This is Audible. New World Library presents "Still the Mind" by Alan Watts, read by the author. A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions. By thoughts I mean specifically chatter in the skull, perpetual and compulsive repetition of words, of reckoning and calculating. I'm not saying that thinking is bad. Like everything else, it's useful in moderation. A good servant, but a bad master. And all so-called civilized peoples have increasingly become crazy and self-destructive because through excessive thinking they have lost touch with reality. That's to say, we confuse signs, words, numbers, symbols and ideas with the real world. Most of us would have rather money than tangible wealth and a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed. And to read about it the next day in the newspaper is oddly more fun for us than the original event. This is a disaster. For as a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs, such as bank balances and contracts, we are destroying nature. We are so tied up in our minds that we've lost our senses. Time to wake up. What is reality? Obviously, no one can say because it isn't words. It isn't material, that's just an idea. It isn't spiritual, that's also an idea, a symbol. Reality is this. [Music] Do you realize that anybody whom you consider in matters spiritual, psychological and so on, has an authority? Has this authority because of your opinion that he has or she has? How do you know? If you say, for example, like a Protestant fundamentalist, that you believe in the Bible, that the Bible is inspired, or you may say as a more liberal kind of Christian that Jesus Christ is the greatest being that ever lived on earth, how do you know? It's your opinion that that is so. Lots of people may have told you so, and you may be very impressed by those people, but you bought it. And so therefore, if you say, well, I would like to become like that, that's an expression of the way you are. You couldn't feel, I would like to become like that, like the authority, like the Christ, except as an expression of the way you are now, and the way you are now is the quaking mess. And therefore, your emulation, your desire, your idealism to become like Christ, is merely one of the appetites of your quaking mess. It's an expression of you as you are. Don't fool yourselves. I'm not trying to put you down by talking about the quaking mess. The quaking mess may be in fact something very, very natural, the way we are, the state of affairs, and we shouldn't be ashamed of it. I'm not ashamed of it. I told you all the tragedy. But it is important not to fool oneself about it. But there does, doesn't there, seem to remain a problem about existence, about being alive. Now let's go into what is that problem, at the sort of nitty-gritty level. Very basic in our thinking is that we, as it say, one must live. We need to survive to go on. We need, therefore, money for food, for this, that and the other. We must go on. And we know that we're not going to get away with it for very long. That after a certain number of years we're going to die, that the thing that's going to end, the thing that we call "I" is going to be as it is in sleep, deep sleep, with no dreams. But that between now and that hour, there may be the most ghastly pains. Not only perhaps the pains of physical disease, or being wounded, or hurt, but the pains of worrying about our failure of responsibility to people who depend on us. And we suffer other people's sufferings simply because we're sensitive in our imagination, and participate in their sufferings, and our adrenaline and our chemicals respond simply by imagination to the sufferings of other people. And what about that? And so we can look at these problems and say, now, quite obviously, all these problems cannot be solved in a physical way. That is to say, we do not expect in our lifetime that medical skill will make us exempt from death. We do not seriously expect that human beings will all learn to be nice to each other, and will refrain from war and horrors of that kind, racial prejudice and so on. We don't seriously expect to find a method of being protected by taking some sort of drug against all possible disease and pain. So therefore we say, now, maybe there's another way around. Maybe that instead of solving these problems at the technical level, we could solve them at the psychological and spiritual level by so disciplining ourselves, by so doing something of ourselves, that we wouldn't be afraid of it anymore. And so, in accord with that motivation, we seek out spiritual teachers, psychological teachers, this, that and the other. Could we somehow be made over so that we don't worry about the quaking mess via spiritual discipline or whatever. And you see, if you examine that, this wanting to overcome the quaking mess and not have it anymore, that precisely is the quaking mess. The thing that we object to about ourselves is precisely what we do about overcoming it. In other words, the activity that we employ in overcoming it is the mess that we object to. Do you see that? And it's very important to realize that. Then if you do realize it, you raise the question, "Then what can I do?" What can I do to transform the quaking mess into the state of mind of the true mystic? Well, if you are the quaking mess, there's obviously nothing you can do to transform yourself