Namaste!

 

 

The Mental Body

The fourth body is absolutely wall-less. From inside the third body, there is not even a transparent wall. It is just a boundary, wall-less, so there is no difficulty in entering and no need of any method. So one who has achieved the third can achieve the fourth very easily.

But to go beyond the fourth, there is as much difficulty as there was in going beyond the first, because now the mental ceases. The fifth is the spiritual body. Before it can be reached there is again a wall, but not in the same sense as there was a wall between the first body and the second. The wall is between different dimensions now. It is of a different plane.

The four lower bodies were all concerned with one plane. The division was horizontal. Now, it is vertical. So the wall between the fourth and the fifth is bigger than between any two of the lower bodies - because our ordinary way of looking is horizontal, not vertical. We look from side to side, not up and down. But the movement from the fourth body to the fifth is from a lower plane to a higher plane. The difference is not between outside and inside but between up and down. Not unless you begin to look upward can you move into the fifth.

How to look upward? What is the way? You must have heard that in meditation the eyes must be looking upward to the ajna chakra. The eyes must be focused upward as if you are going to see inside your skull. Eyes are only symbolic. The real question is of vision. Our vision, our faculty for seeing, is associated with the eyes, so eyes become the means through which even inward vision happens. If you turn your eyes upward, then your vision too goes upward.

So in the fourth body, your consciousness must become like fire - going upward. There are many ways to check this. For example, if the mind is flowing toward sex it is just like water flowing downward, because the sex centre is downward. In the fourth body one must begin directing the eyes up, not down.

If consciousness is to go upward, it must begin from a centre that is above the eyes, not below the eyes. There is only one centre above the eyes from which the movement can be upward: the ajna chakra. Now the two eyes must look upward toward the third eye.

The third eye has been remembered in so many ways.... And the moment your two eyes look upward toward the third eye, a great fire is created at the centre; a burning sensation is there. The third eye is beginning to open and it must be kept cool. So in India, sandalwood paste is used. It is not only cool; it also has a particular perfume that is concerned with the third body and the transcendence of it. The coolness of the perfume, and the particular spot where it is placed, becomes an upward attraction, a remembrance of the third eye.

If you close your eyes and I place my finger at your third eye spot, I am not really touching your third eye itself, but you will still begin to feel it. Even this much pressure is enough, scarcely a touch, just a gentle fingering. So the perfume, the delicate touch of it and its coolness, is enough. Then your attention is always flowing from your eyes to the third eye.

So to cross the fourth body there is only one technique, one method, and that is to look upward.... But first, the first four bodies must be crossed. Only then can it be helpful, otherwise not. Otherwise it may be disturbing, it may create all sorts of mental diseases, because the whole adjustment of the system will be shattered. The four bodies are looking downward, and with your inner mind you are looking upward. Then, there is every possibility that schizophrenia will result.

What I am saying is that one should not experiment with techniques of looking upward before crossing the first four bodies. Otherwise a split will be created which will be impossible to bridge, and one will have to wait for one's next life to begin again. It is better to practice techniques that begin from the beginning. If you have passed your first three bodies in past births, then you will pass them again within a moment. There will be no difficulty. You know the territory; you know the way. In a moment, they come before you. You recognize them - and you have passed them! Then you can go further. So my insistence is always to begin from the first body. For everyone!

 

 

 

The Anahata Chakra

Then comes the fourth centre, the heart centre, called anahata. The word is beautiful, anahata means unstruck sound. It means exactly what Zen people mean when they say, "Do you hear the sound of one hand clapping?"- Unstruck sound. The heart is just in the middle: three centers below it, three centers above it. And the heart is the door from the lower to the higher, or from the higher to the lower. The heart is like a crossroads.

And the heart has been completely bypassed. You have not been taught to be heartful. You have not even been allowed to go into the realm of the heart, because it is very dangerous, it is the centre of the soundless sound; it is the non- linguistic centre - unstruck sound. Language is struck sound; we have to create it with our vocal chords; it has to be struck - it is two hands clapping. The heart is one hand clapping. In the heart there is no word; it is wordless.

We have avoided the heart completely, we have bypassed it. We move in such a way in our being as if the heart does not exist - or, at the most, as if it is just a pumping mechanism for breathing, that's all. It is not. The lungs are not the heart. The heart is hidden deep behind the lungs. And it is not physical either. It is the place from where love arises. That's why love is not a sentiment. -And sentimental love belongs to the third centre, not to the fourth.

Love is not just sentimental. Love has more depth than sentiments; love has more validity than sentiments. Sentiments are momentary. More or less, the sentiment of love is misunderstood as the experience of love. One day you fall in love with a man or a woman, and the next day it is gone - and you call it love. It is not love. It is a sentiment: you liked the woman - liked, remember, not loved - it was a 'like', just as you like ice cream. It was a like. Likes come and go; likes are momentary; they cannot stay long; they don't have any capacity to stay long. You like a woman; you loved her, and finished! The like is finished. It is just like you liked ice cream; you have eaten it - now you don't look at the ice cream at all. And if somebody goes on giving you more ice cream, you will say, "Now it is nauseating - stop! I cannot take any more."

Liking is not love. Never misunderstand liking for love, otherwise your whole life you will be just a driftwood...you will be drifting from one person to another; never will intimacy grow.

