Ask The Master: 20 Nov 2007

What actually happens after death? What is death? It is the most mysterious thing!

Let me answer this question first: Why should we analyze death? (continuation from an earlier post)

Your idea, your understanding about death will change your understanding about life.

In Los Angeles, more than a hundred years ago, Vivekananda was asked by a young lady, 'What is life?' He replied, 'Come with me to India and I will teach you.' She was confused and asked, 'What will you teach me?' Vivekananda said, 'I will teach you how to die!'

It seems strange that the question is about life but the answer is about death!

Actually, if you know the secret of death, your quality of life will be different! Your quality of life, your understanding and attitude to life will change.

Understand that death is not an incident that happens at the end of your life. It is actually happening at every moment of your life! When the understanding of death permeates your consciousness, you will have a clear idea of life. You will realize that living and leaving are just two sides of the same coin.

The renowned painter, Leonardo da Vince once said, 'While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.'

As Khahil Gibran writes:

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, Open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one,

Even as the river and the sea are one.

Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest scientist of them all, was deeply distressed when his scientific discoveries were out to highly destructive use. He turned spiritual and nearer his death, fully believed in the reality of rebirth. He could not otherwise reconcile the purpose of this highly intelligent Universe in creating highly intelligent beings who had such a transient existence.

Serious enquirers of this purpose of Existence in creating humans eventually turned to the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism to dissolve their doubts.

The Eastern philosophy is based upon the experiences of the great enlightened masters and rishis. They believed in many births. They believed in a continuous flow of life and death that Khalil wrote about. Instead of the limiting scientific tradition of the West borne out of the limited space of life, this idea of unlimited space and time of life and death of the Eastern religions gave birth to spirituality. When you keep taking birth again and again, enacting the same drama of a brother, sister, husband, friend, parent, you eventually feel fed up of this drama. When you die, you leave these co-actors and go. Again, when you come back, you have a new setup. It goes on and on. After some time, you are fed up of going through the same cycle over and over. You start looking for liberation. The moment you start thinking about liberation, you start thinking about moksha or enlightenment. Spirituality is all about this. Your understanding of death makes you understand about life.

According to me, your concept of death is the one basis on which you live. (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 19 Nov 2007

What Is Death?

The concept of our understanding of death can be broadly classified into 2 categories: there are people who believe in life after death and those who do not believe in rebirth. Of course, there are many who don't come under either of these two categories. They neither talk nor analyze about death. They want to be deliberately ignorant. Their attitude is, 'Let it come when it has to come and we will handle it at that time. Why should we even think about it or discuss about it now?' They prefer to take the route of escapism.

In western philosophy, there is no concept of rebirth. Their logical mind does not allow them to believe in it. There are no proofs of rebirth. Even the near-death experiences are only experiences of certain people. There is still an element of doubt about what really death is. Is it just the end of the physical body? Why does it really happen at the time it happens to every person? Many scientists are still working on this mystery. They have not been able to come to any decisive conclusion.

That is why, in the West, people want to live their lives fully. They feel that they don't have a second chance to fulfill their dreams. So, they are in a hurry to fulfill all their desires as soon as possible. This has created an anxiety in man. This concept or belief of a single life is what has given birth to science. Man started to search for the maximum comforts, joy and juice from the outer world. Man wants to extract the maximum that he can, at whatever expense to him and others, during the limited period that he knows instinctively is all that he has in this world.

This belief of just one life has also given rise to the sense of pleasures of life and the concept of God in the more serious and introspective humans. For most people, God is just a concept. They have not experienced Him. God is just a vague concept in your life till you get enlightened. In fact, if you see, even the idea of God was created only when this question of death was raised.

Many people have tried to answer these questions. In that process, they have created theories, philosophies and religions. Even the idea of God was created during this process. The question of death is the most mysterious question according to me. From time immemorial, so many people have tried again and again to answer this.

Every person who tried answering this question created a new religion, a new cult. All the religions are born out of this question.

What actually happens after death? What is death? It is the most mysterious thing!

