Meditation Lecture Mexico City, October 2001

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This evening I would like to talk a little bit about meditation, my own experience of it and how I look at it. And then over the next two days though there will be time for questions most of the time, we will be doing it, WeÕll be experiencing it. And that is the only way to do it: you canÕt really talk about it, you must experience it. You must become it. However, it will be good for you to understand the basics of it. You may have noticed I have placed a video camera over there, but we are not going to publish this video, it is for my private use. Just in the unlikely event that I may say something intelligent that I can use later on for a newsletter or a book. YouÕre not going to be movie stars yet, donÕt worry!

Okay, the first image of meditation that probably most of us have, is of somebody sitting very peacefully in a cave in the Himalayas, with long hair, orange clothes and heÕs sitting there like a Buddha in the lotus posture, with his legs crossed or his legs behind his ears. Or another picture would be of twenty thirty or fifty or a hundred monks sitting together in a Japanese Zen temple. Again with their legs crossed in the lotus position or sitting Japanese style on their knees. And in Japan they would be sitting with their eyes half open, totally removed from the world, its business and its many challenges.

But who can do that. Has anyone here done that? Spent a few years at an Ashram or in a temple? It doe s not fit with most people. I donÕt know if it was different in the old days, but nowadays our lives are so complicated and complex that you canÕt just take off for the Himalayas and sit there. The problem is, that even if you went away and spent a year or so sitting silently doing nothing, when you come back your still the same person. Because you bring yourself to the mountains and then you bring yourself back to the valley again too. I have quite a few friends who spent long periods of time meditating, and then they came back with the same anger, the same jealousy, and the same misery. All the same problems came back into their lives almost exactly the same day they came back. So how can we deal with this situation? What can we do, if escaping doesnÕt work? What will work? The only thing that works is facing reality the way it is. And your reality is the life you are living with all the situations that you find yourself in. In your family in your job and in all the difficulties that you may be encountering. Running away from them wonÕt help. It will just postpone the solution.

What we need to do, what we need to learn is to bring a meditative space into our daily lives. Then and only then something can happen, something can change. And for that of course in many spiritual schools or disciplines, teachers will offer meditation classes or weekends just like this group of ours. When you are in a controlled environment like this, with twenty people who are all focused on the same thing, on themselves, on this question "Who am IÓ and "What am I doing hereÓ - in that controlled environment it is relatively easy to be quiet and silent and to be yourself. Because everybody else wants to do the same thing. And that is exactly the space that you encounter when you enter a beautiful church or a beautiful temple or a beautiful place where people come to practice meditation, to practice looking into themselves, to practice looking for themselves. So in this little circle of ours we will start to have a little taste of what a meditative attitude is. But that is only a very little drop of the ocean, and what you have to do afterwards is to bring what you have learned here into your day to day life and nourish it there, and help it to grow bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

So lets go back to the question of what meditation really is. It is not sitting somewhere all by yourself. It is not sitting somewhere in the mountains. It is not a technique either. Just by sitting with your legs crossed in a certain way, nothing much will happen, except that your knees will start to hurt after a little while!

And I am sure you have encountered this: the moment that you sit down trying to meditate suddenly your internal conflict and your internal dialog seem to become stronger and stronger and stronger. So you think that when meditating your mind becomes more active. But thatÕs actually not true. The truth is that when you sit down and you look into yourself and you listen to yourself, you start to become aware of all the thoughts and all the junk that is going through your head. And that is normal, absolutely normal. Even a monk, for example, who looks so removed from everything, so peaceful and quiet, if you could look into his head, you would be surprised at what is going on in there. The same thing that is going on in each and every one of us. I once spent three days in a meditation group at the Osho Ashram in India and there was such a beautiful man. I donÕt know if he was Japanese or Chinese, he was sitting in a perfect posture, just like a Buddha statue. With his shaven head and beautiful face, calm, and quiet. And the whole group was looking at him, thinking, "Oh I wish I could be like that one day, so calm and so peacefulÓ. After three days, he completely freaked out and started physically attacking people and it took five men to hold him down. He just couldnÕt take the silence. But it took three days to notice for the others to notice what was going on inside of him. So donÕt let yourself be deceived by a solemn look on someoneÕs face. Inside we are all the same; weÕre all busy, very, very busy, even though we look peaceful.