into the state of mind which you idealized with that of being the true mystic, the Christ, the saint or whatever. So, you realize that everything is throbbing, that all your ideals are simply manifestations of the quaking mess, trying to get away from itself. And that you are put in the position of, "It is absolutely necessary for me to be different from the way I am, but there's absolutely nothing I can do about it because being the way I am, I cannot be different from that." Let's say this, but then we can put it in different ways. I know that I ought not to be selfish, and I would very much like to be an unselfish person, but the reason why I want to be an unselfish person is that I am very selfish and would far more love myself and respect myself if I were unselfish. You see? I know that I ought to love God, and whatever, and why do you want to love God? Well, because God is the biggest boss, and it's best to be on the side of the big battalion. That's really why I want to do it. In other words, because I'm looking for the safety of my own spiritual skin. So, I think I ought to love God. Oh, sophisticated saints have known this. St. Paul understood it, St. Augustine understood it, Martin Luther understood it. They didn't know what the hell to do about it. But there was nothing to do about it. And yet, something has to be done. Obviously. But you realize when you really look into yourself, there's nothing you can do. And this, therefore, is our point of departure. That we here, perhaps, perhaps not, but we mutually realize there is nothing we can do to be anything else than what we are. To feel any other way than what we feel at this moment. And to be, then, this creaking mess, which has the capacity for the horrors, about what life can do to us. However, this isn't as much of a blind alley or cul-de-sac as it sounds. Because if you discover a blind alley, it tells you something. Watch the flow of water when it crosses over an area of land, and you will see that it puts out fingers. And some of them stop, because they come into blind alleys. But the water doesn't pursue that course. It simply rises. And then it finds a way it can go. But it never uses any effort. It only uses weight, gravity. It takes the line of least resistance and eventually finds a course. We all do the same thing. Only we're ashamed of it. But we're going to do it anyway. We think that when we come to a dead end, a blind alley, "Oh, I've sailed!" Supposing the water, at each place where a finger of water stretches out over dry ground, and doesn't go any further because the land is too high, the water would have said to itself, "I've failed." We would say it was neurotic water. Just wait, and it will find a way. Now, when you find, you see, that this predicament that I've been describing to you, that there's no way of transforming yourself, to become this fearless, joyous, divine being as we think from the quaking now, when you say, "No way," this is not a gloomy announcement. It is a very, very important communication. It's telling you something. Because the land is telling the water, "This isn't the way to go." There's another way, "Try over here." So in the same way, life is telling you, "That's not the way to go." It's telling you, the message underlying this is, you cannot transform yourself, is giving you the message that the you that you imagine to be capable of transforming yourself doesn't exist. In other words, an ego, an I, separate from my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, who is supposed to be in control of them, cannot control them because it isn't there. And as soon as you understand that, things will be vastly improved. Now, we can go into this, "What do you mean by the word 'I'?" We're going to make some experiments on this on a number of different levels, but the ordinary way, "What do you mean by the word 'I'?" "I myself." Your personality, your ego, what is it? Well, first of all, obviously, it's your image of yourself. It's composed of what people have told you about yourself, who you are, how they've reacted to you and given you an impression that that's the sort of person you are. It's all your education goes into this, the style of life you put on and so forth. But it's an image, it's an idea, it's your thought about yourself, and I suppose yourself is in fact not this, but it's, to begin with, your total physical organism, your psychological organism. And, beyond that, an organism doesn't exist as an isolated thing any more than a flower exists without a stalk, without roots, without earth. So, in the same way, although we are not stalked on the ground, we are nevertheless inseparable from a huge social context of, well, to begin with, parents, siblings, people who work for us, everything. I mean, it's just impossible to cut ourselves off from a social environment and also, furthermore, from a natural environment. We are that. There's no clear way of drawing the boundary between this organism and everything that surrounds it. And yet, the image of ourselves that we have does not include all those relationships. Our idea of personality, of ourselves, includes no information whatsoever about the hypothalamus, an organ of the brain, the pineal gland, really of the way we breathe, of how our blood circulates, of how we manage to form a sentence, how we manage to be conscious, how you open and close your