Why should we analyze death? (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 24 Nov 2007

What happens when you die? (continuation from an earlier post)

Now, let us look into the mystery of death, which is truly the greatest mystery. Can anybody speak about death? In Tamil, there is a proverb, 'Those who have seen death have never come back. Those who have come back have not seen it.' No one can speak about death except an enlightened man. He is authorized since he has already undergone the death experience. He is dead. Unless you undergo death, you can never get enlightened, you can never get liberated. The mysteries of death can never be recorded or proved logically. They can never be reduced to facts and figures. They are such personal experiences that only a few enlightened masters have spoken about their experiences. Unfortunately, they have no certificates. God has not created a university or industry for enlightenment. Only few who have had the experience share their views with others and only few who felt the energy of the master could take advantage of the science. That is why the mystery of death is unknown to most people.

This science can transform your life. Since you have not understood this mystery, you have missed so many things in life. The secret of death is not a very popular concept in the West because it can never be proved scientifically. Today, a lot of scientists and psychologists are working on the study of NDEs. Thousands of people have experienced it. There is even a website which gives the experiences of nearly 10,000 people. You will be surprised to know that all their experiences are similar. Hypnotherapists adopt the regression method to know more about the past lives of the patients. The patients are hypnotized and taken back in life and lives, often resulting in information on past lives, how they enter into the body and how and when they leave the body. You will see that the findings are very similar to what the Upanishads say about death. So, now, this science is spreading in the West too.

What happens after death? (to be contd.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Words From The Master - 01 April 2008

Quantum Spirituality

An American travels in England in a train, with a British Gentleman and a Lady who has a dog with her. The dog keeps pestering the American, and the Lady pacifies the dog, no apologies to the foreigner. Finally the American gets fed up, picks up the dog and throws it out of the window. Says the other man: You Americans, you are all crazy! You drive on the wrong side of the road, you use the wrong hand for the fork, now you have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window!

In life, we continuously keep throwing the wrong bitch out of the window. When we choose one thing we eliminate something, which is a wrong decision, and we throw the wrong bitch out of the window.

There is no controversy in Existence. There are no contradictions. We just cannot make the connection. Humans on the other hand always have a conflict. People ask me can we come and stay in the ashram; whatever I say they will come up with an argument against it. If I say stay they will tell me why how they cannot. If I say please don’t, they feel hurt. We always live in a dilemma.

In Science before the concept of quantum was accepted there was a conflict between matter and energy. One group said: both energy and matter exist, but in different space and energy. Another: there is only time gap; yet another: there is only space gap. Post quantum this conflict disappeared. Matter and energy exist together. There is now a concept of singularity where the mind can not penetrate, which is beyond matter and energy.

Once you reach the spiritual zone these controversies disappear. Only when you play with words intellectually you create conflicts and enter into a dangerous zone.

As long as you feel you are living two different lives you are only playing with words. Think of normal material life as a horizontal line; think of leading a spiritual life, one of the present moment, think of it as a vertical line. When you think of choosing between a material and spiritual life, you are choosing between the horizontal and vertical. Only when you understand that you can travel both horizontally and vertically, and even explode in all directions do you understand that there are no contradictions. Till then you will have the conflict.

Mind enslaves you to make you believe that you can only travel in one way, horizontally or vertically. That is why you do not grow in many spiritual sadhanas which force you to choose between the two, material and spiritual. We only wish to try to transform; we really do not wish to transform; yet would like to proclaim our wish to transform. This is holiday religion. We go to a discourse, a temple on a holiday; we practice part time spirituality. It is skin deep. This fills us with hypocrisy and guilt. Even a meditation becomes a ritual if it is restricted to one part of your life at one time in a given space. In true spirituality your life becomes meditation.

People come to me with guilt. I give them some ideas. They insist on learning meditation. Just to console them I give them some meditation technique. After a month if I ask them, they have one more added guilt feeling, of not doing meditation. Meditation is not a quantity that is to be added to your life, it is a quality that needs to be built into your life.