What do we do with all this busy- ness in our heads? Most people say that meditation means, not thinking, being quiet inside. But how do you do that? Because when you sit down, the mind is active, the mind moves: thoughts come and go. Like clouds in the sky, they come and go. And just like with the clouds in the sky there is nothing you can do about your thoughts. If you chase one away, the next one will come. It is an endless process.

Another dynamic of thinking is that each thought, hooks into another thought and into another thought and another thought. You may start out with seeing an apple- somewhere over there- and before you know it you are in the supermarket, in your head, shopping for next week. And before you can catch yourself you are thinking about some dish that your partner does not like, and so on and so on. So from this little innocent apple, we have created this big story inside of our heads. And the idea of meditation is not to let go of all the thoughts right away. You start by looking at them, by watching them just in the same way you are looking at a film on a screen before you.

When you begin watching a movie, initially you are not identified with any of the characters you just see them doing thing, having adventures. And then after a while, if the movie is well done, you get identified with one or several of the characters and then you want them to behave in a certain way, and you hope that this or that will happen to them. And the same thing happens in our heads. This is the thinking process that goes on all day long, just like that. And what we need to learn is a way how to look at our own thoughts and emotions in the same way you look at the characters in a movie that you have just started watching. When there is no identification yet.

And a lot of meditative practices suggest you do that by watching your breath. Looking at your breathing. Watching the breath coming in and going out. And the mysterious thing is that it is very easy to be aware of everything else that is going on at the same time. For example while you are watching your breath, it is very easy to become aware of all the sounds that surround you, all the smells that are around you, the feelings that are around and inside of you. All the sensory impressions are very easy to watch as you are watching your breath. And once you have learned how to do that, to simply be attentive to everything that is going on, then you take the next step, which is becoming aware of your thoughts. And instead of following each thought on its trip from the apple to the supermarket and to dinner, you just look at the apple, you acknowledge it and you let it go. You say "helloÓ, there is a thought, I can see that, but I am not allowing myself to be carried away now, I stay looking at the sky instead of looking at the clouds that come and go.

And when you have learned how to do that, then it will be easy also to watch the feelings and emotions that you have experience. And once you know how to watch physical things, all the sensory impressions, your thoughts and your emotions, then something happens inside of you, some very subtle experience comes to you. You begin to understand that you and what you are looking at, are two different things. The biggest problem that we have is our identification with thoughts and our identification with our emotions. The identification with thoughts and concepts in a big way means war between countries, for example. And the identification with our emotions always becomes troublesome in our families, with our partners and children. Identification is trouble. In meditation you learn how to dis- identify from your thoughts and your thoughts include the concepts that you have about life and your emotions. And that dis- identification makes your life very easy. You become more and more simple and easy going. Because when you are detached, you donÕt hold on to things, concepts feelings, and you become more and more liquid. By holding on to our concepts and emotions, we create safety.

For example a philosophical concept or life view gives you safety. Of course this safety is neither permanent nor real. It is just imagination, but you can feel at home within the framework that you have created for yourself. For example if you are a communist, you feel safe within the framework of communism. If you a rte a new age person, you feel safe within this new age framework. Or if you are anything whatsoever, if you are Mexican or German or Christian or Buddhist, anything whatsoever, you feel safe within this framework. But that framework limits you. There is no philosophical system that is totally open. There are rules and ideas that you live by. They give you security and at the same time they bind you, they tie you down. And by becoming more and more meditative what will happen is that you will melt down those concepts that you have created and go beyond the limits that you have set for yourself. In this way you become more and more liquid. And you will see life becomes very easy, and a lot of fun. Because you donÕt always crash against the borders that you yourself have created with your system of thought. You all know that life does not care about the philosophies that we have created. For example if you are a very peaceful person, and then suddenly something happens like recently in America, those terrible terror attacks. Then you are shaken, because the terror attack, which is reality, does not fit with your idea of life. And then you are stuck and you are caught within your own system of thought. The more you learn how to look at reality as it is, the less you are bound by concepts, ideas and their effects on life. And to get there, you must create a distance between you and the object you are watching. That is what you learn in meditation, that is what you learn by sitting. Allowing reality to be exactly as it is, without wanting to add or delete anything.

