Beauty To Grace

Neutral Observer

The first thing of discipline is a relaxed body and closed eyes, because if you have open eyes, then so many things are moving around, they can be a disturbance. It is perfectly right for the beginners to use a blindfold, so that you are completely inside, because it is your eyes, your senses that take you outside. Eyes take eighty percent of all your outgoing contact – eighty percent is through the eyes, so close the eyes.

For the beginners, it is good if they can use earplugs. Close the ears so no noise from the outside disturbs you. It is only for the beginners; all the precautions are for the beginners.

And then just watch your mind as if the mind is nothing but a traffic of thoughts or a film – a movie passing on the TV screen. You are just a neutral observer.

This is the discipline. And if this discipline is complete, watching comes very easily, and watching is meditation. Through watchfulness mind disappears, thoughts disappear. And that moment is the most blessed moment: when you are fully awake and there is not a single thought, just a silent sky of your inner being.

This is the moment when energy turns inwards; the turning-in is sudden, abrupt. And as the energy turns inwards, it brings immense delight, orgasmic delight. Suddenly your awareness becomes so rich because the energy is nourishment to your awareness. The energy coming back creates almost a flame of your being. You see all around pure light, silence – utter silence, and an immense centering.

You are now at your very center.

At the right moment, when you are exactly centered – the explosion. That explosion, we call enlightenment. This enlightenment brings you all the treasures of the inner world, the whole splendor. It is the only miracle in the world: to know oneself and to be oneself, and to know that one is deathless, one is beyond the body, beyond the mind; one is just pure consciousness.

So the discipline is just a support, the essential thing is witnessing, watching – that is meditation. But in the name of meditation, there are hundreds of so-called teachers who go on exploiting people. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became well known in the West, because the West was not aware that in the East, even the villagers were doing the so – called transcendental meditation. Everybody chanting, repeating the name of God – it is an enjoyable exercise. I am not against it; it is perfectly good, but don’t call it meditation and don’t call it transcendental. Those are wrong words for it.

If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition – that is witnessing. Learn from Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support – immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.