Prabhaker

@Muhammad Nice Video ! Heaven and hell are not geographical. If you go in search of them you will never find them anywhere. They are within you, they are psychological. The mind is heaven, the mind is hell, and the mind has the capacity to become either. Hell and heaven are within you, both gates are within you. When you are behaving unconsciously there is the gate of hell; when you become alert and conscious, there is the gate of heaven.

@cheng chi man Smoking Meditation Do one thing. When you take the packet out of your pocket, for a moment go slowly. When you are taking the packet of cigarettes out of your pocket move slowly. Enjoy it, there is no hurry. Be conscious, alert, aware; take it out slowly, with full awareness. Then take the cigarette out of the packet with full awareness, slowly -- not in the old hurried way, unconscious way, mechanical way. Then start tapping the cigarette on your packet -- but very alertly. Listen to the sound, just as Zen people do when the samovar starts singing and the tea starts boiling, and the aroma. Then smell the cigarette and the beauty of it. Then put it in your mouth, with full awareness, light it with full awareness. Enjoy every act, small act, and divide it into as many small acts as possible, so you can become more and more aware. Then have the first puff: God in the form of smoke. Hindus say,' Food is God.' Why not smoke? All is God. Fill your lungs deeply -- this is a pranayam. I am giving you the new yoga for the new age! Then release the smoke, relax, another puff... and go very slowly. If you can do it, you will be surprised, soon you will see the whole stupidity of it. Not because others have said that it is stupid, not because others have said that it is bad: you will see it. And the seeing will not be just intellectual. It will be from your total being, it will be a vision of your totality. And then, one day, if it drops, it drops; if it continues, it continues. You need not worry about it. This is the secret,: de-automatize.

Celibacy is not a discipline, it is a consequence. If your whole energy is needed, sex disappears automatically because you don’t have energy to waste. You put your total energy so you don’t have any energy... and it happens in ordinary life also. You can see a great painter: he forgets women completely. When he is painting there is no sex in his mind,because the whole energy is moving. You don’t have any extra energy. A great poet, a great singer, a dancer who is moving totally in his commitment, automatically becomes celibate. He has no discipline for it. Sex is superfluous energy; sex is a safety valve. When you have too much in you and you cannot do anything with it, the nature has made a safety valve; you can throw it out. You can release it, otherwise you will go mad or burst – explode. And if you try to suppress it, then too you will go mad, because suppressing it won’t help. It needs a transformation, and that transformation comes from total commitment. A warrior, if he is really a warrior – an impeccable warrior, will be beyond sex. His whole energy is moving.

Positive thoughts may be the result of conscious mind, but success depends on total mind, larger part is unconscious.

@Pramit A glimpse means you had come close. But glimpses are bound to be lost. Meditation can, at the most, give only a glimpse. But do not stop there; do not get stuck looking for that same glimpse again and again. The only purpose of meditation is that one gets a glimpse. Then one has to go ahead. I mean it is not enough to have beautiful glimpses. It is good, but not good enough. The glimpse was only an arrow pointing towards the possibility—it did its work, but you remain there.

It is preparation for meditation. You will be surprised to see how many things start coming to you once you start expressing them. It is not only that your mind expressed them. Your body expresses them. For the first time, you become aware that your body has many repressions to express. If you are a violent man, your hands will be moving as if you are killing someone or beating someone. Many screams will come out. And through the screams, much will be released. Within three weeks you will be able to express what is within you spontaneously. Then you will feel that something is leaving you and you are being unburdened. Now you can sit silently, doing nothing.

The Law of Attraction, became immensely popular feeding on people’s greed, you can attract whatever you want in your life – money, success, the perfect relationship, great house, car etc – simply by focusing on it with the positive intent to have it. In other words, by using positive intention, or positive thinking, you can manifest whatever you want for your life. Every ‘new’ formula for success based on positive thinking is always a hit – after all, who wouldn’t want an easy way to get rich? It appeals perfectly to the greedy, lazy age we live in. Positive thinking cannot change anything because it is a way of avoiding looking at the unconscious mind, which is full of our negativity.…by your not seeing it, do you think it disappears? You are just befooling yourself. You cannot change reality. The night will still be there; you can think that it is daytime for twenty-four hours, but by your thinking it, it is not going to be light twenty-four hours a day. Positive thinking does not work, because it is done with the conscious mind. And the conscious mind is not what is running our lives. It means that we may consciously think we want more money, and focus on the visualization of a nice fat bank account of a few million, but if there is a belief in our unconscious mind that we don’t deserve to be rich, that we will never win the lottery, that it is something for other people not me, then guess what – no matter how much and for how long you visualize those millions, you will never get them! First learn meditation and clean your unconscious mind.