So when we are sitting together, we donÕt want to get rid of thoughts, because thoughts can not be gotten rid of by force. But we will allow the thoughts to come and we allow the same thoughts to pass, to keep going. When thoughts come and go in front of your inner eye, and you have created this distance between you and your thoughts, you know one thing: you know that you and your thoughts are two separate things. Otherwise you could not see the thought. Do you understand this? The eye can not see itself. You can only see what is not you! So if you can watch your own thoughts, that means that you are not your thought. You and the thought are two different things. And this brings a new understanding into your life. And that is that you are consciousness and the thought is a manifestation of consciousness- one that comes and goes. But the I, the person looking at the thought remains, always, thought or no thought. Good thought or bad thought, it makes no difference whatsoever. The same happens with the impressions of the senses. When I look at you, who is that who is seeing you. When you look at the decoration in this room, who is it that is looking at the decorations? When you are listening to my voice, who is listening? Who is it that is hearing the sound of the air conditioner, the dog barking and the cars driving by? That is what never changes, what remains as a watchful awareness. And this watchful awareness is what we want to nurture, this space, that stays always the same, untouched, unmoved. But that notices everything else that is going on outside and inside. Do you know what I am talking about?

It is like the movie screen and somebody in the audience and your feelings and thoughts and all things that are going on around us, are things that are happening on the screen, and we are seeing them. We often say that we are experiencing something. That is not quite true, because we are seeing something that is separate from us. We are not really one with that experience, there is always some kind of distance and this is exactly what a meditative space is like. When you learn to have a distance between you and the thing that is being observed. And the funny thing is that the moment you have created this distance, the border or the difference between you and the thing that you are watching, disappears. This is an antagonism: You need to make a distance, you need to disconnect, and the moment you disconnect, boooom, everything opens up and you become one with the thing you are watching. It is very strange. And that is what we want to practice and so nourish.

In the beginning you will notice that your mind is very, very active. And that can be shocking. You think "Oh my god, this is madness that is going on inside of my headÓ. Because it is not quite thinking: thinking is something that we should be doing consciously. LetÕs say I think about a certain subject. It is like taking a torch and going into all the corners of one room, to see what is there. That would be thinking. If I really look at one subject from all sides: from the front, from behind, make sure that I understand it and that I can do something about it. But what we call thinking, usually is simply like a monkey jumping from one branch to another, ad infinitum. It is not conscious at all, it is accidental, it happens all by itself.

 

Do you have any questions?

Question: When in meditation do we have to learn to separate ourselves from our thoughts and emotions and then when we are able to do that, we become one with what we are watching?

Arjava: Yes, you see what happens is that first of all you create that distance and then, you donÕt live by your concepts anymore, but you learn to live more and more in harmony with what is going on. When it rains, you donÕt try to get rid of the rain in your head. You just say "ok, it is raining, greatÓ and you take your umbrella. That is why I say, eventually you become one with everything, because you donÕt try to go against the natural flow of things. And then everything is one; even the so- called negative emotions and negative states. Misery, suffering and illness: anything is fine.

