#51. Lie Down As Dead | Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

With death, all identifications with the body, mind, name, descriptions, roles, responsibilities are gone. Tantra uses that visualization to realize the truth, the deathless. Meditation Technique: LIE DOWN AS DEAD AND OBSERVE.

Transcript

Namaste Sanyasa family and everyone.

A very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,

Dhyana Se.

We are meditating on 112 meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.

A friend came to visit on a spontaneous visit one evening.

He came over to my place.

This was evening time when I typically sit for few minutes of meditation and then proceed with anything else that has to be done.

Dinner,

Talk,

Whatever needs to be done.

So this friend came on a spontaneous visit.

I told the friend that I'll sit for few minutes of silence.

Gave him an open invitation.

If you like,

You may join,

You may sit on the couch,

You may sit anywhere you like.

Close your eyes if you like or do whatever you like.

I sat in silence for few minutes.

Those few minutes turned into an hour.

And all this hour,

This friend sitting,

Playing with the mobile phone,

Moving,

Tossing and turning.

I could hear that the whole hour this friend could not have even a minute of silence,

Was just doing something or the other to distract oneself.

And I can imagine how uncomforting it must have been for that friend to come and visit,

To not be able to immediately speak,

To interact and to see me in that silence.

This was an open invitation not forced on that person.

But the person was busy with whatever the person wanted to do.

After my meditation was over,

The silence broke.

The person said,

So this is what you do for relaxation.

I watch movies for relaxation.

We all have a friend like that.

We all have friends and people that we know around who do not understand the process of meditation,

Who are yet to come to spirituality.

We have a friend or more people like that around us.

Let us be compassionate to them.

Let us be loving to them.

Let us not try to impose our meditation,

Our spirituality,

Our ways on others.

Our silence is for us.

If the others,

They get inspired by that,

If they wish to be a part of that,

Good.

If not,

Let them be.

Let them come to meditation.

Let them come to spirituality when they see appropriate in their life.

When this dimension of spirituality,

It opens up in their life.

But what we do is,

On the contrary,

We try to convince.

We try to all the time teach.

No teaching is needed for spirituality.

No convincing is needed for spirituality.

When that dimension opens up,

Everyone feels the same.

Just like to an eight-year-old who has yet to come across sexuality,

Who has yet to come to that puberty,

To that adolescence where the sexual energy becomes a reality.

There is no point in convincing,

Talking or sharing anything with an eight-year-old child.

The only thing that will happen to that child if you are going to bring about sexuality,

Talk about it,

Is just going to remain words.

It is just going to remain as knowledge as words.

But the significance,

The experience is yet to come when the time is right.

There is no necessity to convince or to force this on the others.

It does not mean that you are any superior or the other is any inferior.

No one is superior.

No one is inferior.

A child who is eight-year-old is not inferior than an adult.

A child is yet to come to spirituality,

Is yet to come to this dimension of sexuality when the time is right.

When this occurs to that child,

Then all changes that happen in the body,

In the mind,

Become an evidence itself.

To do something about that energy that was not there and suddenly from nowhere has come into life,

Has come into being,

Has awakened in oneself.

Similarly,

Spirituality is that energy,

Is just like sexuality,

That everyone comes to this adolescence,

Everyone comes to this puberty,

This spiritual puberty called as awakening.

When suddenly from somewhere what you were experiencing in your psychology,

What you were experiencing in your physiology suddenly starts to change.

Suddenly everything looks different.

And in this process,

When this dimension opens,

Lots of confusions,

Lots of things that happen in this process,

We all go through that just like all of us went through this puberty,

Adolescence,

This teenage of not knowing what is happening to the body,

Not knowing what is happening to the mind,

Not knowing how to handle that,

But by and by as we grow old,

We learn to handle the energies,

We learn to handle what does this dimension of life mean,

The significance of this dimension of life.

Similarly,

Spirituality is that dimension,

Is that awakening that happens to everyone.

Of course,

The lifestyles that we live in these days,

The spell that is on us is so strong and so many spells are there on top of us that to come to spirituality has not remained as a natural process.

Somewhere we not all come to spirituality at the same time,

At the same point.

Sometimes we may even have to wait lifetimes to come to this realization of what this dimension means to our life.

That we are beyond just this body,

That we are beyond just this mind,

Beyond just the physicality that appears in front of us.

When this dimension opens,

When this awakening happens,

The turmoil also comes along with it,

But it settles.

Comes a point where you pass through all these ups and downs that come along with this opening of the spiritual dimension of the awakening,

And you reach to a stage,

You reach to a phase where you learn to handle this energy,

Where you learn to handle your spirituality,

Where the changes that are going on in your life,

You learn to integrate those changes one by one in your life.

That is why we have this Sangha,

We have this space,

We have this discourse,

This community to go through these changes,

To go through these turmoils,

These ups and downs,

To understand ourselves,

To understand our spirituality,

And through meditation,

Learn to manage the spirituality,

Learn to learn what is this spirituality,

Who we really are beyond just the body,

Beyond just the mind.

