Still The Mind - Introduction To Meditation

This is Audible. New World Library presents Still the Mind by Alan Watts, read by the author.

Who thinks or has nothing to think about except thought, he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusion.

Thoughts I mean specifically, compulsive repetition of words, thinking that thinking is bad, like everything else is useful in moderation.

A good servant for the 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 money than tangible wealth and a great occasion is somehow spoiled for us unless photographed.

To read about it the next day in the newspaper is oddly more fun for us than the original event.

It's a disaster.

For as a result of confusing the real world of nature with mere signs, such as, 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.

That's just an idea.

It isn't spiritual.

That's also an idea, a symbol.

Reality is this.

That anybody whom you consider in matters spiritual, psychological and so on, has an authority.

Has this authority because of your opinion?

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, I would like to become like that, 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 quakingness.

And therefore, your emulation, your desire, your idealism to become like Christ is merely one of the appetites of your quakingness.

It's an expression in you as you are.

Don't fool yourself.

I'm not trying to put you down by talking about the quakingness.

The quakingness 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, it's right.

But it is important not to fool oneself.

But there does, doesn't there, seem to remain a problem.

Let's go into what is that problem, on a nitty-gritty level.

Very basic in our thinking is that we, as it says, one must live.

We need to survive.

We need to go on.

We need, therefore, money 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.

A certain number of years, we're going to die.

The thing is going to end.

The thing that we call I is going to be as it is in sleep, with no dreams.

But that between now and that time, there may be the most ghastly pains.

Not only, perhaps, the pains of physical disease, of being wounded.

The pains are worrying about our failure of responsibility to people who depend on us.

And we suffer other people's suffering simply because we're sensitive and have imagination and participate in those 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 and so on.

We don't seriously expect a method of being protected by taking some sort of drug against all possible disease and pain.

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 with us, that we wouldn't be afraid of it anymore.

In accord with that motivation, we seek out spiritual teachers, psychological teachers, this, that and the other.

Could we somehow be made over that we don't worry about the quaking mess?

And you see, if you examine that, that this wanting to overcome the quaking mess and not have it anymore

precisely is the quaking mess that we object to, 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.

And 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?

But if you are the quaking mess, there's obviously nothing you can do to transform yourself into the state of mind

which you idealize as that of being the true mystic, the Christ, the saint, or whatever.

You realize that everything is funny, that all your ideals are simply manifestations of the quaking mess,

trying to get away from it.

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 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 ought to love God, whatever.

And why do you want to love God?

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 be.

In other words, because I'm looking for the safety of my own spiritual skin.

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.

But you realize, when you really look into yourself, there's nothing you can do.

Therefore, it's our point of departure.

That we here, 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 creating mess.

Practically for the horrors.

Life can do this.

This isn't as much of a blind alley, or a cul-de-sac, as it sounds.

Because if you discover a blind alley, 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.

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.

It takes the line of least resistance, and eventually finds a course.

Now, we will do the same thing.

Only we're ashamed of it.

But we're going to do it anyhow.

We think that when we come to a dead end of blind alley, 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 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, that there's no

way of transforming, to become this fearless, joyous, divine being, as distinct from the

quaking now.

When you say, no way, this is not a gloomy announcement.

It is a very, very important communication.

Telling something.

Because, like, 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, my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, my experiences, who

is supposed to be in control or show 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?

We're going to make some experiments on a number of different levels, but the ordinary way.

What do you mean by the word I, I, myself, your personality, your ego?

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...

It's all your education goes into this, the style of life you put on and so forth.

But you, 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, beyond that.

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.

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.

The idea of personality of ourselves includes no information whatsoever about the hypothalamus,

the pineal gland, the way we breathe, of how our blood suffers, 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, you know, the dew here, when you're not hitting yourself?

Well, in what part of your body do you feel yourself, the real I exist?

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 no useful function whatsoever.

It is when you try, 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.

As he worked over the textbook with its information, he groaned and brunted to try to read to get

out the sounds as if he were heaving enormous weights from his muscles.

I didn't know.

And it was enormous weights he was heaving.

And, you know, the teacher was vaguely impressive.

The poet tying herself up into a knot has absolutely nothing to do with the way your mind works.

But 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.

You just look like that.

