The Meditations of the Vijnana Bhairava

Vijnana Bhairava denotes knowledge of the Lord. Meditation means to be in the moment without thought, to be in the state of blissful consciousness.

1.   The still space between in-breath and out-breath.

2.   Focus attention between the eyebrows.

3.   Look at a blank wall or other blank surface.

4.   Meditate on all-encompassing space.

5.   Meditate on all-encompassing emptiness.

6.   Close all openings of your head (7) and meditate on stillness.

7.   Close your ears and listen to your own internal sound.

8.   Meditate on the sound OM and let it take you to the expanded state.

9.   Pay close attention to the space where sounds emerge and disappear. This is the Non-state.

10. When listening to music, pay attention to every appearance and disappearance of the sounds. Let the sounds carry you into stillness.

11. Go through the letters of the alphabet one by one. Meditate on the sound of each letter individually. Focus your attention where sounds merge and where they emerge.

12. Meditate on your form as being filled with blissful light radiating in all directions simultaneously.

13. Meditate on the timeless moment in the moment. Maintain this timeless experience forever.

14. Meditate on space filling you completely.

15. Meditate on the finer and finer forms of the objects around you. Meditate on the fact that all objects and you are made of the same substance.

16. Meditate on God who pervades this entire creation.

17. Meditate on the sensation that you are the jar that contains the entire universe.

18. Meditate on the space that is contained within a container. Do not meditate on the confinement created by the sides, but meditate on the space that fills it.

19. Meditate in a place where you feel the infinity of space. Meditate on this infinite space.

20. Meditate on the empty space that is created when you move your attention from one object to another.

21. Just when you feel the need to act, stop, and meditate on the sensation of expectation, the sensation of intense waiting.

22. Meditate on the notion that your form and the form of the universe are identical.

23. Meditate on the still space between inbreath and outbreath. Bliss follows.

24. Meditate on the sensation that your body (flesh, bones, blood) is saturated with the essence of the universe, which is bliss.

25. Meditate on the sensation of bliss when your senses bring something astonishing to your attention.

26. Meditate on the sensation of bliss when you experience the bliss of orgasm.

27. Meditate on the joy you experience during any of your daily activities.

28. Meditate on the memory of a joyful experience.

29. Meditate on the memory of a blissful experience.

30. Meditate on the joy of meeting a long lost dear one.

31. Meditate on the joy of experiencing pleasureble foods and drinks.

32. Meditate on the joy of listening to pleasurable music.

33. Meditate on the joy of any kind pleasurable experience.

34. Meditate on the state that occurs when you are on the threshold between waking and sleeping states.

35. Meditate on the state that emerges when you are seated in a relaxed upright and balanced position.

36. Look without blinking at an object for a long time.

37. Laying on your back, completely unmoving, be the witness of your thoughts.

38. When you experience obstacles to your meditation, realize that the obstacle is also a part of your meditation.

39. Through discrimination, realize that “you” do not exist, “your” body does not exist, the “world’ does not exist. What exists is non-dual emptiness.

40. When a desire enters your mind, ask yourself “am I this desire?” The answer will be “no”. Then revel in the state of emptiness that results.

41. When you desire to know something, ask yourself “will this knowledge make me complete?” The answer is “no”. Revel in the state of emptiness that will follow.

42. See only consciousness in this world.

43. Every time you experience strong feelings, withdraw from them and become their uninvolved blissful witness.

44. See the whole universe as a mirage.

45. See yourself mirrored back at yourself in all that exists.

46. See the spark of consciousness in all beings, whether high or low.

47. Clear your mind of all help to meditation and experience the joy of freedom from these crutches.

48. The creator and the created have the same qualities. You are not different from the creator. Therefore you have a hand in everything. You are omnipresent.

