Centering

Prac,ces:
112 ways to open the invisible door of consciousness
DEVI ASKS:
O Shiva, what is your reality?
What is this wonder-lled universe?
What cons@tutes seed?
Who centers the universal wheel?
What is this life beyond form pervading forms?
How may we enter it fully, above space and @me, names and descrip@ons?
Let my doubts be cleared!
SHIVA REPLIES
[Devi, though already enlightened, has asked the foregoing ques@ons so others through the universe
might receive Shivas instruc@ons. Now follow Shivas reply, giving the 112 ways.]
1. Radiant one, this experience may dawn between two breaths. AUer breath comes in (down) and just
before turning up (out) the benecence.
2. As breath turns from down to up, and again as breath curves from up to downthrough both these
turns, realize.
3. Or, whenever inbreath and outbreath fuse, at this instant touch the energyless energy-lled center.
4. Or, when breath is all out (up) and stopped of itself, or all in (down) and stoppedin such universal
pause, ones small self vanishes. This is dicult only for the impure.
5. Consider your essence as light rays rising from center to center up the vertebrae, and so rises
livingness in you.
6. Or in the spaces between, feel this as lightning.
7. Devi, imagine the Sanskrit lecers in these honey-lled foci of awareness, rst as lecers, then more
subtly as sounds, then as most subtle feeling. Then, leaving them aside, be free.
8. Acen@on between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form ll with breath-essence to the top
of the head, and there shower as light.
9. Or, imagine the ve-colored circles of the peacock tail to be your ve senses in illimitable space. Now
let their beauty melt within. Similarly, at any point in space or on a wall un@l the point dissolves. Then
your wish for another comes true.
10. Eyes closed, see your inner being in detail. Thus see your true nature.
11. Place your whole acen@on in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal
column. In such be transformed.
12. Closing the seven openings of the head with your hands, a space between your eyes becomes allinclusive.

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13. Touching eyeballs as a feather, lightness between them opens into heart and there permeates the
cosmos.
14. Bathe in the center of sound, as in the con@nuous sound of a waterfall. Or, by puing ngers in ears,
hear the sound of sounds.
15. Intone a sound, as a-u-m, slowly. As sound enters soundfulness, so do you.
16. In the beginning and gradual renement of the sound of any lecer, awake.
17. While listening to stringed instruments, hear their composite central sound; thus omnipresence.
18. Intone a sound audibly, then less and less audibly as feeling deepens into this silent harmony.
19. Imagine spirit simultaneously within and around you un@l the en@re universe spiritualizes.
20. Kind Devi, enter etheric presence pervading far above and below your form.
21. Put mindstu in such inexpressible neness above, below, and in your heart.
22. Consider any area of your present form as limitlessly spacious.
23. Feel your substance, bones, esh, blood, saturated with cosmic essence.
24. Suppose your passive form to be an empty room with walls of skin empty.
25. Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in heart, reach the center of the lotus.
26. Unminding mind, keep in the middle un@l.
27. When in worldly ac@vity, keep acen@ve between the two breaths, and so prac@cing, in a few days be
born anew. [Lakshmanjoo says this is his favorite.]
28. Focus on re rising through your form from the toes up un@l the body burns to ashes but not you.
29. Meditate on the make-believe world as burning to ashes, and become being above human.
30. Feel the ne quali@es of crea@vity permea@ng your breasts and assuming delicate congura@ons.
31. With intangible breath in center of forehead, as this reaches heart at the moment of sleep, have
direc@on over dreams and over death itself.
32. As, subjec@vely, lecers ow into words and words into sentences, and as, objec@vely, circles ow into
worlds and worlds into principles, nd at last these converging in our being.
33. Gracious one, play the universe is an empty shell wherein your mind frolics innitely.
34. Look upon a bowl without seeing the sides or the material. In a few moments become aware.
35. Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habita@ons. Thence comes the end of
mind pressures.
36. Sweet-hearted one, meditate on knowing and not knowing, exis@ng and not exis@ng. Then leave
both aside that you may be.
37. Look lovingly on some object Do not go on to another object. Here, in the middle of this object
the blessing.
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38. Feel cosmos as translucent ever-living presence.

