Opening the Heart

The heart is the gateless gate to reality. Move from the head to the heart. We are all hung up in the head. That is our only problem, the only one problem. And there is only one solution: get down from the head into the heart and all problems disappear. They are created by the head. And suddenly everything is so clear and so transparent that one is surprised  how one was continuously inventing problems. Mysteries remain but problems disappear. Mysteries abound but problems evaporate. And  mysteries are beautiful. They are not to be solved. They have to be lived.

From head to heart

The first point: try to be headless. Visualize yourself as headless; move headlessly. It sounds absurd, but it is one of the most important exercises. Try it, and then you will know. Walk, and feel as if you have no head. In the beginning it will be only ‘as if.’It will be very weird. When the feeling comes to you that  you have no head, it will be very weird and strange. But by and by you will settle down at the heart. There is a law. You may have seen that someone who is blind has keener ears, more musical ears. Blind men are more musical; their feeling for music is deeper. Why? The energy that ordinarily moves through the eyes now cannot move through them, so it chooses a different path—it moves through the ears. Blind men have a deeper sensitivity of touch. If a blind man touches you, you will feel the difference, because we ordinarily do much work with touch through our eyes: we are touching each other through our eyes. A blind man cannot touch through the eyes, so the energy moves through his hands. A blind man is more sensitive than anyone who has eyes. Sometimes it may not be so, but generally it is so. Energy starts moving from another center if one center is not there.
So try this exercise I am talking about the exercise in headlessness—and suddenly you will feel a strange thing: it will be as if for the first time you are at  the heart. Walk headlessly. Sit down to meditate, close your eyes and simply feel  that there is no head. Feel, “My head has disappeared.” In the beginning it will  be just ‘as if’, but by and by you will feel that the head has really disappeared. And when you feel that your head has disappeared, your center will fall down to  the heart—immediately! You will be looking at the world through the heart and not through the head. When for the first time Westerners reached Japan, they couldn’t believe that the Japanese traditionally have been thinking for centuries that they think through the belly. If you ask a Japanese child—if he is not educated in Western ways—“Where is your thinking?” he will point to his belly. Centuries and centuries have passed, and Japan has been living without the head. It is just a concept. If I ask you, “Where is your thinking going on?” you will point toward the head, but a Japanese person will point to the belly, not to the head—one of the reasons why the Japanese mind is more calm, quiet and collected. Now this is disturbed because the West has spread over everything. Now there exists no East. Only in some individuals who are like islands here and there does the East exist. Geographically, the East has disappeared. Now the whole world is Western. Try headlessness. Meditate standing before your mirror in the bathroom. Look deep into your eyes and feel that you are looking from the heart. By and by the heart center will begin to function. And when the heart functions, it changes your total personality, the total structure, the whole pattern, because the heart has its own way. So the first thing: try headlessness. Secondly, be more loving, because love cannot function through the head. Be more loving! That is why, when someone is in love, he loses his head. People say that he has gone mad. If you are not in love and mad, then you are not really in love. The head must be lost. If the head is there unaffected, functioning ordinarily, then love is not possible, because for love you need the heart to function—not the head. It is a function of the heart. It happens that when a very rational person falls in love, he becomes stupid. He himself feels what stupidity he is doing, what silliness. What is he doing! Then he makes two parts of his life; he creates a division. The heart becomes a silent, intimate affair. When he moves out of his house, he moves out of his heart. He lives in the world with the head and only comes down to the heart when he is loving. But it is very difficult. It is very difficult, and ordinarily it never happens. I was staying in Calcutta at a friend’s house, and the friend was a justice of the High Court. His wife told me, “I have only one problem to tell you. Can you help me?” So I said, “What is the problem?” She said, “My husband is your friend. He loves you and respects you, so if you say something to him it may be helpful.” So I asked her. “What is to be said? Tell me.” She said, “He remains a High Court judge even in bed. I have not known a lover, a friend or a husband. He is a High Court judge twenty-four hours a day.” It is difficult: it is difficult to come down from your pedestal. It becomes a fixed attitude. If you are a businessman, you will remain a businessman in bed also. It is difficult to accommodate two persons within, and it is not easy to change your pattern completely, immediately, any time you like. It is difficult, but if you are in love you will have to come down from the head. So for this meditation try to be more and more loving. And when I say be more loving, I mean change the quality of your relationship: let it be based on love. Not only with your wife or with your child or with your friend, but toward life as such, become more loving. That is why Mahavira and Buddha have talked about non-violence: it was just to create a loving attitude toward life. When Mahavira moves, walks, he remains aware not even to kill an ant. Why? Really, the ant is not concerned. Mahavira is coming down from the head to the heart, creating a loving attitude toward life as such. The more your relationship is based on love—all relationships—the more your heart center will function. It will start working; you will look at the world through different eyes: because the heart has its own way of looking at the world. The mind can never look in that way: that is impossible for the mind. The mind can only analyze! The heart synthesizes; the mind can only dissect, divide. It is a divider. Only the heart gives unity. When you can look through the heart the whole universe looks like one unity. When you approach through the mind, the whole world becomes atomic. There is no unity: only atoms and atoms and atoms. The heart gives a unitary experience. It joins together and the ultimate synthesis is God. If you can look through the heart, the whole universe looks like one. That oneness is God. That is why science can never find God. It is impossible, because the method applied can never reach to the ultimate unity. The very method of science is reason, analysis, division. So science comes to molecules, atoms, electrons, and they will go on dividing. They can never come to the organic unity of the whole. The whole is impossible to look at through the head.

