~~ FROM SOUND TO INNER SILENCE End ~~

A burdened stomach will become a hindrance, so it is helpful for a coward to be relaxed.

Why am I talking about this? I am just saying this, that you have to be aware of your mental processes and your stomach processes; they are deeply related. Psychologists say that fifty to ninety percent of your dreams are because of your stomach processes. If you have taken a very heavy meal you are bound to see nightmares. They are not related with the mind, it is just that the heavy stomach creates them.

Many dreams can be created by outside tricks. If you are sleeping, your hands can be crossed on your chest and immediately you will start dreaming some nightmare. A pillow can be put on your chest and you will dream that some demon is sitting on your chest just going to kill you. And this has been one of the problems. Why is there such a burden from the small weight of a pillow? If you are awake, there is no weight; you do not feel anything heavy. But why is it that a small pillow placed on you in the night when you are sleeping is felt as being so heavy that it is as if you have been burdened with a big stone or a rock? Why is so much weight felt?

The reason is this: when you are aware, when you are awake, your mind and body are not correlated; the gap is there. You cannot feel the body and its sensitivity. While asleep, the control, the culture, the conditioning, dissolves; you have again become a child and your body has become sensitive.

Because of that sensitivity, a small pillow is felt as a rock. It is magnified because of sensitivity - the sensitivity magnifies it. So body-mind processes are deeply related, and if you know what happens you can use this.

Rectum closed, pulled upwards, contracted, creates a situation in the body in which sound can be felt if present. You will feel a pillar of sound in silence within the closed space in your body. Close the ears and pull up the rectum, and then just remain with what is happening inside you. Just remain in that vacant state which is created by these two things. Your life energy is moving within and it has no way to go out. Sound goes out either from your ears or from your rectum. Those are the two doors from where the sound can move out. If is not moving out, you can feel it more easily.

And what will happen when you feel this inner sound? With the very phenomenon of hearing the inner sound, your thoughts dissolve. Just try it anytime during the day: just pull up the rectum and put your fingers in the ears. Press the ears and pull up the rectum. You will feel that your mind has stopped. It will not be functioning; thoughts will have stopped. That constant flow of thoughts is not there. It is good! And if one goes on doing it whenever there is time, in the day if you can do it for five or six times, within three or four months you will become an expert in it. And then such a well-being flows out of it!

And the inner sound, once heard, remains with you. Then you can hear it the whole day. The market is noisy, the road is noisy, the traffic is noisy, but if even in that noise you have heard the inner sound, you will feel the still small voice that goes on inside. And then nothing will disturb you. If you can feel your inner sound, then nothing from the outside can disturb you. You remain silent; whatsoever happens around you makes no difference.