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CONTENTS
I. Living Enlightenment
II. Bhagavad Gita Decoded
III. Brahma Sutras
IV. Kailasa‘s Contributions to Hinduism
V. The Hindu Holocaust
VI. Appendix - Bhagavad Gita VersesPart I
Living EnlightenmentIntroduction
If you are here, it means Existence wants you to be here in this form. You are not an accident; you are an incident.
You are a conscious miracle of Existence. Don’t think this is positive thinking. This is the straightforward and
simple Truth. If you trust this Truth, you will start experiencing life in its pinnacle.
Understand, Existence is trying to express itself through you. What you call your potential is nothing but the
expression of Existence through you. When you freely allow this, you will start realizing your infinite potential.
When you start becoming the fulfillment of Existence, you become flowing energy, which is what I call Living
Enlightenment. Living Enlightenment is living with the flowing energy of Existence, in synchronicity with its
miraculous happenings.
When you live this way, you will find there is no personal barrier, no emotional baggage, nothing that holds you
back in life. Life flows continuously like a river, carrying bliss and fulfillment every moment.
In this book, you will find deeper truths and powerful techniques to tide over personal barriers and resolve
emotional conflicts. You will also find truths that demystify your relevance in this vast cosmos, so you start
moving in a higher plane of consciousness.
This book is for anyone who wishes to live a fulfilling life. It reveals the secrets of the self, Existence and the
world. It is for every individual to start experiencing the ultimate purpose of taking human birth on planet earth.
It is meant to give the experience of:
Shakti, the Energy to understand and change whatever you need to change in life
Buddhi, the Intelligence to understand and accept whatever you don’t need to change in life
Yukti, the Clarity to understand and realize that however much you change, whatever you see as reality is itself
a continuously changing dream.
Bhakti, the Devotion, the feeling of deep connection to That which is unchanging, Eternal and Ultimate, and
Mukti, the ultimate Liberation into Living Enlightenment when all these four are integrated.Flow in Love
Psychology explains that thoughts arise in the brain, and emotions from the heart. Irrespective of where they arise
from, thoughts and emotions are inseparable. Ancient scriptures say that thoughts create us. So do emotions. We
become what our emotions are. Managing our emotions is crucial to transforming our lives.
What is Love?
Whenever we look at something, the first thing we do is to calculate what we can get from it. It can be a person
or an object, that doesn’t matter. Our thoughts start functioning either through fear or through greed to calculate
what there is in the situation for us. Our attention is centered on that object or person.
It is possible to turn our attention towards our own inner space and ask, ‘What can I contribute?’, ‘What can I
add?’, ‘How can I enrich others?’ If the process is only to ask, ‘What can I get out of it?’ then it is driven by lust.
If the process asks, ‘How can I enrich it?’ It is driven by love! Lust is an energy that demands. Love is an energy
that gives.
Love is an intense experience in one’s inner space. Many of us think love is a choice. We think experience and
expression of love is a choice. We think that if we want to, we can handle love; otherwise we can let it go. No! It
is not a choice as we think. It is a basic necessity of life.
When I say life, I don’t mean just breathing and staying alive. I mean being alive at the innermost being level, as
a live Consciousness. If you can express love, if you can experience love, that is the only way of being alive as a
Consciousness. If you don’t experience and express love, you may inhale and exhale, but you can’t say you are a
live being. There are so many animals, plants and other things that breathe day in and day out. You will continue
to exist like them, that’s all.
A small story:
A disciple asked a Zen master ’Does an enlightened master speak?’ The master said, ’No, an enlightened person
never speaks. Only a person who doesn’t know enlightenment speaks.’
Then the disciple asked, ’So does an enlightened master keep quiet?’
The master said, ’No, an enlightened master never keeps quiet. If he keeps quiet, then he is not enlightened. ’
The disciple was puzzled. He asked, ’You say he neither speaks nor keeps quiet. What does he do?’
The master replied, ’He sings! His being sings. He neither speaks, nor keeps quiet. His very being sings.’
Love is the ultimate experience of a human being. When the experience happens, we will not be able to possess
the experience, only the experience will possess us! That is what the master means. When the experience possesses
us, whatever we do will be like a beautiful song. Any word that comes out will be poetry. Our being will be so
light. We will simply float. Our walking will be a dance. Our body language will radiate grace. All our expressions
will be of great service to humanity.
All human beings are born as loving beings. A new born baby radiates causeless love. Does she know anyone
around her at birth?
No! Her energy is causeless love. As we grow, society instills fear and greed in us and we orient our love based
on greed and fear. Then it is no longer causeless love. It is love with a reason. It becomes suffocating. We start
feeling other emotions like jealousy, fear and anger. We experience only love with a cause, a reason. But with a
little awareness and awakening, it is possible to reclaim our original love.
Love cannot be createdLove can never be made to happen with just your logical decision. Our mental setup itself should be created in
such a way that we become love and our actions speak love. Our logic should start radiating a love that is beyond
logic!
If you try to create love, it will be like forcing open the petals of a flower to make it bloom. Can it be called
flowering? No. Love is a flower that blossoms deep within your being and sends out a sweet fragrance that we
share with others.
Love brings great courage
A beautiful incident happened in the life of Ramanuja'. If you study the life of Ramanuja‘, you will see how he
used every step of his life to move towards enlightenment.
When his teacher initiated Ramanuja', he gave him a special chant. The teacher told him not to pass on the chant
to anybody and that if he did so, he would go to hell. Ramanuja asked him what would happen to the others with
whom he might share it. The teacher said that they would be led to salvation.
What would we have done? Naturally we would have kept quiet, thinking, Why unnecessarily go to hell?’
Ramanuja immediately stood on a platform in a temple and called out to the whole village. He loudly pronounced
the chant given by his teacher and told the people, ’Let you all go to heaven! I am not bothered about me going
to hell. Let you all reach heaven!’
When you are deeply in love, you feel as if your whole being is open and you are ready to go to any extreme for
the sake of anybody. You are ready to go to any boundary, as there is nothing to protect within your being. Your
being is totally open. You don’t feel insecure when you are wild with love. That is why people who are in love
always do risky things. They take the risk because they feel they have nothing to lose. There is no insecurity about
anything. They feel so expansive. Love gives tremendous courage and energy. It opens you up. It makes you
finally available to yourself. As of now, you are not available to yourself. Love can make you available to yourself.
When the teacher saw what Ramanuja did, he admitted that he learned a lesson from his disciple and declared that
Ramanuja had reached greater heights than him. He told Ramanuja, ‘You are in a different space now.’
Be Open – Not Philosophizing
The problem is that we have all practically become philosophers. We don’t understand that life is not
philosophy. It is spontaneous flowing energy. It is new every moment. Philosophy is all about repeating the
same old things in different wa s, that’s all. There’s nothing fresh in it. Life is fresh every moment. Philosophy
robs life of the freshness.
A small story:
Ten philosophers were imprisoned in a country. They were kept together in one cell. They decided that somehow
they should escape from the prison. They sat and made a big plan. They got the mold of the prison door key and
made a duplicate key for the prison door.
Finally, they chose the date of escape. The whole plan was clearly laid out. They decided that on the particular
night, two of them will open the prison door with the duplicate key and signal to the others. The others would
escape and these two would follow after locking the door behind them.
The day of escape dawned and two of them went to open the door. The rest of them waited for the signal. They
waited and waited but never got any signal. Three hours passed. Suddenly the two who had gone to open the door
came back and |
Philosophizing
The problem is that we have all practically become philosophers. We don’t understand that life is not
philosophy. It is spontaneous flowing energy. It is new every moment. Philosophy is all about repeating the
same old things in different wa s, that’s all. There’s nothing fresh in it. Life is fresh every moment. Philosophy
robs life of the freshness.
A small story:
Ten philosophers were imprisoned in a country. They were kept together in one cell. They decided that somehow
they should escape from the prison. They sat and made a big plan. They got the mold of the prison door key and
made a duplicate key for the prison door.
Finally, they chose the date of escape. The whole plan was clearly laid out. They decided that on the particular
night, two of them will open the prison door with the duplicate key and signal to the others. The others would
escape and these two would follow after locking the door behind them.
The day of escape dawned and two of them went to open the door. The rest of them waited for the signal. They
waited and waited but never got any signal. Three hours passed. Suddenly the two who had gone to open the door
came back and said, ’We have to drop our plan to escape. It can’t happen today. We will have to do it some other
day. We will have to reschedule our escape.’
The others asked, ’Why, what happened?’
They replied, What to do? The foolish guards forgot to lock the prison door!’Those who philosophize cannot think of anything new! It has to be the same old mental setup. If there is some
change or some new situation, they cannot think creatively to deal with it, because they are not open. They are
like a closed circuit.
We have also become like philosophers when dealing with our lives. We are stuck in patterns of the past. We are
never in the moment. If anything new happens, we are at a loss.
With philosophy, you have fixed ideas and you become very assertive. When you are too assertive, you can’t
love. Assertion is aggressiveness that does not allow love to come in. When you are too sure and filled with
preconceived ideas, then where is the space for love to enter? Love needs beautiful space in order to blossom.
With philosophy, there is no room for love to settle in its existential state. It is like this: if you really want to
experience the taste of nectar, can you experience it through just a set of ideas about it? No! You need to taste the
nectar yourself, give it some space, allow it to fill you and settle in its existential state. Only then you will know
its taste. In the same way, to experience love, just a few ideas alone will not help. You need to allow it to grow in
its existential state in your inner space. Then you will know it. Allow it to happen in your heart, not in the head.
Decide to be with the heart. Then it will grow and happen.
What was once a failure within the head can become a success within the heart! Love is really a success of the
heart that every individual should experience. It is easy to stay in the head. It is, after all, a mundane and familiar
intellect. It requires courage to come down to the heart, because with the heart nothing is familiar, everything is
fresh. At the head level you have a solid identity and familiar patterns. At the heart level there is no identity, no
pattern. It is an open space. To enter into it, you need tremendous courage. That is why love is fearful for many
people. It is an unfamiliar zone. With the head, there is comfortable familiarity.
Ego disconnects – Love connects
If the cosmos is a grand ocean, we are all part of it. We are one with the ocean, not individual drops in the ocean.
When we think of ourselves as individual drops, we feel separate in our boundaries and in our feelings. This is
what is called ego. We become driven by feelings of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. As long as this separation remains, we can
never experience the energy of the ocean that is love. We never experience that causeless and surging love.
As long as we remain a drop in the ocean, we say ‘no’ to life. We neither love nor trust. We don’t feel blissful
either, because bliss is possible only for those who know how to love and trust. It happens only to those who know
how to feel part of the ocean. Bliss is possible only when our heart says ‘yes’, when the ‘no’ completely disappears
from our being. ‘No’ is darkness, ‘yes’ is light. ‘No’ is ego, ‘yes’ is egolessness.
‘No’ is the way of the unconscious person. ‘Yes’ is the way of the awakened one. All the conflict, all the suffering
in our life is because of our saying ‘no’. ‘No’ is a fight, a war with Existence. ‘Yes’ is love, peace with Existence.
‘Yes’ is in deep accord with the totality of who we are — the ocean. Bliss is another name for that accord, that
harmony.
The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean. To be a drop is
to be a hindrance. To be a drop is to be with ego. The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is absent, bliss
reaches us from every nook and corner of the ocean of existence, as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear.
Ego is a closed state of consciousness. All the windows and doors are closed. Life itself becomes insulated and
encapsulated. Our ego surrounds us like a capsule. Our ego is like a sealed capsule, there is not even a small gap
to allow anything to enter. It closes itself due to fear and shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery for
ourselves.
Love is being in the flow with Existence, to be totally with it. Ego is like frozen ice. Love is like liquid water.
Only when we are liquid do we become part of the ocean. Then we don’t have any private goal or destination.
Each moment is blissful, incredibly ecstatic, just going with the plan of the cosmos.
It is such sheer joy to simply exist and flow. Just ‘to be’ is enough. But we need to be sensitive to feel the joy of
being. We need to grow feelers. The feelers are what we call love. Love feels the joy of just being. When you
grow the feelers of love, life is no longer made of independent thoughts but becomes a continuous feeling. Then
the ego starts to dissolve. Once we have moved from thinking to feeling, there is only one more step and that is
from feeling to being, and that is very simple.The first step is difficult: to move from thinking to feeling. The ego has trained the mind to think so much, that’s
why. The second step comes almost automatically. There’s nothing we need to do for it to happen. From feeling
to being, the distance is nothing at all. It can happen at any moment. The poet can become the mystic at any
moment. He is almost there. The real problem is how to get out of our thinking and get more and more into feeling.
Just follow the heart. Just love more, that’s all! Feel more. Enjoy more so that you can feed your heart. Watch the
sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, birds, flowers, animals, rocks, and people, and watch them with awareness.
Look into their eyes. Existence is so multidimensional. Look into every dimension like a poet. Praise it. Feel it.
Be ecstatic! Expand your consciousness and experience every single detail of Existence with love. Slowly, the
ego will lose its hold and disappear.
The only barrier to love is fear. When things start happening, we become fearful because with love we enter into
a merger. This threatens the very basis of our ego. Ego is separateness while love is a merger. The fear we feel is
nothing but the fear of the dissolving ego. Let the fear be there. It will hang around for a while. If we simply
ignore it, the ego will leave us. It is a great day when fear of losing the ego leaves us. From then on growth
becomes simple, easy and spontaneous. Then we are not, only love is.
Be a lover every moment
Encounter any situation in life with deep love. Soon you will become pure love. Whether it is a person or your
work or a passerby or god or anything, just encounter it with deep love for love’s sake. If you are a painter, just
be completely in love with painting. If you are a dancer, be completely in love with dancing. If you are working
with your computer, treat it with utmost love and become lost in it. Just be completely sincere and completely in
love every moment.
If you are painting and at the same time thinking about which gallery to put up the painting in or how much to
sell it for, then be very clear, you are not lost in love. You are in love only with some particular thing, which is
money in this case. If you are dancing while calculating what you will get once you finish the dance, then be very
clear you are not lost in love. You create more and more bondage by doing this.
If you become lost in every moment, you become love. Then, when you work you work with the utmost focus
because you are in |
on growth
becomes simple, easy and spontaneous. Then we are not, only love is.
Be a lover every moment
Encounter any situation in life with deep love. Soon you will become pure love. Whether it is a person or your
work or a passerby or god or anything, just encounter it with deep love for love’s sake. If you are a painter, just
be completely in love with painting. If you are a dancer, be completely in love with dancing. If you are working
with your computer, treat it with utmost love and become lost in it. Just be completely sincere and completely in
love every moment.
If you are painting and at the same time thinking about which gallery to put up the painting in or how much to
sell it for, then be very clear, you are not lost in love. You are in love only with some particular thing, which is
money in this case. If you are dancing while calculating what you will get once you finish the dance, then be very
clear you are not lost in love. You create more and more bondage by doing this.
If you become lost in every moment, you become love. Then, when you work you work with the utmost focus
because you are in deep love with it. This way, your very life becomes a deep meditative love.
Then you start feeling, relating and respecting everything as a living being, just as you are. You even start feeling
the other person’s thoughts. You start responding and relating to the other person without him or her opening up
to you. You feel the cosmos as a translucent, ever living presence. You have tremendous intelligence. You know
exactly how to connect to things. Such is the power of love.
The Sufi* mystic Jalaluddin Rumi’ says, ‘Wherever you are, whatever your condition is, always try to be a lover!’
The whole of Existence is in a deep romance with itself. You are part of it. So it is your nature to be a lover every
moment. Only by being that can you experience the real fulfillment of your original nature.
Love yourself first
The big problem today is that most people don’t love themselves. Society never teaches that it is possible to love
ourselves. Understand that unless you love yourself, you cannot possibly love another person. Only when you
lose yourself to yourself can you lose yourself to others. We are taught that we can only love even ourselves if we
have a reason. If we perform well, we love ourselves. If we fail, we hate ourselves. We apply the same logic to
others. We love them only because of something, never without a cause, without a reason.
When you don’t love yourself, you become cynical and negative towards life.
For a few minutes every day, just sit by yourself and feel overflowing love towards yourself. Feel what a
wonderful being you are. Feel how much you have taken yourself for granted. Feel yourself as part of Existence
and love yourself for it. Melt with the feeling of love for yourself. If you practice this everyday you will see that
where you were once hard and self-centered, now you have become soft and loving.
Then, when people love you, you don’t feel guilty or unworthy because just as they love you, you love yourself
too. You become ready to receive love from others. Usually when others show love to you, you feel guilty orunworthy because you don’t feel you are worth being loved. Once you settle within yourself with deep love, you
will receive others’ love with joy.
Love Existence and feel It Loving You
Existence is not a thing. It is a living energy being. Every single tree, every single stalk of a plant responds to
your love and hate, your every thought.
Cleve Backster‘, a polygraph expert, has conducted several experiments to examine the response of plants to
human emotions and thoughts. He discovered that plants would respond to human thought in a way similar to
how a human being would respond. A simple thought by a person about burning the leaves of the plant would
register erratic movement in the polygraph recording of the plant! Backster* called this response ‘Primary
Perception’ - the ability of plant, animal and human cells to perceive and respond to any thought.
On one occasion, Backster’ recorded graphs that registered a flat line that suggested the plants were in a state of
shock. He asked the owner of the plant if she had done anything to hurt the plants. The lady told him, ‘I roasted a
few of its leaves to get their dry weight!’
When you start loving Existence, it begins responding to you in beautiful ways. You start rising above all of the
differences around you - differences between people, situations, emotions, between anything and anything.
Everything merges into unity. And that is the truth. Everything is part of one Whole. And love is the only thing
that can make you realize this truth.
In India, there is a tradition of spiritual wandering where people walk by foot the length and breadth of the country,
visiting many temples and pilgrim centers. I used to wonder how they were able to do that, especially going
through forests, sleeping with wild animals and begging for food. The secret is that they start feeling connected
with nature so completely that nature protects them beautifully. Whether it rains or shines, the animals and trees,
everything, takes care of them. Even though this may be logically difficult to understand, it is the truth.
If you begin to live with a little respect and love for Existence and all its creations, you will be able to recognize
these things happening in your own life as well. Nature will simply reciprocate your love in many beautiful ways.
