not think the other was mad.

Of course, in such a city, the king and the prime minister doubted themselves: maybe they themselves were mad! By midnight they were in a very difficult position, because the whole city had gathered, and the citizens also realized that something was wrong with the king and the prime minister. A rumor spread that the king and the prime minister had gone mad. And everyone, of course, agreed with this.

People surrounded the palace. The guards went mad, the police went mad, the army went mad, so there was no protection, and the people began to demand: "Come to your senses immediately, otherwise we will overthrow you."

The king asked: "What to do?"

The prime minister said, “Talk to them while I run and fetch some water from that well because we have no other choice. If we want to live in this crazy capital even for a minute, we have to go crazy.”

He brought water from the city well. They both drank it, they started dancing, they threw off their clothes - and the whole city was happy because the king and the prime minister came to their senses, that they regained their sanity.

All ordinary people are insane because the mind is MAD, and whatever you see through the lens of the insane mind will only be your interpretation of reality. It exists only in your mind. This is just an idea.

The madman is closed in his own mind. You are also closed. Perhaps not as closed as crazy, but closed. Perhaps there are a few holes here and there, and sometimes a little light gets inside. But in the rest of the crowd, no one is different from you, so you have nothing to compare to.

Scientists say that if God suddenly decides to reduce everything tenfold, no one will know about it. You have been shrunk - your height was six feet, you have been reduced to six tenths of a foot - but everything around you has shrunk to the same extent. A sixty-foot tree was reduced to six feet, a six thousand-foot mountain was reduced to six hundred feet. If everything is reduced in the same proportion - your height will become six tenths of a foot, and everything else will become equally smaller - no one will ever know what happened. How can you know? Even your yards will get smaller. Nobody will ever know.

You become aware of something only when you don't fit; otherwise, you don't know about it. And the opposite statement is equally true: when you are aware, you do not correspond. The more you realize, the less and less you correspond to ordinary people. Jesus is a stranger, he has become a stranger to you. It is quite consistent with existence, but it does not correspond to this crazy world at all. You think, on the contrary, that he has gone mad. Socrates, Jesus, Buddha were considered crazy; something out of the ordinary happened to them. You live such an abnormal life that a normal, healthy person seems abnormal to you.

The Sufis say that the disease is in the mind itself. And everyone who knows, agrees with them. Surprisingly, whatever the mind thinks, it always finds it in reality...because first you bring something into reality and then you read it. With your right hand you bring in, with your left hand you read - and you think you are reading reality.

I'm talking to you. But you don't listen to me, you don't listen to what I tell you. You can not; it's impossible. Maybe you hear a thousand and one voices. Each of you hears differently than the other. Your interpretation will remain your interpretation, and your friend's interpretation will remain his interpretation. And if, at the end of this conversation, you come together to decide what you have heard, you will be surprised: everyone has heard different things, different stories, because the mind is constantly adding, removing, interpreting, philosophizing ...

You don't just listen to me. You are active. And if you are active, you do not perceive me. An active mind is a barrier to any understanding. A passive mind is needed. An empty mind, devoid of all thoughts, is needed. Then you become like a mirror. You are just listening. You don't try to think because if you start thinking you will miss the point. You have already deviated, you have gone very far.

Just listen! Listen to me as if you are listening to music. Listen to me as if you were listening to a bird or a river. Just listen passively. To listen passively is to become cognizant. Listening passively means knowing, learning. It is impossible to learn otherwise.

This is one of the most fundamental facts to be understood. Otherwise, you can read the Quran or the Gita, but in doing so, you will not be reading the Quran or the Gita at all, but yourself. In the Quran you will read your own mind. You cannot get out of the vicious circle, you are surrounded by a wall - but it is very thin and you cannot see or feel it. Once you understand that the mind is a wall, you will start dropping it.

Be sometimes with the trees and be silent, don't say words, don't formulate, just be. Sit under a tree. Flowers bloom on it. But don't say the words. Just look at the flowers, look at the tree, touch the tree, hug the tree, kiss the tree - but without any words! Do anything, but only - no words. Don't bring the mind. Let the tree and your reality be together. Don't put your mind between them. Drop the mind. Get directly, directly, instantly into connection with the tree. Enter into an instant and direct connection with the sky. Be with me directly and instantly ... with a lover, with a friend.

Just remember one thing: when you bring intelligence, you bring madness. When you bring in the mind, you bring in a distortion factor, a frustrating factor.

Can you be no-mind? This is the only way to know reality.

Now for this short story.

Once upon a time there was a man who lost his ax, and he began to suspect the neighbor's boy of stealing.

When you begin to suspect, the mind becomes active. Suspicion arises and projection begins. This man began to suspect the neighbor's boy of stealing.

He looked at his walk- of course, he was absolutely sure that he would recognize the thief by his gait. The boy had a thief's walk - he stole the ax. His facial expression... It was clear from the boy's eyes that he was trying to hide something. He did not look into the eyes, he avoided the look: he was a thief. He didn't say anything directly. He tried to deceive: he was a thief. His behavior was not normal ... something unnatural, some kind of burden on the heart. He was no longer the same as before. The ax weighed him down. His demeanor…everything about him betrayed a thief, everything about him said that he had stolen the axe.

