Words From The Master - 31 March 2008

So, You want to be a Leader

When you live with the attitude that you are responsible for everything, your whole life will change. When you take up responsibility for everything that happens around you, you will start expanding.

Expansion is the only growth; contraction is death. The more responsibility you take up, the more you will expand and grow. You will become a leader. Most of us wait for the status to descend on us and then take up the responsibility. Be very clear - Only if we take up the responsibility, the status will come! People who wait for the status will not take up responsibility even after they get it. They will simply find another reason or excuse, that's all. An ordinary sweeper in an organization who takes up responsibility and performs his tasks can inspire an entire organization into becoming more responsible. The person who passes the buck and relaxes will never progress significantly in life.

Responsibility is Consciousness. The moment you feel responsible for what is happening around you, that moment the Divine Energy will rush into you! These are all basic secrets of Life that I am giving you.

As long as you are self-centered, you will be nothing more than a blocked bamboo stick that serves only to carry the corpse. When you shed your ego and stand up with responsibility, you will become the hollow bamboo that serves as a flute! Like how the air that enters the flute leaves it as music, the air that enters you will flow as Energy! A cognitive shift will happen in you. Your mental setup will change.
When you work with no feelings of responsibility, you will work and feel like a slave. When you work with responsibility, your capacity will expand and you will flower and radiate Energy. Your worries and sorrows will dissolve and all unfinished work will get finished. Umpteen excuses can be given for dodging responsibility, but they will remain poor excuses.

With responsibility, a new kind of joy will engulf you. You will become a natural leader and life will become a celebration! There is a beautiful story on Buddha: It is said that when Buddha goes to beg, he would appear as a King and the kings who gave him alms would appear as beggars! Seeming like a beggar or a king is not in the property that you hold but in the state that is within you. When you take up responsibility for the entire Cosmos, you will expand and look like a leader!
Feeling that you are responsible is the greatest quality you can possess. When you stand up with a sense of responsibility, a new intelligence will awaken in you!

Words From The Master - 30 March 2008

Sins and Guilt

We are never punished for our sins; we are punished by them.

People believe that sins are punished after a time, since the wheels of God grind surely but slowly. They are therefore not overly concerned about immediate repercussions. You never know: God may forget, He may have other more important things to do, and if He does remember I can always bribe Him to let me off. Sad to say, many sins attract immediate punishment; though the punishment may not seem either tangible or connected.

When we are angry or jealous we are committing a sin against our own nature and our Being. Our inner state turns awry, our peace is ruined. Even a few minutes of a negative emotion such as anger poisons our entire system, and we can take days to recover to normalcy. This is our sin and its punishment.

Guilt is often the punishment we inflict upon ourselves for our sins. Even for petty sins, we carry our guilt a long time. When we drop the guilt we drop the sin as well. A person committing what may be socially termed unacceptable with no feeling of guilt is not a sinner, nor suffers punishment.

People worry constantly about Heaven and Hell and ask me again and again whether they will go to Hell because of what they did. Heaven and Hell are what we create in our mind. Worry and guilt lead us into Hell. It is religions that tend to control through fear of hell in a world that we are yet to reach. All you to fear is the hell in this life as a consequence of your actions and not hell in another life or after this life.

Confessing to a sin as a ritual without any real sense of regret and feeling cleansed quite often makes one ready to repeat it with greater fervor. Doing this only enhances the coffers of religious institutions, does not in any way enhance your spiritual status. To redress a sin one must cleanse one’s own self internally, truly regret the sin and be aware not to repeat it.

Two Zen monks were on a long journey to a distant monastery. On the way they came to a river in spate. As they rolled up their robes and readied themselves to wade through the floods, a young woman approached them and asked for help to cross the river. The older of the two monks lifted her in his arms without hesitation and carried her safely across the river. The monks carried on with their journey and reached the monastery by nightfall. As they were about to sleep, the younger monk asked the older: How could you do such a thing? We monks are not allowed to look at a woman, let alone touch and carry her. You are a sinner.

Responded the older and wiser one calmly: I put her down hours ago. Why are you still carrying her in your mind? Let her go.