But first of all you have to create a distance. And when I talk of distance I do not mean that you should be cold. You should start by witnessing what is going on inside of you. So when you have a thought, a little voice inside your head say," Ah, there is a thoughtÓ. And instead of following that thought, you remain in this moment. And you live in each moment, that is the only reality for you. If you are making tea, and while you are boiling the water you are thinking of something entirely different, you are missing your life. So you catch the thought when it arises: in your mind you are going to the bank, and you are doing all sorts of things, you go "oops, actually I am making tea right nowÓ and you are back in the moment. When you need to think about something, of course it is good to think. You sit down and you consciously look at the thing from all angles. When you want to start a new business you need to think about it, there is no other way. Thoughts are not bad, but they have their time, they have an appropriate time. And sometimes, when they are not appropriate, keep them aside and you will enjoy life much more. Thank you.

 

Question: You say that we have to live each moment of life consciously right?

Arjava: Yes, but it is not that we have to! "Have toÓ sounds terrible.

Question: Shall we then accept what is happening in each moment?

Arjava: Yes, and also to accept that the mind comes in and drifts off into past or future. So you donÕt give yourself a hard time when you catch yourself and you donÕt say "Oh no, I am dreaming again, when is it ever going to stop.Ó You just sayÓ Okay, I drifted off and now I am backÓ. You donÕt have to feel guilty about it. It is tricky, because many esoteric schools say that you shouldnÕt think. And it is impossible not to think by force. This is something that may happen for most of us only after a long period of meditative practice. At first one thought comes after another and the more you practice the more gaps appear between thoughts. And there may be a time when very few thoughts come and you are in peace. But this peace can not be forced.

Question: When we start meditating and we become sleepy and we go to sleep and then the meditation is over?

Arjava: Okay, then you sleep. I know what you are saying from my own experience: there are two different things. One is that we often meditate in the evening when the work is done and we are tired. And the most natural thing to do is to go to sleep. So, see if you can arrange to meditate at a time when you are crisp and awake, maybe in the morning or in the middle of the day. The second thing is that you can get into meditative spaces that are very similar to sleep. You may not be able to differentiate the two. You may think that you went to sleep but it is something else that happened to you. Those spaces often happen in a similar way. When you are sitting silently it may happen that your body is shaken by a jerk. That means that youÕre falling into a different level of consciousness, which is not necessarily sleep. And there is yet another thing. When you are meditating, and the meditation is hard for your ego, you may fall asleep in order to avoid the discomfort. That may be the only way to escape. If that happens, you just enjoy sleeping... In a hypnosis dream journey for example, when you get to a point where something inside you is afraid that you may encounter something you really donÕt want to see, you go to sleep. You go to sleep always at the same time, even when you take the same dream journey the next day!

Any other questions? Or would you like to share your experience?

Question: I was taught that when a thought arises, to accept it and not reject it, without judging it. And do it the same way with my emotions too.

Arjava: Yes, there is no other way. There is a story about a Muslim saint, Mullah Nasruddin. He had a beautiful apple tree in his garden. And all the children in the neighborhood loved his apples. Every time that the kids came to steal his apples he would come running with a stick and chase them away, screaming. One of his neighbors came to him and said: "Mullah, you are such a peace loving man, how come you chase those poor kids away like thatÓ? The Mullah repliedÓ Kids are like thoughts. When you chase them away, theyÕll be back! Ó

And that is exactly the experience of the meditator. The more you try to chase your thoughts away, the stronger they will come back. So as you say, the only possible way to deal with thoughts is to allow them. To acknowledge them and then you can let them go. There are a few issues that go against a meditative state of mind. One is attachment to anything mostly to your concepts, and the other one is judgement. When you look at something or someone with judgement you are stuck. You are not looking at reality the way it is, but you are looking at it through a certain filter. And when you do that, you get hooked and you can not get out. By learning to create this distance between you and your thoughts, between you and your emotions you will notice that you will become less and less judgmental. And you learn how to take reality and other people and even your self the way you are. You take things the way they are and you take others the way they are. The moment you try to change something or someone you are in trouble. That is the rule, always.