Love is different from Respect
Very often, love is confused with respect. From a young age, children are brought up to always show respect but
never to show love. You can hear people teach the children, ‘You should respect your elders.’ You will hardly
hear, ‘You should love your elders.’ That is the problem.
Respect sows the first guilt in you that you are something inferior. It makes you feel separate from the other person
to whom you show respect. On the other hand, love sows the seeds of joy and unity in you. It makes you feel
connected with the other person and with everything in Existence. With respect, there is fear. With love, there is
authentic respect as well as the scope for deep understanding to happen. With respect alone, not much
understanding is possible. With love, there is a possibility for tremendous understanding and transformation to
happen. Love by its very nature is transforming. It softens and melts you.
Respect creates distance between you and the other. Love bridges the distance between you and the other. Only
because people themselves have not experienced love, do they give respect as the rule of acceptable behavior.
Respect is easier but not real. Love might be difficult only because not many know how to go about it, but it is
real. With love, respect lS automatic and authentic. With pure respect, the appearance of love is forced and may
never be authentic.
Love is the root of all religionLove is the original religion. It is the root of all spirituality. All other religions are offshoots. Love is like the root
of the tree and all religions are like leaves or branches. Even the greatest religions are only big branches compared
to the religion of love!
Love has no temple or scripture. It is like the roots that lie beneath the ground but provide the nourishment for
life. Without it, the whole tree dies. Through love many branches and leaves are created. But what do we do? We
cling to the branches and leaves instead of clinging to the root. When we cling to the root, we get the direct
nourishment. When we cling to the branches, we enjoy only one dimension of the nourishment. When you become
more loving, you will enter the invisible temple of love.
A small story:
One day a master asked his disciples how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.
One of them said, ’When you can look in the distance and tell whether the animal is a cow or a horse.’ The master
said, ’No.’
Another disciple said, ’When you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a pine tree or a mango tree.’The
master again said, ’No.’
They asked the master ’Then what is it master?’
The master replied, ’When you can look into the face of any man and recognize your brother in him. When you
can look into the face of any woman and recognize your sister in her. If you cannot do this, then no matter what
time of the day it is, it is still only night time.’
The master can give a few hints, a little hints here and there. Then we must find our own way carefully, cautiously.
Love is just a hint, but if we follow love slowly, very slowly, we will be surprised that god becomes more and
more of a reality. He is no longer just a thought, no longer simply an idea, but something that we can feel. The
deeper we go into love, the closer we come to the feeling. The day we dissolve into love we merge with unity.
From time immemorial, the conclusion of many mystics has been that matter is glued together with love. An
invisible force keeps atoms and molecules together. They do not fall apart because of this invisible force. Science
has yet to discover this ultimate energy. It has detected a few of its manifestations such as gravitation and
electricity but these are only gross manifestations. The day that science discovers love will be the day when
religion and |
can look into the face of any man and recognize your brother in him. When you
can look into the face of any woman and recognize your sister in her. If you cannot do this, then no matter what
time of the day it is, it is still only night time.’
The master can give a few hints, a little hints here and there. Then we must find our own way carefully, cautiously.
Love is just a hint, but if we follow love slowly, very slowly, we will be surprised that god becomes more and
more of a reality. He is no longer just a thought, no longer simply an idea, but something that we can feel. The
deeper we go into love, the closer we come to the feeling. The day we dissolve into love we merge with unity.
From time immemorial, the conclusion of many mystics has been that matter is glued together with love. An
invisible force keeps atoms and molecules together. They do not fall apart because of this invisible force. Science
has yet to discover this ultimate energy. It has detected a few of its manifestations such as gravitation and
electricity but these are only gross manifestations. The day that science discovers love will be the day when
religion and science will commune with each other in the same language.
For now, just rejoice because love is possible. Be joyful that love is your inner potential. You can rise to the
ultimate heights with love. Nothing is impossible with love because love can transform itself into god.
Three types of Love and their Integration
Many people confuse lust with love. This is one of the greatest tragedies. The person who thinks lust is love
remains confined to the physical plane. He never rises higher than that. He has no idea that there is a higher plane.
He remains in the basement of his house. Sex is the base-ment. It is not the place to live in. You can use it for
other purposes, but it can’t be your home. Your home is above it.
Man has three planes of being: animal, human and divine. First is the plane of lust, which is the animal plane.
It is a crude form of love. It is not that love is not present there. Love is mixed or polluted by gross greed and
desire, that’s all.
As our being becomes more refined, we enter the second plane, ordinary human love. Human love has traces of
possessiveness and jealousy. Since human love is grounded in greater understanding than animal love, one does
not simply use the other person for his or her own gain. Human love is capable of seeing the other as an end unto
itself.
The third type of love is divine love. It is love in its highest form, almost like a prayer. There is no possessiveness.
There is nothing earthly in it. It becomes an invisible but powerful force. This is when love becomes prayer and
we feel restful contentment for the first time. I say restful because the other two types of love always keep reaching
for more or keep missing something. There is no restfulness in them. When the third type of love happens, even
sex becomes a deep and divine act beyond mere physical pleasure.Enter into Causeless Love
The first thing we need to understand is that relationships can happen causelessly, without any reason. Only then
will we understand that the experience of love is much more important than the object of love.
You must have at least one relationship in your life that exists for no reason. If you don’t have such a relationship,
be very clear, even if you have money, deep down you are still poor.
From today onwards start relating with someone for no reason. There should be no monetary or physical benefit
from the relationship. If you experience causeless love once, after that, if the money is shared, if the body is
shared, it is okay. The quality is totally different. I am not against money or against marriage. I am not against the
physical relationship, but if it becomes the center of your life, you are missing something very important. That is
what I want to convey here. You miss a major dimension or energy center of your being.
I always tell people, ‘Do some work for half hour everyday that does not bring you money or name and fame. Just
for half an hour, go to some temple or church, clean and sweep the floor, offer some service. Don’t plan to become
a committee member in that place! Don’t think that it will fetch you good credit and a place in heaven... no. Don’t
look any further than that work for half an hour.’
Initially you may think, ‘This half hour is a waste of time. After a few days you will realize that only in that half
hour are you really alive! Only for that half hour you are not driven by fear or greed. You smile at the people
around you without any calculation. You feel strangely sincere in a way that you never felt before.
If you observe yourself at other times, you will see that you even smile only after some mental calculation. Even
before laughing you will see who is the person next to you. Based on that, you decide how many inches to open
your mouth, how polite you should be, how you should project yourself. As of now, every action of yours is
driven by fear and greed. You are fuelled by fear and greed. That’s why you feel lonely and tired.
If you try this technique, you will suddenly see that your body and mind start functioning without the need for
fear and greed! Once you learn this simple knack of how to move your body without fear and greed, be very clear,
you can enter into love. You learn how to tap into the energy of love. You learn how to run your life on the
beautiful energy of love. Only then will you know what is meant by the word ‘love’.
A new center will be awakened in you. A new energy will start radiating in you. Then you will understand how
loving and causeless relationships are possible.
Love, hatred and attention need
Hatred and love are opposite sides of the same coin as long as love is conditional. Love can flip into hatred the
moment we feel that our expectations are threatened. In love of this type, it remains love only as long as the
conditions remain as expected. The moment the conditions change, the love also changes.
Often what we believe as love is actually related to time and space. So long as the distance between lovers is large
and the time of contact is minimal, they feel love towards each other. However, once they get closer and spend
more time together, they feel that they are not so much in love after all! That is why they say familiarity breeds
contempt’. Familiarity can also convert love into hatred. To transcend both love and hatred, we first need to drop
expectations. Expectation is the first enemy of love.
We all go through several stages of relationships in our lifetime. If you observe very closely, whichever stage we
are in, when we ask for love we are actually asking only for the other person’s attention. When we say a person
doesn’t love us, we actually mean that the other person doesn’t give us enough attention. The basic need for any
human being is attention from others. The attention-need, along with our dependency on others for survival, is
what we experience as love.
The dependency on others might be psychological, physical or spiritual. For example, when you expect someone
to lend you a shoulder to cry on, you are dependent upon that person psychologically. When you expect someone
to provide you with money or fulfill your bodily pleasures, you are dependent upon them physically. In whatever
way people may fulfill this dependency, what it boils down to is the attention that they give us! The whole idea
of love is nothing but getting the attention of the other in some way.In the first session of our meditation camp, I ask people to make an honest list of at least one or two persons in
their lives who they really love. Usually in the beginning, people come up with a big list: husband, wife, father,
mother, brother, sister and so on. They include people whom they would like to please or need to please in order
to be happy themselves. As they hear me talk about real love, they start crossing out names from their list one by
one! Understand, if you cross out something, then it was not truly there in the first place.
Many people include certain people in their love list because these people give them a ‘feel good’ feeling. What
do I mean by a ‘feel good’ feeling? It is a certificate saying, ‘You are good. You are this, you are that’ etc. We
love anyone who pays us compliments, is it not? We think twice before arguing with them. We secretly nurture
our good name with them in the name of love. If they go back on their approval of us, we might fall into depression,
so we continue to please them and love them. Like this, there is always some hidden reason for our love.
Some people tell me, ‘No Swamiji, I don’t love my son or daughter for any of these reasons.’ I ask them, ‘Alright,
if your son suddenly starts to make his own decisions, if he suddenly doesn’t fit into your framework, ifhe doesn’t
follow your guidance, ifhe doesn’t live according to your rules, will your love for him be the same?’
They tell me, ‘No, it will not. My love will be reduced a little!’
What does this mean? We love our next generation as long as they are extensions of our life. As long as they fall
into our pattern of thinking, as long as they live in accordance with our conventions, we love them. We |
I mean by a ‘feel good’ feeling? It is a certificate saying, ‘You are good. You are this, you are that’ etc. We
love anyone who pays us compliments, is it not? We think twice before arguing with them. We secretly nurture
our good name with them in the name of love. If they go back on their approval of us, we might fall into depression,
so we continue to please them and love them. Like this, there is always some hidden reason for our love.
Some people tell me, ‘No Swamiji, I don’t love my son or daughter for any of these reasons.’ I ask them, ‘Alright,
if your son suddenly starts to make his own decisions, if he suddenly doesn’t fit into your framework, ifhe doesn’t
follow your guidance, ifhe doesn’t live according to your rules, will your love for him be the same?’
They tell me, ‘No, it will not. My love will be reduced a little!’
What does this mean? We love our next generation as long as they are extensions of our life. As long as they fall
into our pattern of thinking, as long as they live in accordance with our conventions, we love them. We simply
fulfill our own desires through them. We fulfill our lives through them. Whatever we couldn’t accomplish in our
youth, we try to accomplish through them. If we wanted to be a doctor and couldn’t for some reason, we inspire
them to be a doctor. As long as they act and live as an extension of our life, the relationship is beautiful. But the
moment they start deciding on their own, the moment they feel we are suffocating them, the moment they stand
up and say ‘no’, the relationship takes a different turn.
Love and liberate, don’t possess
As long as our love happens towards a particular object, even if the object is a person, we will try to reduce that
person only to the level of an object. That is exactly what we do when we feel possessive or attached to another
person. In the way that we try to possess furniture or a house or any object, we try to possess the person also. We
want the person to be just how we want him or her to be, which means we are actually reducing the person to
sheer matter.
So understand, whenever our love or our attention is towards something in particular, we will be only materialistic,
creating suffering for ourselves and for others. We will only suffocate the object or person. Instead, if we turn our
attention towards the experience of love itself, we will be liberating the object and we too will be liberated from
the object. That is the beauty of love that happens just as love and not for the sake of any object.
When you start possessing someone, you bind yourself also. If you are walking holding your dog’s leash, be very
clear that you are also bound. Don’t think only the dog is bound; you are also bound. Don’t think that only the
dog cannot run away, you too cannot run away! You may be thinking that you are holding the rope and the dog
may be thinking that he is holding the rope. Who knows?
The next time you are with someone, when you are with your friend with whom you are completely open,
remember to practice this technique.
Just sit next to him or her. Don’t bother about what you are going to do or what you are going to say. Just sit,
that’s all! That is the technique. Actually, speaking is nothing but avoiding the other person. Because you cannot
look into the other person’s eyes, you go on speaking. That is the truth. The other person listens so that he can
start speaking whenever you take a break! If a person is listening to you, it means that he is either thinking of
something else or he is preparing for his turn. He sits there so that he can start once you finish.
Now if you try this technique, it can take you to a different space altogether. When you are with the master or
your friend or your beloved, whoever you feel deeply connected with, whoever you are very open with, you can
try this technique. It will straightaway lead you to enlightenment. Be very clear, I am not teaching this technique
for you to have better relationships or for you to develop your personality. No! I am giving it to you to straightaway
experience the pure love that can lead you to enlightenment.This technique will take you through a quantum jump from the form to the formless, from possessive love to
causeless love.
When love happens as causeless overflowing, you simply liberate yourself and the other person from your own
attachment and possessiveness, because possessiveness as you know it, binds not only the other person but you
as well. It tortures the other person as well as you! Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you
and the other person.
When I travel around the world, people ask me,‘Swamiji, did you sleep well last night? It is a new place for you.’
I tell them, ‘Only when you have attachment to a particular house does another house become a new place for
you and you struggle. When you don’t have attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go!’
I never feel any place is mine or not mine. I feel totally at home anywhere. The comfort is always within us, never
outside us. When there is no comfort within us, we look for comfort outside us. Feeling comfortable within us is
the result of the causeless love energy.
When we don’t feel attached to one home, we feel at home in the entire world. We are totally relaxed anywhere
in the world.
Love in relationships
In real life, we always look to express our love towards others in some tangible way. Only if love is demonstrated
in tangible form, it is considered to be love nowadays.
True love is like a communion. It is a resonance between two beings. It can be felt without any expression. It
doesn’t need communication because it is already happening as a communion.
If you really love a person, then your very body language will show it. It will be too much to express in words.
You will feel that any words are inadequate and will only bring down the love that you feel. But if you are using
words, then somewhere the love has not really happened. When you have to speak to express love, then
somewhere there is a lie in it! You are using the words just to decorate the lie.
Real love liberates because it doesn’t compel you to express it all the time. It just is. Real love also gives you the
freedom to freely express what you want to express. You can easily express anything like disapproval or anger
and it will not be mistaken for reduced love.
Not only that, with real love, there will be no domination or power play in relationships. Each person will be like
a beautiful flower that has blossomed to radiate its unique fragrance, that’s all.
With real love, there will be no fear or insecurity either. In normal love, physical distance between two people
causes a lot of insecurity and a lack of trust.
A small story:
A young soldier went to his senior officer and said, ’Sir my friend is not yet back from the battlefield. I request
permission to go out and get him.’
The officer said, ’Permission refused. Your friend is most probably dead. I don’t want you to risk your life going
there.’
The young soldier went all the same and came back mortally wounded and carrying the corpse of his friend.
The officer was furious. He shouted, ’I told you he was dead. Now I have lost both of you. Tell me, was it worth
going out there to bring a corpse?’
On the verge of dying, the soldier replied, ’It was, Sir. When I got there he was still alive. He said to me, I was
sure you would come.’
Real love doesn’t look for utility. It operates on sheer trust and is also beyond space and time.
These days I see people gifting each other with so many things to show their love. Gifting has become an
expression of love. If the gifting happens as causeless overflowing, it is okay.
But if it is a condition to be fulfilled, it becomes a problem! Then it becomes a poor substitute for real love.As long as real love is there, no relationship can become boring. One of the aadheenavasis asked me one day,
‘Everyday you see all of us, all our mistakes and confusions. It is the same thing for you every day. Are you not
bored by us?’ It was a very honest question! I told them, ‘For enlightened beings, just because of their very love,
they feel everybody is unique. They do not look at people as mere numbers. They see each one as unique.’
That is why, with so much patience, masters continue to work with everybody. If it were just a matter of numbers,
it would be very different. When you have this love, your inner space is such that there is no logical reason behind
your actions. You will just feel connected and you radiate love, that’s all!
Not only that, causeless overflowing love is always total in its expression. It doesn’t carry the usual dilutions of
greed or fear. So any person whom you love, you will love totally without any reservations. Irrespective of the
way he is, you will love him. When you love this way, even if the person leaves your life, you will not grieve.
When a person passes away, you grieve only because you regret not having loved him completely. |
avasis asked me one day,
‘Everyday you see all of us, all our mistakes and confusions. It is the same thing for you every day. Are you not
bored by us?’ It was a very honest question! I told them, ‘For enlightened beings, just because of their very love,
they feel everybody is unique. They do not look at people as mere numbers. They see each one as unique.’
That is why, with so much patience, masters continue to work with everybody. If it were just a matter of numbers,
it would be very different. When you have this love, your inner space is such that there is no logical reason behind
your actions. You will just feel connected and you radiate love, that’s all!
Not only that, causeless overflowing love is always total in its expression. It doesn’t carry the usual dilutions of
greed or fear. So any person whom you love, you will love totally without any reservations. Irrespective of the
way he is, you will love him. When you love this way, even if the person leaves your life, you will not grieve.
When a person passes away, you grieve only because you regret not having loved him completely. You can love
him completely only when your love itself is complete. It doesn’t have to do anything with the other person. It
doesn’t matter what kind of person he is. That is the beauty of real love.
It loves for the sake of love, not for the sake of the other person.
If you are grieving for the loss ofa person, be very clear, you are grieving because you missed loving him in
totality. If you had loved him in totality, you would say good-bye to him with complete restfulness, not with grief.
You grieve only because you missed something somewhere. Even if it is your own father or husband or wife, it
is the same. If you had radiated your causeless love to them when they were alive, then when they left there would
not be any regret. But if you had loved them with rationalizations, then when they left, the incompleteness of your
love towards them would create a hangover, and that hangover is what you feel as grief.
Meditation - Feel the Love overflowing in you
Sit down comfortably by yourself and close your eyes.
Focus on your heart region. Exclude everything else. Focus only on the heart.
Visualize your heart as an endless reservoir from where blessings can flow.
Feel every heartbeat deeply. Let every beat resound throughout you.
Between the heartbeats, feel the energy of love happening.
In the deepest parts of and soul, the love energy acknowledged.
Invite the love energy of the heart to flow and fill these deepest parts of your body, mind and soul.
Slowly open your eyes.There is Nothing to Worry
We talked of love so far. Love is about our relationship with others. Love is also about our
relationship with us. Without loving ourselves we cannot love others. What prevents us from loving
our own self is the constant worry or irritation that we generate within us. Whether things go right or
wrong we worry. There is nothing more corrosive to our self-esteem than worry. What is this worry?