For those of us not as wise, guilt is good in a limited way. Guilt helps us to stay away from the mistake a second time. We are rarely intelligent enough to learn mistakes to commit each time, so we just keep repeating old mistakes. Once we learn the lesson from our past mistake and determine not to repeat it, we should drop the guilt. Worrying constantly about past mistakes that you have truly regretted only creates problems. There is no greater sin than refusing to let go of one’s past.

Words From The Master - 29 March 2008

Don’t be angry, be aware

WATCH someone who gets angry very quickly. The more he gets angry, the more he seems addicted to being angry. Getting angry does not resolve problems.

Biologists tell us that repeated behavior actually rewires the brain. Neural networks get established with repeated behavior pattern. What this means is that anger breeds anger.

The emotions not only rewire your brain, but they also rewire your body. In their efforts to accommodate these repeated and debilitating emotions, the cells lose the capacity to absorb nutrients. They grow less and they rejuvenate less. These changes affect you and more importantly affect your progeny as well, as your entire cellular and DNA structure can be changed by your behavior.

Biology tells us that your emotions are chemicals, and these chemicals are released by the brain. We control these chemicals. However, over time, these chemicals can change you and control you.

Watch yourself getting angry the next time. What are you angry at? Are you angry at someone or are you angry about something? If you say that you are angry at some thing, at some behavior, watch yourself as someone else repeats that behavior. Do you get equally angry? Do you allow some people to get away with such behavior, or even humor such behavior in some people that would make you blow up at another person? Therefore, are you angry with a person because you have made up your mind to be angry with that person?

You will find that 90% of the time you are angry at a person and not a behavior pattern or an issue. If you are angry with an issue you can learn to use that anger as energy and do something with that energy. If it is behavior, you can learn to laugh at it. However, if it is a person, you have a deeper problem. You have already made a judgment about that person and all that you do is to collect evidence to support your judgment. Nothing that person does can be right for you.

With awareness you can drop these judgments. Awareness makes you realize the truth that you and another person and every other person are the same at a deep level. If you are getting angry with someone, you are in fact getting angry with yourself. It is your negativities that make you see others negatively. It is possible to drop these negativities via meditation. Don’t get angry, become aware.

Words From The Master - 28 March 2008

Make life your goal, not greed or fear

WE FEEL happy or satisfied when we are running after desires or when we run away from our fears. So every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in every moment is measured only by either greed or fear.

But how can you be happy or satisfied when in this moment you are running towards or away from something? This means we are not actually experiencing the moment. We are not actually living in the present moment. We are continuously in the web of greed and fear. We are either living in the past or we are in the future thinking about our list of desires. We fear if our desires will get fulfilled due to past experiences.

We are never in the present moment. We can enjoy something totally only when we are completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment, enjoying what we are doing here and now.

When you are in the current moment, when you are completely in the present moment with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy which has no reason and which is not affected by the past or future. It is not affected by either our fear or our greed. It is always there.

Then, the current blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. You enter a virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious circle of fear and greed that you are now caught in.

This running towards or away from something is fundamentally because we think that life has some goal to be achieved.

If you are running behind a goal in life, you will be disappointed at the end of life. Sadly, you will feel terribly dissatisfied; you will feel a complete void when you look back at what you have been running for.

But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every moment when we are on the path of life, we are achieving the goal. The goal is achieved every moment of your life.

The self-realised person is active and happy because he is completely in the present moment, living in reality. The Divine Energy simply blissfully flows through him and he does his activities with that blissful Energy. He no longer needs to derive energy for his activities from desire.

Words From The Master - 27 March 2008

We are not what we think we are!

WE ARE not labels. We are all beings living inside the labels. We are not doctor, husband, friend, or anything. We are more than that. We are a total of all that.

We are so deeply attached to the labels. We wear labels very proudly. When people don’t notice and appreciate our labels we feel slighted, neglected, and annoyed. Our labels say things such as ‘I am a manager’ or that ‘I am a big businessman’ or that ‘I own many cars.’

When we associate ourselves with these well-known labels, it makes us feel part of the world. It makes us feel successful. We are no longer alone. We feel pride in the fact that we are somebody well known.

We are continuously partying, shopping or watching TV. We are constantly busy. Why? We are afraid to face ourselves. Our chief entertainment is running away from ourselves.

We believe that all this activity is the path to joy. We have always believed that we will be joyful at some point or other. We think it is only a matter of time. By the time we are about forty we may get everything we have always wanted.

