Four Mudras Of Tantra: Live In The Present

Four Mudras Of Tantra: Live In The Present
15 Aug 2007, 0133 hrs IST,Osho

Tantra talks about four seals, four mudras. To attain to the ultimate, a person passes through four doors; he has to open four locks. Those four locks are called four mudras.

The first mudra is karma mudra. It is the outermost door, the periphery of your being. Karma means action, is the outermost core of your being. What you do is your periphery. You hate or kill somebody, you love or protect somebody.

Action is the outermost part of your being.

The first seal is opened through becoming total in your action. Whatso-ever you do, do totally, and there will arise great joy, not by repeating some mantra, but by doing it totally. If you are angry, be totally angry; and be fully aware of your anger, anger will disappear one day. You have understood it. It can be dropped now. Anything that is understood can be dropped easily.

Only non-understood things go on hanging around you. Remember, Tantra is scientific. It does not say: Repeat a mantra. It says: Become aware in your action.

The second seal is called gyana mudra — a little deeper and more inner than the first — that is somewhat like knowledge. Action is the outermost thing, knowledge is a little deeper. You can watch what i am doing, you cannot watch what i am knowing. Knowing is inner.

Now, start knowing what you really know, and stop believing things which you really don't know. Somebody asks you "Is there a God?" and you say "Yes, God is". Do you really know? If you don't know, please don't say that you do. Say "I don't know". If you are honest and you only say what you know, and you only believe what you know, the second lock will be broken. False knowledge is the enemy of true knowledge. And all beliefs are false knowledge; you simply believe them.

Out of a hundred things you will be unburdened of almost 98. Only a few things will remain that you really know. You will feel great freedom. Your head will not be so heavy. And with that freedom and weightlessness you enter the second mudra. The third mudra is called samaya mudra. Samaya means time. Knowledge has disappeared, you are only in the now; only the purest of time has remained. Watch, meditate over it. In the now-moment, there is no knowledge. Knowledge is always about past. Just this moment, what do you know? Nothing is known.

So samaya mudra is to be in this moment. Ordinarily you think that past, present and future are three divisions of time; that is not the Tantra understanding. Tantra says: Only present is time. Past is not, it has already gone. Future is not, it has not come yet. Only the present is. To be in the present is to be really in time. Otherwise you are either in memory or you are in dreams, both of which are delusions.

So the third seal is broken by being in the now.

The fourth seal is called mahamudra, the great gesture, the innermost, like space. Now, purest space has remained. Action, knowing, time, space — these are the four seals. Space is your innermost core, the hub of the wheel, or the centre of the cyclone. In your innermost emptiness is space, sky. These are the three layers: of time, of knowing, of action. These are the four seals to be broken.

Excerpted from The Tantra Vision Vol 2, courtesy Osho International Foundation. www.osho.com