hand. The information contained in your image of yourself contains nothing about all that and therefore, obviously, it's an extremely inadequate image. But nonetheless, we do think that the image of self refers to something because we have the impression, very strongly indeed, that I exist. And this isn't just an idea, we think, "My God!" It's a feeling. It's really substantially there in the middle of us. And what is it? What do you actually sense? Like, you know, when you're sitting on the floor and you feel the floor is there and it's real and hard. Okay, what are you sitting on the floor? What do you have the sensation of? The dew here, when you're not hitting yourself. What is it? Well, in what part of your body do you feel yourself, the real I existing? We can explore this very deeply, but I'm going to give you a preliminary and superficial answer. The sensation which corresponds to the image of ourselves is a chronic muscular tension, which has absolutely no useful function whatsoever. It is when you try, say, to concentrate. What do you do when you try to pay attention? When I was a little boy in school, I had sitting next to me another boy who had great difficulty in reading. And as he worked over the textbook with its perfectly tittling information, he groaned and grunted to try to read, to get out the sound, as if he were heaving enormous weights with his muscles. You know, "spa-ra-na-ron-a-ron-a-spa-ron," you know. It was enormous weights he was heaving. And, you know, the teacher was vaguely impressed that he was trying. You! And that absolutely, all this tying yourself up into a knot, has absolutely nothing to do with the way your mind works. Because, look, if you try to see hard, you know, look very attentive, and you make tight muscles around here, and maybe you clench your jaws a bit, if anything, that will make your vision more fuzzy. Because if you want to see something clearly, you must not make an effort. You must simply trust your eyes and your nervous system to do their thing. So he just looked like that. I was writing the other night, and I completely forgot somebody's name. But I knew that eventually my memory would produce it. And I just sat for a while and said to my memory, "You know very well who this person is. Please give me the answer." It's just boing, there it was. Because that's the way nerves work. They don't work by forcing. And yet we've all been brought up to try to force our nervous activity, our concentration, our memory, our comprehension, and indeed our very love. We've tried to force it with muscles. Men will understand me if I say, "You cannot force, by muscular effort, yourself to have an erection." Women will understand me if I say, "You cannot force yourself with muscles to have an orgasm." It has to happen. And you must trust that it will happen. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it by using your notice. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. So, in precisely the same way, well, let's complete the picture. So, therefore, the notion that we have of ourselves, of ego, is a compound of an image of ourselves which does not fit the facts, and a sensation of muscular straining which is futile. So that what you perceive to be yourself is the marriage of an illusion and a futility. So, well, what are we, if that isn't the case? Well, obviously, if you want to take a scientific point of view, by that mythology, then you're your organism, about which we know very little. And the organism, as we've seen, is inseparable from its environment. And so you are the organism environment. In other words, you are no less than the universe. Each one of you is the universe expressed in the place which you feel is here and now. You're an aperture through which the universe is looking at itself, exploring itself. And we're going to go into that much more deeply. So when you feel that you are a lonely, put-upon, isolated, little stranger, confronting all this, see, you have an illusory feeling, because the truth is the reverse. You are the whole works that there is, that always was, and always has been, and always will be. Only, just as my whole body has a little nerve end here, which is exploring and which contributes to the sense of touch, you are just such a little nerve end for everything that's going on. Just as the eyes serve the whole body and help it to find its way around, so you are, as it were, serving the whole universe. You're a cell in it. And it's exploring itself. So that you are a function of all that. And therefore, if this is so, it just doesn't fit the... See, these facts do not fit the way we feel. Because we feel it the other way around. I am a little lonely thing exploring all this universe and trying to get... make something out of it, get something out of it, do something with it. And I know I'm going to fail, because I know I'm going to die one day. So we're all fundamentally depressed. And think up all these fantasies about what's going to happen to us when we're dead, and all that kind of thing. What's going to happen to you when you're dead? What do you mean, you? If you are basically the universe, that question is irrelevant. You never were born and you never will die. Because what there is, is you. And that should be absolutely obvious. But it is not obvious at all. That should be the simplest thing in the world. But you, the I, is