Looking in the mirror

[Matt1]

The Meditation Technique of Mirror Gazing

Taken from:
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh,
Dynamics of Meditation,
Bombay, India, 1972
page 273
The technique of mirror gazing is a very powerful
method for encountering
one's unconsciousness.

By unconscious, Osho says,
that what he means is "less conscious".
The following instructions are given by Osho
on how to encounter it through mirror gazing:
Close the doors of your room
and put a big mirror just in front of you.
The room must be dark.
Then put a small flame by the side of the mirror
in such a way that it is not directly reflected in it.
Just your face is reflected in the mirror -
not the flame.
Then constantly stare into your own eyes
in the mirror.
Do not blink.
This is a forty-minute experiment.
Within two or three days
you will be able
to focus your eyes without blinking.
Even if tears come,
let them come but persist in not blinking.
And go on staring constantly into your eyes.
Do not change the stare.
Go on staring into the eyes - your OWN...
And within two or three days
you will become aware of a very strange phenomenon.
Your face will begin to take new shapes.
You may even get scared.
The face in the mirror will begin to change.
Sometomes a very different face will be there
which you have never known as yours.
But, really, all these faces belong to you.

Now the subconscious mind
is beginning to explode these faces.
these masks are yours!
Sometimes even a face
that belongs to your past life may come in.
And after one week of constant staring
for forty minutes,
your face will become just a flux,
just a film-like flux.
Many faces will be coming and going constantly.
After three weeks you will not be able to remember
which is your face.
Your own face, you will not be able to remember,
because you have seen so many faces
coming and going.

If you continue anyway,
then after three weeks the strangest thing happens.
Suddenly there is no face in the mirror.
The mirror is vacant.
You are staring into emptiness.
There is no face at all.

This is the moment!
Close your eyes,
and encounter the unknown.
When there is no face in the mirror
just close your eyes.
This is the most significant moment.
Close the eyes, look inside
and you will face the unknown.
You will be naked,
completely nothing,
as you ARE.
All deceptions fall.

This is the reality,
but the society has created many, many
layers, not to be aware of it.
Once you know yourself in your nakedness,
your total nakedness, you begin to be
a different person.
Then you cannot deceive yourself.
Now you know what you are,
and unless you know what you are
you can naver transform,
because any transformation becomes possible
only in this naked reality.

This naked reality is potential
for any transformation.
No deception can be transformed.
Your original face is now here,
and you can transform it.
And really, just a will to transform it,
will affect the transformation.

But you cannot transform your false faces.
You can change them,
but you cannot transform them.
By change I mean you can replace them
with another face.
So, a thief can become a monk.
A criminal can become a saint.
It is very easy to change,
to replace the masks, the faces.
These are no transformations at all.

Transformation means
becoming that which you really are.
The moment you face the unconscious,
encounter the unconscious,
you are face to face
with the reality
of your authentic being.

This encounter is basic, foundational,
for any religious happening.
So, many many methods have been invented.
There are sudden methods.
There are gradual methods.
I have told you about a gradual method.