VBT – Meditation 20.1
Invisible Circle
IN A STILL VEHICLE… Do not ask where to get a bullock cart; do not deceive yourself, because the sutra says, OR IN A STILL VEHICLE, BY LETTING YOURSELF SWING IN SLOWING INVISIBLE CIRCLES. Just sitting here, swinging in a circle. First take a big circle, then go on slowing it… slowing, slowing, making it smaller and smaller and smaller, until your body is not visibly moving, but inside you feel a subtle movement.
Start with a bigger circle, with closed eyes. Otherwise, when the body will stop you will stop. With closed eyes make big circles; just sitting, swing in a circle. Go on swinging, making the circle smaller and smaller and smaller. Visibly you will stop; no one will be able to detect that you are still moving.
But inside you will feel a subtle movement. Now the body is not moving, only the mind. Go on making it slower and slower, and experience. That will become a centering. In a vehicle, in a moving vehicle, a non-resisting rhythmical movement will create a centering within you.
Gurdjieff created many dances for such techniques. He was working on this technique. All the dances he was using in his school were, really, swaying in circles. All the dances were in circles – just whirling but remaining aware inside, by and by making the circles smaller and smaller. A time comes when the body stops, but the mind inside goes on moving, moving, moving.
If you have been traveling in a train for twenty hours, after you have come home, after you have left the train, if you close your eyes you will feel that you are still traveling. Still you are traveling. The body has stopped, but the mind is still feeling the vehicle. So just do this technique.
Gurdjieff created phenomenal dances, very beautiful. In this century he worked miracles – not miracles like Satya Sai Baba. Those are not miracles; any street magician can do them. But Gurdjieff really created miracles. He prepared a group of a hundred people for meditative dancing, and he was showing that dance to an audience in New York for the first time. A hundred dancers were on the stage whirling. Those who were in the audience, even their minds began whirling. There were a hundred white-robed dancers just whirling.
When he indicated with his hand, they would whirl, and the moment he would say, “Stop,” there would be dead silence. That was a stop for the audience, but not for the dancers – because the body can stop immediately, but the mind then takes the movement inside; it goes on and on. It was beautiful even to look at, because a hundred people suddenly became dead statues. It created a sudden shock in the audience also, because a hundred movements – beautiful movements, rhythmical movements – suddenly stopped. You would be looking at them moving, whirling, dancing, and suddenly the dancers stopped. Then your thoughts would also stop.
Many in New York felt that it was a weird phenomenon: their thoughts stopped immediately. But for the dancers, the dance continued inside, and the inside whirling circles became smaller and smaller until they became centered.
They were slowing down their inner circling. And when Gurdjieff saw that now they were completely oblivious of their bodies, he allowed them to fall down.
If you are completely oblivious of your body, there is no resistance. A bone is broken because of resistance. If you are falling down, you resist: you go against the pull of gravity. That going against, that resistance, is the problem – not gravity. If you can fall down with gravity, if you can cooperate with it, then no possibility of being hurt will arise.
Tags: Invisible Circle