Singularity is beyond matter and energy. Similarly Quantum spirituality is beyond material and spiritual lives. You need to be both in the horizontal and vertical lines simultaneously. What I wish to give you is a technique; not an empty idea. If you go beyond mind you explode in all directions, vertically, horizontally and in all directions.

There is no starting point to worldly life; there is no end point to spiritual life. Enlightenment is not an end; it is a new beginning. An ultimate experience is not the last experience. Some one asked, how can I retain the bliss of the meditation program? The moment you wish to retain, you choose to have bliss, it escapes; like water flowing in a river stays in your open palms but escapes when you close your palms. When you are in bliss just enjoy bliss. You can never possess nithya ananda.

Perfectionists like to choose. Life is not perfect, only death is. One who does not make mistakes, or believes he or she makes no mistakes does not respect others. Do not try to be perfect, do not choose. People ask what they have to renounce to be spiritual. I say please do not renounce. Do not renounce what you have; renounce what you do not have; the fantasies that you do not have. When you are with your wife do not allow your fantasies to come in between. When you have a home, do not allow a fantasy home to come in between.

Maya; ya ma ithi maya; what is not there, what is not real, what disturbs you, that is maya, illusion. When you feel someone is more handsome than you, you create a space, a gap between you and your body. You lose your uniqueness. God is not an engineer, he is an artist, he is a painter, a sculptor; no one being is like another because we are created by God. Renounce maya, what you do not have. What ever you live deeply, you are detached about.

Living in the present moment is the missing link that helps you to traverse the horizontal and vertical lines at the same time and space. Every moment is a possibility that you can explode in. In quantum spirituality there is no attachment or detachment. Without awareness you detach and attach.

We should live within our boundaries; focus on what and where we are. When we are in one place and one time, we always think about another time and another place. Our body is never where our mind is. We invite maya into our lives.

Everything is divine, nothing is excluded. If you wish to be enlightened drop the idea of enlightenment. Idea of spirituality is like the stick that lights the funeral pyre, brought in to burn the material life; once that is accomplished you need to burn that stick as well, and move beyond into quantum spirituality.

Words from the Master

Death is the Guru that gives enlightenment itself. Normally, in all our lives, death is the only thing that comes on time! We cannot ask for even one minute extra. And in our lives, death takes away everything from us – our relatives, our wealth, everything. But for Nachiketa, death gives everything and also enlightenment! Why this partiality? What is the difference between Nachiketa and us?

The only reason is: We are all running away from death while Nachiketa faces death.
Four things need to be understood from this wonderful story. The first thing: When we go in search of death, when we face death, it will not be there. Second thing: Even if death is there, it is not the terrifying thing that we think it is; it is loving and giving. The third thing: Death is our greatest teacher ever. The fourth thing: Death is the thing that can give us the ultimate gift - Enlightenment!

Somehow, for most people, life never goes beyond the Swadhishtana chakra. Life never goes beyond fear of death. We live and die between the Muladhara and Swadhishtana chakras – between desires and fear. We don’t know any other way of life; or we don’t have the courage to take on any other way of life.

In earlier times, people lived without the life security that we have today. There was no vaccination available against fatal diseases. There was no satellite-based advance warning of natural calamities. There was no security against famine or floods; so people were always mentally prepared for struggle, even for death. Especially the warrior class had to be ever-ready for death.

The Samurai warriors of ancient Japan knew the way to face death calmly. If they were defeated in battle, they would simply pierce a long needle into the Swadhishtana chakra. This is a highly professional technique, by which the life energy contained in the Swadhishtana chakra is released, resulting in instantaneous and painless death. The process was known as hara-kiri.