For example, if I want to change you, Luisa, I will be unhappy, our relationship will be one of unhappiness, you will feel my aggression and my arrogance, which says " I know how you should beÓ and "You shouldnÕt be like you areÓ. The whole thing becomes a conflict and there is no room for joy or harmony.

If I take a situation that I want to change, I create nothing but misery. Lets say there is a conflict, an ethnic conflict going on somewhere and I say, " I donÕt want thatÓ. Many of you are Reiki practitioners: What is a very common thing in Reiki is that people will send energy to a crisis area. It doesnÕt make any difference, because what you are actually saying when you want to change something is ÓI know better I know what should be going onÓ. But who are we to say that we know better than life itself, which is huge?

We have to nurture an attitude of acknowledging what is, whatever it is: good, bad, beautiful and ugly, everything. Now that may sound a little fatalistic to some of you, but it really isnÕt. Because I am not saying you shouldnÕt do anything. We are doing things all the time. Working with people with ethnic conflicts and doing all sorts of things. But you can do it only when you are not attached to an outcome, and when you are not attached to any goal. When you have no goal and take things the way they are. If you can mange to do that in your daily life, you are free. Even within your boundaries. Even within your little freedom, you are free. Of course there are borders to what we can do, that much is certain. I donÕt subscribe to the view that there are no limits. There are certain limits, but within those limits we are free to move. To make this point a little more clear I would like to begin with a ten-minute silent meditation. You can sit any way you like. It helps to keep your back as erect as possible without straining. And it helps to be comfortable in your body. So whatever makes you comfortable, you do that. You may want to lean against the wall with your back. You can sit on a chair or on the floor. For about ten minutes, we will sit silently, just listening to the sounds that surround us, whatever they may be. We do nothing else. As we are sitting, put all your attention to listening to the sounds that surround you. Listening to the thoughts that are going around in your head, the dogs barking out there. Keep listening without attachment and without allowing the sounds to carry us away from this moment into a dream world. We simply hear everything. Your own breath, the hum of the air conditioner, your own thoughts, everything. And there is no need to edit anything. Nothing is good, nothing is bad, and everything is simply the way it is. And we allow all the sounds to become part of our meditation.

After the meditation

To behave like that, to have an attitude like that with everything we encounter. Even though the dog is barking when you are trying hard to meditate. You donÕt try to shut the dog up, and you donÕt put anything in your ears, but you just enjoy the dog barking, and you include the dog and its barking into your meditation. Because your meditation really is everything that is happening inside and outside of you at the time you are meditating.

So your meditation includes your own thoughts, your own feelings, all the disturbances from the outside. And when you include all of that, your meditation becomes easy. Because you donÕt go against the natural flow of life which is offering you dog barks and air conditioning sounds at this moment. Meditation is not a technique, but it is an inner attitude that we learn to nourish. And to learn that we could either sit silently as we just did, or we can use different meditation techniques. The techniques that we will practice over the weekend are devised by our teacher, Osho. And he devised many techniques that are meant to shake you up. So we will be doing a lot of shaking in the next couple of days. So first you shake up everything inside you, and then you watch the mud settle within you. Just like when you shake up a glass filled with water and mud, you just look at how it settles again. The mud sinks down to the bottom and the clear water, the clear mind remains on top.

There are two very different ways of looking at our internal reality. The western way looks at the self with a therapeutic eye. You look at your self and think, Ó I am not perfect. I have to be perfect, I have to work upon myself, and I have to do all sorts of therapies to be a better human. And one day, IÕll be perfect, but not now! So one day... and this idea hinders you from enjoying this moment, because your focus is always somewhere else- when I am perfect- I will be enjoying myself, and it will be good for the other people to be around me.

