"Creeping Of An Ant"

 

STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN.

    This looks very simple, but it is not so simple. Read it again: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. THEN. This is only an example; anything will do. STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT, and then – THEN – the thing will happen. What is Shiva saying? 

    You have a thorn in your foot – it is painful, you are suffering. Or one ant is there creeping on your leg. You feel the creeping and suddenly you want it to be thrown away. Take any experience! You have a wound – it is painful. You have a headache, or any pain in the body. Anything will do as an object. It is only an example – the CREEPING OF AN ANT. Shiva says: STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES WHEN FEELING THE CREEPING OF AN ANT. Whatsoever you are feeling, stop all the doors of the senses.

    What is to be done? Close your eyes and think that you are just blind and you cannot see. Close your ears and think that you cannot hear. With all of the five senses, you just close them. How can you close them? It is easy. Stop breathing for a single moment: all your senses will be closed. When the breath has stopped and all the senses are closed, where is this creeping? Where is the ant? Suddenly you are removed – far away. Sometimes when you are in an impossible situation, hopeless, things begin to happen.

    This sutra says, STOP THE DOORS OF THE SENSES. Become stone-like, closed to the world. When you are closed to the world, really, you are closed to your own body also, because your body is not part of you; it is part of the world. When you are closed completely to the world, you are closed to your own body also. Then, Shiva says, then the thing will happen. 

    So try it with the body. Anything will do, you will not need some ant creeping on you. Otherwise you will think, ”When the ant will creep, I will meditate.” And such helpful ants are difficult to find, so anything will do. You are lying on your bed, you feel the cold sheets – become dead. Suddenly the sheets will go away, away, away, and they will disappear. Your bed will disappear; your bedroom will disappear; the whole world will disappear. You are closed, dead, a stone, like a Leibnitzian monad with no window outside – no window! You cannot move!

    And then, when you cannot move, you are thrown back to yourself, you are centered in yourself. Then, for the first time you can look from your center. And once you can look from your center, you can never be the same man again.