You know it happens to you too. Once you start suspecting, you start projecting. As soon as suspicion arises, the seed appears. And then everything changes.

If you are in love with a woman - and at the same time she, perhaps, did not think of falling in love with you; but if you yourself are in love, then everything about her: her walk, her tone of voice in conversation with you, her posture - everything says that she is in love with you. You are more and more sure that she is in love with you. Maybe she does not suspect anything about it, she did not even think about it, but you are sure. It may remain the same, but you are no longer who you were before. Your mind carries something in it - a seed, a projection. Your mind is burdened with thought. Or maybe you suspect your wife - or husband - of cheating. As soon as this thought appears, you find evidence.

Keep in mind, this is where the madness is: first you come to a conclusion, and then you look for confirmation. And they will always be found. Life is so big... Once you decide - and this is the way of madness - first draw a conclusion, and then look for evidence. These proofs are not real proofs, they are pseudo proofs. One way or another, they fit the facts under prejudice. But you have already judged everything in advance, made a conclusion in advance.

Evidence must come first, then conclusions. But people first decide, and only then find evidence. Remember: no matter what decision you come to, there will be evidence. Nobody can stop you from doing this. If you decide that there is a God, you will find him. If you decide that there is no God, you will find that there is no God. If you decide that the number 13 is a bad, ominous sign, you will begin to find evidence every day that some evil lurks in the number 13. On the thirteenth, something goes wrong. Every day something goes wrong, but you don't notice it. You notice it when the thirteenth comes. Many American hotels don't have a thirteenth floor because no one wants to stay on the thirteenth floor. After the twelfth floor immediately goes the fourteenth. And the thirteenth never happens.

I read an article: one man found thousands of proofs that the number thirteen belongs to the devil. He collected thousands of facts: how many murders were committed in the world on the thirteenth day of each month, how many robberies, how many people committed suicide, how many went crazy, how many car accidents happened that day. He collected thousands of facts. Someone sent me this article - he was also impressed by it. She can't help but impress, because this man has drawn so many facts to support his idea.

I wrote to the person who sent me the article: “Try to do the same study of the number 12 and you will find no less number of murders, robberies, heart attacks, suicides, loss of sanity. Any number will do. Just pick a number first and then look at life and you'll find... If you decide 13 is good number, then you will find some other facts: how many couples got married, how many children were born, how many people fell in love.

On the thirteenth, people get married, people also get divorced. You can choose as you wish. People are born, people die. In fact, every day is the same. Reality doesn't favor anything. But your mind... if it starts working, you will find anything...

People come to me - if they have already decided that I bad person, they almost always find confirmation of this. Nobody can stop them; they always find confirmation. Life is great. It includes both summer and winter. She is good and bad at the same time. She is right and wrong at the same time. It is like two wings of a bird - you cannot live without both wings. Somebody comes and he decides, "This is a bad person," he will find all the evidence for it. Another comes, who decides that "this person is good" - he will also find all the evidence. Life gives you enough opportunities. All options are available.

When this man suspected the boy of stealing the ax, he looked at his walk and recognized the thief by his walk. Everything about him betrayed the fact that he had stolen the axe.

Some time passed, and one day, while digging a garden, a man found an ax.

Everything suddenly changed.

The next day he saw the neighbor's boy again. Nothing in his behavior or manner suggested that he had stolen the axe..

Everything has changed. The boy remains the same. The boy is not even aware of what is happening. First he turned into a thief, and now he is no longer a thief - a wonderful, sweet boy, very nice! Look at his walk - it's so innocent. The boy remained the same, the man's mind changed.

If you bring your mind into reality, you see what is not there. You may miss what is in it. Hindus call this bringing the mind into reality maya. This is the root cause of all illusions.

If you want to understand the Hindu concept of Maya, here is the basis of it. If you live from the mind, you live in maya, you live in illusion, you live in your own projections and ideas. The layers of your thoughts hide you from reality and hide reality from you. Giving up the mind is giving up maya, the very basis of all hallucinations. When the mind is absent, existence suddenly opens up. And that is God, not your thoughts about God.

The Hindu always finds Krishna playing the flute; no Christian will ever find Krishna playing the flute. Moreover, all this playing on the flute and the girls dancing around will appear to the Christian mind as some kind of profanity. Something bad and out of place. Krishna is like a hippie. Christians cannot imagine him as a god. Unthinkable. God must be serious. And then, God must always remain crucified on the cross, a martyr, bearing the burden of humanity, seeking to save humanity from all its sins. Can he play the flute? Never. He is a savior; he carries a mountain on his shoulders - the burden of all mankind. The fate of mankind depends on him - and he plays with girls? Krishna looks like a playboy. No, it doesn't look like God at all.

A sad Jesus comes to Christians, unimaginably sad - his very face is more reminiscent of death than of life. Crucified God. These people worship death, not life; everything is very serious. Christians say that Jesus never laughed. It may not be true, but Christians hold on to this idea. How can God laugh when there is so much suffering around, when there is so much sin around? How can God laugh when Vietnam exists, Cambodia exists, Israel exists, all kinds of wars and violence? How can God play the flute? Impossible. He must be serious, crucified.

For the Christian mind, the symbol is the cross, not the flute. But to a Hindu, the idea of ​​a crucified God seems simply absurd, because God must be laughter, singing, fun, celebration! God must be blissful, playing the flute, because the whole existence is a celebration.

