Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Prior to 15 - 17

From Bluetruth

Man is as if he is a circle without a center. His life is superficial; his life is only on the circumference. You live on the outside, you never live within. You cannot, unless a center is found. You cannot live within, really you have no within. You are without a center, you have only the without. That is why we go on talking about the within, about how to go in, how to know oneself, how to penetrate inwards, but these words do not carry any authentic meaning. You know the meaning of the words, but you cannot feel what they mean because you are never in. You have never been in.

Even when you are alone, in your mind you are in a crowd. When no one is there outside, still you are not within. You go on thinking of others; you go on moving outwards. Even while asleep you are dreaming of others, you are not within. Only in very deep sleep, when there is no dreaming, are you within; but then you become unconscious. Remember this fact: when you are conscious you are never within, and when you are within in deep sleep you become unconscious. So your whole consciousness consists of the without.

And whenever we talk about going within, the words are understood but the meaning is not -- because the meaning is not carried by the words, the meaning comes through experience.

Words are without meaning. When I say 'within', you understand the word -- but only the word, not the meaning. You do not know what within is, because consciously you have never been within. Your mind is constantly outgoing. You do not have any feel of what the inner means or what it is.

That is what I mean when I say that you are a circle without a center -- a circumference only. The center is there, but you drop into it only when you are not conscious. Otherwise, when you are conscious you move outwards, and because of this your life is never intense; it cannot be. It is just lukewarm. You are alive as if dead, or both simultaneously. You are deadly alive -- living a dead-like life. You are existing at the minimum -- not at the maximum peak, but at the minimum. You can say, "I am," that is all. You are not dead; that is what you mean by being alive.

But life can never be known at the circumference. Life can be known only at the center. On the circumference only lukewarm life is possible. So really, you live a very inauthentic life, and then even death becomes inauthentic -- because one who has not really lived cannot really die. Only authentic life can become authentic death.

Then death is beautiful: anything authentic is beautiful. Even life, if it is inauthentic, is bound to be ugly. And your life is ugly, just rotten. Nothing happens. You simply go on waiting, hoping that something will happen somewhere, someday.

At this very moment there is just emptiness, and every moment has been like that in the past -- just empty. You are just waiting for the future, hoping that something will happen someday, just hoping. Then every moment is lost. It has not happened in the past, so it is not going to happen in the future either. It can happen only in this moment, but then you will need an intensity, a penetrating intensity. Then you will need to be rooted in the center. Then the periphery will not do. Then you will have to find your moment. Really, we never think about what we are, and whatsoever we think is just hokum.

Once I lived with a professor on a university campus. One day he came and he was very upset, so I asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "I feel feverish."

I was reading something, so I said to him, "Go to sleep. Take this blanket and rest."

He went to the bed, but after a few minutes he said, "No, I am not feverish. Really, I am angry. Someone has insulted me, and I feel much violence against him."

So I said, "Why did you say that you are feeling feverish?"

He said, "I couldn't acknowledge the fact that I was angry, but really I am angry.

There is no fever." He threw off the blanket.

Then I said, "Okay, if you are angry then take this pillow. Beat it and be violent with it. Let your violence be released. And if the pillow is not enough, then I am available. You can beat me, and let this anger be thrown out."

He laughed, but the laughter was false -- just painted on his face. It came on his face and then disappeared, it never penetrated in. It never came from within; it was just a painted smile. But the laughter, even false laughter, created a gap. He said, "Not really... I am not really angry. Someone said something before others, and I felt very much embarrassed. Really, this is the thing."

So I said to him, "You have changed your statement about your own feelings three times within half an hour. You said you were feeling feverish, then you said you were angry, and now you say that you are not angry but just embarrassed. Which one is real?"

He said, "Really, I am embarrassed."

I said, "Which? When you said you were feverish, you were also certain about that. When you said you were angry, you were also certain about that. And you are also certain about this. Are you one person or many persons? For how long a time is this certainty going to continue?"

So the man said, "Really, I do not know what I am feeling. What it is, I do not know. I am simply disturbed. Whether to call it anger or embarrassment or what, I do not know.

And this is not the moment to discuss it with me." He said, "Leave me alone. You have made my situation philosophical. You are discussing what is real, what is authentic, and I am feeling very much disturbed."

This is not only with some other person -- X, Y or Z -- it is with you. You are never certain, because certainty comes from being centered. You are not even certain about yourself. It is impossible to be certain about others when you are never certain about yourself. There is just a vagueness, a cloudiness; nothing is certain.

Someone was here just a few days ago, and he said to me, "I am in love with someone, and I want to marry her." I looked into his eyes deeply for a few minutes without saying anything. He became restless and he said, "Why are you looking at me? I feel so awkward." I continued looking. He said, "Do you think that my love is false?" I didn't say anything, I just continued looking. He said, "Why do you feel that this marriage is not going to be good?" He said by himself, "I had not really thought it over very much, and that is why I have come to you. Really, I do not know whether I am in love or not."

I had not said a single word. I was just looking into his eyes. But he became restless, and things which were inside began to come up, to bubble up.

You are not certain, you cannot be certain about anything; neither about your love, nor about your hate, nor about your friendships.

There is nothing which you can be certain about because you have no center. Without a center there is no certainty. All your feelings of certainty are false and momentary. One moment you will feel that you are certain, but the next moment the certainty will have gone because in each moment you have a different center. You do not have a permanent center, a crystallized center. Each moment is an atomic center, so each moment has its own self.

George Gurdjieff used to say that man is a crowd. Personality is just a deception because you are not a person, you are many persons. So when one person speaks in you, that is a momentary center. The next moment there is another. With every moment, with every atomic situation, you feel certain, and you never become aware that you are just a flux -- many waves without any center. Then in the end you will feel that life has been just a wastage. It is bound to be. There is just a wastage, just a wandering -- purposeless, meaningless.

Tantra, yoga, religion... their basic concern is how first to discover the center, how first to be an individual. They are concerned with how to find the center which persists in every situation. Then, as life goes on moving without, as the flux of life goes on and on, as waves come and go, the center persists inside. Then you remain one -- rooted, centered.

These sutras are techniques to find the center.

The center is already there, because there is no possibility of being a circle without a center. The circle can exist only with a center, so the center is only forgotten. It is there, but we are not aware. It is there, but we do not know how to look at it. We do not know how to focus the consciousness on it.

The third technique about centering:

Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes all inclusive.

• Vigyan Bhairav Tantra 15
  
  
  You need JavaScript enabled for viewing comments