VBT – Meditation 67.5
Allow The Periphery
Tantra’s technique is not to make any effort to change the periphery. Allow the periphery to be as it is. And you cannot change it. It is the nature of the periphery to move and change. You cannot make it static. Nature is a flux. It is so; you cannot make it static. And don’t waste your time and opportunity of life trying to make it static. Just know it as a change. Be the witness of it, and you will come to feel the innermost center which is not a change.
The world is a change, your personality is a change, your body-mind is change, but you are not; you are not the change. What is the use of struggling with change? No need!
Tantra says please be reestablished in your center, be aware of the center which is unmoving, and allow the whole existence to move. It is not a disturbance at all. It becomes a disturbance only if you cling to it or if you try to make it unmoving. Then you are falling into absurdities, foolish efforts. They will not succeed; you will be a failure. Know well that life is a change, but somewhere within this change there is an unmoving center also. Just become aware of it. That very awareness is enough to liberate you. That very feeling that “I am unmoving” liberates. That is the truth. You know it, and you are different.
Don’t fight with shadows! And the whole life is a shadow because change is nothing but a shadow.
The unchanging is the real; the changing is the unreal. So don’t ask whether the peripheral change and movement has to be forced to cease in order to realize the center. There is no need, and you cannot force it. It cannot cease! The world goes on; only it will not go on in you. You can remain in the world, and there is no need for the world to be in you. The world is not the disturbance.
When you get involved in it, when you become the change, when you feel that you have become the change, then it creates problems.
Problems are created not by the changing periphery. They are created by the identification that “I am this change.” You have fallen ill; illness is not really the disturbance. When you feel that “I have fallen ill,” it is a disturbance. If you can be a witness to that illness, if you can feel that illness is happening somewhere on the periphery – that it is not happening to you, it is happening to someone else and you are just the witness – then death also can happen and you will be just a witness.
The moment you witness something you become separate from it, you are the witness, the thing becomes an object – the witnessed.
If you are walking on the road, and you are also witnessing that you are walking – not going along just like a robot, mechanical, everyday habit, the road is known, the legs know it, you can even walk with closed eyes. But walking with absolute alertness every step, every fall of a leaf, every ray of the sun, every bird flying in front of you, fully alert… slowly, slowly, you become aware that you are not the body that is walking, you are something inside which is witnessing.
Once you have witnessed your body, you have got the knack of the method. Then you start witnessing your thoughts – sitting silently, just watching the rush of thoughts, not interfering, not saying, “This is good. This is bad.” Not justifying, not appreciating, no judgment… non-judgmental witnessing, just like the mirror. Anybody passes by, the mirror reflects it; that’s all, it makes no comment.
Strangely enough, when you stop making comments on the thoughts, they begin to stop; your comments keep them alive. Once you are simply a mirrorlike witness, thoughts disappear, and you become aware of a deeper layer of emotions, moods, which are very subtle.
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