I. Silence Is The Great Revelation

1. Scripture as the revelation of God.

2. Discover the revelation that silence brings.

3. Silence offers, one must attain silence. It is NOT EASY.

Comfortable Posture. Close eyes for 10 minutes. Observe total silence of Heart and Mind. Describe ‘Silence’ in terms of your attempts. Experience may infinitely be varied. You have to still the constant wandering of your mind. To quiet and emotional turmoil. On approaching frontiers of silence there may be PANIC and WITHDRAWAL. You may have frightening experience. NO REASON TO BE DISCOURAGED. Wandering thoughts are a great revelation. Take time to EXPERIENCE this wandering mind and TYPE of wandering it indulges. SOMETHING ENCOURAGING  awareness of mental wandering, inner turmoil and inability to be still shows that you have small degree of silence within you. AGAIN close your eyes, become aware of wandering mind for two minutes. Now sense the silence that makes it possible to be aware of wanderings of your mind.

MINIMAL SILENCE as it grows, it reveals more and more rather it reveals yourself to you. You will have ATTAINMENTS like WISDOM, SERENITY, BLISS, GOD, PRECAUTION: you shall have no talk and no discussion. Inhale and exhale deep and slow breathing throughout. Again close your eyes for five minutes. SEEK SILENCE. Now see your success  whether more or less. Don’t seek   ANYTHING SENSATIONAL. In fact, do not seek at all.

Limit yourself to observing. Take in everything that comes to your awareness whether big, small, trite or ordinary. CONTENT of awareness is less important than the quality  of awareness. As quality improves, so silence deepens, you will experience. You will discover, to your delight, that revelation is not knowledge. It is power: a mysterious power that brings transformation

One must become aware of certain body sensations of which one is explicitly not aware. To go around by yourself to become conscious of your toes, your feet, your legs, your knees, your thighs, your buttocks, your waist, your stomach, your chest, your shoulders, your fingers (starting from the tips), your forearms, your elbow, your arms, your full back, then again your shoulders, your neck, your chin, your lips, your nose, your cheeks, your ears, your eyes, your forehead, your head, upper side of your head and backside of your head. Do not dwell for more than two or three seconds on each part of your body. REPEAT it again and again for five minutes. This act of yours brings a sense of relaxedness. BIGGEST ENEMIES: Nervous tension, living too much in head   i.e., to remain conscious of the thinking and imagination and to remain conscious far too little of the activities of the senses. It is a must to remain in the PRESENT and not in past and future.  One must master this technique of sense awareness. One must learn to get out of the area of thinking and imagination and move into the area from Head to Heart   i.e., feeling, sensing, loving and intuiting where contemplation takes birth, prayer becomes transforming power and a source of delight and peace. A few of you may feel an increase in Tension. Note what part of your body is tense and see exactly what the tension feels like. Become aware of the fact you are tensing and note exactly how you are doing this. Note means not to reflect but to feel and sense. You pick up no sensation. Why? Your sensibility has been dead from so much living in head. Our skin is covered with trillions (3 Powers of a million) of bio-chemical reactions that we call sensations and you are finding it hard to pick up even a few of them? You have hardened yourself not to feel may be due to some emotional hurt or conflict that you have long since forgotten. And your perception, your awareness, power of concentration and attention are still gross and underdeveloped. It is as a means for attaining relaxation and stillness. GET IN TOUCH WITH SENSATIONS AGAIN AND AGAIN without naming limbs and organs as you sense. If you notice an urge to move or to shift your posture or position—do not give into it. Do continue this exercise for a few minutes. You will gradually feel a certain stillness in your body. Go on with your AWARENESS exercise and leave taking care of stillness. If you are distracted, get back to awareness of body sensations, moving from one to another, until your body becomes still once again, your mind quietens, you are able to sense again stillness that brings peace and a foretaste of contemplation and of God. HOWEVER, DO NOT explicitly rest in the stillness. Because resting in it can be relaxing and even delightful. BUT in it there is DANGER of mild trance or mental blankness which is not good for contemplation. It is like a sort of self-hypnosis that has nothing to do either with the sharpening of awareness or with contemplation. IMPORTANT: DO NOT DELIBERATELY seek stillness or silence within you and not EXPLICITLY REST in it when it occurs. BUT SEEK SHARPENING OF AWARENESS. In moments, stillness becomes so powerful that all exercise and all your efforts become impossible. Then it is no longer you who go in quest of stillness. But stillness  takes possession of you. THEN you may safely, and profitably, let go of all effort and surrender to this overpowering stillness within you.

