People around the world are greeting each other Happy New Year and declaring their new year resolutions. I am also contemplating my resolution, though I am not sure if it will change anything in my life — but I do want certain change within me. The atmosphere outside has become very toxic. The people who matter in our society — the politicians — have created such a toxic atmosphere — by their hateful utterances against each other. And it seems that we are also following them to a large extent, enjoying spreading hate statements all over the media and the social media. This is our daily food.

Every new year as we age, we resolve to do something different and better, but it does not happen, because, on the level of our collective consciousness, we are creating a mountain of hate over the head. And all heads are busy fighting with the hypnotic idea of survival of the fittest — the idea that belongs to the animal world, not the human or the spiritual world. Jesus, Guru Nanak, and Tao did not teach us survival of the fittest. Jesus said: Blessed are the meek… Guru Nanak told us: Nanak Nanhe Ho Raho…. Lao Tsu of the Tao religion reminded us: The softest thing in the universe, overcomes the hardest thing in the universe.

The world created by the politicians is totally opposite and makes us fight with each other all the time. We go on ageing thinking that we are maturing — but this maturity is very toxic. I suggest that we drop this idea of maturity and be children again. As Jesus says: Unless you are a child again, you cannot enter into my Kingdom of God.

Recently I was reading Childhood of the Magician by Hermann Hesse. He wrote: I was an active and happy boy, playing with the beautiful, many-coloured world, at home everywhere, not less with animals and plants than in the primeval forest of my own fantasies and dreams, happy in my powers and abilities, more delighted than consumed by my burning desires… It was beautiful and it pleased me, but more beautiful still was the world of my wishful thinking, richer still the play of my waking dreams. The reality was never enough, there was need of magic.

In my meditation in the new year, I wish to regain the magical childhood. And I know that meditation can do wonders — bring about a metamorphosis in the human psyche. An old man can become fully childlike, without losing the consciousness that happens in the age of maturity.

Osho says: Maturity is not concerned with age at all. Maturity is growth, and the growth must be through childhood, not against it, remember. Your maturity is false because it has been against the child. The child was born; maturity has been created. The child was natural; you are artificial, cultivated. You will have to go back to the child to regain the source from where growth is possible.

It is a Sufi whirling meditation — learning the art of whirling consciously and settling into consciousness.

Most of the times, we human beings find ourselves dealing with the ups and downs of our lives. We may like it or not, but the complexities of life are bringing such situations all the time. We get pulled into whirlpools and lose our centring. And if we are not deeply rooted in our being or our soul when such situations happen, it is very certain that we will go mad.

What then is the way to get out of the whirlpools? The way is inward — to find the centre of our being within us.

Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi gave a wonderful method of meditation for such a centering to happen. It is a Sufi whirling meditation — learning the art of whirling consciously and settling into consciousness. He himself experimented and found himself — in the centre of his being.

Osho tells us that, “Sufi whirling is one of the most ancient techniques, one of the most forceful. It is so deep that even a single experience can make you totally different. Whirl with open eyes, just like small children go on twirling, as if your inner being has become a centre and your whole body has become a wheel, moving, a potter’s wheel, moving. You are in the centre, but the whole body is moving.”

This meditation technique is done in three stages —
First Stage: 45 minutes — Whirling. Keep your eyes open and feel the centre point of your body. Lift your arms to shoulder height, with the right hand palm up and the left-hand low, palm down. Start turning around at one point — at your own axis. Let your body be soft. Start slowly and after 15 minutes gradually go faster and faster. You become a whirlpool of energy — the periphery a storm of movement but the witness at the centre silent and still. Gradually your eyes de-focus and the surroundings will become a whirl. As you move faster, you become more still inside.

Second Stage: 15 minutes. Let your body fall to the ground. Roll onto your stomach immediately so that your navel is in contact with the earth. Feel your body blending into the earth. Keep your eyes closed and remain passive and silent.

Third Stage: Celebration. Gradually, get up and join the celebration dance if you feel or sit still if you want.

Osho gives the example of children doing this naturally in their childhood. He says: “When a small child goes on whirling he loses the sense of being a body, he starts hovering above his body, he can see his own body turning — and that is the miracle of the method. But we are stopped by our parents very early.”

Mevlana Rumi himself became enlightened by 36 hours of continuous whirling; day in, day out he went on and on. He was riding on a cloud, he could not stop till he fell down. But when he opened his eyes and got up he was a totally new man, the old was gone.

It is good news that Bill Gates is meditating daily — for precious 10 minutes. And now for him, meditation is no longer a “woo-woo thing”, whatever that means. He might have thought that meditation is “tied somehow to reincarnation”.

Well, such misconceptions have always been there about meditation and people in the West have been ridiculing the Eastern meditators as navel-gazers, escapists and renunciates. Such fallacious assumptions discourage these intelligent people all over the world in using such a wonderful tool to raise their consciousness and transform themselves and the world at large. As we all know that when intelligent people do something remarkable and great, the ordinary people follow them, because it looks like a success story. People become followers of these great people. It makes sense to them.

If in India similar statements are given by Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthy, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that the secret of their success is meditation, this will create a huge impact on the minds of intelligentsia and the ordinary people. Recently, superstar Rajinikanth said in an interview that he has been meditating since he was seven years old. He explained: “From childhood, I had the Vedas, the Upanishads, meditation with me. Later, there were many gurus and I made many trips to the Himalayas. It is a deep subject. Only someone who experiences it knows about it. It is difficult to convey in words. Mainly, you get peace. When your mind is peaceful, whatever you do, you do it well.”

