The Hundred Selves: Recognition and Return
Read slowly, aloud, in your own voice, leaving a breath between lines; twenty-five minutes. Record it and play it back if you wish.
Before you begin. This practice follows the tale's own order: stillness, the chain of forms, the vantage of Rudra, a visit, a waking, a gathering, a sending home, a return. It works with roles, ages and moods you already know you have. It does not ask you to find hidden selves, and you should not try to. Do not practise it unsupervised if you have, or have had, a dissociative disorder, a psychotic illness, or trauma that still produces flashbacks or lost time; practise only with a clinician who knows your history. If at any point you lose track of time, meet something that frightens you, or something does not answer when you speak to it, stop and return as below. Never practise while driving, operating anything, standing, or in or near water. Sit, do not lie down.
How to return at any moment. Say aloud, "Everyone home." Press your feet into the floor, take one full breath, count from one to five, and open your eyes on five. Nothing in the practice requires you to stay.
Sit down, and let the seat hold you.
Let the hands rest. Let the feet rest. Let the members of the body be still, as the mendicant sat, controlling nothing, simply not moving.
Breathe out.
Choose one thing to attend to: the breath at the nostrils, or the word one. Think only of that. When other thoughts come, let them pass like the shadow of a cloud over the midday sky.
Breathe out. A little deeper.
Now notice that you have been many. Not a hundred. Three will do.
Let one role come to mind: something you are at work, or at home, a function people know you by. See yourself in it. Notice the wish by which you entered it, the longing that made you want to be this. Every form in the tale was entered through a longing. Name yours, quietly. Then let the picture rest.
Let one age come to mind: yourself at some earlier time, a child, a young adult. See that one. Notice what that one wanted. Name it. Let the picture rest.
Let one mood come to mind: a familiar weather of yours, worry, or hurry, or longing, or anger. See yourself in it. Notice what it wants. Name it. Let the picture rest.
Breathe out.
Three sleepers. Each in its own house. Each forgets the others when it is awake. That is all the trouble there is.
Now rise, as the swan rose, to where you can see all three at once. Not above them in judgment; above them as one looks down from a hill at the houses of a town one loves. You can look at them with pleasure and with curiosity, and feel, under the three, one awareness that is looking.
Rest here a moment. Breathe.
Now choose one of the three to visit. Only one today.
Lay aside the height, as Rudra laid aside his bright form to enter an earthly house. Go down to its level. Find it where it is. Perhaps it is lying down with a sword in its hand. Perhaps someone's arms are about its neck. Perhaps it is ringed with lamps.
Greet it in its own language. Not in yours.
And offer it a little of your awareness, as one would offer a light to a sleeper, not to blind it, only so that it can wake.
Ask it, gently: What do you know?
Listen. Let it answer in words or images or a feeling.
Ask it: What do you want?
Listen.
Thank it.
Now let it see the other two. Let the three stand together for a moment, looking at one another. They may be astonished. They may be still, like figures in a painting. That is how meeting begins. Nobody has to become anybody else.
Breathe out.
Now let all three turn, together, towards the one awareness under them, the swan, the one who says I am. Let each of them feel it in its own way. One awareness. Three persons. Nothing lost.
Rest here.
(Silence: one to three minutes.)
Now send them home.
Say to each, silently, in your own words, what Rudra said: Go now to your own place. Live your life there, with those who are yours. Do what is yours to do. You know the others now.
Watch the role go back to its work. Watch the age go back to its year. Watch the mood go back to its weather, a little lighter.
They are home. You are coming home.
Come back now to the body that has been sitting here all along, on its seat, on the bare ground. Feel its weight. Feel the breath coming in through the nose, and going out. Feel the pulse, in the chest or the wrists or the fingers.
Move the fingers. Move the toes. Press the feet into the floor. Let the shoulders roll once.
I will count from one to five, and on five the eyes open, clear and rested, and you will be fully here.
One. The breath is full and ordinary.
Two. The hands and feet are warm and your own.
Three. The sounds of the room are clear.
Four. Take one deep breath in and let it go.
Five. Eyes open. Here. Now. Fully alert.
Sit a moment. Say your name aloud, and today's date, and where you are. Name three things you can see and two you can hear. If you feel at all slow or far away, repeat the count, stand, walk a few steps, drink some water, and do not drive or operate anything for ten minutes. If anything during the practice troubled you, write it down and bring it to your clinician rather than going back alone.
Then do what the mendicant did when Rudra woke him. Get up from your seat, and go about your day.