Emptiness is your innermost center. All activity is on the periphery: the innermost center is just a zero.
Enter the clear sky
Meditate on the sky: a summer sky with no clouds, endlessly empty and clear, nothing moving in it, in its total virginity. Contemplate on it, meditate on it, and enter this clarity. Become this clarity, this space-like clarity. To meditate on the sky is beautiful. Just lie down so you forget the earth; just lie down on your back on any lonely beach, on any ground, and just look at the sky. A clear sky will be helpful—unclouded, endless. Just looking, staring at the sky, feel the clarity of it—the uncloudedness, the boundless expanse—and then enter that clarity, become one with it. Feel as if you have become the sky, the space. This technique—to look into the clarity of the sky and to become one with it —is one of the most practiced. Many traditions have used this. And particularly for the modern mind it will be very useful, because nothing is left on earth to meditate on—only the sky. If you look all around, everything is man-made, everything is limited, with a boundary, a limitation. Only the sky is still, fortunately, open to meditate on.
Try this technique, it will be helpful, but remember three things. One: don’t blink—stare. Even if your eyes start to feel pain and tears come down, don’t be worried. Even those tears will be a part of unloading; they will be helpful. Those tears will make your eyes more innocent and fresh-bathed. You just go on staring. The second point: don’t think about the sky, remember. You can start thinking about the sky. You can remember many poems, beautiful poems about the sky—then you will miss the point. You are not to think about it—you are to enter it, you are to be one with it—because if you start thinking about it, again a barrier is created. You are missing the sky again, and you are enclosed in your own mind again. Don’t think about the sky. Be the sky. Just stare and move into the sky, and allow the sky to move into you. If you move into the sky, the sky will move into you immediately. How can you do it? How will you do it—this moving into the sky? Just goon staring further and further away. Go on staring—as if you are trying to find the boundary. Move deep. Move as much as you can. That very movement will break the barrier. And this method should be practiced for at least forty minutes; less than that will not do, will not be of much help. When you really feel that you have become one, then you can close the eyes. When the sky has entered in you, you can close the eyes. You will be able to see it within also. So only after forty minutes, when you feel that the oneness has happened and there is a communion and you have become part of it and the mind is no more, close the eyes and remain in the sky within.
Include Everything
This technique is a little difficult, but if you can do it, then it is very wonderful, beautiful. Sitting, don’t divide. Sitting in meditation, be inclusive of all—your body, your mind, your breath, your thinking, your knowing, everything. Be inclusive of all. Don’t divide, don’t create any fragmentation. Ordinarily we are fragmenting; we go on fragmenting. We say, “The body is not me.” There are techniques which can use that also, but this technique is totally different, rather it is the opposite.
Don’t divide. Don’t say, “I am not the body.” Don’t say, “I am not the breath.” Don’t say, “I am not the mind.” Just say, “I am all”—and be all. Don’t create any fragmentation within you. This is a feeling. With closed eyes include everything that exists in you. Don’t get yourself centered anywhere—be uncentered. The breath comes and goes, the thought comes and moves. The form of your body will go on changing. You have not observed this. If you sit with closed eyes, you will feel that sometimes your body is big, sometimes your body is small; sometimes it is very heavy, sometimes just light, as if you can fly. You can feel this increasing and decreasing of the form. Just close your eyes and sit and you will feel that sometimes the body is very big— filling the whole room; sometimes it is so small—just atomic. Why does this form change? As your attention changes, the form of the body changes. If you are inclusive, it will become big; if you exclude—“This is not I, this is not I”— then it will become very minute, very small, atomic.
Include everything in your being and don’t discard anything. Don’t say, “This is not I.” Say, “I am”, and include everything in it. If you can do this just sitting, wonderful, absolutely new happenings will happen to you. You will feel there is no center; in you there is no center. And with the center gone, there is no self, there is no ego; only consciousness remains—consciousness like a skycovering everything. And when it grows, not only your own breath will be included, not only your own form will be included; ultimately the whole universe becomes inclusive to you. The basic point is to remember inclusiveness. Don’t exclude. This is the key for this technique—inclusiveness, include. Include and grow. Include and expand. Try it with your body, and then try it with the outside world also. Sitting under a tree, look at the tree, then close your eyes and feel that the tree is within you. Look at the sky, then close your eyes and feel that the sky is within you. Look at the rising sun, then close your eyes and feel that the sun is rising within you. Feel more inclusive. A tremendous experience will happen to you. When you feel that the tree is within you, immediately you will feel more young, more fresh. And this is not imagination, because the tree and you both belong to the earth. You are both rooted in the same earth and ultimately rooted in the same existence. So when you feel that the tree is within you, the tree is within you—this is not imagination—and immediately you will feel the effect. The tree’s aliveness, the greenery, the freshness, the breeze passing through it, will be felt within you in your heart. Include more and more existence and don’t exclude. So remember this: make it a style of life to include—not only meditation, but a style of life, a way of living. Try to include more and more. The more you include, the more you expand, the more your boundaries recede to the very corners of existence. One day only you are; the whole existence is included. This is the ultimate of all religious experience.
A meditation for the jet set
You cannot find a better situation in which to meditate than while flying at a high altitude. The higher the altitude, the easier is the meditation. Hence, for centuries, meditators have been moving to the Himalayas to find a high altitude. When gravitation is less and the earth is very far away, many pulls of the earth are far away. You are far away from the corrupted society that man has built. You are surrounded by clouds and the stars and the moon and the sun and the vast space. So do one thing: start feeling one with that vastness, and do it in three steps. The first step is: for a few minutes just think that you are becoming bigger…you are filling the whole plane. Then the second step: start feeling that you are becoming even bigger, bigger than the plane, in fact the plane is now inside you. And the third step: feel that you have expanded into the whole sky. Now these clouds that are moving, and the moon and the stars—they are movingin you; you are huge, unlimited. This feeling will become your meditation, and you will feel completely relaxed and non-tense.
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