152. Static meditations

1. Third eye meditation

See the whole world as a dream and awaken to the higher intelligence within you.

Duration: not applicable

This meditation is to be done before going to sleep.

Sit straight on your bed. Close your eyes. Be aware of the third eye, the ajna chakra, which is the subtle energy center between your eyebrows. Do not concentrate, do not strain. Just be fully aware, in a very relaxed way.

Be aware of the ajna chakra and of the movement of prana, the life energy. Watch how the prana flows into your body, how the incoming breath brings more energy and the outgoing breath relaxes your body. Just feel it.

Again, do not concentrate. Just be aware, in a very relaxed way, of the ajna chakra and the flow of the incoming and outgoing breath.

Now, get into a sleeping position. Be aware of the third eye when you are falling asleep. When you lie down on the bed, decide, 'Yes, now I am going to fall asleep.' Be aware when your consciousness gets diffused, when you are just disappearing into the darkness, into deep sleep.

Before going to sleep, if you are aware of the third eye it is enough, because your prana is hovering there during the waking state. As you fall asleep, the prana will start moving downwards from the third eye.

Next, throughout the day, whenever you remember, think that this whole world is not real, that you are just dreaming, that whatever you are seeing is just a dream. Consciously remember that whatever you are doing - eating, sleeping, walking, drinking, driving, sitting in your office - is all just a dream.

Immediately you will tell yourself, 'How can I think that this world is a dream? This world is in fact a reality.' Please be very clear, there is a distinction between fact and truth. 'The whole world is a dream' may not be a fact according to you, because the scale by which you measure whether something is a fact or not, is itself not accurate!

Once you try to practice this technique, in a few days, you will understand the truth behind these words. It will lead you to the truth. It may not be a fact for your logical mind, but it is a fact and truth at a deeper level.

So throughout the whole day, whenever you remember, tell yourself, 'This world is a dream, whatever I am perceiving is a dream.' Slowly, you will see, the whole projection just gets diffused. You will then see the screen on which this whole dream is taking place!

Just try this for the next eleven days. Whatever is happening in front of you, whatever you are experiencing, is a changing dream. Just remember this, that's all.

One important thing to know is any idea that you continuously remember the whole day for eleven days will penetrate your dream state. When you are dreaming, you will know you are dreaming. If you remember you are dreaming in the dream, you will be awakened.

Continuously for eleven days, if you tell yourself that you are a doctor but actually you are a lawyer by profession, in your dreams, you will see yourself as a doctor. If you want to change your identity, eleven days is enough. You will start expressing that new identity.

If this idea penetrates your inner being, the dream state, you will experience a tremendous healing effect over your entire being. This one experience is enough, you will be tremendously balanced in your day-to-day life. Not only that, suddenly you will see that you have the energy to change what you think of as reality. Situations which you thought you would never be able to change, will start changing. The screen on which you project this whole dream and see is what I call consciousness or prana. When you start seeing the screen on which you are projecting this whole dream, you will also see the same screen with awareness when you are dreaming.

The next question that the mind will ask is, 'If I am dreaming, why should I continue doing anything at all?' Even if it is all a dream, you can still be doing, there is nothing wrong with that. You don't want to continue doing because you take yourself seriously. If you remember you are dreaming, then your dreaming or nondreaming is in no way going to change anything. You will then relax and let life happen. You will be in the flow of life.

Suddenly your intelligence will be awakened. You will be awakened to the truth that the whole thing is your projection. Then you will not be the same person anymore because you will see the truth.

2. Diary

Become a witness of your thoughts, and be free from the clutches of emotions.

Duration: not applicable

Keep a diary and note down your feelings, your emotions, at different times of the

day – morning, afternoon, evening, night. Do this for about a month.

Then take a look at your diary. Watch the patterns that your mood follows. Understand your mood cycle.

The next time you feel a low mood, remind yourself of the pattern in your emotional cycle. Remind yourself that this present mood is just one part of that cycle and

enjoy it. It is, that's all. But it is not forever, it will pass.

In the same way, if you are feeling really happy, watch. Watch the emotion, witness yourself through it.

Practice this technique for a few weeks. You will see that you are able to handle your emotions without getting disturbed, no matter what emotion comes up at each moment.

