Become the caress

What the Method Is

This meditation method, directly from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, is stated as: “While being caressed, sweet princess, enter the caressing as everlasting life.”. This instruction emphasizes immersing oneself fully into the act of caressing, transforming a physical experience into a profound meditative state.

How It Is Done

To practice this method, the core lies in a complete inner shift during the act of caressing:

  • Engage in Caressing: The method begins with the physical act of being caressed, or engaging in caressing.
  • Enter the Act Totally: The crucial step is to “enter the caressing” itself. This means to “become the embrace, become the kiss”, rather than remaining a separate “doer” or “receiver”.
  • Forget the Self: The practitioner must “forget yourself so totally that you can say, ‘I am no more. Only love exists’”. This involves dissolving the sense of being a distinct subject (the “I”) and merging with the process of caressing.
  • Experience Beyond the Physical: As the self dissolves, the experience becomes holistic: “Then the heart is not beating but love is beating. Then the blood is not circulating, love is circulating. And eyes are not seeing, love is seeing. Then hands are not moving to touch, love is moving to touch”.
  • Allow Transformation: By becoming the caress, one is meant to enter “everlasting life”. This implies allowing the experience to transcend its ordinary physical bounds and open into a deeper, timeless dimension.
Commentaries and Insights
  • Love as a Door to Relaxation and Eternity: Osho explains that this technique starts with love because love is the “nearest thing in your experience in which you are relaxed”. If one can relax in love, their life can become more loving. Love can suddenly change one’s dimension, “throwing you out of time and facing eternity”. It can become “a deep meditation – the deepest possible”.
  • The Transformative Power of Totality: The core principle is to become the act itself, dissolving the distinction between the subject (the lover/loved one) and the process (the caressing). This aligns with other “stop” techniques where becoming the action (e.g., “become the sucking” or “become the running”) removes the “doer,” leaving only the process. This dissolution of the egoic “I” allows for deeper experiences.
  • Tantra’s Unique Approach to Love and Sex: Tantra views love and sex as natural and accessible doors for transcendence. Unlike traditions that advocate negation or suppression, Tantra encourages total acceptance and mindful immersion in these energies to transform them. It aims for “transformation of love into meditation”. Osho states that “Tantra means this: the transformation of love into meditation” and uses love and sex as vehicles for this purpose.
  • Glimpses of Bliss and the Need for Meditation: While lovers can sometimes experience insights that even saints or yogis miss, these are often just “glimpses”. For these glimpses to become a continuous reality, one needs to transform their love into meditation. A “deep sexual orgasm” can lead to a peak experience where one is “not a body” but becomes “just a spirit that is hovering,” transcending the material world. This “orgasm” for Tantra is not just a release but a state of total relaxation and desirelessness, leading to euphoria and ecstasy.
  • Overcoming Societal Conditioning: Society and various teachings have often conditioned individuals to feel guilt or shame around sex and pleasure, leading to suppression and hurried, localized experiences rather than total immersion. Tantra challenges these conditioned responses, encouraging a return to a natural, accepting, and aware engagement with life’s energies.
  • Non-Duality and Oneness: When practiced with total awareness, the caressing can lead to a realization of non-duality (advait), where the two individuals become one, merging bioenergies, and transcending the physical to feel a “Cosmic oneness, a wholeness”. This feeling of being “at home in the existence” dissolves worries, anguish, and conflict.
  • Gradual vs. Sudden Enlightenment: While the “stop” techniques often aim for sudden realization, the gradual methods (like cultivating sensitivity or understanding) help prepare the individual to “bear” the sudden happening of realization. The repeated practice of entering the caressing with awareness builds this capacity.
  • The Body as a Sacred Temple: Tantra uniquely emphasizes the body as a “holy temple” and a starting point for spiritual work, recognizing its energies as potential vehicles for transcendence. This contrasts with philosophies that may reject the body or focus solely on the mind/soul.
  • Acceptance and No Fight: Tantra’s central teaching is total acceptance – being friendly with all energies, including anger, sex, and greed, rather than fighting them. This non-fighting attitude is essential for transformation, as fighting creates inner division. For Tantra, “no fight” is the central teaching.
  • Beyond Thinking to Feeling: This method encourages moving beyond the intellectual, analytical mind (which divides) into the feeling center (which unites and synthesizes). Modern man is often trapped in mental processes, making deep, total engagement difficult. The technique encourages “unminding mind” and cultivating sensitivity.
  • Mastery over Energy: By engaging with emotions and desires with awareness (rather than expression or suppression), one can direct energy back to its source, leading to self-mastery and inner balance. In the context of caressing, this means letting the energy flow and transform within, rather than just releasing it.
  • No Ideals, Only Techniques: Tantra does not offer ideals but techniques for transformation. This method is a “how-to” rather than a “what-to-be,” allowing the individual’s unique “livingness” to arise.
  • Privacy and Completion: While not explicitly stated for this particular sutra, Osho often warns for powerful energy-raising techniques (like the light ray visualization) that they require absolute privacy and must be completed, meaning the energy should be released at the highest center, not left in the middle, to avoid harm. This implies that such deep practices, especially those involving profound energy work, should be approached with care.