When you meet your boss, you have one face. When you meet your wife, you have another. When you meet your competitor, you have yet another… We’re experts at changing faces. But which one is real?
During an India–Australia cricket match, things took an ugly turn when Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds was subjected to racial abuse by some spectators. ‘Monkey chants’ were hurled at Andrew. Then someone in the stadium started jumping up and down, imitating a monkey. Soon, others joined in and made life at the boundary tough for Andrew.
We may have evolved into humans but the animal within us has not died totally. Every human carries something animallike, deep inside. It surfaces in situations of deep frenzy when our love towards our nation, caste or race makes us intolerant of outsiders. This is the root cause of all religious wars, all communal riots. Not just in India but all over the world, wherever crowds behave in collective ‘unconsciousness’.
There are two ways to deal with this problem—correct it or ignore it. The first step in rising above animalistic tendencies is to accept them. People who don’t accept them are hypocrites. They hide their instincts cleverly but these can erupt unconsciously and shatter their suave image. The second option is meditation—the process of peeling off our masks and discovering our original faces, which we carry with us from birth.
Let us observe what faces we present to people around us, every day. When a man meets his boss, he has one face. When he meets his peon, he has another. When he meets his wife/girlfriend, yet another face. People have become experts at changing faces and thus acquire thousands of them. It has become mechanical to change one’s face to suit the situation. When such people are in a crowd that thinks and acts like they do—all mechanical, all unconscious, all automated —they start making monkey faces. And that is how and why political leaders can exploit them!
Here’s a simple method to shed this mentality. Stand in front of a mirror. Let your emotional faces/masks appear. Make grim faces, funny faces, monkey faces… Grin or grimace, smirk or sneer… Soon, you’ll begin to laugh at your hypocrisy. And this laughter will set you free. You will soon unmask yourself to find your original face. Do this meditation playfully. Don’t be serious. Let your real face surface gradually.
After this, practise Osho’s laughing meditation. Laughing is probably the only activity in which we can involve mind, body and heart. Thus, it is a simple yet powerful meditative practice. It is done in two stages. Each stage can last anywhere from five minutes to an hour, and the stages need not be equally long.
The first stage can be done with eyes open or closed while sitting comfortably on the floor. To begin, just laugh and when you stop, start laughing again. It may help to think of humorous situations, jokes, funny faces, even to think how silly it is to do a laughing meditation! If tears come, cry for a bit before bringing yourself back to the laughter. Don’t be rigid. Let your body move and express itself through laughter.
In the second stage, sit with eyes closed. Witness your mind, body, emotions. Focus on the gap between the in-breath and out-breath at the navel area. Thus, acting consciously and playfully, you can realise your original face.
* Drink plenty of water before going to bed as well as when you wake up in the morning.
The only thing is that people don’t believe this is me and are asking me, “Where is your elder sister Divya?” she laughs. Well, a compliment like that can do great things to women!