3. Affirmation

Your words, your thoughts, have great power over you. They have a great impact over the whole world that surrounds you also. You underestimate the power of the words you use. That is why you use them so casually, often negatively, especially when you talk inside yourself. Create positive words for your consciousness.

Duration: not applicable

Now, decide to use correct and positive words only. Stop supporting the negative thoughts that come up inside you. Give your power and support only to the positive thoughts and feelings, twenty-four hours a day.

If you find that you are in a low mood very often, try this:

Before going to sleep, sit up on your bed,

tell yourself aloud that you are happy, that life is a beautiful experience, that hereafter, you are going to be joyful and blissful. Repeat this affirmation to yourself eleven times.

Now lie down. As your head touches the pillow, feel clearly that it is not just a pillow, but it is the very lap of Existence that you are falling asleep on. Relax and drop into your very source, into the welcoming embrace of Existence.

When you get up in the morning, before opening your eyes, repeat to yourself the same affirmation eleven times.

This can be extended to other negative emotions like fear, jealousy, worry, etc. Become aware of the negativity and decide to drop it. Replace it with the corresponding positive emotion and make it your affirmation.

4. Weightless – Technique 1

Experience the deep peace and bliss in you.

Duration: minimum of ten minutes

Sit comfortably cross-legged on the floor. If this is uncomfortable, sit on a chair but without resting your back.

Try not to support the weight of your body through the feet. Try consciously to lift the calf muscles a bit, naturally you will then put your weight on the backbone.

Initially it will be difficult because we never balance our body. Feel the points of the body touching the ground.

Because we hardly bring our awareness to such things, it may take a few minutes to become aware. Try to focus on the two points, which are touching the ground, through which you are transferring your whole weight to planet earth.

If you can feel the two points through which you are transferring your weight to planet earth, then you can start moving to the next step of balancing. Balancing means finding the center in which you are weightless.

Bend forward slowly as much as you can and feel the weight of your body.

Feel the heaviness of the body. Then slowly, very slowly, come back inch by inch. Feel the weight of the body as you move. Slowly, straighten the body.

You will feel the body weight reducing step by step as you straighten. Come to the point where you feel completely weightless, where you feel completely light.

If you are able to find your center where it is weightless, start moving your body backwards. As you move your body backwards, feel the heaviness again.

Now slowly, very slowly, bring it back to the earlier straight position where you don't feel your body weight at all.

At least two or three times move your body forwards and backwards in this fashion, each time coming to the center straight position where you feel weightless. After a few times, you will be able to correctly catch that point or moment or center, where you feel weightless.

At the point you feel weightless, remain. Be in that same space. There is no need to remember anything or concentrate on anything. Just be completely balanced in the space, in the center in which you are feeling weightless.

Try to balance your body for at least ten minutes a day at home in this fashion. Try for just ten days, and you will get the knack, and you then you will start sitting in that same weightless pose the whole day!

In this posture, not only will your body feel steady and comfortable, your mind will also be free from the body! You will experience the space in which you are totally balanced, where you are beyond intellect and emotion, where you are beyond the identity you are showing to the outer world and to yourself.

You will experience deep peace just by balancing the body. There is nothing else that needs to be done. You may be thinking, 'How can I experience peace just by balancing the body?' Just do it, then you will see!

5. Moving the body in small circles

Experience a shift in consciousness

Duration: not applicable

While doing this technique, do not analyze, do not measure and do not calculate. Just allow the movements happening in you to take place.

If we look inside ourselves, we can see that there are slight movements always happening in us and these are happening in invisible circles. Just be with those movements and allow them to happen. Whenever we allow these movements to happen and meditate on them, we will suddenly see and realize that we are not a solid body, we are a flowing energy.

Experiencing ourselves as a flowing energy is what I call enlightenment or the ultimate experience.

Suddenly we will realize we are not just the body. We may be dwelling in the body, but we are not the body.

This meditation will help us move ourselves with the prana, the life force or subtle energy that is moving inside our body. We have become so frozen that in the initial level it will be difficult to experience the energy. In the initial level we should try to help our body and cooperate with it by creating small invisible circles and small movements.

Sit straight and close your eyes. Inhale and exhale as slowly and as deeply as possible.