What is Worry?
A small story:
A man walked into a bar looking worried and upset.
The bartender asked him, What’s the matter? You look very worried about something.’
The man said, ’My wife and I had a fight and she told me that she wouldn’t talk to me for a month.’
The bartender consoled him, ’It’s okay. One month isn’t that long.’
The man said, ’I know. The month is up today!’
Everyone has his or her own set of worries! If I ask you what you worry about, you will tell me, ‘I don’t have a
job, that’s my worry.’Your neighbor will say, ‘My job is my main worry!’ Someone else will say, ‘My children
are my worry.’ Another person will say, ‘I don’t have children, that’s my worry!’ One person’s dream is another
person’s worry! You will not find any logic in it at all.
What is meant by ‘worry’? Worry arises whenever things are not happening as you want them to happen. It is
the discrepancy between your expectations and reality. For example, you feel your son should stay at home with
you, whereas he feels he should be by himself - away from you. You want to finish your project by a certain
time. But things are happening too slowly and it seems an impossible task. These are all causes for worry. What
you want and expect does not match what others want and expect
How does Worry take root?
Worry takes root from your own thoughts or words. There are two things that continuously happen in you. The
first is dialogue, and the second is monologue —what I call ‘inner chatter’. You either talk to people outside you
or you continuously chatter within you. In any case, words and thoughts are the ‘building blocks’ that make up
worry.
When you speak to others, what you say is strictly governed by societal rules. You automatically don’t use
prohibited or ‘politically incorrect’ words. But what you say inside yourself, no one except you knows. The
thoughts that you generate inside constitute your real worries.
It is like this: there is a continuous current of chatter happening in you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week. From this current a few spikes rise. These spikes are what you feel and express as worries. Worries are
nothing but spikes in the current of thoughts constantly moving within you.
These thoughts are mostly negative. That’s the problem. If I ask you to write your life story in a few pages, you
will write a few incidents highlighting how and when you struggled. You will not highlight the many joyful
incidents that happened in between. The mind is trained to record only negative things. Even when something
joyful happens, you remember only the moment when it ended, never the moments when you felt joy. Because
even when you are at the peak of joy, you are always worrying about when the joy will end! The mind is trained
from a very young age to think that life moves from one worry to the other, or from one pain to another, never
from one joy to another.
In a classroom, the teacher found that one boy was sitting with a very sad face.She asked him, ’What happened? Why do you look so worried?’
The boy said, ’It’s my parents. My dad works all day to provide good clothes and an excellent education for me.
He buys me anything I want. My mother cooks the best food for me and takes care of me from morning until I go
to bed.’
The teacher asked, ’Then what is your problem? Why are you worried?’
The boy replied, ’I am afraid they might run away.’
The mind has a clear identity only with pain, never with joy! That is why recalling even joyful moments becomes
painful.
Joy never gets recorded as thoughts, but pain does. That’s why our internal recordings are always negative
thoughts. Joy is like a blank recording! For example, if your entire life is like a time shaft, on that shaft the joyful
moments are simply empty spaces! There won’t be any recording corresponding to it. But the moments of worry
and suffering will be clearly recorded as black impressions.
See what is as it IS — and move on
Buddha', the enlightened master, used the word tathata - seeing what is as it IS. It is seeing what is there as it is
without any judgment.
But most of the time we see things only through our worry. There is a common saying, ‘We don’t see things as
they are. We see things as we are.’ If you feel there is something wrong with what you are seeing, then you should
look back in at yourself because what you see outside is only a reflection of what is inside you. If you feel pure
love inside, then you see only pure love outside. It always has to do with you, not with what you are seeing.
How can you keep thoughts away from what truly IS? How can you enjoy each moment all the time?
Try this small technique. When you see something — say a person, or a situation, or a book, or anything —
normally old thoughts and familiar reactions immediately rise in you. Bring awareness that these conditioned
thoughts and memories cloud your judgment and visualize shattering those thoughts. Next, see the situation, or
person, or object now with a fresh eye, as though you are seeing it for the first time! Suddenly you see how
much you missed, because of your own worry and thoughts.
Even when you see your husband, wife, brother, or anyone, look at them as though you are seeing them for the
first time. Suddenly, you realize that not only does worry not arise, but also that you will start seeing everyone
alike — whether they are strangers or familiar to you. That is the right way. No one is familiar or unchanging.
Even your wife is not known to you. Everyone is constantly changing every moment along with Existence. Only
your mind is trying to make them appear to be permanent.
Once you start seeing what is as it is, all your energy will integrate within you. There is no more worry, no more
conflict.
Someone asked J. Krishnamurti, the famous Indian philosopher, how to fall in tune with what IS. He beautifully
says, ‘Just don’t name it, you will find you are in tune with it!’
Usually, when we see something, we either try to identify with |
memories cloud your judgment and visualize shattering those thoughts. Next, see the situation, or
person, or object now with a fresh eye, as though you are seeing it for the first time! Suddenly you see how
much you missed, because of your own worry and thoughts.
Even when you see your husband, wife, brother, or anyone, look at them as though you are seeing them for the
first time. Suddenly, you realize that not only does worry not arise, but also that you will start seeing everyone
alike — whether they are strangers or familiar to you. That is the right way. No one is familiar or unchanging.
Even your wife is not known to you. Everyone is constantly changing every moment along with Existence. Only
your mind is trying to make them appear to be permanent.
Once you start seeing what is as it is, all your energy will integrate within you. There is no more worry, no more
conflict.
Someone asked J. Krishnamurti, the famous Indian philosopher, how to fall in tune with what IS. He beautifully
says, ‘Just don’t name it, you will find you are in tune with it!’
Usually, when we see something, we either try to identify with it or we try to condemn it. For example, if you are
told you are arrogant, you either accept it or you try not to be arrogant! You never understand or go beyond
arrogance. You can only understand within your frame of reference, what you are familiar with. Because of this,
you are caught in a limited view of possibilities. To really understand, you need to go beyond this limited point-
of-view. To do that, you have to stop naming it arrogance , that’s all! There will be no more arrogance.
Only by naming it, you start the conflict. That is how you see what IS— by not naming it.
When you see what is as it is, you are in heaven. When you want to see what you want to see, you are in hell. If
you understand that everything is auspiciousness, you will drop expectation and see things as they are, because
everything is auspiciousness.
A small story:One disciple kept asking the master ’Master where is paradise?’
Finally one day, the master asked him, ’Do you really want to know?’
The disciple sat up and said, ’Yes!’
The master said, ’Alright, my first disciple Hemachandra is in paradise.’After saying these words the
master closed his eyes and went into meditation.
The disciple knew it would be a long time before the master opened his eyes. So, he went and asked
some of the disciples ifthey knew where Hemachandra lived. No one seemed to know.
Finally one disciple said, ’I know how to guide you there, but I have never been there myself. It is in a
deep valley beyond a range of ice covered mountains. ’
The disciple wrote down the directions carefully and went back to the master. He told him, ’Master, I
wish to pay a visit to Hemachandra!’
The master was absorbed deeply in some work. Without even looking up he said, ’Go ahead.’
The disciple started on his journey. He walked for many days, passing through sun, rain, snow, and
what not. He became exhausted, on the verge ofdeath. It took him one hundred days to reach the valley.
When he finally reached it he looked at the valley and thought, ’This valley doesn’t look all that great.
I have seen many more beautiful valleys. Why did the master call this paradise?’
He looked around and walked further and fin ally fo und He mac handra ’s hut. Hemachandra was very
pleased to see him. He served him food and asked how the master and other disciples were doing.
All along, the disciple was thinking to himself, ’Master called this place paradise? I can’t believe it.’
After a week-long stay he left and returned to his master. It took him another one hundred days to return
home.
He went straight to the master and stated, ’You said that the place is paradise. But what I saw was the
most ordinary place ever!’
The master said, ’Oh god! At the time of your enquiry, had you been more explicit about your intention,
I would have told you the truth.’
The disciple asked, ’What is the truth?’
The master replied, ’Hemachandra is not in paradise. Paradise is in him!’
When you live close to Existence, without any expectation, seeing what is as it is and finding the
blessings in it, you will carry heaven in you! Heaven is not geographical, it is psychological. It is not
physical, it is mental. If you decide, you can be in heaven right now.
Worry — a legacy passed down
Worry is an unwanted legacy passed down from grandparents to parents to children. Children are like sponges.
They simply absorb the body language and attitude of the parents. The parents are not even aware this is
happening. For example, if a child hears the mother repeating a certain worry four or five times, the child simply
internalizes the habit. He grows up repeating statements unnecessarily, which is one attribute of worry.
Ultimately he carries the worry with him into marriage and then both he and his new wife must deal with it, even
though it was originally his mother’s concern. They will then hand it down to their children, unless they stop
naming it and learn to live with what IS.
One man was pushing his baby in a pram. The baby was screaming at the top of his voice. All the while the man
kept repeating quietly, ’Keep calm George. Don’t scream. It will be okay.’
His wife told him to keep quiet.A woman who was watching this said to the wife, ’Why are you so rude to him? He is really doing his best to
pacify your son!’
The wife looked at her with resentment, pointed to her husband and told her ’He is George.’
When parents express constant worry, children grow up thinking life goes on only because of worry! Understand
that life goes on not because of us, but in spite of us!
The problem is that parents expect their children to worry! If they don’t worry, they brand them as uncaring. It is
possible to care without worrying. Care is doing, worry is chattering. There is no use chattering. Chattering is like
trying to cross a bridge before it comes.
A young boy was driving his mother to the neighboring village. They were nearing the village when they
remembered a particular bridge th at used to be very old and unusable.
The mother got very anxious and said, ’I will never cross that bridge by car.’
The son said, ’Let’s see how it looks when we come to it.’
The mother said, ’I’m sure the bridge will break if we attempt to cross it.’
The son replied, ’Let’s see how strong it is. We won’t cross it without checking it carefully.’
The mother said, ’If something happens to you or me, your father will never forgive me.’ She kept going on like
this, becoming more and more upset.
Soon they reached the spot where the bridge stood. The bridge had been replaced with a new one!
There are two things to understand: chronological planning and psychological worry. Chronological planning is
needed to set up a schedule for tasks or projects to be completed. For example, you decide, ‘I will wake up at six
a.m., do my meditation, then take a shower at seven a.m., and leave for the office by eight a.m. I’ll finish work
by five p.m. and return home by six p.m.’
This type of planning is perfectly alright. But before you come to each task on your list, you start creating anxiety
about it. You think of the pros and cons of each, etc. This is called psychological worry! This is not needed.
Chronological planning is fine, but psychological worry is not needed. It is like trying to cross a bridge before it
comes.
So much energy is spent worrying and it is all of no use. In the story I just narrated, it does not mean that the son
does not care. He cares without worry, that’s all. Why contemplate over the bridge even before it comes?
You can clean the physical parts of your house, your carpets and floors, but what about the space inside your
house? This space is the energy that circulates throughout your house. It captures all the thoughts you radiate. It
sets the very mood of the house. Your worries rest like cobwebs in the space of your house. That is why when
you enter your house, you experience a familiar pattern of worry. The patterns remaining in the space of your
house grip you when you return to it. Understand that your mental setup settles into the space of your house.
The big problem is that you become so used to your patterns of worries that you end up like an island that is cut
off from the fragrance of the mainland. You are cut off from the fragrance of Existence because of your worries.
You miss the miracles of Existence that are continuously happening around you. You forget to appreciate and
remember only to complain. You forget laughter and remember only anxiety. You forget bliss and remember only
stress. Remembering these negative things becomes a mere habit.
Awareness - the benign virus!
What is the solution to this distorted software of the mind?
Deep awareness is the solution. Deep awareness is like a benign virus, if such a thing exists! Once awareness
enters your system, the more you work with the mind, the more the awareness gets into the worry software and
destroys it |
circulates throughout your house. It captures all the thoughts you radiate. It
sets the very mood of the house. Your worries rest like cobwebs in the space of your house. That is why when
you enter your house, you experience a familiar pattern of worry. The patterns remaining in the space of your
house grip you when you return to it. Understand that your mental setup settles into the space of your house.
The big problem is that you become so used to your patterns of worries that you end up like an island that is cut
off from the fragrance of the mainland. You are cut off from the fragrance of Existence because of your worries.
You miss the miracles of Existence that are continuously happening around you. You forget to appreciate and
remember only to complain. You forget laughter and remember only anxiety. You forget bliss and remember only
stress. Remembering these negative things becomes a mere habit.
Awareness - the benign virus!
What is the solution to this distorted software of the mind?
Deep awareness is the solution. Deep awareness is like a benign virus, if such a thing exists! Once awareness
enters your system, the more you work with the mind, the more the awareness gets into the worry software and
destroys it!
Awareness is nothing but bringing our focus to exactly what is happening in and around us. It is witnessing.
Anything that we watch with awareness will dissolve. That is the power of awareness; whether it is physical pain,
mental pain, worry, or something else. When we watch with awareness, we stop the conflict somewhere within
us. We start moving with the natural flow of things.When we watch worry with awareness, we focus light on exactly how worry is created, how it exists. Once this
happens, the worry starts to dissolve and clarity starts happening.
There is a small story about Buddha and his disciples:
One day Buddha arrived for his usual morning discourse with his disciples. He had a knotted
handkerchief in his hand. He showed the handkerchief to the disciples and asked if any of them could
come up and untie the knot.
One disciple went up and tried to untie it. He pulled and pulled and the knot tightened. Another disciple
went up, he looked at the knot %r a few seconds and easily untied it.
All he did was look at the knot and immediately he knew how the knot was made in the first place. So,
he just reversed the whole thing and untied it! The knot itself taught him how to untie it.
In life worries are the knots in the handkerchief. If we look at them with awareness, we will know how
to dissolve them. We will see exactly how the worry was created and then know how to ‘untie’ it. The
worry itself will teach us how to release it.
Work out of inspiration — not out of Worry
If you observe closely, you will see that goals always create worry in us. When we move toward any goal, we
move only with the worry about the results.
Krishna, an enlightened master from ancient India, beautifully says in the ancient Hindu* scripture, the Bhagavad
Gita’, ‘The person who does not expect gain or loss from anything works happily with no need even for
motivation.’
When you are worried about the results, the very worry affects the results. Because when you worry, your doing
is affected. Work should always be done out of inspiration, never out of worry. The motivation for any work
should be inspiration, not worry. Inspiration is an overflowing energy that expands your capacity to do things. It
is completely energizing. Worry, on the other hand, is something that shrinks your capacity. It limits what you
are capable of really doing because it takes away your energy.
When you work out of worry, you are always bothered about the results. When you work out of inspiration,
you are not bothered about the results. You are bothered only about doing the task to the fullest. Any task done
with the energy of inspiration always turns out good results. Even if it doesn’t give the expected results, you won’t
feel bad about it because you have received fulfillment simply by doing it. The ‘doing’ itself will fulfill you.
Leave no space for Worry
When you live without expectation, you are already fulfilled. There is no space for worry or discontent to thrive.
When you don’t have worry, you see things as they are. You don’t worry about what might be or might not be.
Worry exists only if you give it space. The space for worry is the past or future. The present doesn’t hold any
space for it.
A small story:
A mother was preparing a meal for her young son. She emptied a tin of beans into a saucepan and put them on
the stove to cook. Just then the phone rang. She was expecting the call and wanted to take it, but she was concerned
that her son would be left alone for those few minutes while she was out of the room.
She told him, ’Stay here while I answer the phone. I’ll be back soon. Don’t misbehave, and whatever you do,
don’t put those beans up your nose...’
We always worry about what is happening and what might happen, also! The boy might not have even thought
about putting beans up his nose! Now his mother has planted the idea in him. Worry infuses life into manythings that never existed in the first place. Now, when the boy puts the beans in his nose, her worry turns out to
be true! She concludes that her worries are always right.
Worry is only an illusion
If you look into worries, you will observe that they arise out of deep ignorance of the truth that Existence is
running the whole show. If you look, you will see that all worries are mere illusion. You can understand this by
observing what happens at the time of death. When you are alive, you may have one hundred worries, but suppose
you are dying. At that moment, how many worries do you think will dominate you the way they did earlier? Surely
only one worry will be foremost — that you are going to die. None of the earlier worries will exert any great
influence. All the outer world situations remain the same, but still the worries disappear! Only loving thoughts
remain for the people around you who are dear to you.
How is this possible? It is possible only because your worries were never a part of you in the first place. They
were merely a part of your mind. They were nothing solid. If they were solid, they would definitely exert some
amount of influence over you at the time of your death as well.
The nature of worry is such that it always goes behind something that is not present. If you have wealth, it will go
after relationships, if you have relationships, it will go after education, if you have education it will go after good
looks. If everything is present, it will suspect what is present!
Surrender and relax
When you clearly understand that you are part of the grand plan of Existence, no worry can take root in you.
Existence is a live energy being. It has tremendous intelligence with which it runs the whole show. We are all part
of it. The same intelligence that conducts Existence is available to us too. If we tune in to it, our actions will be
fluid and spontaneous like the happenings of Existence. If we don’t tune into 1t, we will harbor worry and fear
and remain closed.
There is so much to learn from Existence! Take animals for example. Have you ever heard of worried sheep or
cows? No! They conduct their lives like you; they are born, they reproduce, they find food, and they face death -
just like human beings. You may say, ‘They don’t have to face the challenges that we have to face.’ What about
their other activities like reproduction, facing death, etc? Are they worried about all that? No! But these things
happen to them too. So understand that Existence is running this whole macrocosm. It can surely take care of you
as well!
Surrendering to the laws of Existence is the greatest relaxation from worry.
The Ego in disguise
If you seriously analyze every worry that arises in you, you will see that ninety nine percent of your worries are
baseless. But the problem is that the ego is not willing to accept that. The ego has invested too much in worry.
Worry can’t be discarded just like that! Just try telling someone that his or her worries are not worth anything.
They will get very offended. You would expect that a person would feel happy if you tell him his worries are not
true. But it won’t be so! He will feel offended. The ego feels offended whenever its worries are not acknowledged
with due respect.
The ego is what sustains the worry. The worry is created out of ignorance, but sustained by ego. Worry becomes
an axis around which the ego revolves. If worry is taken away, the ego suffers. The worry of work and the worry
of responsibility are classic examples of this.
