VBT – Meditation 106.5
Separateness Is False
From the very beginning the problem of human anguish has to be tackled: how does it arise?
Consciousness gives you a feeling that you are the center of your being, and consciousness makes you aware that others are ‘other’, that you are different from them. This difference is just because you are conscious. While you are asleep there is no difference – you are again merged with the universe. Hence so much bliss comes out of sleep. In the morning you feel refreshed, rejuvenated, again alive, fresh.
What is happening in deep sleep? You are losing your ego, you are losing yourself, you are falling into a unity with the universe. That falling back into unity makes you fresh and alive, and in the morning you feel blissful. All the anguish disappears; all conflict, all disturbance, disappears; all fear, all death disappears – because death is possible only if you are separate. If you are not separate, then death is impossible. Who is going to die if you are not separate? Who can suffer if you are not separate? So all Tantra, yoga and other methods of meditation are just to make you aware that separateness is false and in-separateness is real. And if you can become aware of that you will be totally different, because the center will have disappeared from you and it will take its right place in the universe. You will be just a wave on this vast ocean. You will not be separate so you will not be afraid. You will not feel insecure. You will not feel the anguish of approaching death and annihilation.
All that disappears with the ego.
Hindus have always believed that samadhi is conscious sleep. In sleep it happens automatically that you are no more. The existence is, and you are no more; but you are deeply unconscious so you don’t know what is happening. If this same phenomenon can happen consciously, you become enlightened. Buddha moves to the same source, to the same source that you move every night in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep. But Buddha moves to that source consciously, alert, aware. He knows where he is moving to, he knows what is happening, and when he comes back from that deep source, he comes totally different. The old has disappeared and a new being, a new energy has arisen out of it. Of this being, the center is the universe; and with this transfer of the center, all your worry, all your anguish, all your hell disappears, simply disappears. It is not solved, it is simply not there. It cannot exist there without the ego. So how to be consciously deep asleep? How to move into sleep consciously? How to remain alert while you are losing the ego? The ego is a by-product, a by-product of your whole upbringing, a by-product of the natural course of life. It has to be there. There is no other way. No being can evolve without being involved with the ego. But a point comes when the ego can be dropped and should be dropped, and the being should transcend it.
The ego is just like the shell of the egg. It is needed, it protects. Just like the shell of a seed, it is needed, it protects. But the protection can become dangerous also, if it protects too much. If it goes on protecting and doesn’t allow the seed to sprout, then it becomes a hindrance. It must dissolve into the earth so that the inner life evolves out of it. It must die.
The seed must die. Every man is born as a seed. The ego is the outer covering; it protects the child. If a child is born without the ego, without the feeling that “I exist”, he cannot survive. He will be able to protect himself, he will not be able to struggle, he will not be able in any way to exist. He needs a strong center. Even if it is false, it is needed. But a moment comes when this help becomes a hindrance. It protects you from outside, but it becomes so strong that it will not allow you, the inner being, to spread, to go beyond it, to sprout. So ego is needed – and then ego-transcendence is needed.
If someone dies with the ego, he has died as a seed. He has died without really attaining the destiny that was possible, without attaining existence consciously. These techniques are for how to destroy this seed.
Tags: Separateness Is False