The fourth centre, the anahata, is very significant, because it is in the heart that for the first time you were related to your mother. It was through the heart that you were related to your mother, not through the head. In deep love, in deep orgasm, again you are related through the heart, not through the head. In meditation, in prayer, the same happens: you are related with existence through the heart - heart-to-heart. Yes, it is a dialogue heart-to- heart, not head-to-head. It is non-linguistic.

And the heart centre is the centre from where the soundless sound arises. If you relax into the heart centre, you will hear Omkar, Aum. That is a great discovery. Those who have entered the heart, they hear a continuous chanting inside their being which sounds like Aum. Have you ever heard anything like a chanting, which goes on by itself? - Not that you do it.

That's why I am not in favor of mantras. You can go on chanting Aum, Aum, Aum, and you can create a mental substitute for the heart. It is not going to help. T is a deception. And you can go on chanting for years, and you can create a false sound within yourself as if your heart is speaking - it is not. To know the heart you are not to chant Aum - you have just to be silent. One day, suddenly the mantra is there. One day, when you have fallen silent, suddenly you hear the sound is coming from nowhere. It is arising out of you from the innermost core. It is the sound of your inner silence Just as in a silent night, there is a certain sound, the sound of the silence, exactly like that on a very, very much deeper level a sound arises in you.

It arises - let me remind you again and again - it is not that you bring it in; it is not that you repeat Aum, Aum. No, you don't say a single word. You are simply quiet. You are simply silent, and it bursts forth like a spring...suddenly it starts flowing, it is there. You hear it - you don't say it, you hear it.

At this centre of the heart, anahata chakra, you hear. But you have not heard anything inside you - no sound, no omkar, no mantra. That simply means you have avoided the heart. The waterfall is there, and the sound of running water is there - but you have avoided it, you have bypassed, you have taken some other route, you have taken a shortcut. The shortcut simply goes from the third centre avoiding the fourth. The fourth is the most dangerous centre because it is the centre out of which trust is born, faith is born. And the mind has to avoid it. If the mind does not avoid it, then there will be no possibility for doubt. Mind lives through doubt.

This is the fourth centre. And Tantra says through love you will come to know this fourth centre.

The fourth plane is the mental body or the psyche, and the fourth chakra, the anahat, is connected with the fourth body. The natural qualities of this plane are imagination and dreaming. This is what the mind is always doing: imagining and dreaming. It dreams in the night and in the daytime it daydreams. If imagination is fully developed, that is to say if it is developed to its fullest extent, in a complete way, it becomes determination, will. If dreaming develops fully it is transformed into vision - psychic vision. If a man's ability to dream is fully developed he has only to close his eyes and he can see things. He can then see even through a wall. At first he only dreams of seeing beyond the wall, later he actually sees beyond it. Now he can only guess what you are thinking, but after the transformation he sees what you think. Vision means seeing and hearing things without the use of the usual sense organs. The limitations of time and space are no more for a person who develops vision.

In dreams you travel far. If you are in Bombay you reach Calcutta. In vision also you can travel distances, but there will be a difference: in dreams you imagine you have gone, whereas in vision you actually go. The fourth, psychic body can actually be present there. As we have no idea of the ultimate possibility of this fourth body, we have discarded the ancient concept of dreams in today's world. The ancient experience was that in dream one of the bodies of man comes out of him and goes on a journey.

There was a man, Swedenborg, whom people knew as a dreamer. He used to talk of heaven and hell and that they can only exist in dreams. But one afternoon, as he slept, he began to shout, "Help! Help! My house is on fire." People came running, but there was no fire there. They awoke him to assure him that it was only a dream and there was no danger of fire. He insisted, however, that his house was on fire. His house was three hundred miles away and it had caught fire at that time. On the second or third day news came of this disaster. His house was burnt to ashes, and it was actually burning when he cried out in his sleep. Now this is no longer a dream but a vision. The distance of three hundred miles was no longer there. This man witnessed what was happening three hundred miles away.

Now scientists also agree that there are great psychic possibilities of the fourth body. Now that man has set out in space, research in this direction becomes all the more important. The fact remains that no matter how reliable the instruments at man's disposal, these cannot be relied upon completely. If the radio communication in a spaceship ceases to function the astronauts lose contact with the world for all time. They will not be able to tell us where they are or what has happened to them. So today scientists are keen to develop telepathy and vision of the psychic body to overcome this risk. If the astronauts were able to communicate directly with the power of telepathy it would be a part of the development of the fourth body. Then space travel can be safe. A lot of work has been carried out in this direction.

Thirty years ago a man set out to explore the North Pole. He was equipped with all that was necessary for wireless communication. One more arrangement was also made which has not made known up until now. A psychic person whose fourth body faculties were functioning was also made to receive the transmission from the explorer. The most surprising thing was that when there was bad weather the wireless failed, but this psychic person received the news without any difficulty. When the diaries were compared later on it was found that eighty to ninety-five percent of the time the signals received by the psychic person were correct, whereas the news relayed by the radio was not available more than seventy-two percent of the time, because there were many breakdowns. Now Russia and America are both very eager, and a great deal of work is going on in the field of telepathy, clairvoyance, thought projection and thought reading. All these are the possibilities of the fourth body. To dream is its natural quality; to see the truth, to see the real, is its ultimate possibility. Anahat is the chakra of this fourth body.