I was writing the other night, and I completely forgot some of his name.

But I knew that eventually my memory would produce it.

And I just sat and said to my memory, you know very well who this person is.

Please give me the answer.

And he said, boing, there it was.

Because that's the way nerves work.

They don't work by forcing them.

And yet we've all been brought up to try to force our nervous activity, our concentration,

our memory, our apprehension, and indeed our very love.

We've tried to force it with muscles.

Men will understand me, as 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.

And you must trust it, perhaps.

And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it by using your muscles.

Nothing.

Well, let's complete the picture.

So, therefore, the notion that we have of ourselves, of ego,

is of an image of ourselves which does not fit the fact,

and a sensation of muscular straining which is futile.

So, that what you conceive to be yourself is the marriage of an illusion under futility.

Well, what are we doing in the case?

Want to take a scientific point of view?

By that mythology, then you're your organism, 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 in the place which you feel is here and now,

which the universe is looking at.

And we're going to go into that much more deeply.

You feel that you are a lonely 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, always will be.

As my whole body has a little nerve end here,

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 to find its way around,

so you are, as it were, serving the whole universe.

You as a function, 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 and make something out of it.

get somebody 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

or what kind of things can 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. 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.

The view, the I, is what has always been going on and always will go on forever and ever.

But we have been bamboozled by religionists, politicians, by fathers and mothers, by all sorts of people to tell us,

you're not it. 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 mystic or anything.

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, you are all as much extraordinary phenomena as nature.

Bay trees, patterns in running water, a shape of fire, the arrangement of the stars, the form of a galaxy.

You are all just like that. There is nothing wrong with you at all.

Except that I have to add this little flow. You, you, you have, in you, you do think there is something wrong with you.

See? And there is no question, you do! We all object to ourselves in various ways. And I am going to add, there is nothing wrong with that either.

The flow, that is part of what is going on, that is part of what we do.

You see, what I am actually going to do is I am going to deliver you from the sense of guilt.

Because I am going to teach you that you needn't feel guilty because you feel guilty.

Of course you feel guilty! It is 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 someone comes along and says, well, you shouldn't, I am going to say.

Not that you shouldn't. Because you do and don't worry about it.

And if you want to say further but I can't stop worrying about it, I am going to say to you, okay, worry about it.

This is a principle called in Japanese Judo, meaning the gentle way to do along with it.

Therefore, this is the beginning of meditation. You don't know what you are supposed to do. What can you do?

But if you don't know what you are supposed to do, you simply watch what is going on.

If somebody plays music, you listen. And you just follow. And eventually, you understand the point of the music.

The point cannot be explained in words, because music is not words.

After a while, in listening to any music, you will understand the point of it.

And that point will be the music itself, though 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 really feel out what is happening, what you are aware of, as you, as everything else, is all the same.

It's vibrations of all kinds. And there are different bands of respect.

Emotion 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.

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, to begin with, you can do is watch.

Watch what's going on. 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. You are just watching.

Simply observe how they go.

Note now, you may say, this is difficult. I am bored by watching.

Let's say you sit quite still. And you are simply observing what is happening.

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 all this bilge going on. See, you just watch it.

But then you say to yourself, but this is boring. 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 part of your body is it in? Is it in here? Is it in here? Is it in the soles of your feet?

The feeling of boredom can be very interesting if you try to look it out.

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.

It's the essential process of meditation.

We 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.

A wonderful sort of word we call meditation, or I sometimes prefer to say contemplation,

is really supposed to be fun.

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 platelet.

And after all, you must become serious if you think that something is desperately important.

And you will only think that something is desperately important if you are afraid of losing it.

And if you are afraid of losing it, it isn't really worth having.

People who drag on living because they are 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?

No.

Not as you were God.

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 not like practicing rifle shooting or playing the piano,

which one does in order to attain a certain perfection.

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, then fine.

Because in meditation, you see, there's no idea of time.

In practicing learning things, time is of the essence.

Let's 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 its focus is always on the present.

And there may occur growth in it.

But it's the same way that a plant grows.

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.

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 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 sap.

The oak tree is a perfect oak, which again produces 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.

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,

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 reversed effort.

You must therefore understand that as a background of 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 unusable.

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.

Same way with you sing.

There comes a point when your voice takes over.

