Excerpts from The Book of Secrets - 112 Meditations to Discover the Mystery Within

Yoga takes the opposite view - opposite to the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind is being destroyed by its own desires, so yoga says stop desiring, be desireless. Fight desire and create an integration in you which is desireless.

Tantra says be aware of the desire; do not create any fight. Move in desire with full consciousness, and when you move into desire with full consciousness you transcend it. You are into it and still you are not in it. You pass through it, but you remain an outsider.

You are angry... Tantra will not say do not be angry. Tantra will say be angry wholeheartedly, but be aware. Tantra is not against anger, Tantra is only against spiritual sleepiness, spiritual unconsciousness. Be aware and be angry. And this is the secret of the method – that if you are aware anger is transformed: it becomes compassion. So Tantra says anger is not your enemy; it is compassion in seed form. The same anger, the same energy, will become compassion.

Mind is a mechanism of desiring. Mind is always in desire, always seeking something, asking for something. Always the object is in the future; mind is not concerned with the present at all. In this very moment the mind cannot move – there is no space. The mind needs the future in order to move. either in the past or in the future. It cannot move in the present; there is no space. The truth is in the present, and mind is always in the future or in the past, so there is no meeting between mind and truth.

When the mind is seeking worldly objects it is not so difficult, the problem is not absurd; it can be solved. But when the mind starts seeking the truth the very effort becomes nonsense, because the truth is here and now and the mind is always then and there. There is no meeting. So understand the first thing: you cannot seek truth. You can find it, but you cannot seek it. The very seeking is the hindrance.

After breath comes in that is, down and just before turning out that is, going up – the beneficence. Be aware between these two points, and the happening. When your breath comes in, observe. For a single moment, or a thousandth part of a moment, there is no breathing - before it turns up, before it turns outward. One breath comes in; then there is a certain point and breathing stops. Then the breathing goes out. When the breath goes out, then again for a single moment, or a part of a moment, breathing stops. Then breathing comes in.

Before the breath is turning in or turning out, there is a moment when you are not breathing. In that moment the happening is possible, because when you are not breathing you are not in the world. Understand this: when you are not breathing you are dead; you are still, but dead. But the moment is of such a short duration that you never observe it.

We are divided into the center and the periphery. The body is the periphery; we know the body, we know the periphery. We know the circumference, but we do not know where the center is. When the outbreath fuses with the in-breath, when they become one, when you cannot say whether it is the out-breath or the in-breath... when it is difficult to demarcate and define whether the breath is going out or coming in, when the breath has penetrated in and starts moving out, there is a moment of fusion. It is neither going out nor moving in. The breath is static. When it is moving out it is dynamic; when it is coming in it is dynamic. When it is neither, when it is silent, non-moving, you are near to the center. The fusion point of the in and outgoing breath is your center.

Look at it in this way: when the breath goes in, where does it go? It goes to your center, it touches your center. When it goes out, from where does it go out? It moves from your center. Your center has to be touched. That is why Taoist mystics and Zen mystics say that the head is not the center, the navel is your center. The breath goes to the navel, then it moves out. It goes to the center.

Krishna has many names. Krishna is one of the greatest actors. He is constantly centered in himself and playing - playing many roles, many games, but absolutely non serious. Seriousness comes from identification.

If you can understand this, then you can understand the theory of destiny, bhagya – fate. It has a very deep meaning. And the meaning is, if you take it that everything is fixed for you, your life becomes a drama.

A greedy mind has to understand that it is greedy and accept it - not try to be non-greedy. The greedy mind has to go deep within itself to realize the depth of its greed. Not moving away from it, but remaining with it; not moving in ideals – in contradictory ideals, in opposite ideals – but remaining in the present, moving into the greed, knowing the greed, understanding the greed, and not trying to escape from it in any way. If you can remain with your greed, many things will happen. If you can remain with your greed, with your sex, with your anger, your ego will dissolve. This will be the first thing - and what a great miracle it is!