what has always been going on and always will go on forever and ever. But we have been bamboozled by religionists, by politicians, by fathers and mothers, by all sorts of people, to tell us, "You're not it." And we believe this. So, do you see now why, if I put it to you, in this very negative way, you can't do anything to change yourselves, to become better, to become happier, to become more serene, to become mystics or any... If I say, "You can't do a damn thing!" Can you understand this negative statement in a positive way? What I'm really saying is that you don't need to. Because if you see yourselves in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature, as say trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the shape of fire, the arrangement of the stars, the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that. There's nothing wrong with you at all. Except that I have to add this little slip. You have in you, you do think there's something wrong with you. See? And there's no question, you do! We all object to ourselves in various ways. And I'm going to add, there's nothing wrong with that either. Because that's part of the flow. That's part of what is going on. That's part of what we do. So I don't, you see, what I'm actually going to do is I'm going to deliver you from a sense of guilt. Because I'm going to teach you that you needn't feel guilty because you feel guilty. Because you feel guilty. It's like someone put a match on you and you feel hot. So they taught you as a child to feel guilty and you feel guilty. And you say, well, if something comes along and says, well, you shouldn't. It's not the point. I'm going to say, not that you shouldn't, but that you do and don't worry about it. And if you want to say further, but I can't help worrying about it, I'm going to say to you, OK, worry about it. This is the principle called in Japanese, Judo. Meaning the gentle way. Go along with it. Go along with it. Go along with it. So therefore, this is the beginning of meditation. You don't know what you're supposed to do. What can you do? Well, if you don't know what you're supposed to do, you watch. You simply watch what's going on. Like, say, somebody plays music. You listen. And you just follow those sounds. And eventually, you understand the point of the music. The point cannot be explained in words, because music is not words. But after a while, in listening to any music, you will understand the point of it. And that point will be the music itself. So in exactly the same way, you can listen to all experiences, because all experiences whatsoever are vibrations coming at you. You are these vibrations, as a matter of fact. If you could really feel out what is happening, what you are aware of as you as everything else is all the same. It's a... vibrations of all kinds, and they're on different bands of the spectrum. Sight vibrations, emotion vibrations, touch vibrations, sound vibrations, all these things adding together are woven. All the different senses are woven. And you get a pattern in the weaving. And that pattern is the picture of what you now feel. And this thing is kind of a... thing. Now, instead of saying, "What should I do about it?" Because who knows what to do about it? To know what to do about this, you would have to know everything. And if you don't, then the only thing that, at least to begin with, you can do is watch. Watch what's going on. Watch not only what's going on on the outside, but also what's going on on the inside. Treat your own thoughts, your own reactions, your own emotions about what's going on outside as if those inside reactions were also outside things. That you're just watching. And follow, simply observe how they go. Note now, you may say, "This is difficult." "I am bored by watching what is going on." Let's say you sit quite still, and you are simply observing what is happening. All the sounds outside, all the different shapes and lights in front of your eyes, all the feelings on your skin, inside your skin, belly rumbles, thoughts going on inside your head, chatter, chatter, chatter. "I ought to be writing a letter to so-and-so." "I should have done this." There's a whole bilge going on. You just watch it. But then you say to yourself, "But this is boring." Now, watch that too. What is it? What kind of a funny feeling is it that makes you say, "But this is boring"? Where is it? Where do you feel it? "I should be doing something else instead." What's that feeling? What part of your body is it in? Is it in here? Is it in here? Is it in the soles of your feet? Where is it? Boring. The feeling of boredom can be very interesting, if you try to look it up. So you simply watch. Everything going on, without attempting to change it in any way, without judging it, without calling it good or bad, you watch it. That is the essential process of meditation. [Music] We all know what reality is, but we can't describe it, just as we all know how to beat our hearts and shape our bones, but cannot say how it is done. