The effect of profound meditation on the breathing and the heart

Before I started my 5-year training with Osho in Poona in 1976 I was fortunate to undergo 3 years of training and discipline with a Yogi by the name of Mahindra. That started in 1972.  He trained me in the in the strictly Indian traditional ways of asanas, pranayamas, mudras and bandhas. He also trained me in mantras and most importantly, Kriya Meditation. 

As I entered this yogic training, I noticed very positive changes arriving very quick, but by 1974 it was becoming clear that my life was approaching a revolution of changes that would make it impossible to return to the old life.

I spent hours every day with practice and training. When I was done with all the preliminary disciplines, I sat down and practiced Kriya Meditation.

It was during this practice of Kriya Meditation that I noticed that my breathing really seemed to slow down quite a bit and this happened frequently, so I got used to it. 

One day, however, seemed a particularly good day for Kriya Meditation. The breathing slowed down, things became rather still. After a while it seemed as if I did not feel the body much at all. It was then that I noticed that the breathing became slower and slower and especially, the gap between the exhalation and the inhalation became bigger and bigger. This seemed somehow natural until I noticed that the breathing somehow wanted to stop and in fact ultimately did so for what seemed to be extended periods of time, perhaps a minute.

When I went to Poona, those type of experiences continued. However, my meditation efforts in Poona were greatly amplified. I generally meditated five to six hours a day during those 5 years, two hours every day in the direct presence of Osho. Those two hours with Him could easily lead to extremely unusual openings of Inner Space.

The Ashram in Poona was totally dedicated to intense meditation practice. Once a month there was a 10-day meditation camp. Then my days looked like this:

6:00 - 7:00 Dynamic Meditation

8:00 - 10:00 Lecture with Osho

10:30 - 12:00 Sufi Dancing

4:00 - 5:00 Nadabrahma Meditation

5:30 - 6:30 Kundalini Meditation

7:00 - 8:00 Gourishankar Meditation

8:30 - 10:00 Evening Music Group (Great Singing and Dancing)

I generally have a difficult time to convey the incredibly powerful climate of the Ashram. It was a field of transformation of electrifying quality. One just had to step in for lift-off.

Therefore it was not surprising that in the middle of such a climate I went to sleep one night and discovered that while my body was sleeping, I was in a lucid state. In that state I saw a great white light descending from above into the body and as it touched the body, the breathing stopped and in fact, the heart also stopped. But, for some reason, the body did not die, it seemed as if it now was connected with a Source of Universal Vitality that did not require oxygen, not even a heartbeat.

Later on I talked to Osho about this and he said that as we go into profound meditation, such things will occur.

In fact in many yogic scriptures the term "Breathless State" is commonly used as an indication for meditation shifting into Samadhi.

So, if something arrives in your life that takes your breath away, don't worry. Be happy!

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Learning to share the Dharma

I began sharing the Dharma in earnest in 1981, after spending 5 years at Osho's Ashram in Poona, India. Those 5 years were dedicated to the practice of meditation, the central pillar having been the two hours of meditation in the direct presence of Osho, which only could be described as indescribably enriching and luminous. Meditation activities at the Ashram started at 6 a.m. and ended around 10 p.m. To spend a minimum of 5 or 6 hours a day in meditation was easy. However there were many opportunities to engage in practices upto 12 hours a day. Once a month there was a 10­­-day meditation camp which shifted meditation to 8 hours a day. Then there were groups like 10-day Vipassana. There meditation was practiced about 12 hours a day, if one included the two hours with the Master. Other groups like Soma presented various esoteric practices, they ran up to 14 days. And again other groups like Enlightenment Intensive plunged the practitioner into asking himself "Who Am I?" upto 16 hours per day.

This should give a basic idea what an intense place Osho's Ashram was, if you were ready to practice and work on yourself. 