Have you ever seen a flower crucified on a cross, a bird crucified on a cross? A sad river, a sad mountain? The whole existence plays the flute. This is the meaning of the flute played by Krishna: it is a festival, a festival that goes on and on everywhere. This is female energy - festive, dancing.

Every god must be like this: both poles meet in him, in close embrace with his own energy, with his own creation. Creator and creation, male and female, yin and yang, positive and negative must dance together - otherwise there can be no dance. How can a man dance alone? It will seem stupid. For what? .. After all, a man is half, how can half dance? Only the whole can dance.

When this circle closes, the dance happens on its own, spontaneously. There is no need - the holiday comes by itself. It happens by itself - just like that. It happens! - Krishna is not trying to dance, he is not pretending to dance. He doesn't manipulate. The feminine energy is there, and the masculine energy is content, deeply content. Meeting, wedding. This dance is spontaneous.

The Hindu cannot imagine that Jesus never laughed. And if he has never laughed, then he does not understand anything. It should be laughter itself - as deep as possible. Jesus must be laughter; otherwise impossible.

But these are concepts. The Hindu thinks in his own way, and the Hindu God appears to him; a Christian thinks within the framework of his own words, his own phraseology, ideology, and the Christian God appears. But both of them are creations of the mind. Neither is true, both are projections.

Unless you drop all krishnas and all christs, you cannot know reality. They are all dreams that you have created. Beautiful dreams, but still dreams.

When you are alone, in a state of passive alertness, doing nothing, just being present in every moment, suddenly reality explodes. And it does not correspond to any ideology, whether it is Hindu, Christian or Muslim ideology. All ideologies have been overcome. Ideologies are very narrow. Reality is infinitely wide. She can't fit into any idea. It cannot fit into any concept. She has no place there.

The mind is too narrow: it cannot grasp reality, it has to merge into reality.

When you are not the mind, reality appears. And reality is God. And this God - you will find that he does not correspond to Hindus or Christians. He doesn't match anyone. He cannot match. So I always insist: religion is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist. Religion knows no adjectives, religion knows no labels. This is life itself, incredibly alive, with its boundless scope, with its flow, which has neither beginning nor end.

God is life. All concepts are poor, and if you are too attached to concepts, you will find confirmation of them in existence - that is the trouble. The Christian will discover that his God is true because he makes him real. The Muslim will discover that his idea of ​​God is correct because he discovered it. And they all say, "We survived the experience!" How can you deny experience? The Hindu finds his own God. The mind itself finds confirmation of its concepts. Whatever idea comes to your mind, you will be faced with its implementation. You will find whatever you are looking for. But what is found will be only a projection of the mind.

What then to do? Truth cannot be sought by the mind. If you want to find truth, the mind has to be dropped. To truth, to reality, to life, to existence, you have to come completely free of the mind, completely naked, with deep innocence about all ideologies, completely empty, totally empty. Only then will you come to the truth. Otherwise, whatever you come up with will be your own mind that deceives you. And you can go on being deceived - you have been doing this for many lifetimes.

The time has come, the most opportune moment has come to get out of this game. You've played it long enough, longer than necessary. Get out of this game! And the game is this: if you have an idea, the mind will create a dream, and the dream will appear to be real.

Reality is never known through the mind, because the mind is something already known, past, dead. The past must end for the present to be. The known must end for the unknown to be. The mind must stop for God to be. You will have to drop everything you have. If you can drop it, if you are not attached, there is an opportunity for the greatest revolution, the greatest change.

Meditation means the state of no-mind.

Every day, every day I face the same problem: you read in a book that the kundalini rises in a certain way. If you read about it in a book, it will rise! And then it will be difficult to prove that you are wrong, because you have had an experience and you say, “I have experienced it firsthand, how can you say that I am wrong? I felt the kundalini serpent rising up my spine. It moves upwards with incredible force." You feel it - and it is such a clear feeling that there is no doubt. But I tell you that it is your mind. Because there are people who have never heard of kundalini - it does not rise in them; they don't feel it. And they also achieved. Jains never mention kundalini, but Mahavira achieved the highest revelation of being without any kundalini. Buddhists never talk about kundalini. Hindus talk about it - and then it rises.

Buddhists talk about four chakras, and a follower of Buddhism feels only four chakras. Hindus talk about seven chakras; a follower of Hinduism feels seven chakras. I once said to a man who felt the seven chakras:

Don't you know that there are thirteen chakras?

He said:

What! Thirteen? But so far I've only felt seven.

There are six more left, I told him. - Go and try, and when you feel all thirteen, then come to me.

He came six months later. He felt all thirteen - and this man did not deceive, he himself was deceived. He wasn't a liar, he didn't try to lie to me; this is a sincere person.

The mind can create experiences and experiences. So remember, I repeat again and again, that spirituality is not an experience, not an experience. It is the experiencer, not the experience itself; it is the witness of all experiences, not of any one experience in particular. When all experiences are overcome, then you come to a spiritual experience. Spiritual experience is not an experience, not an experience of one kind or another. You simply remain with consciousness without experiencing any experience.

Greed in experience comes from the mind, and when it is satisfied, the mind feels very satisfied even for trifles. What can give you that energy rises along the spine? It is just a feeling - and the mind has created it. The mind is strong.