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone. [Music] I was trying to explain this morning that what's a wonderful better word we call meditation, or I sometimes prefer to say contemplation, is really supposed to be fun. And I have some difficulty in conveying this idea, because everybody takes everything to do with religion seriously. And you must understand that I am not a serious person. I may be sincere, but not serious. Because I don't think the universe is serious. And the trouble gets into the world very largely because the various beings take themselves seriously, instead of playfully. And after all, you must become serious if you think that something is desperately important. You will only think that something is desperately important if you're afraid of losing it. And if you're afraid of losing it, it isn't really worth having. People who drag on living because they're afraid to die, will teach their children to do the same. And they will teach their children to live that way. And so it goes on and on. If you were God, would you be serious? Would you want people to treat you as if you were serious? Would you want to be prayed to? Think of all the maudlin things that people say in their prayers. Would you want to listen to that all the time? Would you encourage it? Would you not do it? So in the same way, meditation is different, you see, therefore, from the sort of things that people are supposed to take seriously. Because it doesn't have any purpose. When you talk about practicing meditation, it's like practicing rifle shooting or playing the piano. Which one does in order to attain a certain perfection. You practice in order to make perfect. You practice the piano to go on stage and perform. But you don't practice meditation that way. Because if you do, you're not meditating. The only way in which you can talk about the practice of meditation is to use the word "practice" in the same way as when somebody says that he practices medicine. It's his way of life. It's his vocation. He does it every day. Maybe he does it the same way every day. Maybe if it's good, that's fine. Because in meditation, you see, there's no idea of time. In practicing learning things, time is of the essence. You have to do it as fast as possible. Let's find a faster way of learning how to do this. In meditation, a faster way of learning is of no importance whatsoever. Because it focuses always on the present. And there may occur growth in it. But it's the same way that a plant grows. Once upon a time in China, there was a family, a farming family, and they were having dinner. And the oldest son came in late. And they said, "Why are you late for dinner?" He said, "I've been helping the wheat to grow." Oh. So they came out next morning and all the wheat was dead. Well, what happened was that he had gone and pulled each stalk up a little. Yeah. To help it grow. So growth always occurs in a being like a plant, which is perfect at every step. No progress is involved in the transformation of an acorn into an oak. Because the acorn is a perfect acorn. And the sapling is a perfect sapling. And the big oak tree is a perfect oak, which again produces acorns. Perfect acorns. At every stage it's there. Just as in the unfoldment of the musical composition, it has arrived at every stage. And it cannot be otherwise. So the meditation work is the same. Exactly the same. So we should not talk about beginners as distinct from experts. We should develop, if we could, a new vocabulary. So it's very difficult in the context of our competitive world to speak about things like this. To bring about the idea of doing something which is not acquisitive. Which you're not going to get anything out of. Because there's no one to get anything. When you understand what I've been talking about, about there being no experience separate from experience, then there's no one to get anything out of life. Or to get anything from meditation. So we have here a sort of law of reverse effort. You must therefore understand that as a background to anything said about techniques. Because whenever we talk about techniques, we seem to be talking about the competitive thing. Mastery. The idea of mastery of technique. But on the other hand, if you play a musical instrument, technique is very important in the making of a satisfactory sound. But if you force the learning of technique, or force the performance of it, everyone will hear it. And you will hear the forcing of it yourself. And it will be unmusical. And so you have to address yourself to the playing of an instrument without hurry. And never, never force anything. And you will find there is a point then where the instrument seems to play itself. And when you get that peculiar feeling of the sound that is coming out of a flute, or a violin string, or whatever, is as it were happening of itself, then you are playing the instrument properly. Same way with your singing. There comes a point when your voice takes over. This is the difference between spiration and inspiration. You may say, as Christians do, that the act of worship is inspired by the Holy Spirit. That when monks are chanting, they are told that the Holy Spirit is chanting through them. They are flutes for the Holy Spirit. And this has a very precise and technical meaning. Because there is a way of producing the breath and of producing sound where it comes of itself and you don't do it. And we will call that way of producing sound "Holy Spirit". But it's based on breath. I pointed out in the first session that breath is a curious operation because it can be experienced as both a voluntary doing and an involuntary happening. You can do a breathing exercise and feel that I am breathing in just the same way as you