39. With utmost devo@on, center on the two junc@ons of breath and know the knower.
40. Consider the plenum to be your own body of bliss.
41. While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caressing as everlas@ng life.
42. Stop the doors of senses when feeling the creeping of an ant. Then.
43. At the start of sexual union, keep acen@on on the re in the beginning, and, so con@nuing, avoid the
embers in the end.
44. When in such embrace your senses are shaken as leaves, enter this shaking.
45. Even remembering union, without the embrace, the transforma@on.
46. On joyously seeing a long-absent friend, permeate this joy.
47. When ea@ng or drinking, become the taste of the food or drink, and be lled.
48. 0 lotus-eyed one, sweet of touch, when singing, seeing, tas@ng, be aware you are and discover the
ever-living.
49. Wherever sa@sfac@on is found, in whatever act, actualize this.
50. At the point of sleep when sleep has not yet come and external wakefulness vanishes, at this point
being is revealed. [Lakshmanjoo says this is another of his favorites.]
51. In summer when you see the en@re sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity.
52. Lie down as dead. Enraged in wrath, stay so. Or stare without moving an eyelash. Or suck something
and become the sucking.
53. Without support for feet or hands, sit only on bucocks. Suddenly, the centering.
54. In an easy posi@on, gradually pervade an area between the armpits into great peace.
55. See as if for the rst @me a beauteous person or an ordinary object.
56. With mouth slightly open, keep mind in the middle of tongue. Or, as breath comes silently in, feel the
sound HH.
57. When on a bed or a seat, let yorself become weightless, beyond mind.
58. In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. Or in a s@ll vehicle, by leing yourself swing
in slowing invisible circles.
59. Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity.
60. Shak@, see all space as if already absorbed in your own head in the brilliance.
61. Waking, sleeping, dreaming, know you as light.
62. In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms.

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63. When a moonless raining night is not present, close eyes and nd blackness before you. Opening
eyes, see blackness. So faults disappear forever.
64. Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop.
65. Center on the sound a-u-m without any a or m
66. Silently intone a word ending in AH. Then in the HH eortlessly, the spontaneity.
67. Feel yourself as pervading all direc@ons, far, near.
68. Pierce some part of your nectar-lled form with a pin, and gently enter the piercing.
69. Feel: My thought, I-ness, internal organsme.
70. Illusions deceive. Colors circumscribe. Even divisibles are indivisible.
71. When some desire comes, consider it. Then, suddenly, quit it.
72. Before desire and before knowing, how can I say I am? Consider. Dissolve in the beauty.
73. With your en@re consciousness in the very start of desire, of knowing, know.
74. 0 Shak@, each par@cular percep@on is limited, disappearing in omnipotence.
75. In truth forms are inseparate. Inseparate are omnipresent being and your own form. Realize each as
made of this consciousness.
76. In moods of extreme desire, be undisturbed.
77. This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy look upon it so.
78. 0 Beloved, put acen@on neither on pleasure or pain but between these.
79. Toss acachment for body aside, realizing I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous.
80. Objects and desires exist in me as in others. So accep@ng, let them be translated.
81. The apprecia@on of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened
person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjec@ve mood, not lost in things.
82. Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. So, leaving aside concern for self,
become each being.
83. Thinking no thing, will limited-self unlimit.
84. Believe omniscient, omnipotent, pervading.
85. As waves come with water and ames with re, so the universal waves with us.
86. Roam about un@l exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole.
87. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength or of knowledge. At the instant of depriva@on,
transcend.
88. Listen while the ul@mate mys@cal teaching is imparted: Eyes s@ll, without winking, at once become
absolutely free.
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89. Stopping ears by pressing and rectum by contrac@ng, enter the sound of sound.
90. At the edge of a deep well look steadily into its depths un@l the wondrousness.
91. Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally at this very place, this.
92. When vividly aware through some par@cular sense, keep in the awareness.
93. At the start of sneezing, during fright, in anxiety, above a chasm, ying in bacle, in extreme curiosity,
at the beginning of hunger, at the end of hunger, be uninterruptedly aware.
94. Let acen@on be at a place where you are seeing some past happening, and even your form, having
lost its present characteris@cs, is transformed.
95. Look upon some object, then slowly withdraw your sight from it, then slowly withdraw your thought
from it. Then.
96. Devo@on frees.
97. Feel an object before you. Feel the absence of all other objects but this one. Then, leaving aside the
object-feeling and the absence-feeling, realize.
98. The purity of other teachings is as impurity to us. In reality know nothing as pure or impure.
99. This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists.
100. Be the unsame same to friend as to stranger, in honor and dishonor.
101. When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person in ques@on,
but remain centered.
102. Suppose you contemplate something beyond percep@on, beyond grasping, beyond not being, you.
103. Enter space, supportless, eternal, s@ll.
104. Wherever your acen@on alights, at this very point, experience.
105. Enter the sound of your name and, through this sound, all sounds.
106. I am exis@ng. This is mine. This is this. 0 Beloved, even in such know illimitably.
107. This consciousness is the spirit of guidance of each one. Be this one.
108. Here is a sphere of change, change, change. Through change consume change.
109. As a hen mothers her chicks, mother par@cular knowings, par@cular doings, in reality.
110. Since, in truth, bondage and freedom are rela@ve, these words are only for those terried with the
universe. This universe is a reec@on of minds. As you see many suns in water from one sun, so see
bondage and libera@on.
111. Each thing is perceived through knowing. The self shines in space through knowing. Perceive one
being as knower and known.
112. Beloved, at this moment let mind, knowing, breath, form, be included.

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