Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of deprivation, transcend.
- For the intellectual/scientific type — the complement to sutra 5 (devotion) for the feeling type; no type is higher, they are simply different doors to the same transcendence.
- Three doors, one threshold: (1) Lie down, close eyes, feel ‘I am dying’ in every limb until the body becomes leaden and will not move — not just thought but felt throughout the body; (2) imagine the whole existence sucking all strength out of you until nothing remains inside; (3) run or dance continuously without stopping yourself — let the body fall of its own exhaustion, do not lie down deliberately. All three approach the same precipice.
- Why the instant of deprivation works: mind is needed for life, not death — at the moment of total exhaustion or ‘death,’ planning, worry, and thought cease on their own, because every worry is life-oriented. No life ahead means no mind ahead.
- The critical move at that instant: do NOT fall with the body — become the observer. Look at the body lying there. The gap between you and the body will be crystal clear; the body is ‘just a body,’ and you are standing apart witnessing it.
- ‘In’ and ‘out’ are mind-constructs: when the mind is absent, you are neither in nor out of the body — you simply witness, prior to all spatial relations. The feeling that you are ‘in the body’ is because of the mind; without the mind, that illusion dissolves.
- Ecstasy = ‘stand out’: a single moment of this separateness cannot be forgotten — it becomes part of your being permanently. After returning to the body you can use the mind, but identification is broken; the room is no longer a prison once you have stood under the open sky.
- Real-life opportunities: actual illness, genuine near-death states, extreme exhaustion — these are natural occasions for this meditation; use them rather than wasting them in fear or planning.