It is very difficult, particularly for the Western mind, to understand that life is meaningless. And it is beautiful that it is meaningless. If it is meaningful then the whole thing becomes absurd — then who will decide the meaning? The West has been thinking in terms of meaning, but the East has been thinking in terms of meaninglessness. The East says life is not a business, it is a play. And a play has no meaning really, it is nonpurposeful. Or you can say play is its own meaning, to play is enough. You love someone. Have you asked the question, “For what purpose does love exist?” The mind, a calculating mind, is bound to ask, “Why love? What is the meaning?” If you can answer then one thing is certain — that you are not in love. If you can show the meaning then love is not there, it is a business, it is a bargain. But lovers will always say there is no purpose to it. To be in love is the goal. The goal is not somewhere else; it is intrinsic, it is in the very phenomenon of love. The goal is already achieved. When you are happy have you asked, “What is the meaning of being happy?” Can there be any meaning to being happy? When you are happy you never ask because the question is absurd. Happiness is itself the goal, there is no meaning to it.

Eye gazing meditation is a simple yet profound practice. Something sacred and intimate awakens when you look in this way. You would have likely heard the phrase, the eyes are the window to the soul. They are just that. Sit and look into each other’s eyes, [it is better to blink as little as possible, a soft gaze]. Look deeper and deeper, without thinking.... If you don’t think, if you just stare into the eyes, soon the waves will disappear and the ocean will be revealed…. If you can look deep down into the eyes, you will feel that the man has disappeared, the person has disappeared. Some oceanic phenomenon is hidden behind, and this person was just a waving of a depth, a wave of something unknown, hidden.

@Samuel Garcia What is awareness? Awareness is not a commitment to something. awareness is an observation, both outer and inner, in which direction has stopped. You are aware, but the thing of which you are aware is not being encouraged or nourished. Awareness is not concentration on something. It is not an action of the will choosing what it will be aware of, and analysing it to bring about a certain result. When awareness is deliberately focused on a particular object, as a conflict, that is the action of will which is concentration. When you concentrate - that is, put all your energy and thought within your chosen frontiers, whether reading a book or watching your anger - then, in this exclusion, the thing you are concentrating upon is strengthened, nourished. So here we have to understand the nature of awareness: We have to understand what we are talking about when we use the word awareness. - J krishnamurti

There is much difference between awareness and witnessing. Witnessing is still an act; you are doing it; the ego is there. So the phenomenon of witnessing is divided between the subject and the object. Awareness is total – total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon – while in witnessing a duality exists between subject and object. Awareness is nondoing; witnessing implies a doer. But through witnessing awareness is possible, because witnessing means that it is a conscious act; it is an act, but conscious. You can do something and be unconscious – our ordinary activity is unconscious activity – but if you become conscious in it, it becomes witnessing. No, Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence; it is going beyond the mind. Mind, as such, is the medium of duality, so consciousness can never transcend duality. It is always conscious of something, and there is always someone who is conscious. So consciousness is part and parcel of the mind, and mind, as such, is the source of all duality, of all divisions – whether they are between subject and object, activity or inactivity, consciousness or unconsciousness. Every type of duality is mental. Awareness is nondual, so awareness means the state of no mind.

@NutellaTC Catharsis helps. If you cathart, if you go through chaotic meditations, you throw all these clouds outside, all these darknesses outside, then mindfulness becomes easier. Right approach is first chaotic meditations and then silent meditations, first active meditations, then passive meditations. You can move into passivity only when all that is there like junk has been thrown out. Anger has been thrown out, greed has been thrown out … layer upon layer, these things are there. But once you have thrown them out, you can easily slip in. There is nothing to hinder.

Buddha never talked about kundalini. It is not that there was no kundalini in his body, but the passage was so clear that there was no resistance. Thus, he never felt it. So it is not necessary for you to feel kundalini. You may not feel it at all. Meditation as such is not really concerned with kundalini at all. If kundalini comes, that is another thing - but meditation has nothing to do with it. Meditation can be explained without even mentioning kundalini; there is no need. And by mentioning kundalini it creates even more conflicts to explain the thing. Meditation can be explained directly; you need not bother about chakras, you begin with meditation. If the passage is blocked you may come to feel kundalini, and chakras will be there, but that is completely nonvoluntary. You must remember that it is nonvoluntary; your volition is not needed at all. Spiritual awakening is activation of fourth body. The world that starts from the fourth body is subjective, whereas the world before that is objective. Things are so subtle, so rare and personal on this plane, that a person has no means to test the validity of his experiences. Hypnotism, telepathy, clairvoyance, all have their potential in the fourth body. Solid foundation in preceding bodies 1-3 is helpful, Patanjali's yoga starts with physical body. Hence yoga has become synonymous with yoga postures.

@Frogfucius The child has to get lost into the world to become a child again. The innocence has to go into all the turmoil of cunningness and calculation to become really innocent again. A child is innocent, but his innocence is that of ignorance. A saint is also innocent, but his innocence is not of ignorance but of experience, of ripeness, of maturity. He is again innocent, but that again has great importance – he cannot be distracted from his innocence anymore. The child is bound to get distracted.