The body sensations exercise is so simple, in fact, as to prove disillusioning. To advance in it, you have to preserve in simplicity. Resist temptation to seek novelty, but try to seek DEPTH. You have to practise second exercise over a long period of time. You may ask for benefits. Don’t ask. Do what you are asked to and you will discover yourself. TRUTH is found less in words and explanations than in action and experience. So get to work, with faith and perseverance. Close your eyes. Repeat previous exercise of body sensations for five to ten minutes.

NOW CHOOSE JUST ONE SMALL AREA OF YOUR FACE, PICK UP EVERY SENSATION. At the beginning you may not feel. Continue previous exercise, then enter in this area. Be aware of the type of sensations that emerge; itching, pricking, burning, pulling, vibrating, throbbing, numbness....... If your mind  wanders, bring it patiently back to exercise.

IV. Thought Control

By doing previous awareness exercises, your mind may be distracted. To deal with such situation, you shall keep your eyes half closed resting on an object or one spot three feet ahead of you. You are not to focus on the object/spot. By doing this, you may have trouble with your wandering mind. No cause for alarm. You practise control over your wandering mind with patience and perseverance. Gradually you will succeed.

To deal with distraction of mind you may follow any of the two ways:

a) You have to follow your thoughts as a puppy in the streets follows any pair of legs it finds in motion. It does not care for the direction where they are moving. After some seconds, you shall make yourself aware that you are thinking. You may say to yourself interiorly that I am thinking ......... thinking ...... thinking. By this you will be aware that thinking process is going on.

b) The other way to overcome distraction is to observe your thoughts as a man stationed at his window watching passers by on the street. After doing this for a while, you shall keep yourself aware that you are thinking .... thinking .... thinking .... You may do any of the above two exercises for not more than five minutes. Thinking tends to stop by making yourself aware of it. A distraction charged with strong emotion: love, fear, resentment, sorrow will not easily yield to this exercise. Other exercises discussed hereinafter shall help you in that.

V. Breathing Sensations

(Become aware of sensations in various parts of your body)

Become aware of the air as it comes in and goes out through your nostrils. Do not concentrate on the air as it enters in lungs, but limit awareness to nostrils breath. Do not control your breathing. Don’t attempt to deepen it. It is not breathing exercise, but breathing awareness. Whenever you are distracted, return with vigour to your task to enable you to make you aware of each breath. Continue this exercise for ten to fifteen minutes. This exercise may be difficult for some of you in comparison to previous exercises; but it is most rewarding in sharpening awareness, bringing calmness and relaxation. HOWEVER, in attempting breathing awareness DO NOT tense your muscles. Determination must not be confounded with nervous tension. You may be distracted at the beginning but you must keep returning again and again to the awareness of your breathing the mere effort involved in doing this will bring beneficial effects that you will gradually notice.

After developing some proficiency in this exercise move on to somewhat difficult and more effective variant:

a) Become aware of the sensation of the air passing through your nostrils. Feel its touch in which part of the nostrils you feel the touch of the air while inhaling .... and in what part of the nostrils you feel the touch of the air while exhaling .......

b) Become aware of the warmth or coldness of the air .... its coldness when it comes in, and its warmth when it goes out.

c) Also be aware of quantity of air that passes through one nostril is greater than the amount that passes through other .....

d) Be sensitive and alert to the slightest, lightest touch while inhaling and exhaling .... STAY with this awareness for ten to fifteen minutes. In case you put in more time, you will get better results. But DO NOT stay on breathing awareness alone for many hours over a period of more than two or three days. Although this exercise brings you great peace and a sense of depth and fullness that delights you but prolonged concentration on breathing is likely to produce hallucinations or to draw out material from the unconscious that you may not be able to control.

VI. God In My Breath

With closed eyes practise the awareness of body sensations for a while. Then come to the awareness of your breathing as done before and stay with this awareness for a few minutes .... Reflect now that this air that you are breathing is charged with the Power and the PRESENCE of God. Think of the air as of an Immense OCEAN that surrounds you .... an ocean heavily coloured with God’s presence and God’s being .... While you draw the air into your lungs you are drawing God in .... Be aware that you are drawing in the Power and Presence of God each time you breathe in... Stay in this awareness as long as you can... Notice what you feel when you become conscious that you are drawing God in with each breath you take ......