Before living at Osho's Ashram I spent 3 years in direct training with a traditional Indian Yogi by the name of Mahindra who taught me many yogic sciences, including Mantra and Kriya Meditation. That was followed by continuing the training in the Himalayas. I spend time with yogis in ashrams and caves at the Ganges. There, in 1975, I met Swami Charanananda, a disciple of Nityananda and most noteably, Swami Paramananda Avdhoot, who lived in Badrinath, close to the Tibetan border at 11,000 feet. Spending time with those two yogis was precious.

In April 1981 I went to Tokyo and I began sharing the Dharma by running workshops and meditation intensives. One could say that I began learning what worked and what didn't.

What works most emphatically is to practice meditation with people, to create a opportunity for direct experience.

What didn't work too well was to ask people to ask questions. One should think that to create room for that would be important, but I discovered that many people actually didn't know or didn't dare to ask questions that had actual relevance to them.

Their existential question would be, "I am miserable and depressed. Why am I suffering so much?" But instead they ask some superficial intellectual question, which if one attempted answering it, would bring no relief to the questioner whatsoever. I soon learnt to ignore many intellectual questions and either to start talking about the dynamics of suffering and what caused suffering (almost impossible to go wrong with that) or push people to ask a question that was authentic and expressed their vulnerability. 

What works well also is to talk about my direct experiences in meditation. This works for a number of reasons. First, I share my own being directly, no quotes from any books, and this seems to inspire very much. And then there is another factor that I began to notice over time: When I talk about my own experiences of meditation practice, it is as if the very air in the room changes. Talking about Samadhi creates the scent of Samadhi in the room. This initially surprised me and I then noted when I share direct experience, some people in the room actually catch it. This seems a valuable avenue of sharing the Dharma.

Looking back over the last 32 years of teaching, I can safely say that my teaching modalities have dramatically changed in the sense that the fluidity of presentation has greatly amplified. I considered it a compliment one day when Julia said, "You know, they come back not because you are so spiritual, but because you are so funny!" Perhaps I have advanced from being a spiritual teacher to being a spiritual comedien. That would be a good thing.

One other enormously important aspect of sharing the Dharma well is to be authentic and vulnerable. I have seen many spiritual teachers succumb to the temptation of allowing themselves to appear a little more than they actually are. To me that represents the first step into a very wrong direction. I consider it very important to let people know that I am not Superman, that I am quite capable of lots of mistakes and that I have many things to learn. In fact, through the practice of meditation I have finally figured out how many things I don't understand and don't know. I allow myself to tell people that I am very unenlighted and that I have lots of work to do and that when I go home after teaching, I practice, I invoke and pray just like they do.

And having said that, I allow myself to share with people my very own longing for liberation. I let them know that I am on the journey just like them. I offer my friendship. I declare that I have not mastered anything, but have so much to learn myself. I am being myself, my very human self, without any pretension of having found what I know I have not found. This seems of pivotal importance for a Dharma teacher and I see many failures there. More often than not I remind people of their own intuition to solve problems and when I don't know the answer to a question, I say that I don't know. 

What works for me is to be myself. 

I might add that recently I have started to reduce the time that I talk about the Dharma in favor of spending more time to practice meditation with people. This creates lengthy meditation sessions, but the results are tangibly encouraging as people are actually going into deeper modes of meditation and feel very uplifted. 

And I feel very privileged to have learnt one of the most powerful methods of accessing meditation at Osho's Ashram in Poona. I call it the Mantra Transmission Circle. In this method we create a circle of people who sing mantras. Singing mantras is a very powerful tool of transformation. However, this method amplifies the power of mantra even further. We have a circle of people singing and then we place a number of people into the center of the circle. Being in the center, the effect of the mantras is most powerful there and the depth of meditation that is reached is utterly amazing. The deep peace and beauty that arises on the faces of people is just marvellous to behold.

Our innermost being wants to return to the Peace beyond understanding. We want to reconnect with that which is Eternal Beauty.

The wonderful news is that it is possible for all of us.