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Ask The Master: 22 Nov 2007

What actually happens after death? What is death? Why should we analyze death? (continuation from an earlier post)

Let me tell you an important incident. When the British were trying to establish their supremacy over India, they were very keen on taking control of a small village in Central India for strategic reasons. There were only about 100 tribal people living there. (This village does not exist anymore.) The villagers were highly esoteric and mystical. They were deeply into meditation and it is said that they never fell sick. They were such highly evolved people that even if they hurt someone in their dream, the next morning, they would go and apologize to the person. They did not even want to have unconscious vengeance or hatred. They were such a mature and spiritual group that had nothing of the outer world but everything of the inner world. When the British tried to force their culture on them, they would not give in. They resisted. Even when they were threatened to give up or face dire consequences, they refused to do so. They gathered in the center of the village and right in front of the British soldiers, they chanted some mantra (mystical saying) and dropped dead. Every single one of them dropped dead. The soldiers could not believe their eyes. They had anticipated the villagers to commit suicide. This incident has been recorded by British soldiers. They also said that for the first time, they felt guilty of being responsible for the death of such innocent, simple yet great people. These people knew the art of dying. They could just drop their body and leave this world.

In Mark Twain's words, 'The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.'

The Bhagavad Gita says, 'Death is just like changing your coat.' Learning to die is the one and only art that you are supposed to learn while you are living.

There is a great fear of death, of the unknown, in most people. A beautiful story from the Katopanishad: (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Many Paths, One Goal?

All spiritual literature can be classified into 3 categories.

One outlining goals of what you wish to achieve, about life, death, what happens after death, what is atman, books of philosophy, etc. These books speak about the truth beyond life and death, intellectual material. Difficulty is that this philosophy is not a method or technique to transform your life. They are perceptions of individual philosophers. Millions have answered the question of what happens after death, and yet it is a virgin question. We do not know the answer. Each person who tried to answer created one school of philosophy. These books do not give any answers, no solutions. These are called Sastra.

Sastra if internalized and if they lead top serious doubts within can be very productive; otherwise they are just fodder to ego and creates the superficial arrogance of knowledge.

There is a second level of literature, songs in praise of God. These are for emotional people; fairy tales to uplift the spirit in devotion. These are called Stotra.

Third kind of spiritual literature is for those seeking solutions, a seeker at the being level, asking for clear cut explanations of spirituality. These are the aphorisms, techniques to provide solutions, and are called Sutra.

A young man asks Socrates: Should I marry? Socrates had a terrible wife, who used to beat him. Socrates said: you should marry. Only two things can happen when you marry. You can have either a good wife leading a happy and contented life, or you will be like me, with a miserable wife and become a philosopher. It will be good for other people.

People who are not happy, who are not down to earth create philosophies. Philosophy means to complicate simple truths, to make people not understand what they should understand; like Psychiatry that is supposed to cure, but never cures. Philosophers only raise questions, never answer, and only postpone answers. You will be happy with one philosopher’s answers till you read another philosopher. More philosophy means more confusion.

Devotional literature is equally fruitless. It’s very easy to love a person in front of you. You can love god, but not your wife and neighbor. Your love of God is all unfulfilled fantasies. You may feel hurt. Please understand that to most of you God is only a concept. How can you love a concept that you do not even know?

Ask The Master: 23 Nov 2007

What actually happens after death? What is death? Why should we analyze death? (continuation from an earlier post)

There is a great fear of death, of the unknown, in most people. A beautiful story from the Katopanishad: There was a young 7-year old lad by the name of Nachiketa. He asked his father, who was a king, 'Why are people afraid to die?' The king was irritated at what seemed to be an obviously understood fact. So, he scolded Nachiketa, 'Why don't you go face death if you are not afraid?' Little Nachiketa was genuinely interested in finding out the answer and he set out to meet Yama (God of Death). On reaching Yama's abode, he found that Yama was not there. So, he decided to wait. After some time, when Yama returned, he was shocked to see a little boy waiting for him. All the time, Yama had to chase people, who in turn tried their best to escape the jaws of death. And here was this small boy who had come boldly to face death himself. Yama compassionately asked him, 'What have you come here for, little boy? You are one of the rare beings who has come to the door of death; normally people run away from me!' Nachiketa replied, 'Master, that is what I have come to find out about. What is death?' At this point, Yama gave him the Truth.

So, you see; actually, Death is the greatest teacher!