But just like the mud on the bottom of this glass, if you dive into it, to the bottom you will keep bringing up more and more junk. It never stops. And it can never stop. One reason for that is, that mind, thought, misery all the concepts that float around in our heads, are not private, are not individual. You can dig all you want and bring out more and more stuff, and you never come to clarity. It never stops Instead of digging up more and more stuff, the other option is to let the muck settle on the bottom, to let it be there and to enjoy the clear light on top. That does not mean that you are pushing more of the mucky stuff down into the mud and lock it up, but you simply allow these mucky things to be in the bottom and the light things to be on top. This is the concept of heaven and hell inside of us. And at times a storm comes, somebody knocks the glass a little bit, and it gets all shaken up, more mud comes up. Then you allow it to come up and you acknowledge it saying, " hello, I am angry nowÓ In this acknowledgement, a lot of the time the anger will disappear because you are not attached to it. You donÕt make a bond with the anger. You donÕt consider yourself one with the anger. You have created a distance between you and the emotion, and then you are free. Then you can even enjoy your anger- without feeling guilty about it.

This is another concept that is very important: guilt. What does guilt mean? It means that I donÕt enjoy myself the way I am for some reason. Maybe someone in my past has told me that I should not be like this, should not talk like this, should not feel or behave like this. Maybe it is not acceptable in your cultural to behave, feel and be in a certain way. Here in Mexico for example people dance the moment they hear music. In Germany or in Japan that would be thought of as very eccentric! And in order not to go against the group consciousness and in order to be able to stay at peace with my group, I feel guilty. And that always brings you trouble. The moment you donÕt like yourself in some way or another, you can not be happy. It is impossible. We were just talking about this in the morning. When you want to do or say something that is important to you and you hold it back, it will take revenge later on. For example, you want to do something with me, you want to have a cup of coffee with me, but you donÕt ask me. Then I suddenly die and for the rest of your life, you will think, "Damn, I missed it. Why didnÕt I ask him?Ó I know these situations because they happened to me a lot when I was younger. I wanted to do something, but did not because I was shy, and then I regretted it for years.

So the easiest way to deal with life is to take care of things the moment they occur. Of course it has to be within the framework that we as civilized humans are accustomed to deal with one another. Obviously we can not just go into the bank and sayÓ Give me all your money. I want it now. I must have that Mercedes and I deserve it because I love myself so much! That is not going to work like that. We do have to stick to the way that we as human beings deal with one another. In some way we have to stick with the cultural rules that are prevalent in the country we are in. But at the same time to repress your own feelings and to go against your nature will always create trouble for you later. And the more you go against your own nature, the more you repress your true self, the more life will take revenge. Because you are life, and going against yourself is going against life itself. I donÕt mean this in a moralistic way. What I call revenge or suffering is happening in right now. When I donÕt do what I really want to do, I feel terrible now. And this is my punishment, it happens instantly. And the more I do it the bigger it gets. You can see that very clearly in terrible relationships. I am sure that you all have experienced this. In the beginning you can still get out, but the longer you go against your own feeling, the harder it gets. And then one day it is too late... you have locked yourself in with your own guilt and your own indecisiveness and your own... silence.... The great moment.... Wow, that was a truly meditative moment. Emptiness...

By not loving yourself the way you are you put yourself into a prison of absence of love. And thatÕs why I said, to work on an attitude like in the meditation we did when we allowed all the sounds, but allowing everything in our lives, in our selves to be how it is. Without judgement, without guilt and without any kind of restriction, as long as it is within the rules that run our society. Becoming more and more free does not make you go against the existing laws, but it means that you become more and more responsible towards yourself, towards others and towards nature. You take your life and your surroundings as the greatest treasure there is. Ultimate freedom means ultimate responsibility

Question: I have been meditating for many several in many different ways. The most pleasant way for me has been when I have not forced myself to meditate. And now that I have arrived, I come straight from work, and I am quite tired. When I sat to meditate it was very comfortable to hear the dog and suddenly I observed that I was about to go to sleep. And one part of me said, ÓNo, you can not go to sleep now. And another part of me said there is no problem and I went to sleep. I woke up I heard the dog, and I went back to sleep. And then I came back to the now and here without guilt, that was the best part of it. No guilt.