Just move the body in very slow and small circles. Even if you only visualize this, it is enough. Suddenly, you will see that your body is moving slowly and you are feeling comfortable with the motion. Just be in that state and allow the movement to happen.

Concentrate near the manipuraka chakra or navel center, which is the source of prana. You will see that your whole body is moving in small invisible circles and you are centered on the navel.

Whenever you are in a moving vehicle, on an airline flight or in a car and when you are not driving, you can try this technique. Suddenly you will see you are disengaged from the 'I' and you are beyond the body.

Try this technique for at least eleven days. You will start experiencing a shift in consciousness.

6. Excluding everything but one

Get centered on eternal bliss

Duration: not applicable

This technique has three steps.

First, feel an object or person before you. Do not just see the object or person, but feel the object or person, become completely lost in them.

Second, feel the absence of all other objects and persons but this one. Exclude everything else. Just be completely absorbed with that one object or one person.

Third, when you really feel there is no other object or person, when you have achieved the state of excluding everything or everyone else, then unclutch from that one object or person also.

Next, leaving aside the object feeling (being absorbed in one object) and the absence feeling (that one object is absent also), realize yourself. Disappear into yourself. Suddenly, you will see you are centered on you, on your deeper Self, on your consciousness, on your very being.

If you are in love with an object or a person, try this technique. First feel the presence of that object or person and the absence of all other objects or persons. Then feel the absence of that object or person also, and you will become centered on eternal bliss.

7. Include everything in you

Expand your consciousness

Duration: 21 minutes

Step 1: Duration: 2 minutes

Sit straight. Now feel clearly the boundary of your body. Look at the room in which you are sitting.

Step 2: Duration: 5 minutes

Now close your eyes and feel the room inside you, as a part of you. Your space has expanded from beyond the boundary of your body to include the entire room.

Step 3: Duration: 2 minutes

Open your eyes, go outdoors and look at the trees and buildings around you.

Step 4: Duration: 5 minutes

Now close your eyes and feel yourself expanded to include all the trees and buildings around you.

Step 5: Duration: 2 minutes

Open your eyes and look at the open sky.

Step 6: Duration: 5 minutes

Now close your eyes and feel the entire sky inside you.

This is a very powerful meditation that can become a part of your daily life – to include everyone, everything around you as a part of your self.

For example, at work, include your work equipment as a part of you, expand your sphere of awareness. Say you are working on your computer, sitting on a

chair with your computer on the table. Include the computer, the chair, the table, and your office space, all as part of you. Close your eyes and feel them as part of you.

Include people working around you as a part of you – your colleagues, your coworkers, the people in your group. Enjoy your individual consciousness expanding to become a group consciousness. If your entire group practices this meditation, then individual personalities beautifully melt and ego clashes get resolved automatically.

8. Find the source

Find the source of your thoughts and awaken to the ultimate source that is Existence.

Duration: not applicable

When you just sit, naturally, some thought will arise in you. See from where the thought is rising or which part of the body experiences movement or feeling through that thought.

You will see, one by one, each thought creates some sensation in some internal organ in your body. Try to see which thought is connected to which sensation happening inside your body. Try to locate the internal organ feeling the sensation, the organ that produced the thought coming into your mind. Do this with each thought.

When you experiment with this technique, if it clicks for you within twenty-four hours, this is the technique for you. If not, continue to try other techniques. This is a technique that can directly give you the enlightenment experience.

9. Touch the eyelids as a feather

This is one of the powerful techniques to awaken the kundalini shakti, the potential energy which you carry within you. This is a beautiful technique to develop sensitivity in the body.

Duration: 30 minutes

Close your eyes and just touch the eyelids with your forefingers as lightly as a feather would. You can use a real feather also, if you like. The feather should not bend when touching the eye. If it bends, it means you are applying too much pressure on the eyelids. Too much pressure will not work with this technique. You need to give just a feather touch.

It is as if you are touching, but not touching. It is as if your fingers are on the eyelids but not pressing them. Balance your hands well and touch your eyelids

with your forefingers. Your hands may tremble at first and you may touch either too heavily or too lightly, or you may not be touching your eyelids at all.

When you are able to touch your eyelids like a feather, you will be able to see a strong energy connection getting established between the fingers and the eyes. Slowly, you will feel that your fingers and hands have become a part of your eyes.