If you watch some people, they simply magnify their situation to prove that they have the greatest worries on
planet earth! If you try to oppose them, they feel very hurt.Even worrying about what others will say about us is a problem of the ego. The ego is constantly worried that its
self-image might be spoiled by someone. It is because of the ego that we feel we want to be somebody special all
the time. We spend considerable time just worrying about our self-image. Understand that the greatest blessing is
being a nobody and yet being blissful. That is the greatest specialty. It is said that the most extraordinary thing |
try telling someone that his or her worries are not worth anything.
They will get very offended. You would expect that a person would feel happy if you tell him his worries are not
true. But it won’t be so! He will feel offended. The ego feels offended whenever its worries are not acknowledged
with due respect.
The ego is what sustains the worry. The worry is created out of ignorance, but sustained by ego. Worry becomes
an axis around which the ego revolves. If worry is taken away, the ego suffers. The worry of work and the worry
of responsibility are classic examples of this.
If you watch some people, they simply magnify their situation to prove that they have the greatest worries on
planet earth! If you try to oppose them, they feel very hurt.Even worrying about what others will say about us is a problem of the ego. The ego is constantly worried that its
self-image might be spoiled by someone. It is because of the ego that we feel we want to be somebody special all
the time. We spend considerable time just worrying about our self-image. Understand that the greatest blessing is
being a nobody and yet being blissful. That is the greatest specialty. It is said that the most extraordinary thing
about an enlightened being is that he thinks he is ordinary! So, understand that enlightenment itself is a journey
to relax into yourself. You are someone special all the time, only when you drop worry and ego.
Get out of your comfort zone
If you really want to come out of your worries, you will come out right now, without trying tojustify any of your
worries.
The thing is, our very worries become our comfort zone. We hide in them. Hiding and merely talking about them
helps us to remain lazy.
Someone asks Mahavira’, an enlightened Jain master from India, ‘Who is the one who has worries?’
He beautifully replies, ‘The person who is worried.’
They ask him, ‘What is the cause of worry?’ He replies, ‘Laziness.’
Then they ask him, ‘Who ends worries?’ He replies, ‘Man himself.’
They ask him, ‘How can worry be ended?’ He replies, ‘By dropping laziness.’
If you drop laziness, you fall into right action. And when you fall into right action, you drop worry. Your comfort
with worry can be understood even from the way you react to other people’s worries. If you keenly watch, you
will observe that whenever a person talks to you about his worries, you first tell them, ‘What can you do... That’s
just the way it happens...’ You never straightaway give a solution to them. When you do this, be very clear, you
are not only encouraging them, but you are also encouraging yourself to remain comfortably in the worry zone.
If you really observe, we love to worry and talk about it. It makes us feel that we are shouldering a lot of problems.
It makes us feel important, like the world can’t make it without us to take care of it.
When you see a problem, if you want a solution, you never dwell upon the problem even for a second. You simply
switch to the solution, that’s all! In the same way, for every worry there is an instant solution. You have to want
it; that is the key.
Most of the time, you prefer to stay in the comfort zone of your worry. It keeps you settled. For example, let’s say
you are visiting your child at college. You see a few students keeping their rooms all messy, or exchanging clothes
and wearing them. You record the whole scene in your mind and assume that is the way of life in the dorm itself.
You advise your child to keep her things neat and not to wear others’ clothes. Even if she tells you her things are
in order and that she doesn’t wear others’ clothes, you will not readily erase or reprogram your recording. You
stick with the earlier recording of what you observed.
There probably were many other beautiful things to record in the dorm — like the joy of the students, the campus
itself, etc., but every time you think of your daughter, only this one recording comes up and you worry about her.
Not only that, anyone you meet, you talk about how things are a mess in her dorm and how everyone exchanges
clothes and wears them! The recording itself is not the truth. But you choose to have it as your comfort zone. You
reinforce it.
Even your worry related to wealth is like this. If making money is the worry, then it clearly means, somewhere
laziness is pulling you back into the comfort of worry. If you discard laziness and move, you make money. There
are a million opportunities in today’s world to make money.
Drop Worry, pick up healthWhen you create more thoughts inside you through worry, the load on the navel region increases. It is from the
navel region that thoughts or worries arise. When you create more and more thoughts, you feel the heaviness in
your stomach. There is an energy center in the navel area called the manipuraka chakra’. This energy center starts
shrinking with the heaviness of worry.
This energy centre responds directly to worry, and affects the stomach. That is why when you worry about
something your stomach starts becoming uneasy. Or when you hear shocking news you say, ‘I can’t digest
it...’Any disturbing news causes your stomach to churn. The stomach is very sensitive to thoughts.
There was a doctor famous for his extraordinary and effective treatment of arthritis. He always had a waiting
room full of people.
There was a doctor famous for his extraordinary and effective treatment of arthritis. He always had a waiting
room full of people.
One day an old lady with her back badly bent walking entered the office with the aid of a stick. When her turn
came, she went into the doctor’s room and amazingly, came out within five minutes, walking completely erect
with her head high.
A woman in the waiting room ran to her and said, ’It’s a miracle! You walked in bent in half and now you are
walking erect! What did that doctor do?’
The old lady replied, ’He gave me a longer cane.’
Sometimes we are so used to living a certain way that we can’t see a better way to live. Worry is that habit that
keeps us from living to our full potential and invites disease into the body. Disease starts in the mind.
There are extreme forms of worry that may become habitual and slow down the functioning of the individual.
This form of worry is diagnosed as Generalized Anxiety Disorder, called GAD. It is much more than the normal
anxiety people experience day to day. According to research done by the National Institute of Mental Health in
the USA, GAD affects about 6.8 million adult Americans and about twice as many women as men.
How meditation helps
Once worry happens, we visit psychiatrists. The cause of worry is in the mind, not outside. Then how
will medicine alone help?
A large number of the people in the world visit psychiatrists for the treatment of worry. Medication is all right,
but for psychosomatic conditions like worry, meditation is also needed.
Meditation softens you. When you soften, love and gratitude start happening in you. Then slowly, there is no
room for worry. Worry is also a form of violence. It is a subtle form of violence. It is a disguised agitation in the
system.
Meditation also tremendously increases awareness. When awareness increases, outwardly you might be
completely involved in the outer world, but inwardly you will be untouched by anything that happens. That is the
real worry-free life.Excel Without Stress
Worry and stress are closely interrelated. They are like parent and child. One cannot exist without the other. What
works for one works for the other as well. However, given that stress is considered the biggest destroyer of health
in today’s world, it is worth going into more depth on this subject.
Four hundred years ago the French philosopher Rene Descartes declared, ‘I think, therefore I exist.’ This has
formed the basis of modern thinking. Billions of people in this world have followed Descartes for generations
believing that unless each one out thinks the other they cannot succeed in this world.
Descartes was right, and he was wrong. He was right in that the human system does not know how to live without
its mind, without thinking. As a result human beings become slaves to their minds. They live in bondage.
Many centuries before Descartes, a vedic sage declared that man does not begin to exist till he stops thinking. Adi
Shankara, at the age of eight, faced his future master across the waters of the holy Tungabhadra river. The master
asked him, ‘Who are you?’
In response Shankara said, ‘I am not the mind, I am not the intellect, I am not the ego and I am not the senses. I
am beyond all that. I am pure consciousness.’
We are merely a bio-machine as long as we think we are mind and body. We are just a shade better than the
animals we ascended from as long as we allow our senses to guide us. But the true potential of human beings is
not merely to think and prove that we are superior to animals. The purpose of human life is to transcend the mind
and ascend to a higher state of consciousness. In that state we are truly in the divinity that we descended from.
Till we reach that state of unity with what we truly are, we are in turmoil. This turmoil, this confusion between
our true nature and what we pretend |
human beings become slaves to their minds. They live in bondage.
Many centuries before Descartes, a vedic sage declared that man does not begin to exist till he stops thinking. Adi
Shankara, at the age of eight, faced his future master across the waters of the holy Tungabhadra river. The master
asked him, ‘Who are you?’
In response Shankara said, ‘I am not the mind, I am not the intellect, I am not the ego and I am not the senses. I
am beyond all that. I am pure consciousness.’
We are merely a bio-machine as long as we think we are mind and body. We are just a shade better than the
animals we ascended from as long as we allow our senses to guide us. But the true potential of human beings is
not merely to think and prove that we are superior to animals. The purpose of human life is to transcend the mind
and ascend to a higher state of consciousness. In that state we are truly in the divinity that we descended from.
Till we reach that state of unity with what we truly are, we are in turmoil. This turmoil, this confusion between
our true nature and what we pretend and strive to be is what we call stress or tension.
Mind is not a machine
According to vedic psychology, we are not disturbed. We are indeed the source of that disturbance. Understand
this well, you are not tensed but you are tension. You are not stressed but you are the source of stress. There is a
big difference between the two. Let us look deeply into it. Then you will understand. You are not in tension. You
are the tension. There is a very big difference between ‘you are disturbed’ and you are disturbance.
A group of reputed and experienced scientists, after doing research for many years, have now come up to say this.
They say: We cannot make man responsible for his actions unless we teach him how to manage his emotions by
managing what is happening inside him.
Whatever the vedic' scriptures said five thousand years ago is the same thing that the modern scientists are saying
now. These scriptures also provide the solution and answer for this age-old problem. They can bridge the gap
between the Western psychology and the vedic psychology.
Western psychology continuously gives us the hope that we can be brought back to normalcy, retaining I as I.
For example, if we are feeling hot in this room, we can fix the air conditioning and make it cool to be comfortable.
But we forget an important factor. The moment we bring air conditioning into this room, we need to maintain
that. That brings additional tension. That brings additional problems. Now we need electricity, we need to pay the
bills and for all these facilities we need money. When you go out to work, you no longer enjoy this room. The
room and its air conditioning exist, but you are elsewhere working to pay the bills for the air conditioner! We
forget an important factor. You as you are, is a disease. The concept of mind, according to Western psychology,
is a machine. According to vedic psychology, it is a process. Mind is not a machine but a process. It is constantly
happening. The word ’manas’, which is the Sanskrit word for mind, means a constant happening, something that
is not passive and dead but something that is dynamic and alive.Western psychology insists on this one idea that the mind is a biomechanical machine. We all believe
unconsciously that mind is matter, a thing or a machine. That is why constantly we connect all the past happenings
of the mind as a chain, and start believing our mind is a solid thing.
Connecting the Unconnected
Let me give you an example. The low mood that you experienced ten years ago, the low mood that you
experienced nine years ago, the low mood that you experienced eight years ago, the low mood that you
experienced seven years ago and the low mood that you experienced yesterday are completely unconnected and
independent incidents. All these happened for different purposes, different reasons, at different times and
situations. You connect all these unconnected incidents and say, My life itself is a depression.’
The low mood that you experienced years ago, months ago, weeks ago or days ago are all unconnected and
independent incidents. Fifteen years ago, you would have felt the low mood and felt depressed because your toys
were lost. Nine years ago, you would have felt depressed because your girlfriend was lost. Few years ago you
would have felt depressed or disturbed because your son was not listening to you. The reasons were different,
situations were different, and the cause was totally different. However, when you connect all these low moods
and decide, ‘My life is full of depression, you have created hell for yourself!
The moment you start believing that your life is depressed, your life indeed becomes depression. Please
understand that it is only what you believe to be your past that you will reproduce in future. We all know that we
can’t fly from our past experience. How can we believe that we can start flying from tomorrow onwards? No, we
can’t. Whatever we believe to be our past, only that we will believe can be our future. So once we start believing
that our past was filled with depression, we have created the unconscious faith that our future will also be
depression.
When we believe that the mind is just a thing, a bio-machine, we have created hell for ourselves. Fortunately for
us, the mind is not a thing. There is hope. The truth is that mind is not a thing as we all have been taught; it is a
process. It is not a noun but a verb.
When we believe the mind is a thing, be very clear, we create problems that do not exist.
A small story:
A man goes to a psychiatric doctor and says, ’Doctor my life is full of problems’. The doctor says, ’Everybody’s
life is a problem. Don’t worry. Every week we will have three sessions and you will be charged hundred dollars.’
The man says, ’Doctor three sessions per week each at hundred dollars will solve your problem. What about my
problem!’
Understand, the moment we start believing that the mind is only a machine, we become helpless. No psychiatrist
can help. No psychoanalyst can help. No other method can help, because the basic belief is wrong. The moment
we bring a wrong belief, whatever is built on that has to go wrong. It cannot be the truth. We need to understand
the basic truth that the mind is a process; we are not in tension but we are tension.
How do we decide?
Only about ten percent of what we perceive through our senses gets recorded in our conscious mind. Everything
else goes directly into our unconscious mind. This is why many times we do not even remember a place that we
pass every day. So long as this sensory perception does not interest us in some way it does not get recorded.
Let us now see what happens to those sensory perceptions that do get recorded in our conscious mind. These
impressions are sorted out by parts of our mind and identified. Your conscious mind records whether the person
you see in front of you is known to you or whether he is an unknown stranger. How you would like to interact
with him is no longer a decision made at the conscious level. In case you know him, your attitude towards him
and your action would be based on the engraved memories that are grooved in your mind. In case he is unknownto you also, the very appearance of that person would trigger unconscious responses. Either way the file moves
into your unconscious for a decision about what you should do.
For most of us, less than ten percent of the mind is conscious. Less than ten percent of what you perceive through
your senses gets recorded consciously. It is possible that less than one percent of what you decide is a rational
decision!
There are two ways we can regain control. The first is to reduce the conditioning that binds us. In our meditation
programs, we work on the removal and dissolution of these samskaras' that bind us. The second way is to be in
the present moment, in total awareness and control.
Transcend time - be in the present
Your thoughts are always about your past or your future. You can only think about what happened in the past or
what will happen in the future. Your thoughts of the past are usually regrets about what you did not do or guilt
about what you did. Thoughts of the future are about what you wish to do.
Please understand, neither the past nor the future is real. The past is dead and gone. Most often we do not even
learn from the past. All we try to do is use our past to steer the future. It is like driving a car looking only at the
rear view mirror! You know for sure where you will end up!
The future is even more unreal. It has not happened. You have very little control over your future the way you
are, because all your actions are steered by the unconscious mind. You are driven by the embedded memories of
your past. Your thoughts are nothing but the movement of your mind between past and future. Your mind never
wants to rest. If it rested you will know you can do without it!
If only you allowed the mind to rest or even persuaded your mind to rest, you will find that you reach a blissful
state. That state is the present moment. All your future has to happen in this present moment. It is what you decide
now in this present moment that makes your future. Once you take care of the present moment, once you live this
present moment consciously |
do or guilt
about what you did. Thoughts of the future are about what you wish to do.
Please understand, neither the past nor the future is real. The past is dead and gone. Most often we do not even
learn from the past. All we try to do is use our past to steer the future. It is like driving a car looking only at the
rear view mirror! You know for sure where you will end up!
The future is even more unreal. It has not happened. You have very little control over your future the way you
are, because all your actions are steered by the unconscious mind. You are driven by the embedded memories of
your past. Your thoughts are nothing but the movement of your mind between past and future. Your mind never
wants to rest. If it rested you will know you can do without it!
If only you allowed the mind to rest or even persuaded your mind to rest, you will find that you reach a blissful
state. That state is the present moment. All your future has to happen in this present moment. It is what you decide
now in this present moment that makes your future. Once you take care of the present moment, once you live this
present moment consciously, you no longer will have cause to regret your past or feel guilty about it.
The shaft in the center represents ‘time’. At any given time, the greater your TPS or Thoughts Per Second, the
more far-flung you are from consciousness of the present moment. You are simply worrying about the future thus
allowing it to slip into the past, without ever getting a glimpse of the present. When your TPS comes down, you
enter more and more into the present and when this happens, you have a clearer vision of the past and the future.
You may wonder what is there to be clear about the past. One can understand that the future may not be clear, but
why the past? I have lived it, so why should it be unclear! You need to understand that what you now remember
of the past is your judgment of the past, not the way it happened. How many times do we talk about the golden
past? How much has been written about the ‘golden past’! There is nothing golden about the past. We just choose
to remember the good parts, so it looks golden.
When you are in the intuitive state, be very clear: for those few moments, your TPS has dropped and you are more
in the present. When your TPS is zero, you can clearly see the entire past and future.
The point where the future meets the past is the present. This is where your thought frequency is zero and you are
in a no-mind state. You have not merely controlled or suppressed the mind, which is impossible. You have
transcended the mind, which is possible.
Meditation brings the mind to rest. Meditation disengages the mind so that the mind cannot play games. We can
also reach this state in the master’s presence. The master is always in a no-mind state, which is the zero TPS state.
When you are in his awareness, whether physically or otherwise, your own TPS also drops. You can reach zero
TPS just by being in the master’s presence. The presence of the master is meditation. Awareness of the master is
meditation.
Physiological effects of StressWe have looked at what the scriptures say and what I think about why stress is created. Let us now look at what
science says.
We all have a part of our brain that controls our actions such as breathing, digestion and such activities that the
body does automatically, involuntarily. Nature has designed a fail-safe system in a part of our brain called
hypothalamus. This part of the brain also includes what biologists refer to as the reptilian brain.
Behavioral scientists often talk about the fight or flight response. When the body-mind perceives a danger to our
survival the hypothalamus is alerted by our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind functions at speeds a million
times faster than the conscious mind. So even before we consciously become aware of danger, we instinctively
become alert. The hypothalamus activates the pituitary gland, the master gland, which then activates the adrenalin
glands that secrete the adrenalin hormone, which is pumped into our extremities, the hands and legs. We then get
ready for the ‘fight or flight’ reaction — either the energy prepares us to fight the threat or to run away from the
threat. The unconscious reptilian brain takes the decision to release chemicals into our body to protect us. This
worked very well in the days of the caveman when he faced lions and tigers. He had to be ready even without
thinking to fight or run away.
To study the effect of adrenalin on human beings today, experiments were carried out on athletes. Sprinters were
lined up at the starting block and moments before the pistol was raised to signal to them to start running the umpire
lowered his arm. So, the sprinters had to fall back and reposition themselves. This was repeated six times. Without
even running a meter the sprinters collapsed at the starting block! The adrenalin level in their bodies had become
dangerously high. The life saving adrenalin can become a killer when it is produced without reason.