What happens when you die? (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 29 Nov 2007

What happens after death?
(continuation from an earlier post)

As long as you are in this body, you will see the whole world in 4 dimensions. Have you seen a movie in 3 dimensions? You feel that you are a part of the scene. But, in 4D, you will also experience it. For example, if you are sitting and there is an earthquake suddenly, you will not just feel you are there but you will also experience it. When you are in this body, the outer world will be exciting and colorful. Meditation and spirituality take the backseat. They don't seem to be important or necessary. You feel that these can wait. But, the moment you leave the body and start traveling inside, the outwardly trip becomes inconsequential and meditation and other spiritual interests become more important and enjoyable. As long as you are in this physical body, you will be continuously chasing money to make your life comfortable.

People come and tell me that they don't have time for meditation. I tell them, 'Don't say you don't have enough time for meditation. Be honest enough and accept that you don't have the interest. At least be clear to yourself that you priority is not meditation. Your aim is to make more money and make your life comfortable. Be honest to yourself.' Your money, your status, your social life will not work when you leave the body.

That is why Tennessee Williams said, 'Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.'

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

To experience what has been mentioned so far, you are encouraged to attend Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP). There is one scheduled in Dubai on Dec 2-3, 2007. Click here for more details.

Ask The Master: 21 Nov 2007

What actually happens after death? What is death? Why should we analyze death? (continuation from an earlier post)

According to me, your concept of death is the one basis on which you live. There is a beautiful Zen saying, 'Learning the art of dying is learning the art of living.'

A Zen story: Once an enlightened master declared that he was going to die the next day at 6 am. Of course, enlightened people know about their death. The disciples requested the master to wait for a few hours as it would be very cold early in the morning. That would also give them sufficient time for the funeral. The master, out of compassion, agreed to do so. He gave them the time of his death as 12 noon. Exactly at the stroke of 12, he left his body.

Enlightened masters truly embody Friedrich Nietzsche's words, 'Death of one's own free choice, death at the proper time, with a clear head and with joyfulness, consummated in the midst of children and witnesses: so that an actual leave-taking is possible while he who is leaving is still there.'

Let me tell you an important incident. (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Words from the Master

Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi got his enlightenment through a conscious experience of death.

When Ramana was a young boy, one day he was just lying on his bed in his uncle’s house in Madurai in India.

Suddenly he got the feeling that he was going to die! He felt that death was coming upon him.

He had two choices – either to resist the feeling, or to accept it and go through it.
Usually people resist, so they pass into coma and leave the body in a state of unconsciousness.

99% of us leave the body in a state of unconsciousness.

Though we know from the moment of birth that our life will culminate in death, we never try to visualize it, we never try to actualize the possibility, we never try to welcome it.

At least once if you go through it with consciousness, you will lose your fear for it automatically.

Ramana was courageous enough to choose the second path. He co-operated with the feeling.

He allowed death to happen. He decided to see what would happen during death.
He saw clearly one by one, the parts of his body dying.

Slowly, his whole body was dead. He saw his body turn into ashes.

Suddenly he realized that something remained even after that; something which cannot be destroyed. It hit him that he was pure Consciousness at that time, beyond the beyond and mind. He was simply a witness to the whole thing!

That knowledge was tremendous and it never left him and when he came back into his body, he was Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi – an enlightened Master.

When you conquer the fear of death, you conquer death itself, because death is just one more imagination! Just as in the Muladhara chakra, our greed makes us imagine the world to be more beautiful than it actually is, here our fear makes us imagine death to be more frightening than it actually is.

We wear glasses of greed and fear, which don’t allow us to see reality. When you experience death psychologically, you release the energy that has been locked in the Swadhishtana due to death-fear; when the Swadhishtana opens, the whole quality of life changes.

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Guaranteed Solutions.