Arjava: And that is exactly how it should be. You allow everything. Even when that what you tried to accomplish, does not happen. Because this is not what is actually happening to you right now. Your body is tired, and what it needs the most is rest. And the best thing that can happen to the body then is resting. Meditation is a funny thing. As I said earlier, meditation is not a technique, it is an attitude. Very often it happens when you donÕt expect it. And it doesnÕt happen when you push it, when you try hard. When you sayÓ Now I am going to meditate seriously, with all my effort.

I have done that for years. Sometimes I sat for very long periods at a time and I noticed that the moment I stopped it happened all by itself. The meditation in a controlled environment is only there for us so we can remember the space of meditativeness later on in our day to day life. Otherwise it doesnÕt make sense. We live in this world.

If you disappear for one hour a day in a quiet room and you enjoy yourself and the peace that surrounds you, and then you suffer for the remaining 23 hours with the rest of your family, you have missed the point. However it is a good start. With time, the enjoyment that you find in the meditative practice will spread into your daily life, where it belongs. When the meditative space has invaded your life, then it spreads to the people that are around you. And then something can happen, also on a larger scale. Then without wanting to change anything or anyone, things and people change. This happens without effort, without desire, without a goal. When you are in this natural state, the people that are around you also get attuned to this natural space. That is the reason why something happens to us in the presence of a spiritual teacher. Those of you who have spent time with a teacher know what it is like. In his or her presence you fall into the same presence, the same openness. And there you experience something that you can later on remember at the office, or at the supermarket. It is infectious; it is a very nice disease. The ultimate disease!

You may encounter some difficulties on the path of meditation. One I have experienced as a young meditator is arrogance. Meditation is the ultimate luxury. When you have everything and nothing is good enough and you think that you are much better than everyone else, there is only one thing left to do. You begin to meditate. And you are in the trap. The cheese looks so good, and the door is wide open... I spent a few years like that, being convinced of my own greatness. I was in India and thought the rest of the world was simply stupid, and I was the only intelligent life form on Earth. But luckily that stopped. I can see the same thing happening with many spiritual seekers; they fly a little to high after take off. It is very good to remember that the witnessing self, the one who is watching everything, is the same in everyone. That is what brings us together as a group and there is no difference whatsoever between anybody. Differences are only felt in the individual, on the surface. The moment you fall in harmony with existence, the small individual ego temporarily disappears and there is no difference between greatness and smallness. There is no difference between men and women and it does not matter how long you have been searching. The beginner is just like the professional meditator! That was very obvious when we sat together: there comes a point when the individual stops to exist, and there is just silence. That silence can not be divided into your silence and my silence, it is one pool. Did you feel that? We all become part of the ocean of consciousness and there we are all the same. If we can feel that space with our eyes open, while we are working we have accomplished what we have tried to do. So you bring this from your meditative practice into the market place-into where you are.

.And as I said earlier there are very many techniques. Not all techniques fit everyone that is why there are so many. It is up to you to find one that fits with you. The way to find a suitable technique is first of all attraction. When you feel attracted to it, it could be a sign that it will fit with you. But it could be repulsion too. When we experiment with a technique and you really hate it, it could be a sign that it is good for you too! You have to experiment with both. The ones that click with you and the ones that make you click. However if the ones that you donÕt enjoy make you feel restless and in any other way uncomfortable after three days of practice, it may be better to discontinue it. I remember I used to do some Tantric Hindu Meditations years ago. Tantra has very little to do with sex, it is a science of the inner alchemy, the secret art to transform the base energy into the clear light. I tried to coerce my former partner into doing the same, and she hated it. The technique has to fit with your inner being.