@actualized1 The individual can be divided into seven bodies. The first body is the physical body which we all know. The second is the etheric body, and the third-which is beyond the second-is the astral body. The fourth-which is beyond this-is the mental or psychic body, and the fifth is the spiritual body. The sixth is beyond the fifth, and it is called the cosmic body. Then the seventh and the last is the nirvanic body, the bodiless body. While developing full consciousness of the material world in the human form, the self simultaneously develops the subtle and mental bodies. We can also divide existence into seven dimensions. In the entire existence, all the seven bodies are forever present. Take a piece of iron say: all the seven bodies are present in it but all the seven are asleep; all the seven are dormant, inactive. So a piece of iron looks dead. First body becomes active in plants so we get the first evidence of life in plants. Physical body exists here without any movement. The plant puts down its roots and always stays in one place. It is not mobile because for that the second body must be activated-the etheric body from which all movements come. The plant is a fixed animal. There are some plants that move a little, in a state between plant and animal. The second body becomes activated in animals. Motion comes from the e-motional body. This does not mean that the second body has reached awareness; it only means it has become activated. The animal has no knowledge of it. Because of the second body being activated it experiences anger, it can express love, it can run, defend itself, it experiences fear, it can attack or hide and it can move. In man the third, astral body is activated. Therefore, not only does his body move but his mind also; he can travel with his mind. He travels in the past as well as in the future. Generally, man halts at the third body. Animals have the second body but not the third body. In presence of enlightened master consciousness grows. If most of the human beings become enlightened, animals too will start becoming enlightened.

@Consolatio Whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer. If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well – and when I say eaten well, I don’t mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself. But eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is a gift from the divine. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance. A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way. Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body, to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.

You don't have a choice, does it stops you from desiring for more. Does it makes you relaxed, silent, in a state a total acceptance ?

If you can accept life in its totality, there is no need of any practices. Problem is that we are not ready for acceptance.

Yoga means union. Meditation is the most supreme phenomenon as far as union with reality is concerned. But yoga has fallen into wrong hands, and not only recently – for centuries it has been in the wrong hands. Patanjali has divided yoga into eight parts. His division is clear-cut, very scientific, but he was not really aware of human stupidity. He started with the body – and that's the right way to start. The first part of yoga must be physiological because man lives on the circumference, in the body, so the work has to start there, only then can it reach the mind. And when one has gone beyond the body and beyond the mind, then the third, meditation, happens. So according to Patanjali the first part belongs to the body. But he was not clearly aware that millions of people would remain entangled with the first part. Hence yoga has become synonymous with yoga postures: people standing on their heads and doing all sorts of contortions. That has become synonymous with yoga. A few people, only very few – if a hundred people become interested in yoga then only one person will get out of the physiological entanglement. And that one person will become entangled in the psychological. If a hundred persons are entangled in the psychological then only one person gets out of it...and only when you get out of the mind does the real yoga begin. The physiological part of yoga will give you great physiological powers; it can make you live a really long, healthy life. But what are you going to do with a long life? If you are idiotic, instead of being idiotic for seventy years you will be idiotic for two hundred years. It is not going to help anybody; it will be a calamity. The second part is even vaster than the physiological. If you get into it you can have many psychic powers, you can read people's thoughts. But what is the point? Your own rubbish is so much, what is the point of reading somebody else's rubbish? He is tortured by his rubbish and you are reading his thoughts – and you think you are doing something great! Hence I say the only essential thing, the real core of all religion, of all yoga, of all methods of search, is meditation. One should put aside everything non-essential. You can use things as stepping stones, but not more than that – just like jumping boards. You need not bother too much about them. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramdev+english

I doubt Rupert Spira had realization of real self/ soul/ awareness. May be he was speaking this language so that he can be understood by others.

It implies that you and screen are separate ?

Can you see your own eyes ?

One wrong question will lead to another wrong question. Awareness is absolutely devoid of any subjectivity or objectivity. Awareness is total – total subjectivity and total objectivity as a single phenomenon. It is difficult to jump from ordinary, unconscious action into awareness. It is possible but arduous, so a step in between is helpful. If one begins by witnessing conscious activity, then the jump becomes easier – the jump into awareness without any conscious object, without any conscious subject, without any conscious activity at all. This doesn't mean that awareness isn't consciousness; it is pure consciousness, but no one is conscious about it. There is a further difference between consciousness and awareness. Consciousness is a quality of your mind, but it is not your total mind. Your mind can be both conscious and unconscious; but when you transcend your mind, there is no unconsciousness and no corresponding consciousness. There is awareness. Awareness means that the total mind has become aware. Now the old mind is not there but there is the quality of being conscious. Awareness has become the totality; the mind itself is now part of the awareness. We cannot say that the mind is aware; we can only meaningfully say that the mind is conscious. Awareness means transcendence of the mind, so it is not the mind that is aware. It is only through transcendence of the mind, through going beyond mind, that awareness becomes possible. Consciousness is a quality of the mind, awareness is the transcendence.

Whatever you are looking can't be awareness. Neither you feel it nor you can sense it. It is the awareness which witnesses the feelings and sensations.

You are awareness !