Yours in the Dharma,
Andreas Mamet

Stop and think...

Within the context of observing our daily behavior I want to present you what I found on the internet. I is called THINK. It is an invitation to reflect for a moment before we speak. 

THINK ...

T - Is it TRUE?

H - Is it HELPFUL?

I - Is it INSPIRING?

N - Is it NECESSARY?

K - Is it KIND?

We can apply this to the words we speak and also to the actions we engage in.

I made this very interesting discovery. If I can really follow this, I speak a whole lot less! I just stay silent. 

Underlying our great capacity of saying hurtful things of course is one great illness that has befallen humanity and that is the our incessant habit of judging others.

Why do we judge others? I can think of two reasons why we judge others. One, we like to feel superior. And two, we totally forget looking at our own lives.

Do you remember the story Christ where he was talking to a crowd of people who were ready to stone a woman who had commited adultery? Interestingly, this terrible act of stoning women seems to arise again in the mid-east. It apparently has never quite gone away. 

Christ really had a very powerful way of teaching through imagery or by simply asking questions. The question that he posed to people was this: If you are free of any kind of bad behavior in your life, then go ahead. You be the first one to stone the woman.  He made people stop and look at their own lives for a moment. Then he said, if you are so virtuous, then go ahead and be the first to pick up a stone. By doing so he stopped the entire crowd from killing the woman.

That is what a Master does. He makes you look at yourself.

The roots of suffering

(Transcription of a Dharma talk given in Paris, 10 December 2014)

Sometimes what happens in our lives is that we suffer. What is amazing about our suffering is that we seem to have so many methods of creating suffering for ourselves. When we are done with one form of suffering, we invent a new fashion of suffering. We seem to be addicted to suffering. When the old suffering gets to be too old and boring, we start a new kind. We are so creative! 

What is interesting about the Buddha is that suffering is the central theme of his teaching, The Noble Truths. This teaching states that there exists suffering, that is the bad news. But there also exists the way to go beyond suffering, that is the good news. 

The Buddha was very sharp and laser-like in his way of analyzing the nature of suffering, of how we suffer.

He said that we suffer in two ways: One way is by wanting something that is not there.  A correct observation, I think. 

The other way is: Something is there in your life and you really, really don't want it. You resist what is there, you want it gone. You resist it and consequently you suffer. Something else is not there. You want it. You suffer.

If you observe all the moments of your suffering, you will bring it all down to that. 

So, what was his solution?  His solution was very radical. If I desire something that is not there, I suffer. If I desire something to to be not there that is, I suffer. In any case, desire is the root of my suffering. So, what would happen if I would just drop all desires?

And that is apparently what he did. So he dropped all desires and his suffering stopped. Perhaps it sounds easy, but we know it really is not. 

Imagine... you really want that woman or man... And 15 years later you really want the divorce (audience laughs) You laugh and you know it is true....

So, his solution was to drop all desires. He solved it that way. He just walked out on everything. Honestly speaking, I don't know if this is the solution for everything.  There exists a very beautiful, Tibetan movie.  At the end of the movie, the woman approached the monk, who had walked out on her. That is what the Buddha did. Buddha walked out on his kingdom, his wife and child. So at the end of this movie, called "Samsara" the woman presented this great existential question: "Couldn't you have achieved all this and not walked out?" 

That is a good question. 

The one thing that I really find fascinating is that consciousness evolves.  Masters of consciousness evolve. If you look at some of the aspects of the Masters from 2,500 years ago, they will appear very unrefined. Unsophisticated. 

I know the Buddha is very much revered nowadays. But I feel some of the aspects of Buddhism are truly ignorant. The aspect of Buddhism that is most ignorant is its relationship with women. I never understand how any woman could possibly become Buddhist. The only way that I can understand how a woman can become Buddhist is that the woman really does not understand Buddhism. 

