Prabhaker

Meditation and martial arts can go together, I have doubts about lifting weights.

It depends on the person’s mind – psychedelic only magnifies, multiplies. If you are a miserable person, psychedelic will make you a million times more miserable. If you are a man of joy, psychedelic will magnify your joy a thousand times.

Ego is the false substitute that you have created for the true self. Enlightenment happens only when ego is no more.

THE EXPERIENCE OF TRUTH is neither a thought nor a feeling. It is a vibrating and a throbbing of all the vital components of your entire being. It is not in you; you are in it. It is your whole being, not just an experience that is happening to you. It is in you yourself, but it is larger than you because the whole of existence is included in it as well. THERE IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE between the experience of truth and an interpretation of truth. When you try to interpret truth you stand outside; when you experience truth you are completely inside it, in total communion with it. This is why it is impossible for those who have had the experience of truth to define it. Truth simply exists, and what is just is. Truth cannot be thought about or pondered over but it can be lived. All thought and deliberation are obstacles to being in truth.

In Western languages MAYA has been translated very wrongly, and it gives the feeling in Western terms that "illusion" means "unreal." It does not! "Illusion" means the inability to decide whether the thing is real or unreal. This confusion is MAYA. Why do we call the world illusory? Let me remind you again: by ‘illusory’ we don’t mean unreal, we mean temporarily real, only for the time being real. Why do we call the outer world unreal? Because it brings only misery and it gives you only projections, ambitions, desires; it never allows you to be really happy, authentically happy. It gives you hope but never fulfils it. It leads you on many journeys but the goal never arrives, hence it is called MAYA, illusion. It deceives you, it is a mirage — it APPEARS to be there, but when you reach there you don’t find anything; and by the time you reach there, your desires are being projected further ahead. It is like the horizon: you go towards it, it goes on receding. You never arrive — you cannot arrive, by its very nature it is not possible, it only appears — it is not there.

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. Awareness means the state of no mind.

The ego cannot be enlightened, just as darkness can not become light. It is part of your nonaliveness or partial aliveness, part of your unconsciousness.

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. If a you cannot sit on the floor straight, comfortably, and you force yourself, and it becomes uncomfortable and painful, then it is better to sit straight on a chair and the whole body relaxed -- as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. But let the back of the chair be straight.

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. If a seeker cannot sit on the floor straight, comfortably, and he has to force himself, and it becomes uncomfortable and painful, then it is better to sit straight on a chair and the whole body relaxed -- as if the whole body is hanging on the backbone. But let the back of the chair be straight. You must have seen pictures and statues of ancient Egyptian kings and queens.

@BeginnerActualizer The posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable. If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay — no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. A posture should be such that you can forget your body.

The lotus posture was chosen for many reasons. If one can manage it without torturing himself, then it is the best, but it is not a necessity. It is better to follow the body and its wisdom: use a chair. The whole thing is you should be comfortable so that the body does not draw your attention. If you are accustomed to sitting on a chair, you can find a way, a posture, a chair made in a certain way that helps your body to relax all its tensions. It does not matter whether you are sitting in the chair or in the lotus posture or lying down on the bed. Sitting is preferable because it will prevent you from falling asleep.

But why does this question arise? This question arises for so many reasons. One, you are not really working. You are just deceiving yourself. You are playing tricks with yourself. You are less concerned with what you are doing and more concerned with what is happening. If you are really doing it, you can leave the result to existence. But our minds are such that we are less concerned with the cause and more concerned with the effect Even if you are following one technique of meditation, you are not on the same road as someone else who is doing the same technique; you cannot be. There is no public path. Every path is individual and personal. So no one’s experiences on the path will be helpful to you; rather, they may be damaging. Someone may be seeing something on his path. If he says to you that this is the sign of progress, you may not meet the same sign on your path. The same trees may not be on your path; the same stones may not be on your path. So do not be a victim of all this nonsense. Only certain inner feelings are relevant. For example, if you are progressing, then certain things will begin to happen spontaneously. One, you will feel more and more contentment. Meditation is not just a certain thing which you do for one hour and forget. Really, the whole of life has to be meditative. Only then will you begin to feel things. And when I say that the whole life is to be meditative, I do not mean to go and close your eyes for twenty-four hours and sit and meditate – no! Wherever you are you can be sensitive and that sensitivity will pay. Then there will be no need to ask, 'Am I progressing or not?' Only with this capacity of being aware of all things happening around you will you develop the capacity to feel what is happening within.

You can't meditate and 'wait for magic' simultaneously ! People who are anxious for results often miss the meditation.

No, it is not possible to feel tired or even exhausted after meditating. All techniques and methods create space for meditation. Meditation is not a technique or method. Meditation is not a science, it is not an art, it is a knack - just that way. All that you need is a little patience. It is not a doing, it is a non-doing. you are simply rejoicing in rest. How can it be tiring?

@wellbranding Sometimes it happens that enlightened persons are more ill than unenlightened ones. Ramakrishna died of cancer; Raman died of cancer. There are reasons…. Now that they don’t belong to the body, they don’t co-operate with the body; deep down they have broken themselves from the body. So the body remains but the attachment and the bridge is broken. Buddha died of food poisoning. He suffered for six months continuously. For Buddha himself, illness and health were the same. That doesn’t mean that illness will not give pain. It will! Pain is a physical phenomenon, it will happen. But it will not disturb the inner consciousness. The inner consciousness will remain undisturbed, it will remain as balanced as ever. The body will suffer, but the inner being will remain just a witness of the whole suffering.

