31. LOOK UPON A BOWL WITHOUT SEEING THE SIDES OR THE MATERIAL. IN A FEW MOMENTS BECOME AWARE.

Look at anything. Forget the substance and just look at the form as a whole, without the eyes moving from one part to another.

For instance, stare at a single star in the black, nighttime sky. A moment will come when that star will disappear. And when that star disappears, you will appear to yourself.

32. SEE AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME A BEAUTEOUS PERSON OR AN ORDINARY OBJECT.

Don't look with old eyes, filled with memory and habit. Everything is not the same as it may have been. People may say nothing is new under the sky. Really, nothing is old under the sky. Look at everything you pass as if for the first time. Make it a continuous attitude.

Heraclitus said that you cannot step into the same river twice. If you are freed from the past and you have a look which can see the present, you will enter the existence. And this entry will be double: you will enter into everything, into its spirit, and you will enter into yourself also because the present is the door.

This technique is just to make your eyes fresh - so fresh, alive, radiantly vital, that they can move within and you can have a look at your inner self. SEE AS IF FOR THE FIRST TIME. Innocent eyes can see. Innocent eyes can enter into the inner world.

33. SIMPLY BY LOOKING INTO THE BLUE SKY BEYOND CLOUDS - THE SERENITY.

First, a useful hint: Do not be in denial about death. Make death a constant contemplation in your life.

Without thinking; just look into the infinite, blue sky. Look at the pure emptiness of it. Your eyes are like a mirror. Whatsoever is before them is reflected. Feel the same sky within, the same dimension within. Become empty. Empty and full are the same thing. Even when empty, you still ARE.

34. LISTEN WHILE THE ULTIMATE MYSTICAL TEACHING IS IMPARTED. EYES STILL, WITHOUT BLINKING, AT ONCE BECOME ABSOLUTELY FREE.

This is a secret method which can be imparted only by a master, visible or not. It helps to fully understand that freedom from the mind is the only freedom there is.

35. AT THE EDGE OF A DEEP WELL LOOK STEADILY INTO ITS DEPTHS UNTIL - THE WONDROUSNESS.

Go on looking, day after day, month after month. The deep well will be reflected in you.

36. LOOK UPON SOME OBJECT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR SIGHT FROM IT, THEN SLOWLY WITHDRAW YOUR THOUGHT FROM IT. THEN.

Use the same object, day after day. Look at it, but do not think. Then, close your eyes, and just as you have removed your eyesight from the object, remove yourself from the image.

37. DEVI, IMAGINE THE SANSKRIT LETTERS IN THESE HONEY-FILLED FOCI OF AWARENESS, FIRST AS LETTERS, THEN MORE SUBTLY AS SOUNDS, THEN AS MOST SUBTLE FEELING. THEN, LEAVING THEM ASIDE, BE FREE.

We have a will to live and we also have a will to die, because mind is the door to hell. Mind is the world. Look at the meaninglessness of the world. Look at the meaninglessness of words. Listen to their sounds and what feelings they invoke. Go into and beyond the feelings.

38. BATHE IN THE CENTER OF SOUND, AS IN THE CONTINUOUS SOUND OF A WATERFALL. OR, BY PUTTING THE FINGERS IN THE EARS, HEAR THE SOUND OF SOUNDS.

Sounds are always present. So are you, alone and silent.

39. INTONE A SOUND, AS AUM, SLOWLY. AS SOUND ENTERS SOUNDFULNESS, SO DO YOU.

If mind can be used as a jumping board to no-mind - and yoga and tantra believe that it can - then something which belongs to mind has to be trained. Sound is one of the basic things. You can use sound to go into soundlessness.

The intoning of a sound is a very subtle science.

First, intone AUM loudly, outwardly. By and by, feel attunement with the sound. Be filled with it. Tune yourself with it.

Then, close your lips and intone it inwardly, loudly, so that the sound spreads throughout your body. You will feel cleansed and vitalized by it. As it penetrates you more, go on becoming more and more slow, because the slower and subtler the sound, the deeper it can go. It is just like homeopathy.