One of the vows of the Medicine Buddha is that "I will pray for you, poor woman, for all the girls here, for you to become men in your next incarnation. (all women in the audience laugh) Then you have a chance to become liberated. Because as a woman you have no chance, you are just an inferiour creature. (more women laugh) 

This is a reality in Buddhism. So, girls, I feel sorry for you. You can go home now. No need to be here, you have no chance at becoming liberated in consciousness. 

If you understood this, how could you not rebel against it? Which is what some American women have actually started to do with the Dalai Lama. 

So, don't mess with the American woman. And once the French woman finds out about this, she is going to join the American woman in the rebellion and they will visit the Dalai Lama together. 

But that is what happens if you go into a house that is 1,500 or 2,500 years old. It leaks through the roof when it rains. 

Et voila. That is the bad news.

But the good news is that consciousness evolves and becomes more and more sophisticated. 

Actually, I feel that women have higher chances at becoming awakened than men. 

Tonight we have an unusual situation. Look how many men are here. It is amazing. Usually women are about 80 percent of the audience. That is normal.  The reason for that is that they are more sensitive than men. They feel more. They are more psychic. 

Except of course all the men that are here tonight. The men that are here tonight are very exceptional. (audience laughs)

But really, the people that come here are the sensitive people. They are in fact super sensitive. That sometimes is also part of their pain. You come here and you feel great. You go into the metro, you feel all the stuff there. You feel too much.

But coming back to the central theme of suffering, I just want to say a few final words. 

It is really important that if you feel suffering in your life that you ask yourself the question: "What is my suffering?"  Really ask the question: "How do I create my suffering?"

 Because there is a pattern to it. You need to discover what that is. You must discover the source of your suffering and how do you repeat it in your daily life.  What thought and behavior pattern do I practice that causes your suffering? 

Make the effort to search and comprehend your fashion of suffering. The only way you can do that is by asking the question and through intensive self observation. And that is a lot of work. But if you do this work, you will benefit. You will see your suffering.  You will see the source of your suffering. Sometimes it is absolutely enough  to just see it and in the seeing it begins to disappear.  That is the good news. 

Become conscious of how you make yourself suffer. And once you become conscious, why would you go on doing it?

Of course the answer to that is also simple. You go on repeating your patterns that cause you suffering because you are too afraid to let go. You are too afraid to make the jump. 

There is something very strange about suffering and the way we make ourselves suffer. After a while you get very good at it and it becomes very comfortable. You take a hammer, you hit yourself over the head and you become very comfortable with the process of inflicting suffering upon yourself. 

And if you stop it, we don't know what will happen. The unknown. The amazing thing is that we can become fascinatingly addicted to that which makes us suffer. And we are afraid of letting go of that which makes us suffer. 

It is like you are standing at the edge of a nest. You are supposed to fly away. But the nest was very comfortable for a long time. And now somebody says, "Fly into the sky." And you say, "Ah, really?" (audience laughs) 

You look outside the nest, it looks very deep. What if I cannot fly, you ask yourself. What if I fall down? We are afraid to try our wings. 

So, I invite you to explore the roots of your suffering. If you do that, you will benefit. Et voila.

Today

Let us attempt to focus on the biggest picture possible. Let us grow every day more into Beacons of Light that, through our choices and actions, pierce through and ultimately, destroy the fog that has laid itself across the planet.

Let us get active - to make this planet a beautiful place to live on. Let us do something. 

Today.

Positivity

Positive thoughts, words and actions create positive results.

Be yourself

After 40 years of meditation and spirituality what I have mostly found is my humanity and vulnerability. I know that often people come to the spiritual world because they seek protection from the many harsh aspects of life, some kind of a magic imperviousness, they are looking for super powers, trying to become Superman. This I have not found at all, even though the natural arising of detachment seems rather helpful.

When we allow ourselves to just be who we are, not copying or pretending to be Buddha, Christ or some powerful shaman, then this vulnerability carries its own strength. But we never become infallible and in that process we do not find perfection. We become more human than ever.