Have you ever seen someone walking on fire? On red-hot coals? Now the fact that people can walk on them is a proven fact. Just a couple of years ago, at Oxford University, a yogi from Sri Lanka walked over a fire - and scientists did everything so that he could not deceive them. He didn't cheat! He walked on fire. What happens when a yogi walks on red-hot coals? It doesn't burn - what's going on?

The possibilities of the mind are enormous. If the mind feels that the fire will not burn, if this feeling is absolute, total, then this very feeling, this very feeling becomes an energy that protects you from all sides. Then your feet do not touch the coals. A layer of unknown energy is formed between the coal and the feet. And the fire does not pass through it, an invisible layer of energy protects you. This is the aura of your body, concentrated under your feet. In fact, you are not walking on fire, you are walking on your own energy. It protects your feet like shoes, energy shoes. The mind compelled her to do so.

It so happened that a university professor was so mesmerized by this sight - this man walking on fire - that he gained great confidence and came closer. When he approached, the coal-walking yogi pulled him towards him, and the professor also went. He had never tried it before and had never trained. What happened? If your faith is total, even if it is total only at a certain moment, the body immediately becomes protected.

Modern medicine has realized the existence of a certain kind of phenomena. One of them is really something special. It lies in the fact that different diseases prevail in different countries. Every community, every religion, every sect has a certain set of diseases that are more common within its boundaries.

Thus, for example, Eastern people are more susceptible to epidemics of plague and cholera, more susceptible to diseases characteristic of living conditions in the community, infections and infectious diseases, since there is no pronounced individualism in the East. In the Indian village there is only a community. Nobody exists as an individual; there is a community. If this community is too big, they start to dominate infectious diseases because no one has a protective aura. If someone falls ill, then the whole community gradually becomes a victim of this disease. And in the same community, several people from the West can live: they will not be affected by the infection.

In fact, just the opposite should be happening: a Westerner in India should be more prone to disease because he has no immunity. He has no immunity to such a climate, to such diseases; he should get sick sooner. But no. According to observations made over the past century, every time an infectious disease spreads, Europeans are protected by some unknown force. And the Indians are getting sick.

Indians have a more communal mind. Europeans have a more selfish and personal mind. Therefore, in the West, other diseases, such as heart attacks, predominate. This is an individual, non-communicable disease. In the East, heart attacks are not so common, and you will not be enough heart attack unless you are from the West, have received a Western education and become almost Western. In the East, heart attacks are not a serious problem, diabetes is not a serious problem, hypertension is not a serious problem - these are not infectious diseases. Christians are more susceptible to them. The Western mind lives as an individual unit. Of course, when you live as an individual unit, the community cannot influence you too much. You are protected from infections.

In the West, infections have gradually disappeared, but people are suffering more and more from personal diseases. Heart attacks, suicide, hypertension, mental disorders are individual diseases. They are not associated with infection. Tension, fear, anxiety... In the East people are more relaxed. They cannot be called too intense. They don't suffer from insomnia. They don't suffer from heart attacks. The community protects them from this. After all, the community has no heart. If you lead a communal life, you cannot suffer from heart disease.

This is a rare occurrence. This means that your mind makes you vulnerable to certain diseases and protects you from others. Your mind is your world. Your mind is your health, your mind is your illness. And if you live with the mind, you live in your own closed world and you cannot know what reality really is. This reality becomes known only when you drop all kinds of mind -- communal, individual, social, cultural, personal... when you drop all kinds of mind. Then your mind becomes universal. Then your mind unites with the universal mind.

When you don't have a mind of your own, your consciousness becomes universal. God is not known as an object. Truth is not known as an object. You become truth. You yourself become God. This is the meaning of Al-Hillaj Mansoor's famous statement "Ana'l haq". He says, "I am God, aham brahmasmi, I am Brahman."

Sufis believe in a universal mind. And they want you to drop the individual mind, the communal mind, the social mind. They want you to drop all the barriers that separate you from the universal mind. You become a drop in the ocean. Only when you become the ocean will you know what it is. Only then will you know what existence is, not before. Mind must die.

Until you die, God will remain beyond your reach. God is not an experience. He is always inseparable from you. You cannot look at it because it is hidden in the beholder. You cannot meet him face to face. Where can you meet him face to face? It is hidden within yourself.

I would like to tell you a story, a very ancient Indian story. It talks about how God created the world. Everything went well. Then he created man, and something went wrong. With the advent of man, problems began. In those days, God simply lived on Earth. He created this Earth to live on it, to be in it, inside and out. These trees and these flowers, these rivers and mountains - why did he have to create them? The story says that he created the Earth to live on it, to be here. And he was here, and all was well with the birds, the trees, the rivers, and the animals; everything was perfect.

Then he made a mistake: he created a man, and trouble started because the man started complaining. He did not pay attention to the fact that the night had come, midnight, that God was sleeping, he would come and knock on the door with his complaints. He constantly annoyed him. The man began to drive God crazy - there was no end to his complaints. And the problem was this: if you solve one person's problem, the very solution makes the other person complain.

Someone says, "I need rain today." And if God sends rain, someone else comes along and says, "You ruined my house - I just painted it!" But someone needed rain for the garden. It was impossible to please everyone, so God turned to his counselors for advice. Someone said:

You need to go to the Himalayas and hide there.

