sound and silent

 

WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES I OFTEN HEAR THE SOUND OF A TINY BELL RINGING WITHIN.
CAN YOU PLEASE TELL US ABOUT HEARING, MEDITATION, SOUND AND SILENCE?

It is possible that hearing inside you a tiny bell when you enter into meditation may be related to your past life, particularly as a Tibetan, because for centuries in Tibet this has been the conditioning of the mind -- that when you enter meditation, you hear tiny bells. And if a conditioning has been continued too long, it is carried into new lives.
But hearing the tiny bell is not meditation; it is just a conditioning. When you start entering into total silence where no bells are ringing, then meditation begins. The tiny bell rings in the mind, and meditation is a state of no-mind. Tiny or not tiny, no bell can ring there; it is utter silence.
But many religions, particularly in the East... and the most prominent is the Tibetan religion which has used tiny bells. It is a significant technique but dangerous, as all techniques are: you can get attached to the technique. If you listen to a tiny bell for hours it will have a hypnotizing effect on your mind. Thinking will stop, only the bell will go on ringing. Even when in reality the bell has stopped, it will go on ringing in the mind. The idea behind the technique was that slowly, slowly the sound of the bell will fade away into silence. If it happens, good. But the greater possibility is that you will become attached to the bell. And it gives great peace, it will give you a feeling of great well-being, because the mind will not be thinking; it cannot do two things.
It is not only the bell -- anything can be used. Lord Tennyson, the great poet, was embarrassed to recognize in his autobiography that from his very childhood... he does not know how -- perhaps sleeping in a separate room as a small child, he was afraid of the darkness. Just to make him feel that he is not alone, he started repeating his own name, "Tennyson, Tennyson..." Repeating his own name he forgot all about the darkness and the ghosts, and all kinds of creatures that humanity has invented for poor children to be tortured with. He would repeat a few times, "Tennyson, Tennyson, Tennyson..." and he would become silent and would fall into a deep sleep.
Later on, as he grew up, it became his usual practice. Without it he could not fall asleep -- it became a necessary ritual. But it started giving him new insights: it not only brought sleep, but repeating, "Tennyson, Tennyson," his own name, he became silent, peaceful; he became somehow more than the body, somehow immaterial. And then, as he came to know about meditation... he had already developed a technique through his whole life. He tried it for meditation, and it worked. Just as it was leading him into deep sleep, it started leading him into deep relaxation, a great peacefulness.
So it is not a question of what mantra, what chanting, what name of which God, or just the sound of a bell... it doesn't matter. All that matters basically is that you become concentrated on one thing, that the mind is so full of one thing that all other thoughts stop. And any one thing for a long time is going to give you a certain kind of hypnotic state.
Just a few days ago, Anando brought me a press clipping. The man was authentic in writing it... he was puzzled, he could not understand what is happening. He had been listening to me -- he had come as a journalist to report -- he had never heard such long discourses, and on subjects which were not his area! So he reports on me: "What is striking," he reports, "is Osho speaks very slowly, with gaps -- sometimes with closed eyes, and sometimes he looks very intensely at you. He speaks so long that one feels bored, but the strange thing is that after this boredom one feels a deep serenity, a silence -- which is strange, because usually out of boredom one feels frustration, one feels angry."
But he has observed well his own mind... one feels a certain serenity, silence, peacefulness, and finally it seems that a kind of hypnosis has happened: "Perhaps this is Osho's method -- to speak slowly, to speak with gaps, so that you start feeling bored. But out of that boredom comes a serenity."
It is strange for him -- it is strange for Western psychology too -- that if boredom is used rightly it is going to create serenity, peacefulness and a state of hypnosis. And hypnosis is healthy: It is not meditation, but it still somehow reflects meditation. It is like the moon reflected in the water; it is not the moon, but this is still a reflection of the moon.
So all the religions -- in the East particularly, but in the West also -- have used very similar techniques. Now a Buddhist monk in Tibet, in the silence of the Himalayas, goes on ringing a small bell for hours... no other sound -- the whole universe around him is silent -- the only sound is the bell. Naturally his mind starts getting bored, starts feeling disinterested. There is no excitement, it is just repetition, but that is the point: if the bell can be stopped -- and the bell has to be stopped -- the mind will go on listening to it for a little time longer.
The monk has become so accustomed to listening to it that he will go on listening to it. And as the sound of the bell recedes, becomes thinner, becomes distant, more distant, the mind is left in a certain silence. This silence either can give you hypnosis... Hypnosis is another name for deliberately created sleep: it is deeper than your ordinary sleep, healthier than your ordinary sleep; it rejuvenates you within minutes, which your ordinary sleep can do only in eight hours. That is one line that it can move on, but that is not meditation.
The other line is... listening to the bell inside you getting more and more distant, you become more and more alert so that you can listen to it, even though the sound is going away from you.
Now you have to be more conscious to listen to it. First you were unconscious and you were listening to it; now it is getting distant so you have to be very alert, very conscious. And a moment comes when the sound disappears... you have to be perfectly conscious. You have taken a different route.
This state of consciousness is meditation.
I am not against hypnosis; what I am against is... hypnosis should not be understood as meditation. Hypnosis is of the mind, and good for the mind, good for the body. Meditation is neither of the body nor of the mind, but belongs to the third within you -- your being. It is good for the being, it is nourishment for the being.
So it is possible that if sitting in meditation, you suddenly start hearing bells, you may have practiced this in your past lives. I don't talk about past lives for the simple reason that for you it will be just a belief. But the question was such that I had to bring the past life in, because it had nothing to do with this life. You had not practiced meditation on the sound of bells, so from where can it come into your mind? It can come only from the past conditioning, and a very deep conditioning.
Nothing is wrong in it. Enjoy it, but remember not to go towards sleep. Go towards more consciousness. Sleep is unconsciousness, so they are diametrically opposite directions. And there comes a point from where you can move either way. When the sound of bells is receding, disappearing, that is the moment. Either you can fall asleep... which is good but this is not meditation, and it is not going to give you any spiritual experience. If you remain alert, aware, the sound disappears; only silence remains.
Consciousness and silence together is what meditation is all about.

by

k.jagadeesh
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