The chances of our meeting a tiger or a lion are quite slim these days. Nevertheless our unconscious mind keeps
sending signals of such danger. These are called ‘fear strokes’. Psychologists estimate that we face at least half a
dozen such fear strokes every day. These fear strokes produce large quantities of adrenalin in us. It has been
established that depression is a direct result of such adrenalin production. Depression in turn is considered to be
the main cause of many chronic and fatal illnesses.
Medical research has found that many young people in rich countries, even teenagers, have arteries so badly
blocked that their arteries are similar to sixty-year-old people! Doctors have established that the physical condition
is only one part of the problem. A much larger part is the emotional condition. It is now fairly well established
that an emotional trigger causes the immediate onset of a heart attack or stroke, even though the physical condition
may have been present for a long time.
Is Stress work related?
In an IT company the Chief Executive received an enquiry for a project. He sent it down for a proposal. The team
that worked on such projects did a full review and said that they could do the job in six months at a cost of a
million dollars. The manager in charge of the team reviewed this and said the team can do this in 4 months at a
cost of three quarter million dollars.
The proposal went up to a General Manager. The General Manager called everyone, gave them a pep talk and
said, ’We should be able to do this for half a million dOllars frI three months.’ Then he sent this as his proposal
to the Chief Executive.
The Chief Executive called the client and told him that his company will deliver the product in two months at a
cost of half a million dollars.
People who work in corporations can relate with this incident. People who make decisions and commitments are
often out of touch with ground reality. Once such decisions are made their egos are in play. Anything can be
sacrificed but not the ego! A simple study of corporate history can show how many companies have failed because
of the egos of the people who led them.
I am told by some of my disciples in the corporate field about something called Level 5 Leadership. This is about
those corporate leaders who put themselves behind the needs of the company and the people who work for them
rather than placing their own ego needs first. Research has shown that the Chief Executives of companies that
have been commercially successful consistently are hardly known to the outside world! These leaders are so
humble, and focused inwards.Stress at the workplace starts with our education system. We start ranking children from a very young age. When
in a group three people are graded as heroes, the rest of the group feels useless. We are taught to compete from a
very early age. This comparison continues into the workplace and converts it into a battlefield.
The so-called Human Resource programs specify that people must be categorized. I am told that in many
corporations it is necessary to show that ten or fifteen percent of the people are bad performers. People are reduced
to statistics! In order to survive people are forced to make others victims. This is probably why they call these
offices ‘concrete jungles’ !
As long as people are driven by fear and greed, they cannot be inspired. They can be controlled and made to
perform routine tasks but they cannot be inspired to do the impossible. This is the dilemma today’s corporations
face. They need people to perform but their kit of motivational techniques is not enough. It contains the whip and
the carrot, nothing more.
A well known psychologist built a model of how human beings move up in their desires. This is now named after
him as Maslow’s’ hierarchy of needs. At the base of this pyramid are one’s survival needs of food, shelter and
other material essentials. People then look for fulfillment in the society they live in, such as building a network
and so on. They then seek love and attention. Then they look for respect, name and fame. After all this they are
still dissatisfied. They feel that there is something still missing in their lives.
That something is within. Maslow called it self-actualization. This is the zone where we flow free of stress. This
is the zone of inner realization. This is the zone where you know that you are one with the |
others victims. This is probably why they call these
offices ‘concrete jungles’ !
As long as people are driven by fear and greed, they cannot be inspired. They can be controlled and made to
perform routine tasks but they cannot be inspired to do the impossible. This is the dilemma today’s corporations
face. They need people to perform but their kit of motivational techniques is not enough. It contains the whip and
the carrot, nothing more.
A well known psychologist built a model of how human beings move up in their desires. This is now named after
him as Maslow’s’ hierarchy of needs. At the base of this pyramid are one’s survival needs of food, shelter and
other material essentials. People then look for fulfillment in the society they live in, such as building a network
and so on. They then seek love and attention. Then they look for respect, name and fame. After all this they are
still dissatisfied. They feel that there is something still missing in their lives.
That something is within. Maslow called it self-actualization. This is the zone where we flow free of stress. This
is the zone of inner realization. This is the zone where you know that you are one with the universal energy.
Whether you work at home, in an office or factory or you do not work at all, you still look forward to this state
where you are centered. This is what we teach in our basic Life Bliss Program courses. The five levels of the
pyramid that Maslow* drew correspond to the seven levels of energy that we carry within us. These seven centers
of energy are called chakras’ in the vedic system. Each chakra represents an emotional state as well as a state of
desire. As we fulfill the needs of each chakra we move up in energy till we reach a state of fulfillment. It is a
process many thousands of people have gone through with remarkable effect. We have taught these programs in
many corporations worldwide. I call this a ‘Guaranteed Solution’.
Meditation technique
This is a simple and yet a powerful technique to clear stress. We teach this technique in our Life Bliss Programs
for unblocking the manipuraka chakra’ or navel energy center, which is the seat of stress. This technique should
always be practised before a meal, when the stomach is empty and a few hours before sleep.
While standing, shout, scream, rave and rant in a language that you do not know. If anyone is listening, it should
also not make any sense to them. Be aggressive in letting out all your emotions and feelings that will start pouring
out of you once you start. Cry if you so wish. Roll on the floor if your emotions drive you.
This technique is a powerful meditation. It unblocks your unconscious and allows all the negativities stored inside
to dissolve. Typical psychoanalytical sessions when patients talk to their analysts, or even throw things around
for catharsis, are still conscious processes. Only ten percent of your stored memories will be released. Processes
such as hypnosis are through the unconscious and you have no control. This technique is a superconscious process
in which you retain awareness while cleansing yourself.
Practice this technique for twenty minutes. Then sit down and allow the energy to spread within you in silence
for ten minutes. During this silence just be a witness to your thoughts. Do not suppress them or chase them.Face Your Fears and Be Free
What is Fear? Fear is a deeper dimension of worry. Worry can cause ulcers. Fear on the other hand can even
destroy life. However, unlike worry without which life is possible, fear seems woven into our lives. It is possible
to face fear without fear. A person who we call courageous is not one without fear, but one who has learnt to face
fear without fear. Fear is a form of energy inside us. That is why it cannot be destroyed. Energy can neither be
created nor destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another. Understand, your fear is directly
connected to your life energy. Whenever you are facing a survival threat, you will see your fear rising and the
adrenalin release happening in your body. That adrenalin release gives you so much energy that you can almost
fly. We call it the fight or flight response; either you face the fear and fight, or you run away. There will be so
much energy in your body the moment you face a survival threat. Whenever that threat is real, the swadhishthāna
chakra, the seat of life, gets completely shaken! Big Bang and Black Hole inside you When there is pure desire
or pure greed in you without any object in particular, it becomes the overflowing energy of creation, expansion,
or Big Bang! For no reason, you simply explode with energy. In the same way, when there is pure fear in you
without any object in particular, it becomes contraction, black hole. Fear is your nature, but don’t direct it towards
any object. Having fear is natural. But connecting the fear to an object is societal. Pure fear helps in survival and
it is spontaneous. Enormous energy radiating from you for no reason is pure greed. If it is because of an object, it
becomes ordinary greed. In the same way, energy settling back within you for no reason is pure fear. If it is
because of an object, it becomes ordinary fear. Unless the black hole happens, the Big Bang cannot happen. It is
part of life, part of the drama, part of the game. Pure fear means you are relaxing into yourself, settling inside you.
That is what we call destruction. The birth of this cosmos is the Big Bang, and death is the black hole*. Birth of
your being is a big bang for you. Death of your being is black hole for you. The inhaling breath is pure desire.
The exhaling breath is pure fear. Prana – the life energy that enters along with the air - goes into you because of
the Big Bang. Prana leaving your system with the outgoing air is the black hole. When you resist or fight with the
Big Bang or black hole, you create disturbance in your system. When fear happens, when the black hole happens,
it means that you are turning towards peace or getting ready for the Big Bang. Whenever pure fear happens, you
become rejuvenated with a tremendous relaxation which surges as courage and energy in you!
Fight between your potentiality and
your negative approach
Whenever you are afraid of losing something that you have, or you fear you cannot achieve something that you
want to have, there is a fight going on between your potentiality and your negative approach to the future. If you
are sure there is no possibility of achieving something, that you don’t have the potentiality, you will not have fear.
If you are sure that you can achieve something, then also, you don’t have fear. Fear is the fight between faith and
belief in oneself on one hand, versus the negative idea or expectation you have about your future on the other
hand. You are literally fighting with your own positive and negative energies. If you are very sure you don’t have
the potentiality that you can’t achieve, then you won’t have fear. If you are very confident you are going to
achieve, then also you won’t have fear. However, if there is something you want to achieve, but you are not sure
that you can achieve it, then you will have fear. The fight between these two ideas, the dilemma is what we call
fear. There are two ways to escape fear. One way is to block all possibility. This means you can die, then there
won’t be any more fear! The second way to escape fear is to break the boundary of possibilities. If there is infinite
possibility, if there is no boundary, if there is nothing that limits you, then you become fearless. Just by having
this understanding, something will click in you and so many fears will disappear from your being!Increased possibility for
enlightenment
People come and say to me, ‘I have too many fears. What can I do?’ I tell them, ‘If you have too many fears, the
possibility for enlightenment is more. So many doors are available to you!’ For a person who doesn’t have too
many fears, the possibility, the number of doors is also fewer because he leads a dull life. A person who leads a
dull life will not have much fear. He has nothing much to lose, nothing much to decide. He is not taking many
risks. All you need to do is this: every time you feel fear, do not disrespect yourself. Do not lose confidence or
condemn yourself thinking, ‘What kind of a being am I?’ Actually people who can face their fears do not have so
many problems. People who are afraid of their fears create more problems for themselves. When you brood too
much about your fears, you start thinking you have problems. Sometimes, just by switching your attention to
something else, you can come out of fear. But that is not fearlessness. Fearlessness means taking a quantum jump
into the consciousness where you will never experience fear of losing anything! Be very clear: the fears that you
have about your life - fear of failure, fear of losing your near and dear ones, fear of losing your wealth, fear of the
unknown - every fear can be used as a door to enlightenment. Another important truth you should know: There is
something within you that never dies which is your source of energy. There is also something within you that
dies; something that is actually never alive, even now. The fear of death exists in you because you think there is
something you have |
much to decide. He is not taking many
risks. All you need to do is this: every time you feel fear, do not disrespect yourself. Do not lose confidence or
condemn yourself thinking, ‘What kind of a being am I?’ Actually people who can face their fears do not have so
many problems. People who are afraid of their fears create more problems for themselves. When you brood too
much about your fears, you start thinking you have problems. Sometimes, just by switching your attention to
something else, you can come out of fear. But that is not fearlessness. Fearlessness means taking a quantum jump
into the consciousness where you will never experience fear of losing anything! Be very clear: the fears that you
have about your life - fear of failure, fear of losing your near and dear ones, fear of losing your wealth, fear of the
unknown - every fear can be used as a door to enlightenment. Another important truth you should know: There is
something within you that never dies which is your source of energy. There is also something within you that
dies; something that is actually never alive, even now. The fear of death exists in you because you think there is
something you have now that will be taken away from you. No! Anything that you have now cannot be taken
away. Anything that can be taken away, you never had in the first place. Anything that can die can never occupy
your inner space.
Fearlessness is courage to face Fear
You cannot conquer fear. Fearlessness means intelligence to live the intense fear without directing it towards any
object. When there is no object to be afraid of, the intense fear will give such an intense relaxation and peace.
Fear is a powerful energy which gives a deep relaxation, self-centeredness. The fear center is the rejuvenation
center. Be very clear: fearlessness does not mean non-existence of fear. It means the fear is there, but you have
tremendous energy or courage to live with it and face it. Fearlessness means having the energy or the courage to
live even with the maximum fear – going beyond that fear and being neither attached to nor detached from the
fear. One more important thing you should know is fear is part of the nature of life. You can be fearless if you are
already in your grave! Then there is no need to be afraid of anything because you have nothing to lose! If you
have something to lose, you will have fear. That is the nature of life itself. Fear does not exist when things are
definite and known. Fear exists only when things are not definite, when they are mere possibilities and unknown
in that sense. For example, death is a possibility. As an incident it is definite, but when and how it might happen,
is not clear. So there is always fear associated with it. If you can just look into the darkness, the fear, with
awareness, you will live through it and get over it.
Fear of losing identity
The biggest fear human beings have is the fear of losing their identity. Even the fear of losing one’s life is not as
great as the fear of losing the identity. The fear of losing your identity is much worse than the fear of death.
Fear of deathAll our fears – losing physical health, mental stability, wealth, name and fame, or loved ones - are actually fear
of death under various disguises. The social fear – fear of being rejected by society – makes us do things to please
society, even when it is not good for us. In this process, many times, we sacrifice what our being really wants to
do. That fear of not being accepted by society is just another form of the fear of death – death of the ego. Every
act of ours is unconsciously related to death and the fear of dying. Understanding death can change your entire
perception of life. It can simply transform the way you handle all your fears.
Anger – the active form of Fear
Fear is what leads to anger. Fear is the passive form of the energy while anger is the active expression. When you
are angry, just look into the anger. At the root of it, you will find a deep fear. Try this for yourself: if you are
feeling fear, express anger at that time. Throw your hands, stamp your feet – express the energy. You will see the
fear disappears. You will see for yourself how fear can simply transform to anger. Similarly, fear can also
transform to hate. You just need to be aware of yourself and witness how the emotions subtly change from one
form to another. When you understand this play, you can easily get out of the game.
Fear strokes
Psychologists talk about fear strokes. Say you are walking in the garden in the dark, and you see a coil of rope -
you start shivering, imagining it to be a snake. That sudden shock you get before realizing it is just a rope and not
a snake, is what is called a fear stroke. A fear stroke is like shaking a rose plant from its roots - if you keep shaking
it long enough, it will die. It is said that we undergo six to twelve fear strokes every day and night, in dreams and
also in wakefulness. Imagine what happens to our being! Fear strokes originate from unconsciousness. When they
are viewed with awareness and consciousness, they can be substantially reduced.
How to Overcome Fear
Witnessing and acceptance
When you are faced with fear, don’t try to resist it or suppress it. Just look at the fear, note the fear and accept it.
Acceptance of the fear dissolves the fear. Allow the fear to shake you. If your body trembles, let it tremble. If
your eyes water, let the tears come. Just be like a blade of grass in the wind - bending without resistance. If you
can face your fears, you see they have no depth. Because you magnify the fears, you imagine them to be an abyss.
It is your choice, to let go of the branch, the fear, or to keep clinging onto it and torturing yourself. Acceptance is
the only way to conquer inevitable things. When you accept, suddenly you see the fear disappear. The moment
you accept, fear loses its power to frighten you. When you don’t fight with it, you will see fear as deep peace.
When the fear stroke happens, just live it. That is the only way. When you have an object connected to fear, accept
it. That acceptance transforms. The more you fight, the more you empower fear. Diverting your attention away
from the fear is also not the way because then the fear still remains with you. It does not mean that you are out of
fear. Allow the fear to take over itself. Go into the fear two to three times. Live the fear intensely without any
reservations. Suddenly you will find that it doesn’t touch you anymore!
Fear is associated with the swadhishthāna chakra, the subtle energy center two inches below the navel region.
VisualizationA very powerful way of overcoming fear is to visualize going through that fear as clearly as you can. The beauty
with this technique is that it can be used when you are not in the fear situation, when you are calm and able to
handle yourself. You can sit by yourself and visualize the situation that causes fear. Feel clearly the fear coming
up in you; face the fear with deep awareness. If you suffer, if your body feels uncomfortable, it is fine. Don’t
suppress the fear, just allow it to happen. When you experience something completely, you drop it.
Meditation Techniques
1. Hamsa Mantra
This is a very powerful technique that can be used twenty-four hours a day. Whenever you are attacked by fear,
just sit back and relax. Put your awareness only on your exhaling breath. Repeat the word ‘sah’ silently as you
exhale; that is, with the outgoing breath. Exhaling is like relaxing and letting go anything that can die. While
inhaling you will be constantly trying to hold on to something. Exhaling is like letting go. Focus on exhaling
without bothering about inhaling. When you inhale, repeat ‘ham’ silently. Place more awareness and energy on
the exhalation. Help yourself exhale deeper. Let the inhalation happen automatically through the body. Place your
energy, attention and effort only on exhaling. It is a silent intonation of ‘ham…sah…., ham…sah’. Silent
intonation of this hamsa mantra will suddenly take you into the awareness, the relaxation that never dies. Whatever
can die will leave your system, your inner space. This technique can also be practiced at other times when you
are not faced by fear - while you are sitting, talking, walking, eating, even while you are sleeping. It is a very
powerful technique. Constantly, all twenty four hours, place your attention on exhaling and just intone the hamsa
mantra silently – ‘hamsah’, ‘hamsah’, ‘hamsah’. When you inhale, intone ‘ham’ and when you exhale, intone
‘sah’. Understand, when constantly intoning this mantra, it will become ajapa japa - chanting without effort.
Chanting with effort is called japa. Chanting without effort is ajapa. It means that which goes on automatically in
you. You just need to intone, that’s all. Fall in tune, that’s all. The whole day it will be resounding within you.
Whatever can die will leave your system, and you will realize whatever can die can never be part of you. If you
are identifying yourself |
ah’. Silent
intonation of this hamsa mantra will suddenly take you into the awareness, the relaxation that never dies. Whatever
can die will leave your system, your inner space. This technique can also be practiced at other times when you
are not faced by fear - while you are sitting, talking, walking, eating, even while you are sleeping. It is a very
powerful technique. Constantly, all twenty four hours, place your attention on exhaling and just intone the hamsa
mantra silently – ‘hamsah’, ‘hamsah’, ‘hamsah’. When you inhale, intone ‘ham’ and when you exhale, intone
‘sah’. Understand, when constantly intoning this mantra, it will become ajapa japa - chanting without effort.
Chanting with effort is called japa. Chanting without effort is ajapa. It means that which goes on automatically in
you. You just need to intone, that’s all. Fall in tune, that’s all. The whole day it will be resounding within you.