God said:

You're right, but you don't know the future. Sooner or later, a man named Edmund Hillary will even climb Everest. They won't leave me alone there either. And when it becomes known that I am in the Himalayas, the whole world will go there. No, it won't help. Yes, for a while it will help, as a temporary solution it will help, but you don't know this Edmund Hillary yet. I can already see it coming, because the future is open to me.

They offered:

Then go to the moon.

God said:

No. This will help, but not for long. There will also be a person. Man will be everywhere.

Then one old counselor whispered something in God's ear, God nodded and said:

Yes, you are right.

This old man said:

Hide in the person himself. Get deep into his heart and hide there.

God said:

You're right, because he will never suspect...

This is such a place… It is unlikely that anyone will suspect that there, inside of you, there may be God.

God is not an experience. He hides in you. You are only his hiding place. God is not an experience, he is the one who experiences all experiences.

Become passive, alert - and suddenly you will find it within you. This story is true, absolutely true... because I followed this story and found him. Follow this story. This is not fiction; this is the absolute, literal truth. He is hidden in you.

Enough for today.

Insert information about Osho and the Osho Center.

Yoga and the Modern State of Man

If possible, read this material as consciously as possible, slowly, in peace and quiet!

What is Yoga?

The word "yoga" is derived from the Sanskrit root "yuj", meaning "connection", "unity", "unity". This translation is not clear to most people, especially since in our time the term "yoga" can be found in any organization, from sects to fitness clubs and dance schools. Therefore, the question immediately arises: what does the connection and unity have to do with it? How does this relate to physical exercises and what they offer us?

Our distant ancestors meant by this concept "unity" in everything that surrounds us, "connection" with everything that exists. Such "unity" is achieved only when a person has a deep mental silence, or in other words - there are no thoughts in the head. In Hindu teachings, this state is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, this the rescue and in Buddhism cessation of suffering. The terms are also used to describe this transformation. release and awakening. Due to the fact that our mind constantly dominates us, chattering uncontrollably, we are far from this state of oneness (yoga). Until we achieve silence in the head, until we learn to use the mind for its intended purpose and not allow it to use us, we will not even be able to understand what yoga really is, what unity and connection, enlightenment and liberation are. Therefore, it will be easier and more natural to define yoga as the silence of the mind. Most of the founders and followers of yoga define yoga exactly like this:

For example, the founder of the Indian school of yoga, Patanjali (II century BC), in the second aphorism of the first chapter of the Yoga Sutras, gave the following definition of yoga: "chitta vritti nirodhah" - which means "holding back the fluctuations of the mind" or in other words - the silence of the mind. All the ancient writings on the topic of yoga put mental silence as the fundamental principle, everywhere it is mentioned that a person is doomed to pain and suffering if his mind constantly rules over him. So, in one of the most ancient and authoritative scriptures Katha Upanishad, the following is said about yoga: “When the senses are calmed, when the mind is at rest, when the intellect does not waver, then, as the sages say, the highest stage is reached. This constant power over the senses and mind is called yoga. He who has achieved it is freed from delusions, "or:" The mind is the king of the senses. The one who has conquered his mind, feelings, passions, thoughts and reason is the king over people. He is worthy of a royal union with the Universal Spirit. He has gained the Inner Light.

Also, if you look into any serious spiritual practice, you can find that concentration of attention is the basis of any technique, because. it is simply impossible to achieve peace of mind without balancing your mind. For example, the essence of the teachings of Zen Buddhism is the exclusive presence in the present moment, where your mind is so calm that no problem, no form of suffering could survive in your life.

It is important to note that all the holy people (Gods) in whom we now believe and worship spoke about mental silence. For example, the last words of Jesus Christ were: "Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Jesus meant by these words that people are in the strongest ignorance - in the power of the mind, they are not who they really are. Another saying of Jesus, recorded in the Gospel of Thomas: "Woe to you because of the wheel that turns in your thoughts" - just think about these words! In general, Jesus only did what he pointed out to people that they are in the darkness of their thoughts and experiences, he constantly taught that happiness is only here and now: "... do not worry about tomorrow ( about future), for tomorrow will take care of his own" or "... no one who puts his hand on the plow and looks back ( into the past), is not reliable for the Kingdom of God.

Jesus taught us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live: "Look at those lilies! They don't care about tomorrow, they don't worry about days gone by. A flower lives in the present, only here and now!" If we return to the term "yogi" (connection, unity), then Jesus said about this: “Split a piece of wood: I am there. Pick up the stone and you will find me there.” In other words, Jesus shows that: "I am the tree, I am what is under the rock, or I am the rock, I am you, I am what surrounds us, I am everything." You feel the divine essence of every living being, every flower or stone, and you understand that everything that exists is holy. Or: "Love your neighbor as yourself" - how can you not love your neighbor, if you feel unity with him, you are one with him. This is exactly what yoga is - connection, unity with everything around. But again, this is impossible to understand on an intellectual level while we are in the dark - under the control of our mind. Even at the time of Jesus Christ, when the intellect was not so involved in everyday life, people could not understand his teachings. Even the authors of the Gospels did not fully understand the meaning of the teachings of Jesus, and therefore the first distortions crept into them even when they were being written.

