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At night, before you go to bed, close the doors of your room and put a big mirror in front of you. The room must be completely dark. Then put a small flame by the side of the mirror in such a way that the flame is not directly reflected in the mirror. Just your face should be reflected in the mirror, not the flame.
Stare constantly into your own eyes in the mirror. Do not blink. This is a forty-minute experiment, and within two or three days you will be able to keep your eyes from blinking for the whole forty minutes. Even if tears come, let them come, but still do not blink and go on staring into the eyes.
Within two or three days you will become aware of a very strange phenomenon: your face will begin to take on new shapes. You may even be scared. The face in the mirror will begin to change; sometimes a very different face will be there -- one which you have not known as yours. But all the faces that come to you belong to you. Now the subconscious mind is beginning to explode: these faces, these masks, are yours. And sometimes you may even see a face that belonged to you in a past life.
After one week of constant practice -- staring for forty minutes every night -- your face will be a constant flux. Many faces will be coming and going constantly. After three weeks you will not be able to remember which one is your face. You will not be able to remember your own face, because you have seen so many different faces coming and going.
If you continue, then one day, after three weeks or so, the strangest thing will happen: suddenly there will be no face in the mirror! The mirror will be vacant. You are staring into emptiness; there will be no face there at all.
This is the moment! Close your eyes and encounter the unconscious. When there is no face in the mirror, just close the eyes. This is the most significant moment: close the eyes, look inside, and you will face the unconscious. You will be naked, completely naked -- as you are; all deceptions will fall.
This is your reality, but society has created so many layers in order that you will not be aware of it. And once you know yourself in your nakedness, your total nakedness, you will begin to be a different person. Then you cannot deceive yourself; now you know what you are.
Unless you know what you are you can never be transformed. Only this naked reality can be transformed. And, really, just the will to transform it will effect the transformation.
As you are, you cannot transform yourself. You can change one false face to another false face -- a thief can become a monk, a criminal can become a saint -- but these are not really transformations. Transformation means becoming that which you really are.
The moment you face the unconscious, encounter the unconscious, you are face to face with your reality, with your authentic being. The false societal being is not there: your name is not there, your form is not there, your face is not there. Only the naked reality of your nature is there, and with this naked reality transformation is possible.
This mirror-gazing technique is a very powerful method -- very powerful -- to know one's own abyss and to know one's own naked reality. And once you have known it, you have become the master of it.
When doing tratak you are to stare continuously, without blinking, for thirty to forty minutes. Your whole consciousness must come to the eyes; you must become the eyes. Forget everything; forget the rest of your body, just be the eyes and continually stare without blinking.
When the whole of your consciousness is centered in the eyes you will come to a peak of tension, a climax of tension. Your eyes are the most delicate part of you, that is why they can become more tense than any other part. And with tension in the eyes, the whole mind will be tense; the eyes are just doors to the mind. When you become the eyes and the eyes reach a peak of tension, the mind, too, reaches a climax of tension. When you fall down from that climax you fall effortlessly into the abyss of relaxation. Tratak creates one of the most tense peaks possible in the consciousness. From that peak the opposite will happen spontaneously, relaxation will happen spontaneously.
Tratak (Fixed Gazing)
When you are doing tratak, thinking will stop automatically. By and by your consciousness will become more centered in the eyes. You will just be aware; there will be no thinking. Eyes cannot think. When the whole consciousness is centered in the eyes, the mind has no energy left for thinking. There is no mind -- only the eyes exist -- so there is no thinking.
The moments when your eyes want to blink are the moments to watch out for. The mind is trying to get energy back to think; it is trying to divert consciousness away from the eyes and back to the mind. That is why constant staring, fixed staring, is needed. Even a single movement of the eyes gives energy to the mind, so do not move the eyes at all. Your gaze must remain absolutely fixed.
When you are staring with no movement of the eyes, the mind is also fixed; the mind moves with the eyes. Eyes are the doors: doors that belong to the inside mind and also to the outside world. If the eyes are totally fixed, the mind stops; it cannot move.
This technique begins from the eyes, because to begin from the mind is difficult. It is hard to control the mind but eyes are outer things, you can control them. So keep your gaze absolutely fixed, staring without blinking. When your eyes are still, your mind will become still.
Source: Osho - Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Chapter 18
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The true Self is No-Self.
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