The heart of peacefulness

A very simple method but it works miraculously—try it. And anyone can try it, there is no danger. In an easy position: the first thing is to be in a relaxed position—easy, whatsoever is easy for you. So don’t try some particular position or asana. Buddha sits in a particular posture. It is easy for him. It can also become easy for you if you practice it for a time, but in the very beginning it will not be easy for you. And there is no need to practice it: start from any posture that comes easy to you right now. Don’t struggle with posture. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be in a relaxed state. Just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs feeling whether there is some tension. If you feel somewhere there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel that in the leg, in the right leg, there is tension, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak and then suddenly relax so that you can feel how relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just finding if there is some tension somewhere. Wherever you feel the tension make it more, because it is easy to relax it when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. It is easy to move from one extreme to another, very easy, because the very extreme creates the situation to move to the other. So if you feel some tension in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as possible, create tension and bring it to a peak. Bring it to a point where you feel that now no more is possible—then suddenly relax. So see that all parts of the body, all the limbs, are relaxed. Be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety per cent of the tensions—the rest of the body carries only ten per cent—because all your tensions are in the mind and the face becomes the storage. So strain your face as much as possible, don’t be shy about it. Intensely make it in anguish, anxiety and then suddenly relax. Do it for five minutes so you can feel now the whole body, every limb, is relaxed. You can do it lying on the bed, you can do it sitting also—however you feel is easy for you. The second thing: when you feel that the body has come to an easy posture, don’t make much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body. Because really, remembering the body is a sort of tension. So that’s why I say don’t make much fuss about it. Relax it and forget it. Forgetting is relaxation, because whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body. Then close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, your chest. First feel it, just between the two armpits, bring your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, just the heart area between the  two armpits, your chest, and feel it filled with great peace. The moment the body is relaxed, automatically peace happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious. And when you forget the whole body and bring your attention just to the chest and consciously feel that it is filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately. There are two areas in the body, particular centers where particular feelings can be created consciously. Between the two armpits is the center of the heart, and the heart center is the source of all peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That’s why people from all over the world, without any distinction of caste, religion, country, cultured or uncultured, every race, have felt this: that love arises somewhere from the heart. No scientific explanation exists. So whenever you think of love you think of the heart. Really, whenever you are in love you are relaxed, and because you are relaxed you are filled with a certain peace. And that peace arises from the heart. So peace and love have become joined, associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love. So you can do two things. Either you can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But the path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you. The other is the other, and you are becoming dependent in a way. So love will give you peace sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish and anxiety, because the other has entered and whenever the other enters there is bound to be some disturbance because you can meet with the other only on your surface, and the surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes—when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict—only sometimes you will be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.

Atisha’s Heart Meditation

Atisha said:Train in joining, sending and taking together. Do this by riding the breath. Atisha says: start being compassionate. And the method is, when you breathe in—listen carefully, it is one of the greatest methods—when you breathe in, think that you are breathing in all the miseries of all the people in the world. All the darkness, all the negativity, all the hell that exists anywhere, you are breathing it in. And let it be absorbed in your heart. You may have read or heard about the so-called positive thinkers of the West. They say just the opposite—they don’t know what they are saying. They say, “When you breathe out, throw out all your misery and negativity. And when you breathe in, breathe in joy, positivity, happiness, cheerfulness.” Atisha’s method is just the opposite: when you breathe in, breathe in all the misery and suffering of all the beings of the world—past, present and future. And when you breathe out, breathe out all the joy that you have, all the blissfulness that you have, all the benediction that you have. Breathe out, pour yourself into existence. This is the method of compassion: drink in all the suffering and pour out all the blessings. And you will be surprised if you do it. The moment you take all the sufferings of the world inside you, they are no longer sufferings. The heart immediately transforms the energy. The heart is a transforming force: drink in misery, and it is transformed into blissfulness…then pour it out. Once you have learned that your heart can do this magic, this miracle, you would like to do it again and again. Try it. It is one of the most practical methods, simple, and it brings immediate results. Do it today, and see.