ATMA SPURANA🔗

This is a technique to be aware of ourselves every moment, in every action. Originally from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, this was the technique made popular by the great master Gurdjieff in the West.

Don't imagine it is simple. We cannot maintain our awareness on ourselves for more than a few seconds. Then we forget. You think you are remembering, but your mind has already jumped to a new thought!

Self-remembering is NOT thinking; it is simply awareness. If you think, I am, you have missed the point. That is what we usually end up doing – repeating the words, I am, I am. The words are not the experience. Don't verbalize. Just feel, I am. Don't think about it.

When you are walking, stop for a moment and be aware that you are. Carry this awareness. Be aware that you are experiencing the sun on your face, the wind in your hair. Be aware of the one who is experiencing. Just feel, I am. For a moment, you will be thrown back into yourself! You get a glimpse of deep silence, of reality. This simply cannot be explained in words, you have to experience it.

When you touch something, just feel the touch. When someone touches you, feel the touch, feel the one who is being touched. Your consciousness becomes still sharper.

Retain this awareness at all times. This is an anytime-anywhere meditation. In fact, make it an all-the-time meditation!

Meditation on the sky is meditation on emptiness. The clear blue sky is intensely empty. To meditate on it is to enter into clarity.

Choose a day when the sky is clear blue, cloudless and vast. In a quiet place, simply lie on your back and start looking at the sky.

Don't start thinking about the sky! Don't start thinking about how wonderful and blue the sky is looking. The moment you start thinking about it, you separate yourself from the sky. Your job is not to think about the sky, but simply to enter into the sky.

Just by looking, feel the clarity of the sky. Be aware of the purity of the blue sky. Enter into that clarity. Move deep into the sky. Go on looking deeper and deeper into the sky, as if you are looking for something further and further in its depth.

Keep on staring till you become one with it. Not till you think you have become one with it! When you have become one with it, you will know for yourself. It may take an hour or more. Don't stop, don't let your attention wander. Don't take your eyes off the sky.

Now close your eyes. If the union has really happened, you will feel the sky inside yourself. You will feel that the sky has entered you! Your mind would drop, your thoughts would drop away. Remain in that sky.

In the beginning, it will be only for a few moments. But with practice, you will experience this state for longer and longer periods. With the clear sky within you, you will experience no-mind.

This meditation is one of the ways to open your heart center. The heart is the portal through which you can enter reality. This meditation is especially useful if you are a head-oriented person, if you are more based in the intellect than in the emotions.

Actually, almost all of us are head-oriented. Heart-oriented people can't survive very long in today's world. So we have all made our minds strong. Our heart center is weak, because we don’t give it enough exercise. We don’t operate from the heart, we don’t act from the heart.

Try looking at the world from your heart, and you will discover a unity in the world. The mind sets up barriers, the heart dissolves barriers. Activating the heart center naturally creates a gushing of love in your life.

Simple, though strange!

The only thing you have to do is: imagine yourself as headless!

It is not funny; this is a tough technique.

Walk, sit down, feel as if you are headless.

Feel that your head has disappeared.

All your focus is now on your heart.

In the beginning it will be just a pretence; you will feel weird and disoriented.

What happens to all my sense-organs? How will I see, hear, speak?, you will ask.

Your sense-organs have not disappeared – they have simply slipped into your heart region!

Just like how blind men use their hands to ‘see’, you will be using your heart. You will be seeing with your heart, from your heart.

Try it.

You can do it.

Stand before a mirror and look deeply into your eyes. Feel as if you are looking from your heart.

Allow every act to be controlled by the heart. Feel the love in your actions.

By and by, you will feel the heart center flowering, actually flowering. You will feel a blossoming inside.

And then you will feel the onrush of love.

You will find your every act becoming more loving. That is why, when someone is in love, we say – he has lost his head! When you are flowing with love, when your heart center is overflowing, you actually lose your head. Your actions are no longer controlled by the head.

There is no specific duration for this meditation. Just do it whenever you feel compelled to. And you will keep feeling compelled. As you keep practising this meditation, you will find yourself growing more and more loving. Your relationships will improve dramatically. You start perceiving the harmony in the world. You move a step closer to God.