VBT – Meditation 64.5
Choose Anything
Fasting has been used only because of this, for this technique. Fasting in itself is of no use. If you are not doing this technique with hunger, fasting is foolish – just foolish, of no use. Mahavira used fasting with this technique, and Jainas have been simply using fasting without this technique.
Then it is foolish. You are just destructive, and it cannot be of any help. You can be hungry for months and identified with hunger, feeling that “I am hungry.” It is useless, harmful. There is no need to go on a fast. Every day you can feel it, but there are problems. That is why fasting may be helpful.
Ordinarily, we stuff ourselves with food before we feel hunger. In the modern world there is no need to feel hunger. You have a fixed time for your meals, and you take them. You never ask whether the body is feeling hungry or not; at a fixed hour you take your meals. Hunger is not felt. You may say, “No, when it is one o’clock I feel hungry.” That may be a false hunger; you feel it because it is one o’clock, your time. Someday you can play a trick. Tell your wife or your husband to change the clock.
It is twelve, and the clock will show that it is one. You will feel hunger. Or it is already one hour fast: it is two exactly, and the clock shows one; then you will feel hunger. You look at the clock, and you feel hunger. This is artificial, false, it is not real.
So fasting may be helpful. If you fast, then for two or three days you will feel a false hunger. Only after the third or fourth day will real hunger be felt; your body will demand, not the mind. When the mind demands, it is false. When the body demands, it is real. And when it is real and you become alert, you become totally different from your body. Hunger is a body phenomenon. Once you can feel that hunger is different from you and you are a witness to it, you have transcended the body.
But you can use anything, these are just examples. This technique can be used in many ways; you can devise your own way. But insist on one thing: if you are trying with hunger, then go on at least for three months with hunger. Then only will you be disidentified with your body someday. Don’t change the device every day because a deepening is needed with any technique.
So choose anything for three months. Stick to it, apply the technique, go on working with it, and always remember to be aware in the beginning. In the middle it will be very difficult, because once the identity is felt that YOU are hungry, you cannot change it. You can get changed mentally. You can say, “No, I am not – hunger, I am a witness.” That is false. This is the mind talking, this is not a feeling experience. Just try to be aware in the beginning, and, remember, you are not to say that “I am not – hunger.” This is how the mind can deceive. You can say, “The hunger is there, but I am not hunger. I am not a body, I am BRAHMAN.” You are not to say anything. Whatsoever you say will be false because you are false.
This chanting that “I am not the body” will not help. You go on saying “I am not the body” because you know that you are body. If you really know that you are not the body, what is the use of saying “I am not the body”? There is no use, it will look stupid. Be aware, and then the feeling that “I am not the body” will be there. This will not be a thought, this will be a feeling. This will not be felt in the head, this will be felt all over your being. You will feel the distance – that the body is far away, that “I am absolutely different.” And there is not even a possibility of mixing both. You cannot. The body is the body; it is matter, and you are consciousness. They can live together, but they never mix. They cannot become mixed.
Tags: Choose Anything