This is the difference between inspiration and inspiration.

You may say that the act of worship is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

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.

And it is 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 that I am walking.

But on the other hand you breathe all the time when you are not thinking about it.

And in that way it is involuntary.

You must breathe.

And so it is the faculty, depending to which we can realize the unity of the voluntary and involuntary systems.

Anasati in Buddhism means mindfulness of the breath.

Watching breath.

And watching breath is fundamental in meditation.

Because it is so easy to see the happening.

To think from what we thought of as the doing.

But the curious thing is about breath is that you can get with the happening.

And in getting with it you can do extraordinary things with it.

Anyone who swims knows that.

Anyone who sings.

Anyone who does it, as a matter of fact, any athletic thing knows that the breathing is important.

The synchronization of what you are doing with your breathing is the whole heart.

As it is in the artery also.

It is not worked by muscle power.

It is worked by gravity.

And what I would like you to do is if you will sit up.

And the reason for this is very simple.

The 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 is very easy to go to sleep.

And 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 out.

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.

Letting the breath fall outwards.

And as you get to the end of the out breath.

Do it with the same sort of feeding that you have.

When you let your body drop into a very comfortable bed.

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 in this 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 let the breath fall outwards.

You simply float a sound.

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 out loud.

Keep it a little short-winded and easy about a thing like this.

And as well as allowing the sound to hum and happen with breath that is falling out.

You couldn't, as it were, simply request it to increase the volume without forcing.

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 a group.

But it's important to have the sound running continuously.

Try it again, taking your own notice once more.

To increase the volume.

of sound without the slightest sense of strength, so that you are not singing it, that it is singing.

Don't premeditate, but let it come. It's as if, almost, you were talking nonsense.

I can talk nonsense at the top of a hat. I can do your whole lecture in a completely non-existent life.

What you're doing is you're doing this gently with voice, and you're simply preoccupied, like easy having to yourself.

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.

Let yourself be offended by improper or unscheduled sounds. If, for example, the record is scratchy, okay.

You wouldn't object if you were listening to it, sitting by a fire, crackling logs.

Let em' ring. 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.

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 exists.

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.

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 mind, where were you?

This would be called a state of consciousness, where we have primitive form of samadhi.

That is to say, that is to say, we are happily absorbed in what we are doing and we have forgotten about ourselves.

We 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 sounds.

But in this, you, it's sort of straining too much as a rule.

See?

If you keep it down to a soft thing like this, and get the flaking 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 it to change.

So that, you're just swinging along with it.

This is the point.

Why, from ancient times, people discovered humming and singing.

And everybody used to sing while they weren't.

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 voices.

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 when extra dimension is added to the voice,

as soon as you bring a note into it.

That's the divine element.

The note sign, the singing sign, symbolically speaking.

So, this is a form of what I would call free mantra chanting.

Like we did it then.

It isn't used much.

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 there are things going on and around that's inside you as well.

So, as distinct from the prescribed mantra,

like Om Mani Padme Honi, Jai Jai Ram, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna,

each one of them has a different feeling to it.

Tibetan monks go down to an extraordinarily deep sound.

They go as deep as you can get.

It's very difficult for yourself 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're in another state of consciousness altogether.

You're not anymore in fidgety,

tapping into your style everyday consciousness,

normal restlessness.

But in this way,

always, you get a sensual 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, 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?

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.

It also means that you

abandon socially nervous personality.

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.

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 food for you,

but we won't mention that

because it brings in too much purposelessness.

But it's like a child

will make noises

because of the absorbing interest

of making noises.

The child child will make opuses

to explore the possibilities

of what you can do with a voice.

See?

You don't see adults going around there.

Oh, be sorry.

Oh, yeah, I'm not.

Oh, yeah.

See?

Make a lot of fun.

But all is

all is perfectly incomparable

with a meditation.

Oh, somebody

What are you laughing at?

I don't get any point laughing

if that's a dumb son.

I had a friend who was a theological student, and he was very fat, and he used to sit on the elevated train that went from Evanston into Chicago.

He had a seat 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.

He sat while he was sitting, and he'd get on with Evanston.

It was lovely to work it out.

All his flesh.

By the time they got into Chicago the whole town.

Honorable hopes you have enjoyed this program.