can feel I am walking. But on the other hand you breathe all the time when you are not thinking about it. In that way it's involuntary. You must breathe. And so it is the faculty depending to which we can realize the unity of the voluntary and involuntary systems. So therefore, what is called anapanasati in Buddhism means mindfulness of the breath, watching breath. And watching breath is fundamental in meditation because it's like sound. It's so easy to see the happening of the breath as distinct from what we thought of as the doing. Breath happens. But the curious thing is about breath is that you can get with the happening of breath. And in getting with it you can do extraordinary things with it. Anyone who swims knows this. Anyone who sings. Anyone who does as a matter of fact any athletic thing knows that the breathing is important. The alignment, the synchronization of what you are doing with your breathing is the whole art. As it is in the artery also. But powerful breath is not worked by muscle power. It is worked by gravity, by weight. And what I would like you to do is if you will sit upright and the reason for this is very simple that your... part of your body in which the breathing is occurring is unencumbered. And also sitting upright on the floor you are slightly uncomfortable so that you won't go to sleep. And in any peaceful and quiet state of mind it's very easy to go to sleep. But now in this way, in this position you simply become aware of your breathing without trying to do anything about it at all. You let it happen. And watch. You are also at the same time letting your ears hear whatever they want to hear. In other words, you let them hear just as you are letting your lungs breathe. Now, beyond this can you get the idea of breathing out heavily. Letting the breath fall outwards without pushing it. And as you get to the end of the out-breath do it with the same sort of feeling that you have when you let your body drop into a very comfortable bed. You drop out. Let go. It falls. Let weight do it. And then after a while the breath will return. Don't pull. Let it fall back in. And drop in until you've had enough. And then let it drop out again. It's a good idea just to breathe in through the nostrils and out through the lips allowing there to be a slight sensation of moving air on your lips so that you know you are breathing and that you are not just straining your muscles. But never force anything. Just have the feeling of it going that way by virtue of weight. And then as you let the breath fall outwards you simply float a sound on it. Think of a sound that pleases you. A note. That seems agreeable to your voice. And as you breathe out heavily imagine that sound to yourself. Whatever you feel like. Hum it out loud. And keep it down. [Breathing] [Breathing] Now, you know, you are still a little short-winded and uneasy about a thing like this. You can as well as align the sound to hum and happen with the breath that is falling out you can as it were simply request it to increase the volume without forcing it. And you can keep a sound humming as a whole group of people together by when your sound ends bring it in again quite softly and then allow the volume to rise. And then you will get a more or less continuous production of sound by group. But it is important to have the sound running continuously. Try it again, picking your own notes again once more. [Breathing] [Breathing] [Breathing] [Breathing] Now ask it to increase its volume. [Breathing] You are listening, aren't you? What we are working into is the completely liberated but soft and gentle letting of sound happen through us without the slightest sense of strain. So that you are not singing it, but it is singing with your voice. Don't premeditate the tune, but let it come so that it's as if almost you were talking nonsense. I mean, you know, I can talk nonsense at the top of a hat, I can do a whole lecture in a completely non-existent language. But what you are doing is you are doing this gently with voice and you are simply preoccupied with it like easy having to yourself. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] And as and when I talk, just hear the sound of my voice. Don't bother about what it means. Your brain will take care of that by itself. Just let your eardrums respond as they will to all vibrations now in the air. Don't let yourself or your ears be offended by improper or unscheduled sounds. If for example the record is scratchy, OK. You wouldn't object if you were listening to it sitting by a fire crackling loud. [Music] Let them ring. It's just a noise. [Music] And keep your tongue relaxed, floating easily in the lower jaw. Also stop frowning. Allow the space between your eyes to feel easy and open. And just let the vibrations in the air play with your ears. