INSTRUCTIONS🔗

Sit down somewhere, anywhere. The noisier the place, the better! Look for a place with continuous sound. It could be a natural sound, like the gushing of a river or a waterfall. Or it could be a railway station, a marketplace.

Sit silently. Feel the sounds coming towards you from every direction in waves. With sounds flowing at you from all directions, feel yourself at the center of this storm of sound.

You are at the center, and sounds are flowing towards you.

Feel: at the center, where you are, there is no sound! At the center is total silence. If there was sound at the center, you would not be able to hear the sounds outside. The sounds are entering you, penetrating you, but they stop at the center.

Inside you, there is a point where all sounds stop. It is from that point that every sound is being heard. Try to locate that center.

Suddenly, you will locate it.

Suddenly, your awareness will turn inward.

Your awareness will shift from the outer world of sound. You will be at the center, where there is silence. There is a point where no sound can enter. That point is You.

Once you have heard that silence, you will never again be disturbed by sound, never touched by sound.

We always think that we are hearing sounds with our ears. With this technique, you discover that sounds are not heard in the ears, or even in the head. The sound is always heard at the navel point! That is the center of sound.

Why the emphasis on noise? Because excessive noise has the same effect as plugging your ears! When the sound is unintelligible, continuous, when you can no longer distinguish separate sounds, then the sound itself becomes a barrier. You cannot try this technique with songs – because the language will be intelligible to you, you will focus on the meaning, you will immediately use your head. It has to be plain noise.

In the middle of the noise, just try plugging your ears with your fingers. Suddenly, you will hear a new sound – the soundless sound. This new sound is the absence of sound. There is such a sound, and you can easily hear it!

With sound, we begin to flow towards the source of sound; with soundlessness, we begin to flow inward, into our own center.

Learn to listen to both, the world of sound outside, and the soundless sound at the center. Move from one to the other. Move from the outer to the inner, and back again. Each time, your sharpness of perception will increase. Learn to move easily between the inner and the outer world, and you will see the play that all is!