49. Dance with abandon. Then drop to the ground as if dead and experience the total absence of yourself.

50. When sudden activities shake up your mind, you can find yourself in the Non-state.

51. Focus your attention on a single object. This will bring about the experience of the blissful conscious Self.

52. Realize that there is not such thing as a pure or an impure thought. Experience the freedom that comes with this realization. Free yourself from all so-called ethical injunctions.

53. Bring your feelings into a state of balance. Meditate on the joy you experience in this state of balance.

54. Contemplate the empty space that surrounds all objects. This focus frees the mind from the limitations set by concrete forms.

55. Chant one of the many names of God with ecstasy.

56. Meditate on the joy you experience whey you have truly imbibed new knowledge.

57. Have a stable and balanced mind. This leads to the experience of joy.

58. Pray to God with single-minded attention. Experience the bliss contained in this prayer.

59. Breath in with the sound of HAM and breath out with the sound of SA. But, be the witness of HAM and SA. Live in the space where the Non-State naturally exists.

60. Meditate on the joy of victory. Do not gloat!

61. Meditate on the joy of moments of perfection.

62. Meditate on the notion that you are perfect, this world is perfect and God is perfect.

63. Meditate on the notion that this moment is perfect.

64. Hold back the tide of your memories and the tide of worries about the future. Be joyful in the space between the past and the future: this moment.

65. Meditate on the notion that your body is filled with void.

66. Meditate on the notion that the universe is filled with void.

67. Meditate on nothingness in a cemetery.

68. Meditate on the astonishment experienced during a magic act.

69. Meditate on the miracle of the existence of creation.

70. Meditate on the experience of pain. Find the witness behind the pain.

71. Meditate on the point of emergence of strong emotions as well as on the point where these emotions subside.

72. When finding your attention being pulled towards sense objects, turn our attention within and experience the freedom from attachments.

73. Meditate on the question “who am I?”

74. Meditate on the fact that knowledge and the knower merge the moment something becomes known.

The State of Meditation

Meditation has enormous power. It helps focus the mind and thereby allows the mental energies to be concentrated when engaged even in simple everyday thinking.

You can understand how important it is when trying to solve a problem – complicated or not – to be able to concentrate on the matter at hand until a solution is found. Nothing is more of a hindrance to success in any venture if the mind keeps losing the train of thought and veers uncontrollably off the path.

Meditation is concentration on an inner center, a center that is not of the mind, but that is beyond the mind.

You might ask: How can I concentrate the mind on a center that is beyond the mind? Wouldn’t that center have to be in the mind? How can the mind go beyond the mind?

The answer to these questions is this: When I use the word mind, I refer to the thinking and feeling mind. Beyond this thinking and feeling mind is the purely aware mind. This aware mind is like the ocean, while the thinking and feeling mind is like the waves on the surface of the ocean.

The waves of this ocean generally do not reach to a great depth. Sometimes, there is a powerful storm that really stirs up the water, but even that force can’t reach the bottom of the ocean, where all is still, forever so still.

Meditation works from the inside out. In meditation, your intention is to concentrate on the still aspect of the ocean. You are the entire ocean, active waves and restful depth.

Every heavy object thrown into the ocean will break through the waves and will slowly sink through stiller and stiller layers toward the eternally still bottom of the sea.

What pulls the heavy object toward the bottom is natural gravity, the intention to concentrate all matter in one place.

In your mind, the same force of gravity exists. You simply need to drop a thought colored with the intention to concentrate and you will find yourself in the stillness of the bottom of your being.

The journey within takes just a moment. Meditation is not a process, it is a state that get’s attained through your intent. You are in control of your mind. You have always been in control of your mind, and will always be in control. (Development and condition of your physical brain are other matters).

It is important to learn meditation while you are are still in full possession of your mental faculties. Once you begin losing brain capacity through the influence of old age or a deteriorating body, the subtleties of concentrated meditation may escape you.

Allow the natural gravity of intention to pull your attention toward the place of eternal stillness. Bliss awaits you where you are beyond the waves of the thinking and feeling mind in the state of pure being.

Where do you find comfort?

