VBT – Week’s Meditation 94
Manifestation Of Reality
You cannot say to Tantra, “How can a body posture, a particular body posture, be helpful to enter reality?” Tantra says it can be helpful. A certain body posture is not a mere body posture, because the body is the manifestation of reality. So when you give your body a certain posture, you are giving reality a certain form. And there are postures with which you can easily enter into yourself. A certain food can be helpful. A certain practice of breathing can be helpful. These are material things – food, breathing, body. But you can enter through them.
And similar is the case with mind: just working with mind also you can enter. Many times the question may have arisen in your mind about Shiva telling Parvati certain techniques which look just imaginary. The question is bound to arise – how can imagination be helpful?
Even imagination is a mode of reality because the mind is a manifestation of reality. And when you change the imagination in the mind, you are changing the mode of reality. For Tantra nothing is unreal. Even a dream has its own reality – and it affects you. So a dream is not a mere dream. A dream is as real as anything else because it affects you, it changes you. You are different because you dreamed it; you will never be the same because a certain dream has happened. So if you dream that you are a thief, in the morning you will say that it makes no difference, it was just a dream. But for Tantra it is not so. A dream of stealing, of theft, has changed you. Your reality is different in the morning; you cannot be the same. Whether you recognize it or not, it has affected you. It will affect your behavior, your future – it has become a seed.
Even a dream is not irrelevant. And you think that dreams are just dreams. That is not so, because you cannot create a dream consciously, you cannot choose a dream. It happens to you as anything else happens to you. Can you choose a dream? Can you think about a dream that you will dream tonight? Can you choose it? Can you – will it? You cannot – will it, because to will, a dream will need many changes in your reality. Only then will a dream come. A dream is just like a flower. A rose flower comes on a rose bush, and you cannot change the flower unless you change the whole process, from the seed onwards. You cannot just change the flower. A dream is flowering. If you can change the dream, you can change reality.
So, many times, many techniques will appear imaginary – but they are also real. And Tantra is trying to change your imagination. If the imagination can be changed, then the hidden reality behind it will automatically be different.
The techniques that we will discuss today start from your imagination, from your dreaming, from your mind. Three things have to be remembered. One: whatsoever happens to your mind is not superficial – it is happening because of you, it is happening because you happen to be in a certain situation. So two things can be done: either change the situation, then you will have to start from the body because the body is the situation; or if you are not starting with the situation, then change the happening. It will persist, it will not be easy to change it, but if you make an effort and you go on making the effort, if you are stubborn and are not defeated, then the very effort will change it.
One thing is certain: you may not achieve the goal that you were thinking of, but the fact that you make this effort will bring a change. You will be different: whether you succeed or fail, you will be different. The very effort will be counted.
Thirdly, don’t think that mind is just mind, and don’t think that dreaming is just dreaming. If you can direct your dreaming – and now there is a therapy in the West called ‘Directed Daydreaming’ – if you can direct your dreaming, you are directing yourself. And many things will become different.
In the West they now have another technique they call psychodrama. That too is one of the oldest Buddhist methods – to become a part of a drama, to act it so totally that you forget that you are simply acting. The acting becomes action, and you are not the actor, you become a real doer in it.
It changes you.
Tantra says that if you can change dreaming, imagination, if you can change your mind and the pattern of it, the reality behind it will be different. Because it is deeply rooted in reality, you can move through the mind. These techniques are just to change the way and the style in which your mind has been behaving up to now.
Tags: Manifestation Of Reality