Several questions come up on this path of spirituality.

Let me share one question from one of the meditators in our community,

Because this is also your question.

The meditator asks,

It just happens in a split of a second.

Maybe it doesn't have to do anything with it at all,

But I was just wondering.

Let me repeat the important part of this question.

This happening,

This is not just happening to you,

And it is a very significant development on your spiritual path,

That when you start to observe things,

When you start to observe what you call as yourself,

Suddenly,

In a split second,

The awareness,

It opens up.

The spell that you are carrying on top of yourself,

Of all the identifications,

It breaks,

And suddenly you see your hand as if this could be the hand of someone else.

This is happening more and more often,

And it will happen more and more often,

Not just with the hand.

You will look at yourself in the mirror,

And if you have come out of meditation,

If you have been very lucid,

Very meditative in those days,

When you look at yourself in the mirror,

Suddenly,

In a split second,

You will see,

Is that you?

Who is this?

Suddenly,

The question of who is this will not remain only an intellectual question.

It will become your experience,

This question,

Is this my hand or someone else's hand?

Is this me in the mirror or someone else in the mirror?

Is this my body or someone else's body or something else?

All this suddenly will become alive in your life,

Not just as an intellectual query,

But as an experience.

And this only indicates that through your meditation,

Through your awareness,

Suddenly the spell of identification is broken.

You are moving from that identification of I,

My body,

Me,

This constant holding on to everything that you are spelled to holding on to,

That you are hypnotized to hold on to.

This dehypnosis is happening,

This unfolding is happening,

Where you are losing suddenly grip over all what you are holding on to,

These identifications,

And you can move from all what you are calling the doing from your being,

From all the physical to the non-physical to the consciousness.

So this is a significant development,

If that happens,

Good,

Great.

If that does not happen,

Also fine.

A person,

He went to a psychiatrist.

They both sat on a table.

That person put his ear down at the table,

Put the ear very close to the table and said,

Listen.

The psychiatrist also put his head down,

Ear down on the table,

Tried to listen,

Said,

I don't hear anything.

The person said,

Exactly,

All this is worrying me that you don't hear anything.

If you don't hear anything,

It is also fine.

If you don't experience this,

It is also fine.

If you experience this disidentification with your body,

Disidentification with your identities,

With your name,

With your own face,

With your titles,

With your descriptions,

If you slowly get into that process of disidentification,

If that happens naturally to you,

Great,

Allow it to happen.

It only leads you to your true nature.

It only leads you to your truth,

That you are consciousness,

Your awareness.

All these identities,

All these labels,

These are functional,

These are utilitarian.

They have no reality to them.

How to bring this experience more in our meditation,

To move towards disidentification,

To move towards the truth of our reality that we are consciousness?

Let us listen to the technique given by Bhairava in Vigyan Bhairavtantra for today.

Bhairava says,

Lie down as dead and observe.

Let me repeat,

Lie down as dead and observe.

This is one of those easy techniques that have been very popular in yoga as well known as Shavasana.

In yoga,

The interpretation of this technique is known as Shavasana,

Which you would do after you have done some physical activity,

After you have done your sequence of yoga and you lay down for few minutes of rest.

It is known as Shavasana,

Shav,

The body,

The dead body,

But it is far more significant than just relaxation.

So try this technique in these next few minutes,

The shorter version of it in this session,

And you can practice this as a longer version as you like afterwards in your daily life.

So for this technique,

We will lay down.

This is one of those rare techniques where we do not sit where we lay down.

If for some reason you cannot lay down wherever you are,

Then you may also practice this while sitting.

But if you can,

If your situation allows for the next 10-15 minutes to lay down,

Then lay down wherever you are while doing this practice.

How to do this?

Very briefly before we do it and go into the silence.

Lay down as dead,

Allowing all your body to relax,

Not holding anything about your body.

We are holding the body,

We are holding the life as if we would let go of life,

Then life would go away out of our own hands.

We are given this life,

The existence is holding us,

We are not holding the existence.

So the first thing that you will do is let go of this holding of body,

Let go of this holding of existence.

When you have allowed your body to relax as if it is dead,

Even if you have cold feet,

Even if there is sensation,

Something is happening in the body,

Allow that to happen as if the body is dead.

You have nothing to do with the body anymore.

Then you will move on to your mind.

All these identifications,

Your name,

Your description,

Your relations,

All for a few seconds,

For a few minutes,

Allow all of that to go.

Let all of that go as if you are dead,

As if there is no life in this mind anymore.

So what is the meaning of the name?

What is the meaning of all the descriptions?

What is the meaning of all the responsibilities and everything else?

Let go of all that for a few minutes.

Lie down as dead.

Reviews

Thank you.

I found myself in a state, but I can't tell if it was a state of awereness or a state of mind. What is awereness?
Also, I could let go of my body, but I was disturbed by the sounds and my breathing. How can we take our sounds out?

Thank you 🙏🏼

Fantastic! There are times when it is unclear during laying down meditations, whether we are asleep or into deeper consciousness. How to judge that?