VBT – Meditation 39.5
A Circle Within You
If you repeat a particular sound, it creates a circle within you. It creates boredom; it creates sleep. That is why Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation is known in the West as a non-medical tranquilizer. It is because it is a simple repetition of a mantra. But if your mantra becomes just a repetition without an alert YOU inside, an alert YOU constantly listening to you, listening to the sound, it may help sleep, but it cannot help anything else. As far as it goes, it is good. If you are suffering from insomnia, transcendental meditation is good.
Otherwise, it helps – but not unless you use the mantra with an alert inner ear. Then you have to do two things: go on reducing the pitch of the mantra, reducing the sound, making it more slow and more subtle, and at the same time simultaneously go on becoming more alert, more alert. As the sound becomes subtle, become more alert; otherwise, you will miss the whole point.
So two things have to be done: sound has to be slowed down, and you have to become more alert.
The more sound becomes subtle, the more alert you are. To make you more alert the sound has to be made more subtle, and a point comes when sound enters soundlessness, or soundfulness, and you enter total awareness. When the sound enters soundlessness or soundfulness, by that time your alertness must have touched the peak. When the sound reaches the valley, when it goes to the down-most, deepest center in the valley, your alertness has gone to the very peak, to Everest. And there, sound dissolves into soundfulness or soundlessness, and you dissolve into total awareness.
This is the method: INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS SOUNDFULNESS, SO DO YOU. And wait for the moment when the sound has become so subtle, so atomic, that now, any moment, it will take a jump from the world of the laws, the world of the three, and it will enter the world of the one, the absolute. Wait! This is one of the most beautiful experiences possible to man – when sound dissolves. Then suddenly you cannot find where the sound has gone.
You were hearing it subtly, deep down: “Aum, Aum, Aum…” and then it is no more there. You have entered the world of the one. The world of the three is no more. This, tantra says, is soundfulness; Buddha says soundlessness.
This is a way – one of the most used, one of the most helpful. Mantra became so important because of this. Because sound is already there and your mind is so filled with it, you can use it as a jumping board. But there are difficulties, and the first difficulty is sleep. Whosoever uses a mantra must be aware of this difficulty. That is the hindrance – sleep. You are bound to fall into sleep because it is so repetitious, it is so harmonious, it is so boring – you will fall victim. And do not think that your sleep is your meditation. Sleep is not meditation.
Sleep is good in itself, but beware. If you are using the mantra for sleep, then it is okay. But if you are using the mantra for spiritual awakening, then beware of sleep. For those who use a mantra, sleep is the enemy – and it so easily happens. And it is so beautiful, because it is a different type of sleep: remember that too. When it comes from a mantra, this is not ordinary sleep. This is a different kind of sleep.
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