VBT – Meditation 55.1
Just To Safeguard
Sufis have used this technique, and before they give this technique to a seeker, they give another practice also just to safeguard. Whenever this technique is given in Sufi systems, before it another practice is given, and that is to imagine with closed eyes that you are falling into a deep well – dark, deep and bottomless. Just imagine falling into a deep well – falling and falling and falling, eternally falling.
There is no bottom, you cannot reach the bottom. Now this fall cannot stop anywhere. You can stop; you can open your eyes and say no more, but this fall in itself cannot stop. If you continue, the well is bottomless, and it gets more and more dark.
In Sufi systems, this well exercise – this bottomless, dark well exercise – is to be practiced first. It is good, helpful. If you have practiced it and you have realized the beauty of it, the silence, then the deeper you go into the well, the more silent you become. The world is left far away, and you feel that you have gone far away, far away, far away. Silence grows with darkness, and deep down there is no bottom. Fear comes to your mind, but you know that this is just imagination so you can continue.
Through this exercise, you become capable of this technique, and then, when you fall into the well between waking and sleeping, it is not imagination; it is a real fact. And it is bottomless, the abyss is bottomless. That is why Buddha has called this nothingness emptiness – SHUNYA. There is no end to it. Once you know it, you also have become endless. It is difficult to have this glimpse while awake. Then it is impossible, of course, while you are asleep because then the mechanism is functioning, and it is difficult to detach yourself from the mechanism. But there is a moment in the night and in the morning another moment – in twenty-four hours there are these two moments – when it is very easy, but one has to wait.
“AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED:” Then you know who you are, what is your real being, what is your authentic existence. We are false while we are awake, and you know it well. You are false while you are awake. You smile when tears would have been more real. Your tears are also not believable. They may be just a facade, ceremonial, a duty. Your smile is false, and those who study faces can say that your smile is just a painted smile. There are no roots within; the smile is just on your face, just on your lips. It is nowhere else in your being. There are no roots, there are no limbs. It is imposed. The smile is not coming from within to without; the smile has been forced from without.
Whatsoever you say and whatsoever you act is false, and it is not necessarily the case that you are doing this false business of life knowingly – not necessarily! You may be totally unaware – and you are! Otherwise it will be very difficult to carry such false nonsense continuously. It is automatic. This falseness continues while you are awake, and it continues even while you are asleep – in a different way, of course. Your dreams are symbolic, not real. It is surprising that even in your dreams you are not real, even in your dreams you are afraid, and you create symbols.
Tags: Just To Safeguard
