Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures.
- The instruction. Abide on a hilltop or open terrain where the vision reaches no end — endless space. Stay not as a permanent lifestyle but for a defined period; its length varies by person.
- Why endless space. The ego needs limits/boundaries to define itself against — the more defined the boundary, the easier it exists. Where vision meets no end it has nothing to push against and begins to dissolve.
- Why ‘clear of trees, hills, habitations.’ The mind re-creates society from any foothold: a single cottage in the valley becomes a symbol of humanity (you dream of who lives there); people living alone start talking to trees and get a response. Remove every object the mind could turn into a relationship — and resolve in advance to form none (no tending a tree, no befriending it).
- The mind is society internalized — it follows like a shadow. Leaving physical society is easy; you cannot leave the mind behind. Faces of loved ones invade dreams; the world you left suddenly looks more beautiful than ever and the hilltop turns ugly. This is mechanical habit, not failure. (Even Buddha, six years alone, was trailed by Yashodhara’s memory.) Stay alert, refuse to identify with it; a moment comes when the mind leaves — and the pressures leave with it.
- Embrace uselessness deliberately. Society conditions the mind to demand utility, so in solitude it manufactures noble arguments (‘the world is suffering, who are you to sit here? you are wasting time, you have gone mad’). This is the Devil — i.e. the mind itself. Decide from the start: ‘I am going to waste time; I will simply enjoy being here.’ Be like the solitary rock in a Zen garden — no purpose, always in meditation.
- Crowds press physically, not only psychologically. Animal studies: every creature needs a territory; violate it and tension, abnormality, even madness or suicide follow (animals caged with every need met but no space go mad). Human overcrowding presses the mind ceaselessly. Endless space removes this pressure-field — deeper sleep, a freer awakening: ‘the end of mind pressures.’
- Not a way of life — a technique, a medicine. Living in a monastery forever is error: if your peace is accidental (given by the hills) you can never know it is real. Go for a fixed period, then return and test the attainment in the marketplace; when you can stay inwardly alone amid the crowd, the crystallization is genuine. [Q&A Q1] And true solitude is not swapping society for a substitute society — an ashram or commune re-creates hierarchy (master, disciples, good and bad) and re-feeds the ego, so nothing changes.
- [Q&A Q1] The fear/pain IS the tapas — do not relieve it. The ego exists only in relationship, fed by others’ images of you; cut off from that social soil it starves, and its dying feels like your own death — the ‘dark night of the soul.’ Do nothing to escape it: no mantra, no distraction. Chanting ‘Ram, Ram’ here is whistling in the dark — it only revives the ego that must dissolve. Let the trembling, shaking, near-madness happen; remain a passive witness. Whatever arises passes by itself if you do not interfere. Three months held this way completes the passage.
- [Q&A Q2] The marker, and the gap. In real aloneness even individuality dissolves (it too was given by society): you become an empty inner space, a nobody — neither man nor woman, neither good nor bad. (Buddha, asked if a nude girl had passed, answered: ‘Someone passed — I cannot say man or woman, beautiful or ugly, clothed or naked; I only heard footsteps.’) Between the old self dropping and the new emerging lies a gap — an autumn, then a bare winter where you feel dead and naked. Do not panic: it is the dark before dawn; you are pregnant, simply wait.
- [Q&A Q3] The opposite extreme dissolves the ego equally — this is the aloneness pole. Ego survives by balancing between love and hate, like a tightrope walker leaning left then right. Move completely to either pole — utter aloneness (renunciation, vairagya) or utter love of all existence — and you fall off the rope; at an extreme the ego cannot stand. This technique works the aloneness pole, the ‘maximize relationship’ technique the other; both end the ego.