VBT – Week’s Meditation 41

VBT – Week’s Meditation 41

Take Charge

Take charge from the robot – with any ordinary thing. When eating, eat consciously. Do not do it mechanically, as you have done every day. When smoking, smoke consciously. Do not allow your hand to move to the packet unconsciously, do not bring the cigarette out unconsciously. Be conscious, alert – and there is a difference.

I can raise my hand mechanically, just without any awareness; I can raise my hand with full awareness flowing in my hand. Try it! You will feel the difference. When you are aware, your hand will be raised very slowly, very silently, and you will feel that the hand is filled with awareness.

And when the hand is filled with the awareness, your mind will be thoughtless, because your whole awareness will have moved to the hand. Now no energy is left to think.

When you raise your hand automatically, mechanically, you go on thinking and your hand goes on moving. Who is moving that hand? Your robot. Move it yourself! Do it in the day at any time, any moment, while doing anything. Take charge from the robot. Soon you will be able to have a mastery over the robot. But do not try it with difficult situations – that is suicidal. We always try with difficult situations, but because of the difficulty you never win. Start with simple situations, where even if you are not so efficient no harm is going to result.

We always try with difficult situations. For example, one man thinks, “I am not going to be angry.”

Anger is a very difficult situation and the robot will not leave it to you. And it is better that the robot should do it because he knows more than you. You decide about sex – not to do something or to do something – but you cannot follow it through. The robot will take over. The situation is very complex, and more efficient handling is needed than you can give it right now.

Unless you become so perfectly aware that you can tackle any complex situation without the help of the robot, the robot will not allow you to do it. And this is a very necessary defense mechanism. If it were otherwise, you would make a great mess of your life – if you were to go on taking things away from the robot in difficult situations.

Try! Start with simple things such as walking. Try with this; there is no harm. You can say to the robot that “There is not going to be any harm. I am just walking, taking a walk, and I am not going anywhere – just walking. So there is no need of you; I can be non-efficient.”

And then be aware and walk slowly. Be filled with awareness throughout your whole body. When one foot moves, move with it. When one foot leaves the ground, leave the ground with it. When the other foot touches the ground, touch the ground with it. Be perfectly aware. Do not do anything else with the mind; just turn the whole mind into awareness.

And with that awareness you will not be just a mechanical thing. For the first time you become a person – now you are not one. And a person has a face and a mechanical thing has many masks – no face.

If you are a person – alive, alert, aware – you can have an authentic existence. If you are just a mechanical device, you cannot have any authentic existence. Each moment will change you; each situation will change you. You will be just a floating thing with no inner core, with no inner being.

Awareness gives you the inner presence. Without it you feel that you are, but you are not.