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LISTEN TO OSHO SPEAK ON THIS MEDITATION

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS.

Every technique is useful for a certain type of mind. The technique we have been discussing, the third -- closing the openings of the head -- can be used by many. It is very simple and not very dangerous. You can use it very easily, and there is also no need to close the openings with your hands. Closing is needed, so you can use ear plugs and you can use a mask for the eyes. The real thing is to close the openings of your head completely for a few moments -- for a few moments or for a few seconds. Try it. Do not practice it -- only suddenly is it helpful. When it is sudden it is helpful. When lying in your bed, suddenly close all your openings for a few seconds, and see what is happening within.

When you feel suffocated, go on -- unless it becomes absolutely unbearable, because breathing will be closed. Go on, unless it becomes absolutely unbearable. And when it is absolutely unbearable, you will not be able to close the openings any more, so you need not worry. The inner force will throw all the openings open. So as far as you are concerned, continue. When the suffocation comes, that is the moment -- because the suffocation will break the old associations. If you can continue for a few moments more, it would be good. It will be difficult and arduous, and you will feel that you are going to die -- but do not be afraid, because you cannot die. You cannot die just by closing the openings. But when you feel now you are going to die, that is the moment.

If you can persist in that moment, suddenly everything will be illumined. You will feel the inner space which goes on spreading, and the whole is included in it. Then open your openings. Go on trying it again and again. Whenever you have time, try it. But do not practice it. You can practice stopping the breath for a few moments. But practice will not help, a sudden jerk is needed. In that jerk, the flow into your old channels of consciousness stops, and a new thing becomes possible.

Many practice this even today -- many persons all over India. But they practice it, and it is a sudden method. If you practice, then nothing will happen. If I throw you out of this room suddenly, your thoughts will stop. But if we practice it daily, then nothing will happen. It will become a mechanical habit. So do not practice it. Just try it whenever you can. Then suddenly, by and by, you will become aware of an inner space. That inner space comes only to your consciousness when you are on the verge of death. When you are feeling, "Now I cannot continue for a single moment; now death is near," that is the right moment. Persist! Do not be afraid. Death is not so easy. At least up until now not a single person has died using this method.

There are built-in securities, that is why you cannot die. Before death one becomes unconscious. If you are conscious and feeling that you are going to die, do not be afraid. You are still conscious, so you cannot die. And if you become unconscious, then your breath will start. Then you cannot prevent it. So you can use ear plugs, etc. Hands are not necessary. Hands were used only because if you are falling into unconsciousness, the hands will become loose and the life process will resume again by itself.

You can use plugs for the ears, a mask for the eyes, but do not use any plugs for the nose or for the mouth, because then it can become fatal. At least the nose should remain open. Close it with your hands. Then when you are actually falling into unconsciousness, the hands will become loose and the breathing will come in. So there is a built-in security. This method can be used by many.

The fourth method is for those who have a very developed heart, who are loving, feeling types, emotional.

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS.

This method can be used only by heart-oriented persons. Therefore, understand first what is a heart-oriented person. Then this method can be understood.

With one who is heart-oriented, everything leads to the heart, everything. If you love him, his heart will feel your love, not his head. A head-oriented person, even when loved, feels it cerebrally, in the head. He thinks about it; he plans about it. Even his love is a deliberate effort of the mind.

A feeling type lives without reasoning. Of course, the heart has its own reasons, but it lives without reasoning. If someone asks you, "Why do you love?" if you can answer why, then you are a head-oriented person. And if you say, "I do not know, I just love," you are a heart-oriented person.

Even if you say that someone is beautiful and that is why you love, it is a reason. For a heart-oriented person, someone is beautiful because they love him. The head-oriented person loves someone because he is beautiful or she is beautiful. The reason comes first, and then comes love. For the heart-oriented, love comes first and then everything else follows. The feeling type is centered in the heart, so whatsoever happens touches his heart.

Just observe yourself. In your life, many things are happening every moment. Where do they touch you? You are passing, and a beggar crosses the street. Where are you touched by the beggar? Do you start thinking about economic conditions? Do you start thinking about how begging should be stopped by law, or about how a socialist society should be created so that there are no beggars? This is a head-oriented man. This beggar becomes just a datum for him. His heart is not touched, only his head is touched. He is not going to do something for this beggar here and now -- no! He will do something for communism, he will do something for the future, for some utopia. He may even devote his whole life, but he cannot do anything just now.

The mind is always doing in the future; the heart is always here and now. A heart-oriented person will do something now for this beggar. This beggar is an individual, not a datum. But for a head-oriented man, this beggar is just a mathematical figure. For him, how begging should be stopped is the problem, not that this beggar should be helped -- that is irrelevant. So just watch yourself. In many situations, watch how you act. Are you concerned with the heart or are you concerned with the head?

If you feel that you are a heart-oriented person, then this method will be very helpful to you. But know well that everyone is trying to deceive himself that he is heart-oriented. Everyone tries to feel that he is a very loving person, a feeling type -- because love is such a basic need that no one can feel at ease if he sees that he has no love, no loving heart. So everyone goes on thinking and believing this, but belief will not do. Observe very impartially, as if you are observing someone else, and then decide -- because there is no need to deceive yourself, and it will be of no help. Even if you deceive yourself, you cannot deceive the technique, so when you do this technique you will feel that nothing is happening.