As of now when you close your eyes, you feel your boundary ends inside the eyelids. But with your feather touch, your eyes will feel like they have expanded! If the pressure you apply is just right, you will have this experience. Your eyes should feel the same sensitivity outside that you feel inside, and the fingers also.

Once you start practicing this technique intensely, you will be able to see that the energy circles inside you instead of leaving you through your eyes, as you normally feel it does. Understand, if you close your eyes, the outer scenes may cease and the outgoing energy may stop. But even then, inside you, some scenes will be moving and so the energy will continue to be wasted. Only if you stop the inner and outer scenes, does enlightenment happen.

This technique takes at least half an hour to balance even once. It might take at least one month of daily practice to balance oneself completely using this feathertouch technique.

10. Rise with the sun

Awaken to the intense energy in you.

Duration: 10 to 15 minutes

Look at the sky for about 10 to 15 minutes before the sun rises on the horizon. When the sky is gaining color, watch with a deep silent alertness.

As the sun rises in the sky, clearly feel the sun inside you also rising. When the sun is up on the horizon, feel that the sun inside you has reached your navel. As the sun comes up slowly, feel the inner sun also gaining intensity.

At the end of 10 to 15 minutes, close your eyes. Enjoy the bright, silent feeling of the sun inside you.

11. Devotion

Soften and transform with devotion.

Duration: not applicable

Close your eyes and sit straight. First, spend a few moments choosing the person who has made the greatest contribution to your life, who has enriched your life the most, someone who means a lot to you.

Now feel connected to that person. Remember him clearly. Remember how he caused great transformation in you, in your life.

Feel deeply connected to that person, to that being. Remember all the beautiful things contributed by him in your life. Remember how much he added to your being. Deeply relax into his memory, into his being. Just disappear into his being, into the beautiful, loving intimate memories of him. Relax and merge into his being.

12. See in the outer and inner spaces and drop

Break free from fear and insecurity.

Duration: not applicable

Sit with some object. Look intensely at it. Let your whole mind be completely filled with the memory of that object. If you are sitting with somebody's photograph, let your whole mind be filled with the memory of that person, your experiences with that person. Let the experiences fill your inner space.

Now close your eyes, withdrawing your sight from the object. Sit inside the inner space, with the same thoughts, and see the object or person in the inner space for a few minutes.

First, see the object or person in the outer space and the inner space. Then see them only in the inner space. Then drop that also and just remain with your being. Decide consciously to withdraw even your thoughts and just be.

13. Awareness while falling asleep

Enter into samadhi with acute awareness.

Duration: not applicable

This technique should be done when you are ready to fall asleep - not when you are supposed to sleep or at the time prescribed to you. When your body actually says it is ready, do this meditation.

Just rest and wait passively, that's all! Don't try to sleep. Don't try to follow any method to fall asleep. Don't feel guilty or anxious if sleep is not happening to you.

Just wait. While waiting you will always be more aware. When you are passively waiting, you will be more aware. If you are aggressive, you will not have awareness.

Understand one important thing: the more passive and receptive you are, the more your awareness will increase. That is why prayer develops your awareness. During prayer you are very passive, deep, waiting for the grace. A prayerful or passive mood will bring you to awareness. Just be in a passive mood. You can even think of sleep as a goddess. In the Upanishad we have a chant to respect or worship the deity of sleep or nidra devi! You can think of sushupti or the deep-sleep state as a goddess. Wait with a passive mood for Her to land on you and bless you. Just be in a deep, waiting mood.

Suddenly you will see that you are slowly losing the awareness about your body but you are still aware. You will not lose the idea 'I'. Be aware of that moment. The door for the fourth state, samadhi, spiritually awakened state, will open. In that space your verbalization will not be active. You will not have thoughts but you will have consciousness, 'I am not aware of my body but I am aware that I exist.'

At this point suddenly you will see that you are completely relaxed, you are aware, but the idea of the body doesn't exist. The following morning you will see that you are fresh, alive! But you will feel you were aware throughout the night. You never lost your awareness, yet you feel completely rested and relaxed. You don't feel any tiredness. This is the experience if you have had the glimpse of the samadhi state.