ANOTHER REFLECTION

1. While you breathe in, be conscious of God’s Spirit coming into you Fill your lungs with the divine energy he brings with Him ....

2. While you breathe out, imagine you are breathing out all your impurities .... your fears .... your negative feelings .... Your shortcomings and weaknesses.

3. Imagine you see your whole body becoming radiant and alive through this process of breathing in God’s life-giving Spirit and breathing out all your impurities ......

Stay with this awareness as long as you can without distractions.

VII. Breath communication with God

Devotional Prayer may here be called as ‘PRAYER’; whereas ‘Intuitional Prayer’ may coincide roughly with CONTEMPLATION. Both type of prayers lead to union with God. Such of them is more suited to some Sadhakas than to others. According to time and need suitability of these Prayers may change.

Any Prayer that limits itself to the thinking mind alone is not prayer really but! at best, a preparation for prayer. Even among Sadhakas there is no genuine personal communication that isn’t at least in some small degree heart communication, that does not contain some small degree of emotion in it. If a communication, a sharing of thoughts, is entirely and totally devoid of all emotion you can be sure the intimate, personal dimension is lacking.

Here are some variations of the previous exercise more devotional than intuitional. As the thought content in prayer is minimal—it will easily move from the devotional to the intuitional, from the heart to the heart.

Become aware of your breathing for a while. Now REFLECT presence of God in the atmosphere all around you.... Reflect His presence in the air you are breathing—BE CONSCIOUS OF HIS PRESENCE.... Notice what you feel, when you become conscious of His presence in the air you are breathing in and out....

Now express yourself to God non-verbally. Frequently, express a sentiment through a look on a gesture .... Then again by breathing. Express first of all, a great yearning for Him without using words, even mentally, say to Him, MY LORD, I long for You .... Just by the way breathe. You may express this by breathing in deeply, by deepening your inhalation.

Now express another attitude or sentiment: ONE OF TRUST AND SURRENDER—NO words—just through breath, “My LORD, I surrender myself entirely to you .... You may do this by emphasising your exhalation, by breathing out each time as if you were sighing deeply. Each time you breathe out feel yourself letting the whole of yourself go in God’s hand.

Then, after sometime, take up other attitudes before your LORD and express these through your breathing such as: LOVE.... CLOSENESS.... and INTIMACY ADORATION.......... GRATITUDE.......... PRAISE.... if you are tired of doing this, return to the beginning of this exercise and just rest peacefully in the awareness of God all around you and in the air you are breathing in and out.... Then, if you tend to get distracted, fall back on second part of the exercise and express yourself to God non-verbally once more.

VIII. Stillness

Modern man is unfortunately plagued by a nervous tension that makes it almost impossible for him to be quiet. If he actually wants to learn to pray he must first learn to be still, to quieten himself. In fact, this very quietness and stillness frequently becomes prayer when God manifests Himself in the form of STILLNESS.

Repeat the exercise of becoming aware of sensations in your bodywhole body. This time start with the top of your head and end it with the tips of your toes, omitting no part of the body. Beware  of every sensation in each part.... You may find some parts of your body completely devoid of sensation.... Dwell on these for a few seconds—if no sensation emerges, move on......

As you become more proficient in this exercise you will, hopefully, sharpen your awareness to the extent that there will be no part of your body in which you do not feel several sensations.... For the time being you must be content to dwell briefly on the blanks and move on to the parts where you feel more sensations Move slowly from head to foot.... then once again, from head to foot..... and so on for some fifteen minutes. As your awareness sharpens you will pick up sensations that you hadn’t noticed before.... you may also pick up sensations that are extremely subtle, too subtle to be perceived by any but a man of deep as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of concentration and deep peace. Now become aware of yours body as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of various types of sensations.... Stay with this for a while, then return to the awareness by parts, moving from head to foot.... then, once again, rest in the awareness of your body as a whole......

Notice now the deep stillness that has come over you. Notice the complete stillness of your body.... Do Not, however, rest in the stillness to the extent of losing awareness of your body.... If you are getting distracted, give yourself the occupation of moving once again from head to foot, becoming aware of sensations in each part of your body. Then, once again, notice the stillness in your body. If you are practising this in a group, then at occasions, notice the stillness in the whole room.

It is very important that you do NOT move any part of your body while doing this Sadhana. This will be difficult at first, but each time feel the urge to move, or scratch, or fidget, become aware of this as sharply as you can.... Don’t give in to it.... It will gradually go away and you will become still once more........