Rajinikanth did not renounce the world and made a tremendous contribution to the world of movies.

Osho, the enlightened mystic of modern times, made meditation the central point of his spiritual teaching. Thousands of Osho centers around the world are offering meditations on a regular basis. He has a very unique take on this subject. According to him, meditation is a way of life. It is life-affirmative. One does not have to run away from life and practice meditation in some ashrams in the Himalayas. Yes, one can take a few days off to go somewhere and learn meditation, but one has to return to the world and continue living meditatively.

He says: “Meditation cannot be a fragmented thing. It should be a continuous effort. Every moment one has to be alert, aware and meditative. But the mind has played a trick. You meditate in the morning and then you put it aside. Or you pray in the temple and then forget it. Then you come back to the world, completely unmeditative, unconscious, as if walking in a hypnotic sleep. This fragmented effort won’t do much. Consciousness is a continuum. It is like a river, flowing constantly. If you are meditative the whole day, every moment of it — and only when you are meditative the whole day — the flowering will come to you.”

There are seven points of mindfulness — awareness, benediction, creativity, devotion, ecstasy, friendliness, and Godliness. But if one starts with the first point sincerely in daily life, the other six points happen as part of natural growth. In the beginning, being in constant awareness is an effort, one has to remember to be in total awareness of everything — within and without — on physical, mental and emotional levels. This is the most arduous process, but not something impossible. Being aware of our actions on the physical level with all its sensations, being aware of our thoughts and being aware of our emotions and feelings is in itself a long process of sadhana. This one step leads us towards the state of realisation of the totality of our being.

During this process of this realisation (one can call it the inner journey), one starts having some glimpses of benediction, an inner contentment, the real happiness within — that is not dependent on others. This fills us with more energy to live our life creatively — not wasting our energy in trivial matters of the world. A new door of devotion opens in our being. A person who lives a life of devotion has a certain direction in life — will not go astray. The journey is no longer boring or tedious — it becomes juicy. One can go unhindered on the path which has become lush green with all the scenery. One can sing and dance on the path in ecstasy and celebrate the journey. The journey itself — for an ecstatic meditator — feels like the goal.

In this state of being, a seeker feels the fragrance of friendliness showering from all directions. One feels at homeness with the earth and sky, the trees, the birds, the mountains, the rivers and the waterfalls and everything in nature. One feels oneness with the whole existence. This is what is meant by Godliness. God is not some person sitting high up in the sky like an emperor giving commandments to his empire. God is this totality and the wholeness of existence — this very life that surrounds us.

Osho says: To me, when someone says that God exists, it means the same thing: Existence exists. God and existence are equivalent synonyms. Once you have become aware of what existence is, you will not call it existence. Then you will call it God. The moment one becomes aware of the total being that is, then you cannot use the word existence. You become more intimate with it, so you have to use a personal name.

The experiencing of Godliness within oneself manifests as friendliness towards all beings — the whole life that surrounds us — as Osho points out: Your life should reach to others. Your blissfulness, your benediction, your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed. It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry — not only to friends but to strangers too. This is real compassion, this is real love: Sharing your enlightenment, sharing your dance of the beyond.

Recently, on a particular website, I came across a beautiful statement by Wayne Dyer: “You can be a host to God or a hostage to your ego. It’s your choice.”

Being hostage to the ego is the case with most people — and as a matter of fact, they seem to have no choice. This is something that everybody believes to be unavoidable — they have to live with it. It is the way the whole society functions — and everybody is expected to function this way only.

It begins very early in life. The schools and the other educational institutions teach us to be competitive, and a stupid mantra is taught that to succeed in the world is to defeat others. This feeling of defeating others gives pleasure to the person who succeeds and misery to the one who cannot defeat others. In this race of ambition, everybody becomes trapped in a false sense of the self — an artificially created something that feels like the self. It is a hallucination — it is maya — about which all the enlightened sages have been warning us. And none of us has paid any heed to their warning. This unreal “self” has been created by the whole social conditioning — very unconsciously. We all have become imprisoned inside its thick concrete walls — even God cannot penetrate into such walls, forget about hosting God.

In one of the talks compiled in the Book of Life, J. Krishnamurti explains it beautifully: You know what I mean by the self? By that, I mean the idea, the memory, the conclusion, the experience, the various forms of nameable and unnameable intentions, the conscious endeavor to be or not to be, the accumulated memory of the unconscious, the racial, the group, the individual, the clan, and the whole of it all, whether it is projected outwardly in action, or projected spiritually as virtue; the striving after all this is the self. In it is included the competition, the desire to be. The whole process of that, is the self; and we know actually when we are faced with it, that it is an evil thing. I am using the word evil intentionally because the self is dividing; the self is self-enclosing; its activities, however noble, are separated and isolated. We know all this. We also know that extraordinary are the moments when the self is not there, in which there is no sense of endeavor, of effort, and which happens when there is love.

Call it love or meditation — only this can set us free. This realisation itself is the freedom from being hostage to our ego and realises the true self. Osho says: The ego is just the opposite of your real self. The ego is not you. The ego is the deception created by the society so that you can continue playing with the toy and never ask about the real thing. That’s why my insistence that unless you drop the ego, you will never come to know yourself.