Ask The Master: 26 Nov 2007

What happens after death? (continuation from an earlier post)

I was in Varanasi which is sort of the headquarters of Hinduism. Hindus are enjoined to visit Varanasi at least once a life-time to wash away their sins by bathing in the river Ganga that flows through this city. I was caring for an elderly monk who was sick; he belonged to a famous religious order and was very ill. He was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and I was sitting by his bedside. There was another person in that ICU ward who was dying. This happened before my enlightenment experience. I could see the struggle of the soul leaving the body. The body was in tremendous pain, as if a knife was ripping across the entire body length, as if a thousand scorpions were stinging him. The pain was so palpable that I wanted to run away from there; I could hardly watch. Suddenly the being fell into coma; coma is a pain killer; it is an automatic mechanism of the mind for the body to stop feeling the pain, that unbearable pain.

When I saw the being suffering, it seemed only for a few minutes; for that being, it was eternal. The pain of that being remained with me; I too was suffering; I watched, but could not do anything. The monk I was attending to recovered. A year after this incident, I became enlightened. I traveled down to South India. After about two years, I was again in an ICU healing a disciple. This time too another person was dying at a bed nearby. I saw that person die even as I was healing my devotee. I felt the pain starting; I wanted to run; but, now, instead of this being falling into coma and unconsciousness, unable to bear the pain, it went into deep awareness, a super consciousness. It was floating from layer to layer and disappeared into bliss. I asked the family of the dead man whether he was a very spiritual man, whether he was a great meditator, whether he was enlightened. They said: No; he was a non-believer, an atheist not even religious. I wondered: How could he have such a blissful death? How? Why? For this being, death was not an ordeal; it was a blessing. Why then did the other soul suffer? I contemplated, I meditated. Suddenly, the knowledge that descended on me was the knowledge of what I now teach at NSP (Nithyananda Spurana Program). It is a science, a technology that arose from the experience of those two deaths.

All suffering is caused by samskaras. (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 27 Nov 2007

What happens after death? (continuation from an earlier post)

All suffering is caused by samskaras: memories of desires, the unfulfilled desires accumulated over births in our body, mind and spirit. NSP makes the inner space pure and clean; it dissolves all samskaras. The spirit leaves peacefully, blissfully. Death becomes liberation and a celebration for one without samskaras.

When you leave the body, you cross 7 different layers of your body: physical, pranic, mental, subtle, causal, spiritual and finally nirvanic. As soon as you leave the body, as the spirit leaves the physical layer, you undergo a tremendous pain, unmanageable pain. A small cut in your hand gives you so much pain. Can you imagine what the pain will be when your whole body, your consciousness from head to toe, is torn? The pain will be similar to the pain that you will undergo when you are stung by 10,000 scorpions at once! A little meditation while you are living will help you have a painless transition. It can heal and guide you at the time of passing away.

You must know the depth of the problem; otherwise, you will not go for the solution. (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 28 Nov 2007

What happens after death? (continuation from an earlier post)

You much know the depth of the problem; otherwise, you will not go for the solution. When death happens, your consciousness will be torn from the body. There will be severe pain. Immediately, you will go into coma. Doctors say that coma is an automatic mechanism to combat the pain. It is automatic anesthesia. That is why, every ordinary man falls into coma before he leaves the body. Only the enlightened masters have a conscious death. There is no need for them to go into a coma. Many enlightened masters have passed away in the sitting posture. Paramahamsa Yogananda was one of them.

Next in the pranic space, your desires want to posses your body, but time refuses to allow them to do so. It is time to leave and move to the next body. In the struggle between your desires and time, it is only time that wins. Like this, step by step, you move into different spaces and enter the next body. You enter into another body in 3 kshanans (kshana is defined as the time between two thoughts).

As long as you are in this body, you will see the whole world in 4 dimensions. (to be contd.)

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Ask The Master: 25 Nov 2007

What happens after death? (continuation from an earlier post)

You need a little bit of mental preparation before you can go in depth into this subject. Whatever I have spoken so far is only to prepare you, to bring you to a mental level, from where you can understand what I am going to say. I promise you that what I am going to narrate about my experience is the truth, and the absolute truth. It matches the findings of the rishis as well as hypnotherapists and psycho-analysts and doctors. I developed that personal experience into a formula that will help people to overcome the pain at the time of their transition.