It is extremely painful for most people to stay still. Even physically painful and you become physically tense, spend all the time you need becoming aware of the tension.... where you feel it, what it feels like.... and stay with it till the tension disappears.

You may feel physical pain, rather severe pain. No matter how comfortable the position or posture you have adopted, your body is likely to protest against the stillness by developing aches and pains in various parts. When this happens, a serious Sadhaka MUST RESIST the temptation to move limbs or read just posture so as to ease the pain. Just become keenly aware of the pain.

Your awareness may wholly be absorbed by the acute pain. You may start sweating, may be profusely. Your mind may think that you are going to faint with pain; at such moment firmly decide Not to fight it, Not to run away from it, Not to desire to alleviate it, but to become aware of it, to identify with it. Then you may see that the pain sensation is broken into its component parts and you may be surprised to discover that it is composed of many sensations viz., intense burning sensation a pulling and tugging, a sharp, shooting sensation which may merge every now and then.... and a point which may keep moving from one place to another.... This point you may identify as pain.... As you will keep up this exercise, you shall find that you are bearing the pain quite well i.e., pain without suffering.

Every Sadhaka has to experience some types of pains, as indicated above, until his body becomes accustomed to remaining perfectly still. Deal with the pain through awareness. When your body finally does become still, you will have a rich reward in the QUIET BLISS   that this stillness will bring you. The temptation to scratch is another frequent temptation with beginners. This is because, as their awareness of their body sensations sharpens, they become aware of itching and pricking sensations that were there all along but were hidden to awareness because of the psycho-physical hardening that most of us submit our bodies to and because of the grossness of their awareness. A Sadhaka must resist such temptations during awareness Sadhana.

First quieten yourself through the awareness of sensations in various parts of your body.... Sharpen your awareness by picking up even the subtlest   sensations, Not just the gross and evident   ones.... Keep your hands on knees. Now very gently move your hands and fingers so that your hands come to rest on your lap, palms facing upwards, fingers joined together.... The movement must be very, very slow.... like the opening of the petals of a flower.... And while the movement is going on BE AWARE OF each part of it.

Once your hands are resting on your lap, palms facing upwards, become aware of the sensations in palms.... Then become aware of the gesture itself, this is a gesture of prayer to God.... What meaning does this gesture have for you? What are you saying to God through it ? Say without words, merely identifying with the gesture... It may give you some taste of the kind of prayer you can make with your body....

When you pray with your body you give power and body to your prayer. People fail to attend to their body in prayer; they fail to take their bodies along with them into the holy temple of God. When they themselves visit temples or places of worship, they stand or sit in the presence of God, but they are carelessly slouched in their seat or standing in a very slovenly fashion.... They are still not gripped by the living presence of the Lord. Therefore, a devotee of the Lord should try to understand the meaning and purpose of ‘Body Prayer’. The ‘gestures’ suggested are merely samples. A ‘devotee’ may invent his own gestures to express his ‘Love’, ‘Praise’, ‘Adoration’, ‘Surrender’, ‘Gratitude’....

Close your eyes. Quieten yourself through one of your awareness exercises. FEEL you are in the presence of God in a very devout way, hands devoutly joined in front of you, slowly raise your face upwards towards God.... Let your eyes continue to be closed.... What are you saying to God through your upturned face? Stay with that sentiment or communication for a few moments.... Then become as fully aware as possible of the position of your face.... of the sensations on your face.... After a few moments ask yourself once again what you are expressing to God through your upturned face and stay with that for a while....

This is a devotional   variant to the exercises on body sensations that you will find helpful if you have reservations about calling the body sensation exercises true prayer or contemplation. Repeat one of the body sensation exercises. Take some time to experience as many and as subtle sensations as you can in various parts of your body......

Now make the REFLECTION: Every sensation I feel, no matter how light and subtle is the result of a bio-chemical reaction that could not exist except for God’s Almighty Power.... FEEL God’s power at work in the production of every single sensation.... Feel HIM touching you in each of those sensations that HE is producing.... Feel the touch of God in different parts of your body: rough, smooth, pleasurable, painful....

The experience of God need not be something sensational or out of the ordinary, unless your devotion and Divine Love is developed. There is, no doubt, an experience of God that is different from the ordinary run of experiences that we are accustomed to: there is the deep silence that I spoke of earlier, the glowing darkness, the emptiness that brings fulfilment.