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] You must understand that in meditation we are concerned only with what is. With reality. Nothing else. The past is a memory. The future an expectation. Neither past nor future actually exist. There is simply eternal now. So don't seek or expect a result from what you're doing. That wouldn't be true meditation. There's no hurry. Just now you're not going anywhere. Simply be here. Live in the world of sound. Let it play. That's all. [Music] [Music] [Music] In the world of pure sound, can you actually hear anyone who is listening? Can you hear any difference between all these sounds on the one hand and yourself on the other? Now when you were thus absorbed in this sound, where were you? This would be called a state of consciousness where we have a primitive form of samadhi. That is to say, we are happily absorbed in what we are doing and we have forgotten about ourselves. You can't very well do that and worry. Or think anything serious. And you'll notice that there's a special way of doing it. Because I mean we can go crazy and we can do kind of the wild Indian chants. But in this you are sort of straining too much as a rule. If you keep it down to a soft thing like this and get that floating feeling of the voice, if you instantly you feel any sound that's uncomfortable, avoid it. Slip down if you're going too high. Slip up if you're getting too low. If your voice tends to change, follow its change. So that you're just swinging along with it. This is the point of why from ancient times people discovered humming and singing and everybody used to sing while they worked. But you will notice that today very few people sing at all. You have to make a thing of it. People are afraid of their voices. Their melodic voice is distinct from the spoken voice. I know an enormous number of people who never sing at all. Why is it that when the scriptures, the Upanishads, the Sutras are read, they are invariably chanted? Because an extra dimension is added to the voice as soon as you bring a note into it. That's the divine element, you see. The note sound, the singing sound, symbolically speaking. So, this is a form of what I would call free mantra chanting, like we did it then. Which isn't used much. But it does give you, as you do it, a very good idea of what the meditative state is. Because it isn't just the letting happen, only the things going on around, that's inside you as well. But distinct from the prescribed mantra, like Om Mani Padme Hum, or Om Ah Hum, or Om Aram Sri Aram, Jai Jai Ram, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hari Hari, etc. Each one of them has a different feeling to it. The Tibetan monks go down to an extraordinarily deep sound. They go as deep as you can get. There is a reason for this. It's very difficult to explain, because you have to do it. But when you go down into sound as deeply as you can get, you're going to an extreme of the vibration. And everybody feels naturally that what is deep is sort of the underpinnings, the foundation. And when they go into that deep sound, they are literally exploring the depths of sound. As we say, go into it deeply. But you can very readily see, once you get into that, that you are in another state of consciousness altogether. You are not anymore intricately chattering to your skull everyday consciousness. What I call normal restlessness. But in this way, always you get a sensuous feeling of the breath, that it's very enjoyable to breathe. And then you will find this will help in the quality of the sound you produce. And we will of course have to get away from some of our musical prejudices when we do this. Now, I know, I'm sorry, but everybody thinks that to spend a lot of time gently humming nonsense to yourself is a waste of time. What are you going to do with the time that you save? But the point though is, with all this, the first thing we have to understand is what I would call deep listening. And very few people ever really listen. Because instead of receiving the sound, they make comments on it all the time. They're thinking about it. And so the sound is never fully heard. You just have to let it take over. Let it take you over completely. Then you get the samadhi state of becoming it. And it also means that you abandon your socially nervous personality. Where one of the reasons why people don't sing is that they hear so many masters on records, and they're ashamed of their own voices. And think there's no point singing unless I'm good at it. Well, that's like saying there's no point in my doing anything at all unless I'm particularly gifted at it. Which is ridiculous. But singing is of course very good for you, but we won't mention that. But it brings in too much purposelessness into it. And, but it's like a child will make noises because of the absorbing interest of making noises. The child will make all sorts of... See? You explore the possibilities of what you can do with a voice. See? Get off the adults going around there. They'll all be shy. And go... See? You're having fun. But all this is perfectly incorporable with meditation. It embarrasses the hell out of some people. You say, "What are you laughing at?" I don't see any point in laughing at somebody. I had a friend who was a theological student, he was very fat. And he used to sit on the elevated train that went from Evanston into Chicago. There were seats right down the side of the train, so he'd sit in the middle of one side and everybody in the car could see him. It was fat, but it was silly when you get on at Evanston. You'd sit there on a kind of vacant, you'd start to circle to him. And slowly he'd work it out. And he'd work it out into all its flesh by breaking. And by the time they got into Chicago, the whole town was in it. Honorable hopes you have enjoyed this program. {END} Wait Time : 0.00 sec Model Load: 0.64 sec Decoding : 3.08 sec Transcribe: 6848.77 sec Total Time: 6852.49 sec