Tantra says that the body is the only tool we have that can lead us in the present moment, outside of our mind. When we are in the mind, everything is a memory of the past or a projection in the future. When we are in the present moment, on the contrary, we expand and we are open to the mystery and to the juiciness of existence. In this meditation from Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, Osho invites us to expand the “lotus of our heart” through the senses, touching our beloved, or in touch with music, with a flower or with a tree…
“BLESSED ONE, AS SENSES ARE ABSORBED IN THE HEART, REACH THE CENTER OF THE LOTUS.
Touch! Close your eyes; touch anything. Touch your beloved or your lover, touch your child or your mother or your friend, or touch a tree or a flower, or just touch the earth. Close your eyes and feel a communication from your heart to the earth, or to your beloved. Feel that your hand is just your heart stretched out to touch the earth. Let the feeling of touch be related to the heart. You are listening to music. Do not listen to it from the head. Just forget your head and feel that you are headless, there is no head at all. It is good to have a picture of yourself without the head in your bedroom. Concentrate on it; you are without the head, do not allow the head to come in. While listening to music, listen to it from the heart. Feel the music coming to your heart; let your heart vibrate with it. Let your senses be joined to the heart, not to the head. Try this with all the senses, and feel more and more that every sense goes into the heart and dissolves into it.
The heart is a lotus
Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the centre of the lotus. The heart is the lotus. Every sense is just the opening of the lotus, the petals of the lotus. Try to relate your senses to the heart first. Secondly, always think that every sense goes deep down into the heart and becomes absorbed in it. When these two things become established, only then will your senses begin to help you. They will lead you to the heart, and your heart will become a lotus. This lotus of the heart will give you a centering. Once you know the center of the heart, it is very easy to fall down into the navel center, very easy. This sutra does not even mention this – there is no need. If you are really absorbed in the heart totally, and reason has stopped working, then you will fall down. From the heart, the door is opened toward the navel. Only from the head is it difficult to go toward the navel. Or if you are between the two, between the heart and the head, then too it is difficult to go to the navel. Once you are absorbed in the navel, you have suddenly fallen beyond the heart. You have fallen into the navel center which is the basic one – the original. That is why prayer helps. That is why Jesus could say, ”Love is God.” It is not exactly right, but love is the door. If you are deeply in love – with anyone, it doesn’t matter who…
Love matters; the object of love doesn’t matter.
If you are in deep love with anyone, so much in love that there is no relationship from the head, if just the heart is functioning, then this love will become prayer and your beloved or your lover will become divine. Really, the eye of the heart cannot see anything else, and that is why it happens with ordinary love also. If you fall in love with someone, that someone becomes divine. It may not prove to be very lasting, and it may not prove to be a very deep thing, but in that moment the lover or the beloved becomes divine. The head will destroy the whole thing sooner or later, because the head will come in and try to manage everything. Even love has to be managed. And once the head manages, everything is destroyed. If you can be in love without the head’s management coming in, your love is bound to become prayer and your beloved will become the door. Your love will make you centered in the heart – and once you are centered in the heart, you automatically fall down deep into the navel center.”
Osho, The Book of Secrets