There are sudden, unaccountable flashes of Eternity or of the infinite   that comes to us when we least expect them, in the midst of our work. One needs to do so little, really, to experience God. All one needs to do is quieten   oneself, become still  and become aware of the feel of your hand. Beware of the sensations in your hand.... There you have God, living and working in you, touching you, intensely near you.... Feel HIM.... Experience HIM. Most of the devotees look upon an experience like this as far too pedestrian. Surely there is more to the experience of God than just the simple feel of the sensations of one’s right hand. This needs a long explanation to know the reality Yet, you are assured that these simple and humble exercises shall help you a lot to march towards that reality.

We forget all too easily that one of the big lessons of incarnations is that God is found in the ordinary also. Do you wish to see God? Look at the fact next to you. You want to hear him? Listen to the cry of a baby, the loud laughter of a simple party, the wind rustling in the trees. Or just quieten yourself, become aware of the sensations in your body, sense HIS ALMIGHTY POWER at work in you and feel how near He is to you.

Choose one sense object for a basic object of attention. It is suggested that you choose either the sensations in one part of your body of your breathing or the sounds around you.

Focus your attention on this object, but do so in such a way that if your attention shifts to something else you are immediately aware of the shift.

Let us suppose you have chosen for your basic object of attention your breathing. Well, then, concentrate on your breathing.... It is quite likely that after a while your attention will move to something else a thought, a sound, a feeling.... Now provided you are aware of this shift of attention to something else, this shift is not to be counted as a distraction. It is important, however, that you be aware of the shift while the shift is taking place or immediately after it has taken place. Count it a distraction only if you become aware of the shift long after it has taken place.

Suppose you choose breathing as your basic object of attention. Then your exercise will possibly go something like this:

I am breathing.... I am breathing.... Now I am thinking.... thinking.... thinking.... Now I am listening to a sound.... listening.... listening.... Now I am irritated.... irritated. Now I feel bored.... bored.... bored...

In this exercise, the wandering of the mind is not considered a distraction provided you are aware that your attention is shifting to some other object.... Once you have become aware of this shift, stay with the new object (thinking, listening, feeling....) for a while, then return to the basic object of your attention (breathing).... your skill in self-awareness may become so great that you will not only become aware of the shift of your attention on to some object, but even of the desire to shift, the impulse in you to shift on to something else. As when you want to move your hand you will first become conscious of the desire arising within you to move the hand, your consent to this desire, your carrying out of this desire, the very first stirring of your hand.... All of which activities are performed in an infinitesimal fraction of a second and so we find it impossible to distinguish one from the other until the silence and stillness within us has become almost total and our awareness has acquired razor edge sharpness. Self-awareness is a powerful means for increasing in love of God and of neighbour. The self-awareness heightens the love. The love, when it is genuine, fosters deeper self-awareness.

Do not go in search of abstruse means for developing your self-awareness. Begin with humble things like the awareness of the feel of your body or awareness of the things around you and then more on to exercises like the ones which are suggested here and it won’t be long before you notice the fruits of peacefulness and love that heightened self-awareness brings with it.

Do any of the awareness exercises that have preceded. Take your body sensation, for instance, as the focus of your attention.... Observe not only the sensations that yield themselves readily to your awareness, the grosser sensations but also the subtler ones.... If possible, do not give the sensations any names (burning, numbness, pricking, itching, cold.... ). Just feel the sensations without putting a label on to them....

Do the same with sounds.... Capture as many of them as possible.... Do not try to identify the source of the sounds. Listen to the sounds without putting a label on to them.

As you proceed with this exercise you will notice a great peacefulness coming upon you, a deep silence.... Now become aware, briefly, of this peacefulness and silence......

Feel how good it is to be here now. To have nothing to do. To just be. Be.

For those who are more devotionally inclined. Do the previous exercise until you sense the peacefulness that comes with it....

Become aware, for a brief while, of that peacefulness and silence....

Now express yourself to God non-verbally. Imagine that you are dumb and you can only communicate with your eyes and your breathing. Say to the Lord, non-verbally, Lord, it is good to be here with you. Or, do not communicate with the Lord at all. Just rest in His presence.

Also, for the devotionally inclined, a rudimentary exercise in finding God in all things.

Return to the world of the senses.... Become as keenly aware as possible of the air you breathe.... of the sounds around you.... of the sensations you feel in your body.... Sense God in the air, the sounds, the sensations. Rest in this whole world of the senses. Rest in God.... Surrender to this whole world of the senses (sounds, tactile sensations, colours....) ......