Only delicate, refined sounds can enter your heart, the central core of your being, and the more subtle a sound is, the more intense an awareness you will need to feel it inside. Listen to it, inside, still and awake.

40. IN THE BEGINNING AND GRADUAL REFINEMENT OF THE SOUND OF ANY LETTER, AWAKE.

41. WHILE LISTENING TO STRINGED INSTRUMENTS, HEAR THEIR COMPOSITE CENTRAL SOUND; THUS OMNIPRESENCE.

42. INTONE A SOUND AUDIBLY, THEN LESS AND LESS AUDIBLY AS FEELING DEEPENS INTO THIS SILENT HARMONY.

43. WITH MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN, KEEP MIND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TONGUE. OR, AS BREATH COMES SILENTLY IN, FEEL THE SOUND "HH".

44. CENTER ON THE SOUND "AUM" WITHOUT ANY "A" OR "M".

45. SILENTLY INTONE A WORD ENDING IN "AH." THEN IN THE "HH," EFFORTLESSLY, THE SPONTANEITY.

46. STOPPING EARS BY PRESSING AND THE RECTUM BY CONTRACTING, ENTER THE SOUND.

If you stop your ears and pull your rectum up, contract your rectum, everything will stop for you. Drop your psychological armor and listen, feel and be attentive.

47. ENTER THE SOUND OF YOUR NAME AND, THROUGH THIS SOUND, ALL SOUNDS.

Your name has gone very deep within you, but there is a very beautiful phenomenon about your name: you never call it, others call it. Your own name can be used as a mantra very easily, and it is very helpful because your name has gone very deep into your unconscious. Your name becomes just a door for all names. Enter the sound.

48. AT THE START OF SEXUAL UNION KEEP ATTENTIVE ON THE FIRE IN THE BEGINNING, AND SO CONTINUING, AVOID THE EMBERS IN THE END.

Sex can be a very deep fulfillment, and sex can throw you back to your wholeness, to your natural, real being, because sex is a total act. Become the body, become the animal, because the animal is whole. Sex is the deepest, the biological center within you. You are born out of it. Your every cell is a sex cell; your whole body is a sex-energy phenomenon.

Don't just want release and don't be in a hurry. Don't hanker for the end - remain with the beginning. Remain with this overflowing energy. Create a circle.

Don't take the sex act as a way of going anywhere. Don't take it as a means: it is the end in itself. Remain with the present going nowhere, and melt into one another. Both partners melting with each other circularly give vital energy to each other.

49. WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN AS LEAVES, ENTER THIS SHAKING.

When the energy of sex spreads all over your body, every cell becomes alive because every cell is a sex cell. You cannot control it. You may start shaking. Enter the shaking and don't be aloof. Allow the shaking and every cell of both of your bodies to dance. Be the shaking - it is not just your body that is shaking. It is you - your whole being, in circle with the other. Feel the non-duality.

50. EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, WITHOUT THE EMBRACE, TRANSFORMATION.

If you know the feeling, you can enter into the act without the partner.

51. ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY.

Enter this joy and become one with it - any joy, any happiness. When sudden joy grips you, attend to the joy, not the cause for the joy. The joy is always within you. Be centered in your own feeling of rising energy. The moment you look at it, it will spread. Don't just be an observer of it; merge into it.

Even with negative emotions, do this. When you are angry, do not be centered on the person who has aroused it. If the emotion is negative, you will be freed of it by being aware that it is within you. If the emotion is positive, you will become the emotion itself. If it is joy, you will become joy. If it is anger, the anger will dissolve.

If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through awareness. If it is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it.

52. WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF FOOD OR DRINK, AND BE FILLED.

Go slow, and be aware of the taste as much as you can. When you feel sweetness, become that sweetness.

Tantra says be alive, more alive, because life is God. There is no other God than life. Be more alive, and you will be more divine. Be totally alive, and there is no death for you.

53. OH LOTUS-EYED ONE, SWEET OF TOUCH, WHEN SINGING, SEEING, TASTING, BE AWARE YOU ARE AND DISCOVER THE EVER-LIVING.

Tantra is a training in how to become real and undivided, aware of your whole being. Be aware that you are - the current, the energy, the life, the ever-living.