Another enlightened person who noticed the dysfunction of our mind was Gautama Buddha (5th century BC). The Buddha taught that the root of all our suffering is in passionate desires and constant desires, and in order to be free from pain, we need to break the fetters of desires, i.e. calm your mind. According to the Buddha, the human mind in its normal state generates dukkha, which translates as suffering, dissatisfaction, or simply a state of sheer unhappiness. He sees her as salient feature human condition: "Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will meet dukkha there, and sooner or later it will manifest itself in any situation." In other words, you can’t get away from your mind: run even to a paradise island, where all your desires will be fulfilled for you, anyway, suffering will overtake you, because. sooner or later a person will be satisfied with this too (this understanding is especially given to wealthy people who do not know material problems and are very difficult to perceive by people with low incomes).

A similar meaning was put into their teachings by all the enlightened people who came to this earth. They said: "Look how you live, what suffering you create, what is going on in your thoughts?" Then they pointed to the possibility of awakening from the collective nightmare - "normal" human existence. However, due to the fact that a person has been in ignorance for thousands of years, most of the ancient religions were so distorted that their spiritual essence was completely lost behind them. In reality, there is and always has been only one spiritual teaching, although in the most different forms. This single teaching can be defined by the term "yoga" (connection, unity, mental silence), which is what all spiritual teachers have pointed out.

Hereafter, the meaning of the word "yoga" will be defined as the silence of the mind. Synonyms for this expression: mental silence, silence in the head, mental peace, absence of thoughts (voice) in the head, live in the present moment, stay in the present moment, be here and now, be aware.

What does the silence of the mind mean?

"The paramount duty of a yogi is to think in such a way as not to allow himself to think" (M. Eliade). While in the ordinary state of consciousness, the human mind tends to avoid the present moment - to run away from what is happening here and now. For most people, the voice in their head never stops for a second. He relentlessly comments, evaluates, compares, judges, speculates, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. And all these comments are far from always related to what is happening in this moment. This inner voice can resurrect the recent and very distant past with equal success, or play out situations that may arise in the future. Sometimes this sound track is complemented by visual images or "mental cinema". And quite often, options for a negative development of events and their possible consequences are drawn - what is called anxiety.

"Do you get dressed and at the same time think about the phone call you absolutely need to make within the hour and the route you will take to get to work? in another place? And when you come to work, do you think about your personal or family problems? And when you return home, do you leave part of your head at work? In short, do you realize how often you are a slave to your own thoughts, and not their leader? you wash the dishes or mow the lawn, your thoughts roam where they please, and you trail behind them. You are not their master! (Liz Burbo)

Your mind is a tool, an instrument. It is needed to perform a specific job. Having completed this work, the tool is postponed. However, in the current state of affairs, approximately 90 percent of human thoughts are not only repetitive and useless, but simply harmful due to their distorted and often negative nature. Watch your mind and you will see that it is so. As a result, most of your life energy is wasted. The inability to stop the thought flow in the head is a terrible disease of mankind. We do not realize this, because almost everyone suffers from this disease. That is why we perceive it as a normal phenomenon. This hum of thoughts that does not subside for a second prevents us from finding the way to the area of ​​​​inner peace and quiet, from feeling who we really are.

"Silence of the mind" means that there are no thoughts in your head, you are in the present moment, here and now. If you do something, for example, read, walk, talk or listen to music, then your stream of thoughts is directed only to this activity.So, if you are reading, then you are reading, being completely in the text, and not in parallel with reading, discussing past problems in your head or what you need to call a friend.If you are walking, then you are walking, enjoying the surrounding nature and people without chewing on thoughts of past or future events, or that you still have to get home for a TV series.If you went to bed, then you went to bed, and not to analyze the past day, make plans for tomorrow, or worry about insomnia and that again tomorrow you will not get enough sleep.The presence of mental silence, no matter what you are doing at a particular moment in time, is the silence of the mind.

Modern people are very much like clockwork toys that run in circles and make certain sounds. The toy stops when its winding mechanism spins, just like a person, having spent all his energy, stops before he has time to understand what has happened. Whether it was his life, or not his, or not life at all. Don't have time to talk about it?

Questions about the meaning of life and its main goals arise in almost everyone, but many people discard them without getting to the bottom. Those who have decided to still get answers to the questions posed are invited to use such a tool as the practice of silence. It is used in many systems of self-improvement of various teachings and religious movements, including yoga, a deep and powerful system of self-knowledge.

Ideally, silence is the absence of both external (speech) and internal dialogues and monologues (active activity of the mind). Inner silence becomes achievable only at the fifth step of yoga 1 - pratyahara (distraction of the senses from external objects), which is inaccessible to most people, especially on initial stage. In addition, the techniques for stopping the internal dialogue and thoughts are mainly transmitted personally from teacher to student and practiced under the supervision of this mentor, which limits the availability of such practices to a wide range of people. For these reasons, this article will discuss how to approach pratyahara and how to prepare for working with the mind. As you know: "the student is ready, the teacher is ready."

When practicing silence, you should not talk to anyone, even to yourself, without voicing thoughts aloud and without commenting on your actions (with prolonged silence, such desires may arise).

