VBT – Meditation 106.1
Other Is Conscious
This technique says, FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. This will be difficult because first you have to feel the person as a person, as a conscious being. Even that is difficult.
Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This is the same thing – but the other must first become a person for you. He must exist in his own right, not to be exploited, manipulated, utilized, not as a means but an end in himself. First, the other must become a person; the other must become a ‘thou’, as valuable as you are. Only then can this technique be applied. FEEL THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF EACH PERSON AS YOUR OWN CONSCIOUSNESS. First feel that the other is conscious, and then this can happen – you can feel that the other has the same consciousness that you have. Really, the ‘other’ disappears, only a consciousness flows between you and him. You become two poles of one consciousness flowing, of one current.
In deep love it happens that the two persons are not two. Something between the two has come into being and they have just become two poles. Something is flowing between the two. When this flow is there you will feel blissful. If love gives bliss, it gives bliss only because of this: that two persons, just for a single moment, lose their egos – the ‘other’ is lost and oneness comes into being just for a single moment. If it happens, it is ecstatic, it is blissful, you have entered paradise. Just a single moment, and it can be transforming.
This technique says that you can do this with every person. In love you can do it with one person, but in meditation you have to do it with every person. Whosoever comes near you, simply dissolve into him and feel that you are not two lives, but one life, flowing. This is just changing the gestalt.
Once you know how, once you have done it, it is very easy. In the beginning it seems impossible because we are so stuck in our own egos. It is difficult to lose it, difficult to become a flow. So it will be good if in the beginning you try with something that you are not very scared or afraid of.
You will be less afraid of a tree so it will be easier. Sitting near a tree, just feel the tree and feel that you have become one with it, that there is a flow within you, a communication, a dialogue, a melting. Sitting near a flowing river just feel the flow, feel that you and the river have become one.
Lying under the sky, just feel that you and the sky have become one. In the beginning it will be just imagination but by and by you will feel that you are touching reality through imagination.
And then try it with a person. This is difficult in the beginning because there is a fear. Because you have been reducing a person to things, you are afraid that if you allow someone to be so intimate he will also reduce you to a thing. That is the fear. So no one allows much intimacy: a gap is always to be kept and guarded. Too much closeness is dangerous because the other can convert you into a thing, he can try to possess you. That is the fear. You are trying to convert others into things, and others are trying to convert you – and no one wants to be a thing, no one wants to become a means, no one wants to be used. It is the most degrading phenomenon to be reduced to just a means to something, not valuable in yourself. But everyone is trying. Because of this there is a deep fear and it will be difficult to start this technique with people.
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