People come to me, and I ask them to what type they belong. They do not know really. They have never thought about it -- about what type they are. They have just vague conceptions about themselves, and those conceptions are really just imagination. They have certain ideals and self-images, and they think -- or rather, they wish -- that they are those images. They are not, and often it happens that they prove to be just the contrary.

There is a reason for it. A person who insists that he is a heart-oriented person may be insisting only because he feels the absence of heart, and he is afraid. He cannot become aware of the fact that he has no heart.

Look at the world! If everyone is right about his heart, then this world cannot be so heartless. This world is our total, so somewhere, something is wrong. Heart is not there. Really, it was never trained to be there. Mind is trained, so it is there. There are schools, colleges, universities to train the mind, but there is no place to train the heart. And the training of the mind pays, but the training of the heart is dangerous. If your heart is trained you will become absolutely unfit for this world, because the whole world is run through reason.

If your heart is trained, you will just be absurd in the context of the whole pattern. When the whole world will be moving to the right, you will be moving to the left. Everywhere you will feel difficulty. Really, the more man becomes civilized, the less and less the heart is trained. We have really forgotten about it -- that it exists, or that there is any need for its training. That is why such methods, which can work very easily, never work.

Most of the religions are based on  heart-oriented techniques -- Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and many others. They are based on the heart-oriented person. The older the religion, the more it is based on heart-oriented persons. Really, when the Vedas were written and Hinduism was developing, there were people who were heart-oriented. And to find a mind-oriented person then was really difficult. But now the reverse is a problem. You cannot pray, because prayer is a heart-oriented technique. That is why even in the West, where Christianity -- which is a religion of prayer -- prevails, prayer has become difficult. Particularly, the Catholic Church is prayer-oriented.

There exists no such thing as meditation for Christianity, but now even in the West people are becoming crazy about meditation. No one is going to church -- and even if someone is going, it is just a formal thing, just Sunday religion -- because the heart-oriented prayer has become absolutely unknown for man as he is in the West.

Meditation is more mind-oriented, prayer is more heart-oriented. Or we can say that prayer is a technique of meditation for heart-oriented persons.

This technique is also for heart- oriented persons:

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS.

So what is to be done in this technique? AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART...

Try! Many ways are possible. You touch someone: if you are a heart-oriented person the touch immediately goes to your heart, and you can feel the quality. If you take the hand of a person who is head-oriented, the hand will be cold -- not just cold, but the very quality will be cold. A deadness, a certain deadness will be in the hand. If the person is heart-oriented then there is a certain warmth, then his hand will really melt with you. You will feel a certain thing flowing from his hand to you, and there will be a meeting, a communication of warmth.

This warmth comes from the heart. It can never come from the head, because the head is always cool... cold, calculative. The heart is warm, non-calculative. The head always thinks about how to take more; the heart always feels how to give more. That warmth is just a giving -- a giving of energy, a giving of inner vibrations, a giving of life. That is why you feel a different quality in it. If the person really embraces you, you will feel a deep melting with him.

Touch! Close your eyes; touch anything. Touch your beloved or your lover, touch your child or your mother or your friend, or touch a tree or a flower, or just touch the earth. Close your eyes and feel a communication from your heart to the earth, or to your beloved. Feel that your hand is just your heart stretched out to touch the earth. Let the feeling of touch be related to the heart.

You are listening to music. Do not listen to it from the head. Just forget your head and feel that you are headless, there is no head at all. It is good to have a picture of yourself without the head in your bedroom. Concentrate on it; you are without the head, do not allow the head to come in. While listening to music, listen to it from the heart. Feel the music coming to your heart; let your heart vibrate with it. Let your senses be joined to the heart, not to the head. Try this with all the senses, and feel more and more that every sense goes into the heart and dissolves into it.

BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS.

The heart is the lotus. Every sense is just the opening of the lotus, the petals of the lotus. Try to relate your senses to the heart first. Secondly, always think that every sense goes deep down into the heart and becomes absorbed in it. When these two things become established, only then will your senses begin to help you. They will lead you to the heart, and your heart will become a lotus.

This lotus of the heart will give you a centering. Once you know the center of the heart, it is very easy to fall down into the navel center, very easy. This sutra does not even mention this -- there is no need. If you are really absorbed in the heart totally, and reason has stopped working, then you will fall down. From the heart, the door is opened toward the navel. Only from the head is it difficult to go toward the navel. Or if you are between the two, between the heart and the head, then too it is difficult to go to the navel. Once you are absorbed in the navel, you have suddenly fallen beyond the heart. You have fallen into the navel center which is the basic one -- the original.

That is why prayer helps. That is why Jesus could say, "Love is God." It is not exactly right, but love is the door. If you are deeply in love -- with anyone, it doesn't matter who... Love matters; the object of love doesn't matter. If you are in deep love with anyone, so much in love that there is no relationship from the head, if just the heart is functioning, then this love will become prayer and your beloved or your lover will become divine.

Really, the eye of the heart cannot see anything else, and that is why it happens with ordinary love also. If you fall in love with someone, that someone becomes divine. It may not prove to be very lasting, and it may not prove to be a very deep thing, but in that moment the lover or the beloved becomes divine. The head will destroy the whole thing sooner or later, because the head will come in and try to manage everything. Even love has to be managed. And once the head manages, everything is destroyed.

If you can be in love without the head's management coming in, your love is bound to become prayer and your beloved will become the door. Your love will make you centered in the heart -- and once you are centered in the heart, you automatically fall down deep into the navel center.