It is also useful to limit yourself in communication via the Internet, SMS and other communication means. The idea is that by remaining silent in speech but communicating in other ways, we receive the same energies, experience emotions, and experience various distractions of the mind. The result of such silence, of course, will tend to zero.

Try to stay away from modern technologies turning off all electronic equipment and gadgets. Exclusion from the usual daily activities of reading news on social networks, playing games on a computer or phone, watching films, even educational and educational ones, helps the mind stop concentrating on the outside world and turn attention inward. Know that the radiation of electronic devices knocks down the natural biorhythms of a person.

Determine the activity in which you will occupy your mind throughout the practice of silence. Make a plan in advance if you decide to practice silence for more than one day, trying to stick to it later. Even if you practice for several hours, then just as clearly decide what you will do.

If you cannot practice alone, explain to your family in advance what you will be doing, and during silence, try to minimize interaction with them through gestures. Avoid contact with pets. The practice of silence is a time to work on yourself and your mind, and any object that evokes emotions or distracts triggers automatic programs for responding to the situation formed by your mind. In addition, be prepared for the fact that your mind itself may begin to provoke your family to show attention to you, watch this.

Given that all people are very different, the practice of silence for one person can be very different from the practice for another. For someone, being silent for half an hour is already an austerity (there are people who talk so much that they continue to broadcast in their sleep), while someone spends almost the whole day in silence, without feeling any discomfort. Therefore, the description of the practice given in the article is an average option available to everyone. The degree of load should be adjusted depending on the individual characteristics of the individual, observing the rule of asceticism: discomfort is necessary, but it is not brought to the extreme limit of a person’s endurance. Great overstrain due to excessive efforts in the first experiences of the practitioner can lead to a blurring of awareness and a sense of the effect obtained from the practice of silence. At first, the changes are very subtle and barely perceptible, be careful and go the middle way.

Having decided to practice silence, determine your capabilities by the duration in time and the frequency of repetitions of this austerity. Practicing even once a week gives good results, provided it is regular. Mahatma Gandhi practiced daytime silence once a week.

Below are some options for practicing the mind for a few hours a day.

1. Analysis the past day (week). You can consider questions such as:

• what tasks and goals did you manage to achieve, and which did not, what was the reason for this?
• was there harmony and consistency between your actions and the inner world, what contradictions arose?
• what emotions did you experience in this or that situation, how much were you involved in emotional activity and lost your awareness?

This is a difficult task for beginners, because the attachments to emotions are too strong, the mess in the mind, it is impossible to understand what is good and what is bad, to separate our own desires from those acquired and imposed on us by society. All this makes practice very difficult.

Leave ten percent of the time at the end of the practice to be in a state of mind relaxation, try not to think about anything, contemplate the flow of thoughts in the mind without getting involved and not concentrating on anything in particular.

2. Reading educational or spiritual literature- the most accessible and effective method for beginners. If possible, try to analyze and comprehend what you read. If you practice for two hours, allocate the time so that one hour is spent reading, forty minutes are used for reflection, and the remaining twenty minutes are devoted to keeping the mind in silence. If literature is difficult to perceive and understand, then read for an hour and a half, for the last half hour your mind will be silent, contemplate the sluggish stream of thoughts. This will replace for you a state of complete silence of the mind, which is unattainable at the initial stage.

Why is it good to read? You teach your mind to work, directing it where you decide, uploading into it the information that you consider correct and necessary for your development, excluding the “information garbage” imposed by society, you change the firmware of your mind. This will become the foundation for your further development. Either you lay it yourself, or someone does it for you, there are no other options. Reading develops the imagination, which prepares you for the practice of visualization, promotes concentrated work of the mind. Try, after reading one scripture completely, repeatedly re-read it, each time comprehending what you read, the results of comprehension will be very different (in most cases). Thanks to this, you will be able to more successfully carry out the previous practice, by understanding your actions.

3. You can practice concentration on the breath. Watch the inhalation and exhalation, but do not control the breath. Then you can try to stretch the inhalations and exhalations to acceptable discomfort, keeping the concentration not only on the breath, but also controlling the length of the inhalation and exhalation. With these practices, the mind often slips away, you must try to follow it and return to concentration.

Before practice, it is advisable to perform physical exercises, hatha yoga asanas or articular gymnastics are best suited. This will relieve muscle tension and help you to be more relaxed in silence. Try to spend most of your time in sitting postures for meditation, they will help you achieve best results for a shorter period.

Silence all day long is the first step in a long practice and can have a very tangible effect.

Possible practice plan for the day:

• 5:00 am wake up, morning routine;
• 5:30 pranayama practice or simple concentration on the breath;
• 7:00 practice of hatha yoga asanas;
• 9:00 breakfast;
• 10:00 walk alone in the park or forest;
• 11:30 reading developmental or spiritual literature;
• 12:30 reading comprehension;
• 13:00 rest, but not sleep;
• 13:30 practice of hatha yoga asanas;
• 15:00 concentration on breathing;
• 16:00 lunch;
• 17:00 walk alone in the park or forest;
• 18:30 reading developmental or spiritual literature;
• 20:00 reading comprehension;
• 20:30 preparation for bed;
• 21:00 sleep.