This is how this formula happened to me; this formula is behind the Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP). I am trying to transmit and reproduce my experience as a master just like a scientist develops formulas to reproduce the external truths that he observes.

I was in Varanasi which is sort of the headquarters of Hinduism. (to be contd.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: Beyond Life And Death

Words From The Master: See what is as it IS – and move on

___________________________________
Excerpt From:	Living Enlightenment
Chapter 1:	You Are Your Emotions
Section 2:	There is nothing to worry – Living enlightenment is enjoying life without worry.
Part 3:	See what is as it IS – and move on
___________________________________

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 if they 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 of death. 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 finally found Hemachandra’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.

Do not postpone living

One man after having lost his wealth prayed to God and got a boon that from dawn to dusk on the following day, whatever land he covers by running, can be owned by him.

The man started running at dawn and kept running even after he covered more than what he lost. He refused to heed his body’s pleas for rest and food. His mind was filled with thoughts of the land owned by his neighbors and relatives. By evening he felt dizzy and weak. In the distance, he saw a burial ground and a river flowing beyond it. He was very happy at the thought of owning a river and a place where he and his progeny could be buried and decided that he would stop after he reached the river. Just as the sun was about to set, he reached the river.

He bent down to sip some water. The moment his lips touched the water, he dropped dead of exhaustion. They buried him in the burial ground he had crossed!

This is how we all live our lives. We run the race without even stopping to think why we are running.
We travel in the horizontal dimension of thinking ‘what next’ all the time. This is what causes us to run.
As long as we are moving in this horizontal line, we will run till we drop dead in our grave. Traveling from more to more is only traveling towards our grave. It is just slow death! It can never be life.
It is possible to satisfy our needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy our wants because, they are changing and unclear all the time. Every time one want is fulfilled, a hundred more come up.
Always, as long as we are chasing something, it seems that it is worth the whole world; but after we get it, somehow it is not important any longer! If we become aware of ourselves and understand what exactly we want, and try to do that alone, we will never find ourselves in this kind of a self-contradictory and fragmented situation.
Never think, let me work now, I can enjoy later!
I tell you, it will never happen. Every tomorrow comes in the form of today only. Doing should lead to being every moment, only then we are on the right track.
It is now or never. We all run throughout our lives thinking that we can enjoy later, but we land up running into the graveyard.
So don’t postpone living. Celebrate! It is now or never.

Be Blissful!

Do not postpone living. Celebrate!

ONE man after having lost his wealth prayed to God and got a boon that from dawn to dusk on the following day, whatever land he covers by running, can be owned by him. The man started running at dawn and kept running even after he covered more than what he lost. He refused to heed his body’s pleas for rest and food. His mind was filled with thoughts of the land owned by his neighbours and relatives. By evening he felt dizzy and weak. In the distance, he saw a burial ground and a river flowing beyond it. He was very happy at the thought of owning a river and a place where he and his progeny could be buried and decided that he would stop after he reached the river. Just as the sun was about to set, he reached the river.

He bent down to sip some water. The moment his lips touched the water, he dropped dead of exhaustion. They buried him in the burial ground he had crossed!

This is how we all live our lives. We run the race without even stopping to think why we are running. We travel in the horizontal dimension of thinking ‘what next’ all the time. This is what causes us to run. As long as we are moving in this horizontal line, we will run till we drop dead in our grave. Travelling from more to more is only travelling towards our grave. It is just slow death! It can never be life.

It is possible to satisfy our needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy our wants because, they are changing and unclear all the time. Every time one want is fulfilled, a hundred more come up.

Always, as long as we are chasing something, it seems that it is worth the whole world; but after we get it, somehow it is not important any longer! If we become aware of ourselves and understand what exactly we want, and try to do that alone, we will never find ourselves in this kind of a self-contradictory and fragmented situation.