Whatever can die will leave your system, and you will realize whatever can die can never be part of you. If you
are identifying yourself with something that can die, that identification will be disconnected and you will be
unclutched. Whatever can never die, you will feel connected to that. Whatever cannot die is your very being. Try
this technique for just three days. You will suddenly see that the fear of losing your wealth, parts of your body or
your health, or your near and dear ones, or the fear of the unknown
– all the fears will disappear. When you put your awareness on exhaling, whatever is occupying your inner space
as a part of you that can die, will simply leave your inner space. You will be liberated.Pain is a great teacher
Often, fear manifests itself as pain. The most frightening thing in the world is pain. All living beings are afraid of
one thing, and that is pain. If you look deeply, you will find that people don’t fear even death as much as they fear
the pain and agony they will undergo at the time of death! Many are afraid of poverty, many of relationships, and
many others fear disease. The root cause of all these fears is the pain that happens while going through these
things. All these fears are because of the fear of pain.
What is Pain
Pain can be physical, mental or emotional. Physical pain is a basic necessity for the body. Just imagine, if we
could feel no pain in our body we might accidentally hurt ourselves or start styling our faces, hands, and legs the
way we style our hair today! Actually, pain is a letter of request, written by the body to the mind, saying, ‘Please
pay attention to me!’ because attention is energy. When attention is given to a particular area, that attention
becomes energy for that area. When the body communicates pain, it is actually asking for attention or energy,
which will help it heal. Mental or emotional pain is the psychological feeling that arises when you are faced with
something you don’t like. Research shows that emotional pain can deeply disturb the physical body. For example,
the psychological feelings that arise with sexual repression can result in lower back disorders, or the pain of
shouldering too much responsibility can cause pain in the shoulders. Whether physical or emotional pain, an
important thing you need to understand is that pain is always born from resistance to the present moment.
Time Vs Understanding
If a painful incident happens in one’s life – the loss of a child, the husband or wife leaving the spouse, the breakup
of a close friendship – one suffers, but slowly accepts it over time. One may cry and brood many days and nights,
but then one comes to accept what happened. Time heals. It is a common saying. Understand that time is needed
for healing only because you were not ready to face the pain and suffering in a conscious and aware manner at
the time the incident happened. If you can just look at the pain, if you can witness the emotion with awareness
and see the play of the mind while experiencing pain, then the understanding dawns and instant healing happens.
Time is needed because you are not ready to have the understanding. So you suffer a great deal. Over time, after
some weeks, months, or even years, the incident fades and becomes a distant memory. However, the pain is not
completely gone from your system. If you come across a person who even distantly reminds you of your lost child
or husband, it comes up. For example, if the person has a similar style of talking, walking, or laughing, the wound
reopens. It hurts because you carry the memory of the past. Because of this, you feel life is too heavy a burden to
bear. You choose to hold onto your entire past: when you were a child, when you were a teenager, when you first
went to work. You hold onto all the stages of life with all the experiences, pains, and mistakes. That burden and
load of your emotions associated with the past, is what causes you pain every time you experience it. If you decide
to drop the past and look at every situation with a fresh perspective, then you will not have so much pain. You
will heal instantly. You will not need so much time.
Pain and pleasure – two sides of the
same coinThe root of pain and pleasure are the same. It is the same sensation with two names. It is like this: two people
receive a body massage from the same person. One concludes that it was a beautiful rejuvenating process while
the other decided that it hurt! The same massage will appear like pain or pleasure depending on the person
receiving it. Life has both of these opposites – pleasure and pain. Both pleasure and pain are from the mind. The
mind always moves from one extreme to the other. It rarely falls into the middle path. From pleasure you move
to pain, from pain you move to pleasure. As we saw earlier, pleasure and pain are completely dependent on the
person feeling the pleasure or pain. Something may seem like pleasure to you while the same experience may be
painful to someone else.
In the Bhagavad Gita, the great scripture that teaches the various paths to Self realization, the enlightened master
Krishna says beautifully, ‘He who regards alike pleasure and pain, and looks on a lump of earth, a stone, and a
piece of gold with an equal eye, who is wise and holds praise and blame to be the same, who is unchanged in
honor and dishonor, and who treats friend and foe alike, is said to have gone beyond the modes of nature. Pleasure
and pain are the same to him and he is ready for enlightenment.’
Free yourself from pleasure and
pain
Buddha, an enlightened master, says, ‘Free yourself from both pleasure and pain.’ Craving for pleasure and
nursing pain are both different aspects of the same experience. Both are chains. Pain may look like an ugly chain
and pleasure a beautiful chain. Just as the day follows night and night follows day, pain and pleasure will always
follow each other. When you understand that pleasure and pain are both creations of the mind, you will realize
that they are both temporary, they come and go like soap bubbles. Nobody is needed to take away your pleasure,
because your mind by its very nature will move like a pendulum to the other extreme called pain! The only way
is to go beyond both pleasure and pain. This doesn’t mean suppressing pleasure or forgetting about pain. It is an
awareness that transforms pain to bliss – the energy that exists no matter what the external situation may be. Bliss
is your very nature and cannot be lost. Just because of your resistance to what is happening, you feel pain and
your natural bliss is forgotten.
Awareness in Pain
Pain, whether physical, mental, or emotional, has only a negative existence like darkness. Darkness exists only in
the absence of light. As such, it has no positive existence of its own. In the same way, pain exists only in the
absence of awareness. Just as darkness disappears automatically when light is brought into a room, pain dissolves
automatically when the energy of your awareness is focused on it. Any mental or emotional pain that you carry is
just the tip of the iceberg. You need to go into the root where it starts. You need to work on the root cause for it
and heal it. Otherwise, there is a distinct danger that you will inflict that pain on someone else or hurt yourself
more with it. I always tell people, ‘If you have pain, just drop everything and work on it. See that its root is healed.
Only then you can be in a safe zone. Otherwise neither you nor the people living around you are in a safe zone.’
When you face any pain with awareness you become aware that you are not just the body. You become aware
that no pain can touch the real ‘you’. Once you realize that you are beyond pain, you rise above pain to become a
dukkha ateeta* (one who has gone beyond suffering). You experience the rare freedom that arises with non-
attachment to the body. You will carry this freedom all your life. You leave mundane life behind and enter into a
spiritual plane. The whole material world disappears and another world arises, one of incomparable beauty,
innocence, joy and compassion. The pain will evaporate of its own accord when you see the nature and cause of
pain with intense inner clarity because the clarity evaporates the reasons for the pain to exist in you. This
realization brings with it a state of absolute bliss, which is the state |
Otherwise, there is a distinct danger that you will inflict that pain on someone else or hurt yourself
more with it. I always tell people, ‘If you have pain, just drop everything and work on it. See that its root is healed.
Only then you can be in a safe zone. Otherwise neither you nor the people living around you are in a safe zone.’
When you face any pain with awareness you become aware that you are not just the body. You become aware
that no pain can touch the real ‘you’. Once you realize that you are beyond pain, you rise above pain to become a
dukkha ateeta* (one who has gone beyond suffering). You experience the rare freedom that arises with non-
attachment to the body. You will carry this freedom all your life. You leave mundane life behind and enter into a
spiritual plane. The whole material world disappears and another world arises, one of incomparable beauty,
innocence, joy and compassion. The pain will evaporate of its own accord when you see the nature and cause of
pain with intense inner clarity because the clarity evaporates the reasons for the pain to exist in you. This
realization brings with it a state of absolute bliss, which is the state of enlightenment.Pain – A phenomenon of the mind
‘Phantom’ Pain
There have been recorded instances of ‘phantom pain’ which is pain in a part of the body that does not exist. Once
in the Second World War, a soldier’s leg had to be amputated because it was badly damaged. The strange thing
was that when he became conscious again he was still complaining about the pain in the leg. He was covered with
a blanket so he had no idea that the leg had been removed. The blanket was removed and he was shown that his
leg was not there anymore. He was shocked! Further research then showed that each part of the body is related to
a certain part of the brain. When a certain part of the body feels pain, the corresponding brain center shows
activity. In this case, the related brain center was still vibrating in the same way it was vibrating when the leg was
a part of the body. There are many such instances of people who feel pain in the empty space where their limbs
were amputated. This is called ‘phantom pain’.
Placebo effect
The mind has tremendous influence over the body. Even the perception of physical pain can be changed by the
mind. In science they call it the ‘placebo effect’ when a simple sugar pill gives the same effect as a painkiller, just
because the person is made to believe that the sugar pill is a painkiller! The other day, I was reading about research
done at the University of Michigan in the USA that appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research was
done on a group of young men who agreed to let researchers inject their jaw muscles with a concentrated saline
solution, causing pain. The brain’s response to the pain was studied using PET (Positron Emission Tomography)
scans that showed the activity of the body’s natural painkillers, called endorphins. In one scan, the men were told
they were being given a painkiller but actually what was given was just a placebo – a substance that had no
painkilling properties. Then they were asked to rate the intensity of the pain they felt on a scale of 0 to 100. Also,
the PET scan would indicate the brain activity related to pain. The researchers were able to study both the response
of the brain and what the men actually felt. The amazing observation was that when the men were given a placebo,
meaning not a painkiller but just a neutral substance, the pain they felt was actually less. It was as if they had been
given the painkiller itself! The PET scans indicated that the endorphin (natural painkiller) system in the brain was
activated.Desire is a Dynamic Energy
Fear and desire are the fundamental energies that drive our lives. We act either out of a desire to achieve something
or reach somewhere, or out of a fear of not wanting to experience something. Attraction and repulsion are not
merely forces of molecules, but also essential to human behavior.
Recognize Your True Desires
One of the major driving forces in human life is desire. If you look into your life, you can see most of the time we
are driven by either desire or fear. We have so many desires and many times we feel we don’t have energy to
fulfill them. According to the Jain tradition, the Divine sends us with enough energy and capacity to fulfill all our
desires. But most of us don’t feel this way. Why? There is a difference between our true desires and ‘borrowed’
desires. Our true desires are called our ‘needs’. Borrowed desires are called our ‘wants’. We have enough energy
to fulfill our true desires or needs. What are our true desires? During the Life Bliss Program Level 2 (Nithyananda
Spurana Program), we have a session where people are asked to make a list of their desires, their needs and wants.
Then they meditate on these desires. At the end of the meditation, I ask them to recollect from memory their list
of desires. What they can recollect is usually a fraction of what they have written! It is as if they started with a
large tree full of leaves, their desires, and during this meditation the tree sheds almost all its leaves, as if the leaves
were dried and dead. What leaves the tree retains glow like golden leaves. If you can understand which desire is
innate and which is accumulated, spiritual growth happens automatically. When our desires are our own true
desires, when they reflect our real needs, when they express themselves in our inner energy, we don’t feel any
desperation about trying to achieve them. The realization comes that, as a matter of natural course of events, these
desires will be fulfilled.
The true desire for fulfillment
When you have a headache, you are not comfortable with that state - because you know that it is not your true
nature. Your true nature is having no headache. In the same way, when you have some desire, you immediately
want to come out of it - because deep fulfillment is your very nature and desire causes an imbalance in that
fulfillment.
Two important truths you need to understand:
1. Your whole life is a long chain of events performed towards the one goal that is fulfillment. Whatever you
may do, whether it is eating or drinking or having relationships, wealth or joy, it is all to experience fulfillment.
In different directions you seek fulfillment instead of seeking it directly.
2. Fulfillment is within you, it is your very nature. That is why you are trying to come out of non-fulfillment.
The fact that you are searching for fulfillment means that fulfillment is known to you. Otherwise you would not
search for it! In the instances in your life when you have felt some fulfillment, there is also a hope that you will
experience it again. That is why you extend your life.
Desire, knowledge and actionThe desire that is pure and not directed towards any particular object or person is simply an overflowing
energy that is called iccha shakti or the ‘desire energy’. From the navel, energy comes as pure energy.
In the heart region, this energy gets converted to the power of desire. This further gets converted into
words in the throat region. When this energy gets converted into words, it is called oak or the ‘speech
energy’. To give an analogy, the energy that comes from the navel is like loose cotton. The cotton
becomes thread in the throat region. Or you can imagine it this way: the energy that comes from the
navel is like molten iron. The throat is like a forge where the product is formed! Anyhow, the speech
energy moves further to the brain. There it stays as knowledge or gets converted into a command. In
the brain, the energy could stay as the power of knowledge or gnana shakti. For example, the desire
energy related to the body can become knowledge of the body. The other option is, the words get
converted to a command and get executed as well. The command goes to the entire body and moves
you. This is called the power of action or kriya shakti. For example, the desire energy related to your
body can express as the power of action like moving your body. Pure iccha shakti or desire energy
which comes from your being gets converted in the throat region to gnana shakti - power of knowledge
and kriya shakti - power of action. If the energy is not processed and channeled properly, the knowledge
and action become disconnected from the power of the pure desire energy. The knowledge and action
should be in tune with the desire energy. Then it forms a virtuous circle of desire leading to better
knowledge and action, which in turn leads to clearer desires! Let us say you have a desire to make a
million dollars. If it gets converted properly as knowledge, you will have a clear plan and do the right
actions to become a millionaire. If the desire energy gets converted as too much knowledge and less
action, then you will end up only thinking more and more, building castles in the air. On the other hand,
if the desire energy gets converted as too much action and less knowledge, then you will end up working
blindly. For example, you may work really hard like driving a truck from Los Angeles to New York,
but can you become a millionaire this way? There is action but not the right knowledge. So the proper
conversion of the desire to knowledge and action has to happen |
energy
which comes from your being gets converted in the throat region to gnana shakti - power of knowledge
and kriya shakti - power of action. If the energy is not processed and channeled properly, the knowledge
and action become disconnected from the power of the pure desire energy. The knowledge and action
should be in tune with the desire energy. Then it forms a virtuous circle of desire leading to better
knowledge and action, which in turn leads to clearer desires! Let us say you have a desire to make a
million dollars. If it gets converted properly as knowledge, you will have a clear plan and do the right
actions to become a millionaire. If the desire energy gets converted as too much knowledge and less
action, then you will end up only thinking more and more, building castles in the air. On the other hand,
if the desire energy gets converted as too much action and less knowledge, then you will end up working
blindly. For example, you may work really hard like driving a truck from Los Angeles to New York,
but can you become a millionaire this way? There is action but not the right knowledge. So the proper
conversion of the desire to knowledge and action has to happen. The reason why this conversion doesn’t
happen properly is lack of awareness. When you are honest and integrated with the desire, there is no
conflict and the conversion happens properly.
The power of love
You might have even experienced some incidents like this in your life. A girl who is afraid to cross a
busy street, if she sees her child run across the road will just jump onto the road to save the child without
a thought about her own safety. We should understand how she has lost her fear all of a sudden. The
reason is that the love for her child has awakened the dimension of motherliness in her. It is the same
thing with every relationship of love. If the feeling of love blossoms in somebody, immediately all the
fear will leave the person’s inner space. Understand, love has tremendous power and so does lust. If
you have a lot of energy in your muladhara chakra, it will override the other chakras immediately. There
will not be any fear in your swadhishthana chakra„ and there will not be any worries in your manipuraka
chakra. These higher chakras will not work when the muladhara chakra has the full power. Without the
person’s knowledge, it will unleash the latent unknown potential in him. It will spread his potential to
the outer world too. If you have a son or daughter, then the dimension of motherliness will be awakened
in you. If your mind is ready to receive the experience of different dimensions, those dimensions will
blossom in you. If you are completely open-minded, every person you meet in your life will cause you
to blossom further. But if you are egoistic, even your spouse or your lover cannot cause you to blossom.
Please understand, you have a great responsibility to create an open and non- egoistic mind before
entering into a relationship such as between husband and wife or between lovers. Then the very feeling
will transform you eternally. If this eternal transformation does not happen, you miss a major dimension
of your life. Why are we not able to feel true love? It is because of our samskaras, our emotional
attachment to the past memories. Your inner space is filled with too many things related to the past.
So your inner space is not available to the present moment. You can only love or feel connected to the
people or objects falling in tune with the past memories you loved. If you can drop the emotional
attachments to the past, suddenly you will see you have so much of inner space available to you. You
can then directl open up to anybody who is in front of you w1t hout asking for his or her past.Lust to love
Lust is a primal emotion provided by nature for continuation of the species. To go beyond lust is the
first major step in realizing the ultimate potential of human life. Humans are forever confused between
love and lust. They think only animals are lustful. Actually, only animals are capable of pure lust when
they mate! Humans, with their rationalization, can neither be lustful nor loving. That is why they feel
dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Sex is carbon, love is diamond. Sex is mud and love is the lotus that blooms
in the mud. It is the same substance — the only thing is, you should know how to process it. Just drop
your expectations, and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy.
Discover the man and woman inside
you
Today, we know biologically that no man is 100% man, and no woman is 100% woman. A man may
be 51% man and 49% woman. Likewise, a woman may be 51% woman, and 49% man; just a difference
of 1%, may be more. You have taken birth from the energies of your father and mother. Then, how can
you be only male or only female? Whether we accept it or not, we are an embodiment of both male and
female energies. We are whole, not divided. Right from the moment of birth, society labels you as either
male or female. And it expects you to start behaving accordingly. Inherent human nature is fulfillment.
She starts looking to the outside world for a substitute for her own lost half. The male child starts
searching for a female presence, and the female child for a male presence. This is where the whole idea
of sex starts. The search starts with the idea of how our ‘would-be’ should be.
A small story:
One 90-year old man used to sit every day at the beach from morning to evening, watching people
going by. Another man who noticed this went up to him and asked him, ‟What do you actually do sitting
here everyday? ‟The old man replied, ‟I am searching for a woman to be my wife.‟ The man was
simply shocked at this reply and asked him, ‟Why did you not search in your youth? ‟The old man
replied, ‟I have been searching since I was 30 years old.‟ The man was astonished and asked him,
‟What sort of a woman are you searching for?‟He replied, ‟I am searching for a prefect woman.”
‟The man asked, ‟You havent found one yet?‟ ‟I found one woman who matched what I had in mind
but it didn‟t work out well with her replied the old man. The man asked why. The old man replied, ‟She
was searching for a perfect man!”
This is what happens when we try to get a perfect match for the image that we carry inside us. But after
a long search, we suddenly find a person who seems to match our mental image — from a distance.
What happens at this point is what is called falling in love’. This is the science behind falling in love.