Of course, this is an ideal option, which implies the possibility of complete privacy and the availability of free time for the whole day. The described plan can and should be changed, adjusting it for yourself. If you do not practice yoga and adhere to some other system of self-development, are a follower of some religious teaching or an atheist at all, draw up your own action plan based on the methods of self-development and ways to control mental activity that are in your arsenal. Your day should be completely occupied so that the mind cannot find a loophole and make you leave the practice earlier than you planned. A bored mind will start tossing you a bunch different ideas on the topic of what is interesting to do right now, and distract you from practice, starting with the offer to arrange an unplanned snack and going to global options, such as going to visit.

It is also very good to conduct cleansing practices on the days of silence. In yoga they are called shatkarmas. If you are just starting to master them, then on the day of mauna (silence) the determination to start them will be added.

It is advisable to practice the Day of Silence regularly, start with once a month and then try to practice one or more times a week. The effect of the practice is enhanced if you spend this day in nature, outside the city. Admiring the beauty of the nature around you, do not forget about the action plan drawn up. Use contemplation as another method of working with the mind.

The practice of silence can intensify austerity on the days of Uposatha, Ekadashi and other fasts. This will help to keep the concentration on the austerities performed and deeply understand their meaning.

Staying silent for more than one day can already be called the practice of seclusion or retreat. To plan for several days, you can use the one-day chart above. The effect of such practice is much higher, and the process itself is much more interesting and varied (you climb into the deeper layers of your consciousness). Those who decide to try the practice of long silence, but doubt their firmness, should try a group form of staying in mauna, for example, vipassana. The general energy of the practitioners will add strength and self-confidence to you, which will help you to hold out until the end of the penance. Such practices are conducted by experienced teachers, they give special techniques and can help you in many ways, explain or suggest something. Try at least once such a practice (long silence), it can give a serious impetus to the path of self-development.

What ultimately gives a person silence, how to apply it in life? Logical question. Without understanding the meaning of such austerity, the practice will become uninteresting and even impossible.

Oddly enough, silence enhances speech. Note that many developed and well-known (adequate) people are laconic. Powerful speech brings great benefits and saves a lot of energy. People will begin to understand you from the very first phrase, so it won’t take thirty minutes to explain or prove something to someone. The energy accumulated in the Vishuddha chakra due to silence will help you easily and clearly express your thoughts and convey their meaning to the person or group you are speaking to. This energy is produced through your mental work during the practice. Due to the increase in energy in the Vishuddha chakra and the overall energy, the ability to push through (change) reality for oneself may appear. Do not be afraid of such a phenomenon, but be sure to be careful. Always remember the law of karma and, when using these opportunities, check your actions for compliance with high moral and ethical standards (for yogis, these are the prescriptions of YAMA and NIYAMA), try to bring good to all living beings.

Silence will help reveal the nature of your desires. With regular practice, you will be able to distinguish between what has been imposed on you and what is not your true desire. Also, those desires that you forgot about, but they left some kind of imprint on your personality, will begin to surface on the surface of the mind. Gradually you will be able to work with them.

Outer silence sooner or later leads to inner silence. Mind control is one of the main tasks of yogis. At first the mind will be very restless and will do whatever it pleases, but over time you will either befriend him and convince him to do something that will be useful to both of you, or submit him to your will.

The regular practice of silence makes it possible to live more consciously and meaningfully, and this allows us to take control of our emotions. After silence, the effect of inner silence remains, you observe the people around you and the events taking place with a certain degree of detachment, without emotional involvement. It happens that after silence this effect is absent, on the contrary, you start chatting without interruption, fussing. Perhaps the energy accumulated from practice (tapas) was not transformed, and your passions (habits) absorbed it. Or you made excessive efforts to complete the practice and wasted energy on the process itself, without getting "energy surplus" in the end. Do not get attached to the fruits of the practice, both positive and negative, always remember your main (highest) goal in life, which everyone has their own. The fruits of practice are just one of the beads on your rosary of self-development. We do not practice for the sake of moving the links, they only help us reach the goal.

At the beginning of the path, the practice is separated from everyday life, the contrast of sensations in practice and in ordinary life is clearly felt. Realizing the difference between “how it can be” and “how it really is” motivates you to continue regular practice. Gradually, the boundaries begin to blur, and the practice naturally flows into your life, becoming an integral part of it. You stop just talking about nothing, gossip, ask stupid questions, start analyzing what you are going to say out loud. You will become able to hear the destructive noise of human civilization and deeply feel the harmony of the whisper sounds of nature, the cosmos, the entire Universe, when you yourself learn to be silent.

Remember, silence is sometimes the best answer to a question.

Dalai Lama

Probably, someone may disagree with what was said in the article, operating on the fact that there are too many tricks for the mind in the methods of silence practice and this will not lead to peace and quiet in the mind. To some extent he will be right, because modern man who does not yet know what his own mind is, most likely it will not be possible to tame or subdue it. It is necessary to make tireless efforts, to study the nature of one's own mind, and to practice regularly.

In defense of the practice of silence, I will quote one of the teachings of the Buddha:

The jug is filled gradually, drop by drop.

Be patient and start small.

Practice, try different methods and ways of self-knowledge, and noticing the result of some specific practices, try to go deeper and unleash their potential. I wish you all success on the path of self-improvement and development.

If you have the intention to experience the influence of the practice of silence on the inner world, we invite you to attend the seminar