Never think, let me work now, I can enjoy later! I tell you, it will never happen. Every tomorrow comes in the form of today only. Doing should lead to being every moment, only then we are on the right track. It is now or never. We all run throughout our lives thinking that we can enjoy later, but we land up running into the graveyard. So don’t postpone living. Celebrate! It is now or never.

Be Blissful!

Idol worship is not an idle ritual!

Clay images have been used in many tribal cultures to infuse health and illness, even death and life, into animate and inanimate beings.

This is not a voodoo myth, but documented by eminent scholars, who studied these phenomena without bias. On the other hand pseudo scholars from the West, followed by imitators from the East condemn what they call as idol worship.

In our Vedic culture we do not worship idols, we worship the universal energy through idols. If clay images of men and material can have so much power as demonstrated by the tribal societies, how much energy would there be in images of the Divine?

Our Vedic Seers created temples as repositories of truth and energy. They are batteries of cosmic energy that radiate this energy for thousands of years. This requires intelligence to understand not intellectual knowledge.

Western scholars have denigrated our culture through misinterpretation. Some scholars have gone on record to say that they translated our scriptures to prove that there was nothing of value in them. Many Indians celebrate such people as great scholars who provided invaluable service by translating our scriptures. These same Indians, many of them with scholarly credentials, have no depth of understanding of their own culture, and condemn temples and rituals.

There are two problems. One is that all our sacred scriptures need understanding at different levels of energy, actually seven. Very few are able to understand beyond the gross physical energy level. It is not a matter of learning Sanskrit words. Anyone can look up a dictionary and translate; it is a matter of rising in energy to the required level of understanding.

The second is the loss of connection between our sacred scriptures and the rituals that followed from them; between the sruti and smruti. Without this connection, rituals seem meaningless and are performed without meaning. It is the duty of spiritual masters to reestablish this connection.

Temples have been created not for idle worship. Most of our great temples are built upon or created by enlightened Masters who imbued them with their own energy. When you pray in an energy field like that, your prayers do come true.

It is like a projector that magnifies a slide onto a screen. The same way your prayers are projected into reality through the energy of the temples and the energized idols. The energy enables your body mind spirit to be focused on what you sincerely wish for resulting in fulfillment.

The world is not your enemy, it is You!

Usually, as an individual ego, we always see the World around as our enemy.

We are all like small waves in a big ocean. However, suddenly, the wave starts thinking that the ocean is its enemy. When it is created, when it exists or when it drops, the wave is always connected to the ocean. But, the wave starts thinking that it is in some way different from the ocean. Not only that, the wave starts fighting with the ocean.

For the wave to realize that it is fully connected with the ocean, it has to be consumed by the ocean. The ego has to dissolve. The individual identity of the wave has to disappear. This is the first and last step to enlightenment.

We all live in the illusion of our own self-created identities. Each adopts another wave as its father, mother, wife or child and relates with these. However, ultimately, each one of these related waves disappears just like the wave itself.

Yet, the impermanence of its own existence as a wave as well as that of other waves around it, to whom it feels related, does not sink in easily. You have to rise beyond the individuality of your existence as a wave to be able to see that you are part of the larger whole of the ocean of this world.

If you look at the human body itself, you can see this oneness so beautifully exemplified. The human body consists of trillions of cells living in total harmony. If you look at the individual cell itself though, it has intelligence by itself.

However, when it is a part of the larger whole, the body, it is not the intelligence of the individual cell only at work but it is the collective intelligence of the body mind system that governs.

An enlightened master, Suzuki lived in Japan. When his master passed away, he started weeping profusely. One person asked him, ‘You are an enlightened person; you shouldn’t be crying on your master’s death.’

Suzuki replied, ‘My master was the most extraordinary man on planet earth.’ The person asked him, ‘What was so extraordinary about him?’

Suzuki replied, ‘I have never seen such an extraordinary person who thought he was the most ordinary man.’

In ordinary life, every average person thinks he is extraordinary. When you feel that you have undergone the maximum suffering, your ego feels good. Only when your enemy is big, you feel big. When your enemy is small, you feel small.