This technique is one of the most helpful, and it has been used for millennia by many teachers, masters. Buddha used it, Mahavira used it, Jesus used it, and in more modern times Gurdjieff used it. The whole Gurdjieffian system is based on this one sutra of self-remembering. Remember yourself, whatsoever you are doing. You are.

Raman Maharshi made it a meditation to ask, to inquire, "Who am I?" - don't believe in any answers that the mind can supply. Nisargadatta's entire inquiry, also, was into the existential question "Who Am I"?

54. WHEREVER SATISFACTION IS FOUND, IN WHATEVER ACT, ACTUALIZE THIS.

You feel thirsty, so you drink water. A subtle satisfaction is attained. Forget the water, forget the thirst. Remain with the subtle satisfaction that you are feeling. Be filled with it; simply feel satisfied. Everything is a window. Everything is beautified by a positive mind. This is a very delicate process, but very sweet also, and the more you proceed in it, the sweeter it becomes.

55. AT THE POINT OF SLEEP, WHEN THE SLEEP HAS NOT YET COME AND THE EXTERNAL WAKEFULNESS VANISHES, AT THIS POINT BEING IS REVEALED.

There is a point when you are not asleep and not awake, just in the middle. There you are in a neutral gear. There is a gap. Through that gap you can have a glimpse of your being. Keep at this every night.

As the sleep comes, just wait. The moment you are waiting for will be very subtle and potentially very atomic.

A moment will come when you are neither asleep nor awake, but aware of your authentic existence.

56. ILLUSIONS DECEIVE, COLORS CIRCUMSCRIBE, EVEN DIVISIBLES ARE INDIVISIBLE.

This is a rare technique, one not much used, but one of the greatest teachers in India, Shankara, used it and based his whole teaching on this technique. Shankara says everything is illusory. Nothing is certain other than you.

57. IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED.

The original mind is like a mirror: it is pure, and it remains pure, but dust can gather upon it and cover it up. Our mind is the original mind plus dust, the buddha-mind plus dust, the divine mind plus dust. Once you know how to uncover it, how to reclaim it from the dust, you have known all that is worth knowing and you have attained all that is worth attaining.

Desire is a "dis-ease". You are in desire, desire grips you, you are temporarily mad, possessed, you are no more in your senses. Suddenly remember to be undisturbed - as if you are undressing. Inside, become naked, naked from the desire, undressed. Desire will be there, but now you have a point within you which is not disturbed. You will know that desire is there on the periphery. Like fever, it is there. In a cyclone, there is a center which is undisturbed.

58. THIS SO-CALLED UNIVERSE APPEARS AS A JUGGLING, A PICTURE SHOW. TO BE HAPPY, LOOK UPON IT SO.

This whole world is just like a drama, so don't be too serious about it. Look at the expanse: look backwards, look forwards, look to all dimensions at what you are, what your life is. It looks like a long dream, and everything that you take so seriously this moment becomes useless the next moment.

Remember your first love, how serious it was. Life depended on it. Now you don't remember it at all, it is forgotten. If you are unhappy, you have taken it too seriously. Right attitude is what makes you happy.

59. OH BELOVED, PUT ATTENTION NEITHER ON PLEASURE NOR ON PAIN, BUT BETWEEN THESE.

Everything is polar, and mind moves from one polarity to another. Buddha says remain in the middle always; no matter what the polarity,

Don't try to escape the pain; remain with it as a witness, in between. If unhappiness comes, allow it. If happiness comes, allow it. Remain a watcher on the hill.

60. OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED.

When you are angry, you always justify your anger, but when someone else gets angry you always criticize. If you think you are exceptional, know well this is how every ordinary mind thinks. We have double standards - one standard for one oneself and another standard for everyone else. This double-standard mind is going to be in deep misery always. This mind is not just, and unless your mind is just you cannot glimpse the truth.

Don't condemn. Every man is you. Acceptance of this becomes transformation and compassion. Bring everything up to the surface. Accept your humanity and your animality. Through acceptance, awareness is possible.