Note that it is always ‘falling’ in love, never ‘rising’ in love! Because of our own strong needs and
expectations, we see things as we want to see them. As long as this distance is maintained, things go on
smoothly. We continue to project our imagination upon each other. But, as the person slowly comes
closer we find that fantasy and reality are totally different. We need to understand that no living person
can live up to the image we carry in our minds simply because the image is not built from reality! No
image can be matched with reality, because at the end of the day, it is only an image, a fantasy!
The ultimate alchemy
What is alchemy? The process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is
alchemy. In the same way, when our being is ripe the base feeling of lust transforms to love, the highest
emotion we are capable of. In the same way, remove the impurity of your fantasies, add the purity offriendliness in your relationship and process this with your patience. In the beginning, people may not
be able to understand the change in you. Just continue with belief and confidence in yourself. Your
sincerity and strength has no way but to touch others around you positively. Add friendliness to love.
As of now, our lust is deep-rooted violence to possess the other person. Add friendliness to the
relationship. Welcome the partner as he or she is; do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept
the mind, body and being as it is. Then you can see lust turns to love and your being is in eternal bliss.
Love adds life even to the person. With love the person is a spirit, life! Without love the person is
reduced to a thing, utility! Without love, when you look at a beautiful man or woman and plan for what
you can get out of that person, you reduce him or her to a thing. Only when you look at that person with
love, the person is a spirit, a living being. Celibacy is nothing but not craving for the suppressed half
that is inside you, that’s all. If you are a male, you need to experience such fulfillment unto yourself
that you no longer miss the suppressed half or female inside you. If you are a female, you are so enough
unto yourself that you don’t look outside to experience this fulfillment. When you achieve this
fulfillment, whether you are married or not, there will be peace in your mind. It is then |
our lust is deep-rooted violence to possess the other person. Add friendliness to the
relationship. Welcome the partner as he or she is; do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept
the mind, body and being as it is. Then you can see lust turns to love and your being is in eternal bliss.
Love adds life even to the person. With love the person is a spirit, life! Without love the person is
reduced to a thing, utility! Without love, when you look at a beautiful man or woman and plan for what
you can get out of that person, you reduce him or her to a thing. Only when you look at that person with
love, the person is a spirit, a living being. Celibacy is nothing but not craving for the suppressed half
that is inside you, that’s all. If you are a male, you need to experience such fulfillment unto yourself
that you no longer miss the suppressed half or female inside you. If you are a female, you are so enough
unto yourself that you don’t look outside to experience this fulfillment. When you achieve this
fulfillment, whether you are married or not, there will be peace in your mind. It is then that you can be
celibate even in married life! This is true celibacy.Meditation Technique
Dukkha Harana Meditation
Total duration: 30 minutes
This meditation technique will bring out all the suppressed emotions in you.
Breathing is very closely related to the mind. If your thinking is calm, your breath will be relaxed. If
your thinking is aggressive, your breathing will also be aggressive.
You may practice this technique on an empty stomach, preferably in the morning. 21 days of
Dukkhaharana will transform your being and bring a glow to your face and body.
Step 1: 10 minutes
Stand with your eyes closed. In the first part of this meditation, your mental system is made fully
alive by deep breathing. This energy will melt all the repressed emotions like melting ice.
Breathe deeply and chaotically from the depths of your body, always through your nose with your
mouth closed. Move your hands, flex your knees, lower yourself and then rise up. Move as if you are
a bird in flight, up and down, knees moving up and down, arms moving up and down, in line with
your breathing.
Do the movements gently and synchronize your inhalation with upward movement and exhalation
with downward movement.
Step 2: 10 minutes
Keep your eyes closed and tense each part of your body, part by part, limb by limb, then let it relax.
Tense and relax one limb and then move to the next. Start with your feet; then move to legs; then
move to thighs; next to the hips; then to stomach and lower back; then to chest and upper back; then
to your arms from finger tips to shoulder; next to the neck and shoulders; next to your face, and
finally to the top of the head. Relax each part of your entire body before you move to the next part. At
the end of these ten minutes, you will become vacant inside; you will become cool, calm and
composed.
Step 3: 10 minutes
Sit down keeping your eyes closed and chant the hoo’ kara sound, just the word ‘hoo’.
There is no need to chant it deeply and loudly. Just chant it in a relaxed manner. As you chant, simply
witness whatever happens inside or outside your being.
The first two parts of this technique are actually a preparation for the third part that is the actual
meditation. When you come to the third part, you will see that the mind becomes silent effortlessly,
by itself. Silence cannot be forced upon you; it can only happen by itself. Remain in this relaxed state
with a smiling face and blissful mood. During this time, there may be many experiences. Just watch
them as you would watch the television. Watch your mind thought by thought.Guilt is The Original Sin
What is Guilt?
When you have desires you have guilt as well. Guilt is the opposite face of desire. Sometimes you feel
guilty about desiring something because you feel it is not right to desire it. Other times you feel guilty
when your desires are fulfilled because you feel you are not deserving of what you receive. When your
desires do not come true you feel guilty because you feel you have not done what you ought to have.
Desires invariably lead to guilt.
Guilt is nothing but your past decisions and actions being reviewed with your updated intelligence.
For example, when you were in school, you might have said a few mean things to one of your friends
which caused a relationship to break. Now, this many years later, with the intelligence that you have,
is it right to review that incident and feel guilty? No! At that time you had only that much intelligence,
so you behaved in that fashion. Now, you have updated intelligence.
It doesn’t make sense to review the past with your present intelligence.
The futility of the past
What is gone is gone. What has been done is done. You cannot undo it. Now if you constantly think
about the past and feel guilty, you destroy your present and your future too. Nothing can be done
about it, so guilt is useless. What can you do? All that you can do is not repeat the same pattern again,
that’s all. At that time with whatever intelligence you had, you acted, that’s all.
Our past is always past, it is always dead. That is why it is called past. Yet, we always let the past
affect us. How do we allow the past to affect us? In two ways:
1. If you review your past incidents or decisions using the present intelligence, you will create guilt in
your being.
2. If you take the present decisions based on past experiences, you will be repeating the same past
into the future also, maybe in a little updated fashion!
3. Even though you might not commit exactly the same mistake, you will be moving in the same
experiential level, in the same plane.
4. Our mind falls into a groove, a track, a mindset that forces it to do what it has always done. So we
keep making the same mistakes as well.
Three kinds of Guilt
There are three kinds of guilt that take root in us and kill our intelligence:
1. Guilt created by immediate family
2. Guilt created by social laws
3. Guilt created by ourselvesGuilt created by immediate family
Before the age of seven, guilt is created by your immediate family. If you don’t do according to your
parents’ wishes, they instill guilt in you. They tell you that god will not approve of what you are
doing. Poor god, he has to support whatever anyone says about him! Or your parents tell you that you
should respect their wishes as parents. Immediately you feel guilty of making them unhappy. In this
way, family sows the first guilt in you. You in turn pass it on to your child. Like a crown, it is passed
on over generations.
Because you don’t have the knowledge to explain why things have to be done in a certain way, you
change it to a rule and impose it on the child and create guilt through it. For example, children love
whirling. They love moving and flowing with the body. It is a natural way for them to center their
energy. But what do we do? We stop the child and put the fear in him that he may fall. We don’t stop
our efforts until we make the child stiff, frozen and dull like us!
The child may want to go outside and play in the sun or collect some flowers or just jump around in
the fresh air. If you think about it, it is not much the child is asking for. But the mother says ‘no’ - he
may fall ill due to the hot sun. If you look a little deep, you can see that by saying ‘no’ she gets a
subtle feeling of power, of being in control. She might say it is the sun but it is subtler than that.
The ‘no’ by the mother actually has a deep impact on the child. It creates guilt in the child. Now, the
child may force himself to stay in or he may escape from his mother’s eyes and step out. But either
way his raw energy is being suppressed. Ifhe forces himself to stay in, his energy is not being allowed
to express. If he goes out, he will feel guilty, he will be afraid that somebody might spot him. And all
this for nothing big - just for playing in the sun!
As the child grows, this deep engram of guilt will actually settle inside him. Even after he grows up
into a man and becomes independent, he may be sitting in the lawn under the sun and those childhood
memories may be triggered. He may feel guilty and uneasy for no reason. There is nothing to feel
guilty about just sitting in the lawn but the old memories are awakened.
This is how guilt arises. Small incidents like this collect and make guilt your natural way of life.
Guilt and happiness
Why can’t we enjoy and encourage the natural joy and happiness the child lives in?
If you look a little deep, you can see that happiness itself has become associated with guilt. A small
child knows nothing of guilt - he is just wild and natural. That is why seeing a small child can be so
captivating. He is total in whatever he does. He has not been introduced to the mask of civilization. He
is still wild. That is why he is so full of |
forces himself to stay in, his energy is not being allowed
to express. If he goes out, he will feel guilty, he will be afraid that somebody might spot him. And all
this for nothing big - just for playing in the sun!
As the child grows, this deep engram of guilt will actually settle inside him. Even after he grows up
into a man and becomes independent, he may be sitting in the lawn under the sun and those childhood
memories may be triggered. He may feel guilty and uneasy for no reason. There is nothing to feel
guilty about just sitting in the lawn but the old memories are awakened.
This is how guilt arises. Small incidents like this collect and make guilt your natural way of life.
Guilt and happiness
Why can’t we enjoy and encourage the natural joy and happiness the child lives in?
If you look a little deep, you can see that happiness itself has become associated with guilt. A small
child knows nothing of guilt - he is just wild and natural. That is why seeing a small child can be so
captivating. He is total in whatever he does. He has not been introduced to the mask of civilization. He
is still wild. That is why he is so full of energy. He is overflowing with joy and curiosity; he is just
vibrating with the energy bubbling inside him.
The child wants to enjoy everything but the parents are filled with the conditionings of society — guilt,
seriousness, hypocrisy. The child wants to shout and jump and dance - that is his natural expression.
But the adults stop him, ‘Don’t shout! It is bad manners. You should be civilized. You should carry
yourself well like us.’ By and by, the notion of being free and happy is itself associated with feelings
of guilt.
Guilt created by societyFrom seven to fourteen, society creates guilt in you through its rules. The guilt based on fear is created
by social laws. Till the age of fourteen, family and society create guilt for you. An important guilt in
this is the guilt of sex. Parents or family never open out topic of sex.
When there is a chemical change happening in you, you feel your body is new. A lot of questions arise
and clarity is needed but no one is prepared to give it.
And to add to the confusion and desire, the media around you constantly bombards you with fantasies
in that vulnerable age of change.
To add to it, society instills in you the feeling that you are not enough unto yourself. It makes you feel
guilty of what you are, what you do. Once it convinces you that you are a sinner, you are caught in its
grips. Then you cannot enjoy the joy of life any more.
According to me, guilt is the greatest sin. At least other sins will punish you after your death. Guilt will
punish you when you are alive.
‘My religion is to live - and die - without regret.’
You are called a saint or a sinner only by society. As long as society labels you a saint, you are a saint.
The moment society labels you a sinner, you are a sinner. If you kill someone in society, you will be
called a murderer, you will be punished. But if you kill someone on the battlefield you will be called a
hero, you will be given a big award! So there is no absolute scale to decide what is right and what is
wrong. It is society’s own logic.
Heaven and hell
A very subtle and cunning way of sowing guilt today is through the idea of heaven and hell. People
exploit your fear and greed by showing you ideas of hell and heaven. They create in you greed for
heaven and fear for hell. They create so many concepts of hell and heaven and sell them to you. They
say, ‘If you practice these types of things, you will be rewarded with heaven; if you practice otherwise,
you will be punished with hell.’ When you are given rules based on greed and fear, you automatically
start creating deep guilt in you.
A small story:
Once a military general asked a Zen master,
‟Master what are heaven and hell?‟
The master asked, ‟What do you do for a
The general replied, ‟I am a general.‟ The master just laughed, ‟Which idiot asked you to be a
general? You look more like a butcher!‟
The general was furious and took out his sword shouting, ‟I will cut you to pieces.‟
The master just raised his hand and said, ‟These are the gates of hell.‟ The general realized his folly
and bowed down deeply to the master for forgiveness.
The master continued, ‟These are the gates of heaven.‟
Be very clear, heaven and hell are not physical locations. They are psychological states of your mind.
One instant the mind may be in hell and the next it may be in heaven — the gates to heaven and hell
open and close at any time alternately.Guilt created by you
Till the age of twenty one, knowledge from family and society creates guilt. After twenty one, the guilt
sown in you by family and society grows roots inside you. Then you start creating guilt for yourself
without any reason. Guilt becomes a permanent guest in your being!
The guilt created by family and the guilt created by society are imposed guilt; they are like a crown that
is passed on from one generation to another. The third guilt is the worst - that which you create for
yourself. When you internalize guilt based on greed and fear, you create new types of guilt for yourself.
The moment you start feeling guilty about something, you can be exploited. That too when you start
fighting with yourself it is easier to exploit you.
If you look into your life you can see how every moment you are subtly looking for some reason to
fight with yourself, to feel discontent with yourself. You cannot remain without some conflict, you want
to create misery for yourself because that is what you have been taught — happiness is a sin.
The stone of guilt in the river of your
mind - the block in the flow of
intelligence
You are designed to move like a freely flowing river. Guilt is like the rocks in the
path of the water. Society has subtly branded happiness as a sin. That is the problem. That is why you
will notice, when everything is going smoothly and happily, there will be a lurking feeling of guilt in
you. You are taught by society that being happy and enjoying life is being irresponsible in a way. So
you feel guilty.
But when you feel sad and depressed, do you ever feel guilty? No!
You are taught that life is a chain of suffering and endurance, with happiness stepping in once in a
while.
This is also why people can’t take it when you are happy and smiling all the time. They try their best
to bring you back to the so-called reality - by instilling guilt in you.
When you are enjoying, dancing or relaxing at the beach for example, suddenly you will observe guilt
starts rising in you about all the work that is pending, about all the responsibilities that need to be
fulfilled.
Guilt has no basis but it can destroy your whole life. If you can live without guilt, you will enjoy
every moment without any regret and still fulfill all your responsibilities.
The problem is that your being is a crowd of voices that don’t belong to you. It is a totality of your
mother’s voice, your father’s voice, your teacher’s voice, your neighbor’s voice and what not! All
these voices are in there. If there is only one voice, you will never have any problem. Your mind will
move like a river. But there are so many voices telling you so many things and creating the rocks of
guilt in your path.
As long as you flow like a river, you will express extraordinary intelligence in your life.You will live with an energy that is overflowing every minute. The moment you allow guilt in you,
the moment you are stopped in your free flow, you create energy clots inside your being.
Lift yourself by your self
Once you become aware of how you are driven by guilt, you can start practicing to come out of it.
When you start practicing anything, naturally you will slip a few times. When you practice to be
without guilt, you are bound to slip back into the older patterns of greed and fear. Then suddenly you
will remember, ‘Oh, I started working out of fear, ‘I started working out of greed.’ Then you will start
afresh. When you start working, naturally you will see these things happening.
A small story:
A monk from a big spiritual organization was sent to a remote tribal area for doing service. Suddenly,
the headquarters received a lot of complaint letters about the monk.
The president after reading the letters said, ‟We have posted the right person.‟ The secretary asked
him, ‟What is this Sir? We are getting complaints about him. How do you say we have posted the
right person?‟
The president replied, ‟If we are getting complaints, it means he has started working, there is
something happening!‟
When you start something new you will have three phases - the first is resistance. The next is just
avoidance — people will neither care nor resist. The third is acceptance.
In the same way, when you start doing anything inside your system, you will start growing but these
three phases will be there. The first phase will be resistance. You will feel the new practice is a
difficult change in your current system. Because of this, the next thing that happens is you start
avoiding opportunities where you should be practicing the change. Again and again you will go back |
greed.’ Then you will start
afresh. When you start working, naturally you will see these things happening.
A small story:
A monk from a big spiritual organization was sent to a remote tribal area for doing service. Suddenly,
the headquarters received a lot of complaint letters about the monk.
The president after reading the letters said, ‟We have posted the right person.‟ The secretary asked
him, ‟What is this Sir? We are getting complaints about him. How do you say we have posted the
right person?‟
The president replied, ‟If we are getting complaints, it means he has started working, there is
something happening!‟
When you start something new you will have three phases - the first is resistance. The next is just
avoidance — people will neither care nor resist. The third is acceptance.
In the same way, when you start doing anything inside your system, you will start growing but these
three phases will be there. The first phase will be resistance. You will feel the new practice is a
difficult change in your current system. Because of this, the next thing that happens is you start
avoiding opportunities where you should be practicing the change. Again and again you will go back
to your older ways. Your system will resist, it will try to create all kinds of complications, all possible
arguments. If you allow the resistance to grow, you become your own enemy.
Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita’, ‘Let you lift yourself by yourself. If you don’t, you will be your
worst enemy.’ It is up to you to help yourself as your best friend or hurt yourself as your worst
enemy.
Be very clear: nobody can hurt you unless you allow. Nobody can help you unless you allow.
If you have forgotten the practice, remember and again and again lift yourself.
Don’t fall into depression, don’t have guilt. Don’t think you will not be able to do it.
Even in the life of Buddha if you read, he was about to leave the body when his disciples asked him to
give his ultimate message, and he said Appo deepo bhava — Let you be your own light, let you be
guided by yourself.
The way out — looking in
To feel guilty is to be in sin. In fact that is the only sin. The hell that we talk about is not in another
time and space. It is within us when we feel guilty, without doing anything to change our mindset.
All your guilt, all your pain, everything is a pure imaginary shaft you create inside your head. The
mistake you did ten years ago, the mistake you did seven years ago and the mistake you did three
years ago, are independent and unconnected incidents. But when you connect them and start thinkingabout it, naturally you start creating guilt. You start feeling like a continuous sinner. This is one
approach.
There is another approach. When you commit a mistake, see objectively why you committed it, how
you committed it. Watch as an observer how and why it is getting repeated. Look scientifically into
the mechanism of guilt. Just this awareness will open a new door and you will never commit the same
mistake again - because once you look into it, and you find the cause, it will disappear. To know a
thing totally is to be free of it.
Morality
Integrity
Please understand that morality should happen out of integrity, not out of guilt.
What do I mean by integrity? Integrity is being in the present moment and being only one solid
personality and not many conflicting personalities. It is seeing reality without the play of the mind.