You have to be respectful to yourself. When you are attracted to a technique practice it at least for three days. If it becomes apparent that this is not the right one for you, discontinue. If it clicks with you, keep going for at least three months. With meditation the effects are not necessarily immediate. What is immediate is like fireworks. Once I practiced a certain meditation technique, and after a couple of days, I thought my head was going to explode. I thought," this is great, so spectacular!Ó After four or five days, the whole things stopped. I felt nothing, but I kept going. Several months later I realized that something beautiful had opened up for me. But for a few month I did not feel much. Only in the beginning it was very intense when I broke through a barrier. I am an extremist who enjoys these theatrical events. They may disappear and you may not feel anything for a while. DonÕt let that discourage you and keep practicing. Most likely you are on the right track.

A lot of the Osho meditations are very active. In some of them you move your body and breath rapidly before you sit quietly. He said that he created them for modern man, who is so busy that he can not simply sit silently. Of course that is not true for everyone. Some of us can naturally sit and be quiet. That is not an achievement in itself, just a difference. Some people sit easily others donÕt. If it is difficult for you, it is good to move, to exhaust your body first, before you sit. Even though I like to sit quietly, I do that too, at home. I go into the garden and dig a hole, or I shovel snow in the winter, work up a sweat and then go and sit in my meditation room. You will see that it is much easier to sit quietly after you have moved your body. You become aware of one side of the spectrum when you have just experienced the other. You feel the opposite, the polarity. It is easier to let your self fall into a quiet space when your body is a little exhausted. Remember that this meditative space is always here. We are usually absent!

We will also be showing you some techniques that you can use while you are doing something else. Please understand that meditation is not something that is to be locked into your meditation room. It belongs into every moment of your life. It belongs in the aware moments and into the unaware moments. One thing that may happen to you the more you enter into the world of meditation, is that more unwanted material from the subconscious bubbles up. You expected to become exceedingly peaceful, but you may find yourself more and more angry and irritated instead! I noticed that in myself. If you should experience that, stay with it, donÕt try to get rid of the unwanted, take it easy and give yourself the time you need to let it go. If you are have a partner or a family, let them know that this is just a temporary thing. You can wear a sign that saysÓ Anger in the processÓ. Now you need to learn not to dump your anger on others. Your anger is foremost your responsibility, even if it has its roots in something that is beyond you. There is a very obvious difference between expressing your emotions and dumping them on others and that is something we have to learn. How to express ourselves without dumping it on someone. If I am angry, the easiest way of letting my partner know, without yelling at her, is telling her "I am in a rotten mood.Ó That is my wife and myself do- not always- but most of the time. In this way we avoid conflict before it happens. Conflict, whether in the family, between partner or even countries does not arise out of the sudden. Conflict builds up over time.

Question: sometimes we project it over each other, and we say angrilyÓAre you madÓ?

Arjava: If you are lucky enough to have an understanding partner this can be a great exercise; to say to him or to her without blaming them what is going on with you. Your moods are your moods after all. The easiest way to do it is by simply saying it. In the beginning you may say what you feel a little too strongly, that is normal. We often overreact when we have found a new way of doing things. And with time you will be able to do it gently and with love. We noticed that very often a bad mood will disappear simply by acknowledging it quietly and its strength dissipates in your acknowledgement. If the mood or emotion is so strong that you can not deal with it, and you donÕt know what to do with it, you can go out into the desert and scream.... This is something that happens to children. It takes practice to harness the emotions that well up inside of us with seemingly uncontrollable force.

For many years I taught English in Japan and my students would come to class, mad with anger. They did not know what to do with it; they could not let it out, but they could not contain it either. So we took some thick pillows and encouraged the kids to beat the hell of those pillows to their heartÕs content, screaming and kicking. I would hold the pillow and they would beat and kick it. One time I remember one of the girls said after one pillow session: Oh, it is so good to learn English! From what we have said earlier you can gather that spiritual growth, and meditation as one part of that, is a strange phenomenon. Instead of becoming bigger and bigger, you actually become smaller as time passes. You donÕt grow you shrink! You become smaller and smaller the more you let go of your ideas, concepts and philosophies. You let go of how things should be andyou become one with this moment, one with what is happening right now...