Where do you go for comfort when you feel stressed? Do you go to the past or to the future for help? Do you want to find comfort in the things that you are familiar with, or do you charge ahead and attempt to find a new way of dealing with reality?

The past and the Ego are really one and the same. There is no “absolute” past in the sense that there is only one version of it. Each one of us has a personalized version of the past, that’s why the past and the Ego, the personality, are really identical.

If the past and the Ego are the same, what about the future? The Ego tries to establish itself in the new territories it encounters, essentially imposing the patterns of the past on an area of unlimited possibilities.

Nothing about the past can be changed. Perhaps your understanding about it can deepen over time, but the events will always remain the same, unalterable. The future is where the possibilities for true growth lie.

So, when you attempt to find solace in the things you have already done, then you are not giving the future a change to prove that it holds adventures for you, more magnificent than you can imagine.

Stillness of Mind

Stillness of mind is experienced when the focus naturally concentrates on the potency of the moment. In this quiet moment there is only the potency of the moment and nothing else.

That is really all there is to the “Art" of finding peace. What is peace but the harmonic fusion of all energies involved at a particular moment in time and space? Peace is the being in balance.

The Potency of the Moment

The potency of the moment should not overwhelm the mind. Mind should be able to contain it. By potency I mean the near overwhelming power of existence, of being, of the Divine.

By divine power I mean the direct experience of what I have called “sweet brutal consciousness.”

It is a blissful experience, and also brutal in that it reveals all the weaknesses of the mind with brutal honesty. Only the truly pure at heart can withstand the flow of this power through the mind/body system.

Those with an impure heart will suffer from the onslaught of this divine revelatory and cleansing power.

The divine power is absolute in the sense that it is the greatest power in existence. And it supersedes all other powers that followed its manifestation. All human powers are subjugated to it.

Each new thought energy arising in the mind is in a way a version of the Big Bang, having the power to create a whole new world out of seemingly nothing.

It is important to cut through the thinking mind to the origin of the mind’s energies and find the place of still potency that is at the heart of the mind. And one needs to cut deeply and mercilessly. Something important lies there and it needs to be discovered.

Use the ax of dispassion or the scalpel of discrimination to get to the deeper layers of the mind. Use the tools that are most in line with your personality. Finding the truth is not a cookie cutter affair. One size does not fit all. Being born to particular parents at a particular place and time do not determine your path towards this divine power.

Ask for help and it will arrive. Be open when it does. Dogmas are not helpful on the path. Neither is the constantly thinking and evaluating mind. The divine has many forms through which it may appear. But then, it appears in all of them. Although to some of them certain minds have an affinity and respond better than to others.

The Struggle

The struggle for consciousness to express itself. I know that I am, but how does that manifest in the world? Others see what I do, but not who I am. I am me. There is always a slight uptick to me, no matter how dark the clouds are that have gathered in the mind. This is not the effect of positive thinking, but the effect of life, which always seeks new ways of expressing itself.

So, I am never completely alone. I am always with my deep inner sense of being. I am by myself, but not lonely.

Inspiration

Inspiration is the key to everything. Without it nothing ever changes. Inspiration is like a force that gets applied to an object and propels it in a new direction.

The question science, religion, philosophy, etc, are trying to answer is this: “what is the inspiration behind this creation?”

I know that I exist. That is the only indisputable fact. Everything else is relative. “You” are relative. “This world” is relative. “My thoughts” are relative. “My knowing” of my existence is absolute.

Seeing a table is relative, because it depends on sense organs and a mind. Knowing that something is there is absolute.

The questions regarding me are: “Who am I?” “How did I get here?” “What am I doing here?”

The question regarding the table is: “What is it?” “How did it get here?” “What is it doing here?”

Questions like these are inspiring to me. They cause me to us my mental energies to explore the mystery of existence.

I listen, I read, I meditate, I write. Those are the means of my exploration.

And then, whatever I produce must provide inspiration, otherwise I am wasting creation’s “time.”