Once the mind steps in, duality also steps in. Just by being intensely aware of the present moment,
you can achieve integrity where there is only one and not two or three or many personalities fighting
in you. Only when the mind flits between the past and future, you become split personalities and
integrity doesn’t set in. If the mind is on the present, automatically you become unified and integrity
sets in.
A small story:
One day, a priest knelt before god and started crying loudly, ‟I am a sinner. Please have mercy on
me, O god.‟A man who was praying silently got inspired by this and also knelt down next to the priest
and started praying. Now, another man also went down on his knees and started crying. Seeing this,
the priest nudged the first man saying, ‟Look who thinks he is a sinner!‟
All our humility, our morality, is more or less a pretence to others and to ourselves. We pretend
because we are not solidly integrated within us. We ourselves don’t know which personality within us
is authentic and so we get caught in such games. If we are integrated, we will be authentic in every
action, and automatically we will be moral.
Be aware, be spontaneously right
Please understand, you will never make mistakes if you are deeply aware at the time of making them.
When you are aware, you will be one solid personality and moral as well. When you stray from
awareness, you will be many personalities and immoral also. Morality has to do with awareness, not
with any other social rules. Awareness is the only way to be naturally moral. Awareness causes you to
spontaneously take the right action in the right situation. Morality can cause you to do the wrong
action in the right situation because it doesn’t have the right base. Its base is not its own, it is built up
by society. So you don’t feel connected to it. When you don’t feel connected, you cannot act with
confidence. Once you integrate yourself, you will be centered upon awareness. If you remain
fragmented, there will be no awareness and you will depend on morality for guidance.
Conscience Vs ConsciousnessWhen you start internalizing the laws of society, you create a deep wound in your being. You destroy
your innate intelligence. According to me, children can be given a set of rules initially so they don’t
move from the path of consciousness. But soon they have to be given the understanding of life and the
need to operate from consciousness instead of conscience.
If you live with consciousness, you will automatically live a moral life. To start understanding the
need to live with consciousness, just look into your morality. Morality is only skin deep, whereas
consciousness comes from the very being. Your consciousness tries to break through your conscience.
Your consciousness continuously fights with your conscience. Conscience is societal. Consciousness
is natural. Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness.
People ask me, ‘Master, what is this? You are pulling down the whole social structure. Then how can
we all live morally?’ I tell them, ‘Be very clear, it is only for kids that you need a forced morality. For
them you need to say, ‘Keep quiet, I will give you candy.’ Of course, nowadays kids reply, ‘I am
happy. I don’t need your candy. Who cares for your candy!’ For a child you can say that you will give
candy and restrict him. You can impose morality on him based on fear or greed. But for you, it is time
to grow up. You are not kids anymore. Just stand up with consciousness. When I say consciousness, I
mean the intelligent energy of your being.
Rules
The natural instinct to break rules
When anything is a forced rule, you always try to get around it. For example, you always speed when
you don’t see the policeman.
A small story:
A policeman pulls over a car on the highway for speeding. When he asks for the driver‟s license, the
driver replies, ‟But officer I was only trying to keep a safe distance between my car and the car
behind me!‟
When you follow rules blindly without understanding their spirit, this is what happens — you just
wait for an excuse to break them.
Honestly answer yourself: if there were no rules, no regulating authority to keep a check on what you
did, would you be the same person as you are now? Would you be doing things in the same way as
you do now? If your answer is no, be very clear that the rule is coming from your conscience, not
from your consciousness. You have not internalized the spirit of the rule or you do not agree with the
rule. That is the reason you are not doing things in a way natural to you.
The thrill of ‘no’
You can see, when you tell children not to do something, they will be most tempted to do it. As long
as you don’t mention anything about doing it or not doing it, they may not even be bothered about it.
But the moment you tell them not to do something, they will be looking to do it.A small story:
One man says, ‟I found three ways to get things done.‟His friend asks, ‟What are the three ways?‟
The man replies, ‟First, do it yourself. Second, hire someone to do it. Third, tell your kids not to do it.
That‟s all, it will be done!‟
Actually there is a taste, a thrill in doing what you are not supposed to do. Most of the time, you
develop an instant urge for something if you are asked not to do it. You feel a kind of joy or
satisfaction by doing it. That is the basic tendency in every human being.
A Small story:
Once a shopkeeper was trying hard to increase his sales. He trfed various options — discounts,
catchy advertisements, better customer service. Nothing worked. Then one day, he hung a black
curtain on his shop window and made a small hole on it |
children not to do something, they will be most tempted to do it. As long
as you don’t mention anything about doing it or not doing it, they may not even be bothered about it.
But the moment you tell them not to do something, they will be looking to do it.A small story:
One man says, ‟I found three ways to get things done.‟His friend asks, ‟What are the three ways?‟
The man replies, ‟First, do it yourself. Second, hire someone to do it. Third, tell your kids not to do it.
That‟s all, it will be done!‟
Actually there is a taste, a thrill in doing what you are not supposed to do. Most of the time, you
develop an instant urge for something if you are asked not to do it. You feel a kind of joy or
satisfaction by doing it. That is the basic tendency in every human being.
A Small story:
Once a shopkeeper was trying hard to increase his sales. He trfed various options — discounts,
catchy advertisements, better customer service. Nothing worked. Then one day, he hung a black
curtain on his shop window and made a small hole on it. Under the hole he put up a board, ‟Peeping
strictly forbidden.‟ From that day, he saw crowds gathering at his shop, each one curious to peep
through the hole to see what was there! His shop sales automatically increased because people now
actually saw the variety of grocery items his shop carried.
When you are told not to do something, the basic human tendency is to do exactly that.
As a teenager, when you say ‘no’ to your parents, you feel you have proved you are independent.
When you say ‘no’, you feel you have proved you are somebody special, somebody different. As long
as you say ‘yes’, you feel you are only a child. When you start saying ‘no’, you feel you have become
an adult.
You feel that you are a man only when you say ‘no’ to your father. Till then you feel you are a child.
Just to prove that you are a man you start saying ‘no’ to your father. This is basic psychology. When
you say ‘no’ you think you are somebody, until then you think you are nobody. So please be very
clear, to whatever you say, your grown up son is going to say ‘no’, because he wants to be somebody.
Dead rules Vs Live intelligence
In the course of time, many regulations that had meaning earlier become blind rules - without any
meaning. In India, during the times before electricity was invented, tailors would sew by hand with a
needle with the help of dim lanterns. So clothes would not be sewn after sunset since sewing in the
dim light of the candle or lantern would cause strain on the eye. So the work was always confined to
daylight hours.
But even now in India, the elderly people in the house will say, ‘It is not a good thing to sew after
dusk!’ The very reason for not sewing at night doesn’t even exist anymore! Electricity and bright
lights are there. But it has become a ritual for them, with no connection to its original purpose.
A small story:
Once a paratrooper was being interviewed on television. The interviewer said, ‟Your life must be
really adventurous.‟
The paratrooper replied, ‟Yes, it does have its scary moments.‟
The interviewer asked, ‟What is the most anxious experience in your life?‟
The paratrooper replied, When I was coming down on the lawn of a house and the sign read, ‟Keep
off the grass!‟
When you don’t have the right intelligence or understanding, things become dead rules in your life.
When you have understanding, any correct rule can become a friendly technique to live life happily.
Rules and rituals are actually techniques for your own enlightenment. When I say enlightenment, I
mean a blissful life full of clarity. Of course, when pursued deeply, it will lead to the ultimate state of
enlightenment.A small story:
A railway official reported a murder on a train, ‟The murderer entered the compartment, stabbed the
victim multiple times. Then he left the train through the opposite door jumping onto the railway track
— there by violating the railway regulations.‟
When you don’t have the right understanding, you will miss the whole thing and end up acting in a
foolish way. When you are given the right understanding, you will understand that any rule was
created just for you and others around you to live a happy and blissful life.
When the spirit of the rule is understood, there won’t be any problem falling in line with it. By falling
in tune, there will only be juice in your action; there will only be a blissful commitment to it. But if
the spirit is missed, everything is missed. Life will seem dull and lifeless.
Take meditation for example. Meditation itself is done to go inwards irrespective of the outer world
noise and situations. I have seen that some people, before starting their meditation routine, will first
try to create a noiseless situation outside. They will go around telling everyone to keep quiet. They
will practically freeze people in their normal routine just because they are going to meditate.
Only when the spirit is missed, things become dead rituals. You miss and mess!
All rules and regulations were created for a harmonious life with the understanding that you will not
kill me and I will not kill you, and both of us will live happily. That was the basic understanding
behind them. However in the course of time, they became laws.
All rules and regulations were created to live a harmonious and happy life, but the moment you
internalize the rules without the understanding, you create guilt. As long as you follow the rules with
an understanding, you will be happy. When you start following the words instead of the spirit, you
will start creating guilt.
When you want to escape from the law, what do you do? You just catch on to the words of the law
and drop the spirit behind them. Then you legally work around the words and escape from the law.
When you catch the words, you become a bureaucrat and you miss the spirit. Only when you catch
the spirit, you can be an intelligent being without guilt.
The useful guilt
There is a certain guilt that is useful for you, a guilt which if pursued intelligently can cause you to
move forward in life. It is like this: when you see that you have the potential to do something, when
you feel that you have so much potential which you are not using at all, then if you are intelligent,
guilt will happen in you. This guilt can spur you to start doing things that will actualize your entire
potential.
Sometimes we see the state of things around us and we know in one corner of our mind that we can
very well help turn the situation around. But either due to laziness or due to the fear of confrontation,
or due to the fear of taking responsibility, we just keep quiet and watch. This type of situation can
cause deep guilt in us. This guilt is significant. If we take steps to correct the situation by doing what
we really feel we should do, then the guilt will disappear and we will also move forward.
This type of guilt has the ability to drive you to do what needs to be done. Because of lts very nature,
you cannot harbor this guilt for long. You have to get over it. And the way to get over it is by doing
what needs to be done. Once it is done, the guilt also disappears. How long you wish to harbor this
guilt without taking steps, for that long you suffer from it. This is the simple logic of this guilt.
Another manifestation of this guilt happens when you can feel your ego surfacing in certain situations
and you are unable to help it. When you can smell your ego but you are unable to control it, this guiltarises in you. This guilt is also good since it is a sign of the deep awareness of your own ego. It
facilitates you to sincerely work towards eliminating that ego.
Guilt can result in physical disease
Guilt is the sure killer of intelligence. According to me, guilt is the worst killer of intelligence. It will
never let you move in your life.
Once one of our devotees had a tumor at the base of her spinal cord. For twenty years she suffered
with the tumor. She came to me complaining, ‟Please help me, heal me. I am suffering with this
tumor for so many years. After undergoing surgery, it has reappeared. ‟I started talking to her slowly
to trace the origin of the problem. I asked her a few questions at the end of which she finally opened
up and started weeping. I asked her ‟Do you have any guilt related to your sex energy? “She slowly
opened up.
She said she was physically abused when she was very young. One of her close relatives had abused
her for many years. That guilt stayed with her. She said, ‟I started hating that part of my body. I
started feeling that that part of the body should not exist in me. I felt that part of my body was not my
being. My hatred towards that person turned towards my own body.”
Her hatred was so deep. I continued speaking to her. Slowly she opened up more and more. When she
brought the guilt out, she came out of the guilt. She was psychologically healed.
I gave her a small meditation technique to meditate on that area. I told her ‟Express your anger
towards that man |
the tumor. She came to me complaining, ‟Please help me, heal me. I am suffering with this
tumor for so many years. After undergoing surgery, it has reappeared. ‟I started talking to her slowly
to trace the origin of the problem. I asked her a few questions at the end of which she finally opened
up and started weeping. I asked her ‟Do you have any guilt related to your sex energy? “She slowly
opened up.
She said she was physically abused when she was very young. One of her close relatives had abused
her for many years. That guilt stayed with her. She said, ‟I started hating that part of my body. I
started feeling that that part of the body should not exist in me. I felt that part of my body was not my
being. My hatred towards that person turned towards my own body.”
Her hatred was so deep. I continued speaking to her. Slowly she opened up more and more. When she
brought the guilt out, she came out of the guilt. She was psychologically healed.
I gave her a small meditation technique to meditate on that area. I told her ‟Express your anger
towards that man. Weep, shout, cry, hit. Close the doors, take a pillow, imagine that it is him and
show your anger on it. After that sit silently and feel that part of your body also as your own. Feel
love towards that part of the body.‟
You will be surprised that in just ten days the tumor disappeared! It never recurred.
Most of our ailments are due to psychological disturbances where guilt plays a major role. Most of the
time, our energy flow gets blocked because of guilt. If you look deep, wherever you are not able to
move, wherever you are not able to take decisions, wherever you have fear, there will be some guilt
lurking.
Acceptance — the beautiful way out
Acceptance is a wonderful tool to relieve yourself of the pull and push between the past and future.
With acceptance you fall into the present straightaway. The first thing is to accept all the happenings
of the outer world and all the happenings of the inner world. Whatever problems you have in the outer
world and whatever problems you have in the inner world, just accept them in their entirety.
Summarize all that you experience as problems and accept them in totality.
Accept all guilt, all mistakes and all failures. Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot
accept. You will then relax and guilt will drop from your mind.Just try this small experiment:
Just relax for three days with complete acceptance. If you relax for three days without the pull and
push in the inner and outer worlds, are you going to lose all your wealth? Surely not! So there is no
problem. In three days you are not going to lose anything. Why don’t you give it a try? Just for three
days, sincerely, utterly, accept everything in your life one hundred percent!
If you are not able to accept one hundred percent then accept that you are not able to accept one
hundred percent. Even the acceptance of ‘I am not able to accept myself in the inner world and outer
world’ will make you drop from the pull and push between the past and future. The moment you
understand, ‘I am unable to free myself from the pull and push of desires and fears, I am not able to
accept my reality, that very understanding will start doing its job.
If you can fall into the present moment, relaxing from the outer world and inner world things, in three
days you will have a glimpse: What is life? What does it mean to live in the present moment? If this
happens to you, you will experience such ecstasy, such a different space, such a different life that you
have never experienced before.
You have lived based on your philosophy for maybe the last thirty years. Just for three days, don’t try
to alter anybody in the outer world. You will see that when you experiment with such great
techniques, they work miracles in your being. They start a great alchemy process in your being. If you
are not able to be sincere, accept that you are not able to be sincere. Even that sincerity is enough.
You will start seeing a different space in you.
Meditation Techniques
From Head to Heart
Sit down and close your eyes. Take slow and deep breaths, just for a few minutes. Along with it, feel
that your head is being pressed into your heart, into the chest region. Become totally headless. You
have no head now. You are headless.
Feel that you are breathing from the heart. Feel that you are seeing through the heart. Feel that you are
smelling through your heart. Feel very clearly that you are breathing through the heart. Listen
through the heart, see through the heart, and feel through the heart.
Stand up. Have the consciousness from the heart and let your movements be as slow as possible.
Don’t walk. Just move your body around slowly. Remember that you are moving from the heart. Your
center is the heart, not the head. Again and again, forget the head. Move from the heart. Remember
you are a headless being.
Stand in one place. Now, increase the speed slowly, very slowly. Remember to move from the heart,
not from the head. Forget your head. You are a headless being moving.
(After few minutes)
Sit down where you are. Just be without the head. Sit only with your heart. Relax.
(After few minutes)
Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes.You Are The Best, Why Compare?
Comparison and Jealousy
Emotions of fear, desire and guilt are subjective emotions. What I mean by this is that you do not
need another person or even an object to create these emotions. Imagine that you are in a sound
proofed room with your eyes closed and with nothing to touch, taste or smell. You can still feel the
emotions of fear or desire. But to compare yourself with another person and to feel jealous of him,
you need the presence of another person. Jealousy is therefore an objective emotion. It needs an
object to be activated.
A small story:
One evening a man was sitting with his wife on a park bench. Without noticing them, a young man
and life girlfriend sat down next to them. The young man started talking to his girlfriend in a very
loving manner.
Hearing this, the wife whispered to husband, ‟I think he is going to propose to her. Maybe you should
cough or do something to warn him!‟
The husband replied, ‟Why should I warn him? Nobody ever warned me!”
Jealousy starts from comparison. We always compare ourselves with others in various fields — looks,
wealth, knowledge, name and fame and friends to name a few. When we compare ourselves with
others we feel that somebody else has something more than what we have and, we get caught in
jealousy.
Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit!
Why Comparison?
Why exactly do we compare ourselves with others?
First, we compare ourselves because we have never understood ourselves. We are not aware of who
we are and what we have.
Second, society has conditioned us from our birth to evaluate ourselves based upon others. From
childhood the comparison starts. In school, the grading system introduces a child to competition and
comparison with others.
There are standard benchmarks to measure a child’s qualities such as mathematical ability, scientific
aptitude, artistic skill, athletic ability, musical talent and so on. But, what we don’t realize is that
when we try to measure a quality using a standardized benchmark, it is nothing but using comparison
as the scale to measure the child himself. We are literally punishing all children with the reward
systems we use in schools.
The child gets used to judging and knowing himself by looking at others and comparing himself with
them. He has no understanding of himself based on what he is. He knows himself only based on
others.
A small story:Once a man was testifying in court about a road accident. Suddenly, the man noticed that the court
reporter was writing while he spoke. As the man started speaking faster and faster he noticed that the
reporter was writing faster and faster. Suddenly the man said to the court reporter, ‟Please don’t
write so fast. I am not able to keep up with you!”
Every judgment you make about yourself is based on some comparison. But why does the idea of the
other enter into your mind? It is because you have not looked in and realized who you are. You have
not experienced the bliss and tremendous potential you have inside you. You feel incomplete because
you have not been able to express yourself as you are. So, the emptiness and lack of fulfillment inside
makes you feel inferior to others.
The futility of comparison
Buddha says, ‘Nothing exists except in relationship.’ Suppose you were the only person on a new
planet, how could you compare yourself with anyone? Could you call yourself tall or short, ugly or
beautiful, rich or poor, intelligent or dumb? No! When there is no one with whom to compare
ourselves, we just are!
Understand, even now, there is no scale to compare you with anybody. Each individual is unique.
Can you compare a lion and a horse? Do we ever compare ourselves with flowers or birds or
mountains? Then why do we have to compare ourselves with other human beings! A beautiful Zen
story:
A king once went to a master to ask for a technique to become more powerful than his neighboring
kings. He sat in front of the master and started |
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