Just one or two sessions with a guide will be enough. The man can be moved towards meditation. And once he moves towards meditation, drugs have no importance at all. Phony experience is different from real experience. You can start thinking that you have achieved what you were seeking, and your hands are empty.

The drug experience is a forced, phony experience, but because we don't know the real, the phony seems to be right. If you have not seen the real, then even the phony is too much. The drug experience is so cheap and the meditation experience is so costly, because you have to go through such effort. Then by and by the mind starts choosing the cheaper one. Mm? It is the path of least resistance, so the mind says "Why bother?" The drug can give you something so easily, then why bother with Vipassana -- sitting and meditating and struggling hard? Why not the easier way?

No, This comes again and again in everybody’s life: whatsoever you are doing you get tired of, you get fed up, you get bored with it. It is very easy to be interested in a new thing – it needs great guts to remain interested in an old thing. That’s what makes a person a genius. Otherwise everybody will become a genius. The only difference between a genius and an ordinary person is that the genius has the guts to stick at something even when he is feeling bored, fed up. These are plateaus that come. Mm? you work with great joy because something is new – there is a great exploration, new territory and you are enchanted… it is like a romance, a honeymoon. But by and by you become acquainted with the territory; you have looked into all the corners of it and there seems to be nothing new. Now you know all about it so the sensation is no more there, the thrill is no more there. Now, it is at this point that if you can stick at it and make efforts to find something new in it, you will break through one plane, and on another plane the exploration starts again. That’s how many people lose their life energy: they don’t stick at things. It really needs courage to remain with the old, because when the plateau comes and everything seems to be just a repetition, doing the same thing again and again and again, one feels to change – change the wife, change the husband, change the job, change the friend, change the town, go somewhere else, do something new.

Express your emotions or whatever comes to your mind freely, not to someone just in a vacuum. Let it loose, vent out your emotions in the most natural state that comes to you. If you feel like weeping, weep loudly, if you feel anger upsurging, scream and take out all your anger or violence to the sky/vacuum. Gradually over the weeks, as you bring out the repressed and suppressed emotions, you would notice older issues and feelings coming up. 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. Once you master the art, a feeling of space will be created which will unfold within you and you will feel relaxed.

How almost everybody here knows about 'enlightenment' ? It is a fiction !

This is traditional knowledge of the east. Many enlightened masters of the past and present (including Osho, Sadhuru, Ram Dass) have approved it. For details you can refer "Tibetan Book of the Dead" revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). Your consciousness will be dissolved into the universal ocean of consciousness. Buddha before leaving his body he says that what he had attained under the bodhi tree was just nirvana, emptiness or enlightenment and what he is now going to attain will be mahanirvana or supreme emptiness or great enlightenment.

Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived for forty years after his enlightenment. It is these forty years which became useful to us.

In the Jaina tradition in India death has also been used to strengthen willpower. Mahavira is the only person in the world who allowed if any seeker wished to use death for this purpose. No one else has given such permission. Only Mahavira has said one can use death as a spiritual discipline -- but not the kind of instantaneous death which occurs by taking poison. One can't build his willpower in one instant; it requires a long span of time. Mahavira says, "Go on a fast, and die of hunger." Mahavira was fully assured that no one dies really. Hence he felt there was no need to worry so much about death, and he found no harm in a seeker pursuing this discipline. Mahavira was also confident that if a man were to seek death unwaveringly for fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, or a hundred days, the very greatness of that event is bound to transform him. In India it is legal right for Jaina tradition.

@Dodoster Conscious death is the door to enlightenment. If you die consciously you will be born consciously the next life, and that life will be your last one in a body on planet earth. There is a Tibetan method "Bardo" for the people who meditated but missed enlightenment in their life. The Bardo is a simple method but with great significance. The Bardo is suggestions to the dying person: “Now be silent. Leave this life consciously. Rather than death taking it away from you, relax your hold; don’t be defeated by death, don’t struggle. Just drop all your attachment. This world is finished for you, and this life is finished for you. There is no point in holding on to it; in holding on to it you will be fighting with death. You cannot win, and a very significant possibility will be missed. It is the end of a dream. That is the fundamental point in bardo, that you have lived a dream that you call life, a seventy-year-long dream. It is coming to an end. You can weep for the spilled milk and miss the opportunity – because within seconds you will be entering into another womb, into another dream. So bardo is reminding you that what is disappearing was a dream. And it is very easy when death is coming to see your life as a dream. The person is just falling into deep silence and death is descending. And he is listening to these words from someone he has loved, he has trusted, from someone whom he cannot imagine would deceive him – only then is it meaningful.

Try to understand the ego. Analyze it, dissect it, watch it, observe it, from as many angles as possible. And don't be in a hurry to sacrifice it, otherwise the greatest egoist is born: the person who thinks he is humble, the person who thinks that he has no ego. That is again the same story played on a more subtle level. That's what the spiritual people have been doing down the ages – pious egoists they have been. They have made their ego even more decorated; it has taken the color of spirituality and holiness. Your ego is better than the ego of a saint; your ego is better, far better – because your ego is very gross, and the gross ego can be understood and dropped more easily than the subtle. The subtle ego goes on playing such games that it is very difficult. One will need absolute awareness to watch it.