Cosmic Bathtub Meditation

We're going to ask you now to become comfortable and to start to visualize. I would suggest that when you do this on your own, that before you do so, you again perform the Your Version of the Pancho Pichara Puja, the worship involving five things. And for this purpose, since you're going to be visualizing, you may as well visualize this offering also instead of necessarily doing it externally. So you're going to offer, and now you're offering it to the Divine Mother. However you envision her, and you're going to offer, remember both to her and to yourself, the essential oil of a fragrance that you prefer for the Earth element, and something tasty, some food stuff, chocolate, for example, for the water element, and a candle, or a ghee lamp, a flame for the fire element, incense for the air element, and a flower for the element of space.

So by offering these to her, and offering them to the elements that make up your body, what you're going to do is you're going to create an alignment. She's created the entire universe, including these five elements. And your organism, by being made up of these five elements, is automatically aligned with all of the five elements in the physical world around us, particularly when you make that alignment explicit, as you do when you do this worship involving five things. So go ahead and do that, and then when you're ready, you have your eyes closed, you're allowing yourself to remain nice and calm, remember that you're breathing slowly, regularly, evenly. Again if you like, do some alternate nostril breathing, and even if you start off by actually using your fingers, after a while it's better just to use your intention to breathe in through the left, out through the right, in through the right, out through the left.

Why torture your nostrils? Let the nostrils be as they are, you're interested mainly in the movement of prana. So align yourself, align the prana, and then take yourself to your own personal cosmic bathtub, and this is a bathtub that is located in your happy place, wherever that might be. It might be in the middle of the forest, but this is a wonderful forest in which there are no creepy crawly biting insects and potential predators that are going to disturb you. It might be on the seashore where the waves are gently crashing, but you don't have to worry about the tsunami, and you don't have to worry about getting a sunburn, or it might be, it might be anywhere.

It might be in a Victorian era bathroom, we don't know, that's up to you. Wherever you're going to feel most relaxed, and most comfortable, and most nourished, and this bathtub is whatever size that you want it to be, but it is not filled with water. No, it is filled with either ghee, or sesame oil, or coconut oil, or the fat of your choice, something that you would like to have on your skin. A hundred, two hundred years, three hundred years ago, there were actually treatments in Ayurveda, they don't use them anymore because of the amount of oil that you have to put in as much as 50 quarts at a time, but they used to have bathtubs that they built fires underneath to have the oil be warm, and you would actually lie in this bathtub that was literally filled with oil. Getting 50 liters of medicated oil might be a little beyond the capacity of most people nowadays, and also how would you dispose of it, so we don't need to bother about that.

That's why we have the miracle of visualization. Here we are, the cosmic bathtub, it's a nice location wherever you would like for it to be, it is filled with whatever kind of fatty substance you would like to be in, and you were lying in it, and it is being gently warmed from below, or from above, or from the sides, however you would like it to be warmed. Remember, you're visualizing this, you can do whatever you would like to. Anyway, it's exactly at the temperature you would like it to be, and there you are, and you're floating in this giant tub of oil, and you have whatever scent you would like to have going, and you have whatever kind of music you would like to have, and the surroundings or whatever your eyes are interested in, everything is promoting snaeha, everything is promoting that kind of positive sort of fattiness, that positive kind of very oily juiciness that is making you relax, and causing your skin to become nice and plump, and relaxed, and to feel like it is completely nourished, and it's being swaddled. So now you're being swaddled in this oil, and the oil is very warm, and you are simply allowing yourself, it's as if the entire universe had been, the entire thirteen and a half billion light years of the universe had been converted into ghee.

And here you were lying in the giant ocean of ghee, Vishnu sleeps on a thousand headed snake in the ocean of milk, but Vishnu has been so nice to you that he's converted the ocean of milk for your benefit into the ocean of ghee. There you are, and you're not on a thousand headed snake, you're in the ocean of ghee, but you can continue to breathe for reasons that are directly attributable to your visualization. You are having an excellent and wonderful experience, and at the moment where you felt like you have achieved the amount of oily goodness that you would like to achieve at that time, then what happens is the door opens, or if you're outside there is no door, but the mother of the universe arrives in whichever form you would like for her to arrive. She could be very big, she could be humanoid, she could be in any form that she would like, but you have to be able to identify her as the absolute font of matrutva, of maternal affection, that she is sending love in your direction, she wants nothing in return except your best interest, whatever that might be. And she's the person who knows what that would be.

And now what she does, now what she does is she gently takes you out of the cosmic bathtub and she holds you just like a mother would hold her baby. And so now you're feeling completely, not only relaxed because you've been marinating in this oil all this period of time, but now she'll bring you up to where you can listen to her heartbeat and you can put her head, your head on her breast, and you're feeling completely relaxed, she is stroking your head, it's as if she's swaddling you with her arms, and it's, remember the entire universe that is providing you with this experience, it's being, that experience has been condensed into a form that you can relate to, but you are projecting onto this form that feeling that you most want to feel from the universe, that kind of motherliness that you can relax into, that you can feel utterly and completely safe with, and that you can know that you can always rely on at all times. And she continues stroking your head during this period, and you continue to relax and feel more and more safe, and more and more calm, and more and more able to do what your responsibility is in the world, to perform the responsibilities that are yours, and to, as you perform them, not have to try to look for it in yourself, but allow that kind of motherly love, that matrutva, to flow through you into everything that you do, into everyone that you meet, into all the trees, and the insects, and everyone you encounter. And as you do that, you can feel that it is not your volition that is doing this, it's simply you are acknowledging that when you do not require your individuality to get into the way, that you can act as a vehicle for the supreme positive maternal energy of the universe to come through you, and to deliver a valuable and desirable result to everyone who can accept it as best they can from you as best you can. And when you have felt that you have now been swaddled and stroked and petted and caressed and relaxed and otherwise pampered to the extent that is most satisfying to you at that moment, then she will towel you dry, which is going to be a lot easier than it would be if you had been actually lying in 50 liters of oil, because getting all of that off of your skin would not be a joke.

But miraculously you are going to turn into a completely well organized and not sticky at all person, and then you are going to open your eyes, take a deep breath or two, bow down to her, request to her to go back to where she has come, meaning the center of the universe, and to return the next time, and then after taking yet another deep breath you can get up slowly and meditatively, calmly and deliberately, and proceed about the rest of your day.