What we don’t understand is why we wanted all this. This question haunts us because we continue to be deeply unhappy. This is the ‘depression of success.’

This is a peculiar disease of the rich and successful. The more affluent we are, greater are the chances of being afflicted with this kind of depression.

The depression of success is the greatest illness in developed western countries. Material success fails to make people happy. We are restless. We need to keep experimenting in search of happiness. So, we tend to change or acquire new possessions. We change cars every year, we change houses every second year, and we change wives every third year. Still, we stay deeply unhappy.

At some point in the journey we have forgotten that we are not the labels. If we are a parcel traveling from the US to India, various stamps and identification marks will be placed on it to route and speed it on its way. The parcel may think that these external stamps are its true identity. The parcel is wrong. It is not what is outside, but the stuff inside that makes the parcel what it is.

Dive within. Let go of the labels and seek the inner being. This is the way to bliss.

Words From The Master - 26 March 2008

We are part of the universal hologram

WE NEED to learn to be in tune with nature. We need to be in tune with our very existence.

We can learn to witness events around us. We can begin with where we sit; sit without resistance; sit and be one with nature. Just say to yourself ‘I will not resist nature. I am not going to resist the temperature. I am not going to resist existence. Let me relax.’

We immediately question if we can extend this experiment to extreme conditions. We want to check whether we can apply this in snow and ice. This is our mind. The mind always likes to think of extremes.

If we do it completely, totally, we can do it. Our problem is that we don’t have perfect totality, that depth or clarity. If we can fall totally in tune with nature, we can certainly be comfortable even in extreme conditions. Many human beings simply do that. So can we. When we think we are different from nature, we are disturbed by nature.

There is another fear. Air is full of life. There are all kinds of bacteria and viruses living there. At any moment, a single virus or bacteria can cause disease in us. When we’re entirely in tune with nature, the viruses or bacteria that enter inside can cause no harm. They simply leave us alone. We will not be disturbed.

Our troubles start the moment we start thinking that we’re an individual body that has a separate existence. Then our entire body becomes an enemy.

What we fail to see is that we are a part and everything else is the whole. When we fall in tune with the whole, the whole becomes our face. The moment we start thinking, discriminating or resisting the whole, the whole seems to become an enemy. Let us be very clear. The whole, the universe, isn’t here to kill us or destroy us.

The whole, the universe, is a hologram of which we’re a part. It is like a giant puzzle. Every piece is important for a puzzle. Every single part of the hologram reflects the entirety of that hologram. Each one of us reflects that totality. This is the totality of the whole, the entirety of which is the universe.

We should think we’re a part of the whole. We should relate ourselves with nature.

Words From The Master - 25 March 2008

Stop Postponing, Start Living

Once, there was a man who had just bought a new car after learning a bit of driving. He sat in his new car and got it started but soon, lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. A friend, who came to his rescue, asked him in surprise, ‘Don’t you know how to drive?’

The man replied exasperatedly, ‘What do you mean by asking whether I know how to drive? Of course I know how to drive; I know how to start and move it; only I don’t know how to stop it!’

We are in a very similar state where our mind drives us instead of us being in control of it. The mind is just the collection of all your thoughts. So, if you don’t have clarity in your thoughts, you are in a confused state of mind.

Just try this experiment: sit down for five minutes, write down all the thoughts as they come to your mind, honestly, without editing. Then, read what you have written and you will realize that we are running a mental asylum inside our heads! One moment, you would be thinking about your workplace, in the next, for no reason, about the house and then, about your kids. There is no logic in the way our mind moves from one thought to another.

Bring your mind to the present moment, to live life from moment to moment. Then, life will become joy, bliss, ecstasy as you will live your life more intensely. If you are eating, eat it with totality. Whatever you do, do it totally, with full consciousness and awareness.

Start enjoying intensely what you have in life. This will give you an immensely deep satisfaction and reveal a whole new dimension of life. There is no need to renounce anything that you have. Just renounce what you don’t have! That which is not there, but which troubles you as if it is there, is what is maya.

As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, do your duty but don’t crave the result. This does not mean that you work without expecting your salary. Let the job itself become the enjoyment. When you enjoy the path, even if you fail to get the desired result, you will feel deeply satisfied. If you do not enjoy the path, even if you succeed, you will still feel dissatisfied. You can never enjoy only the goal unless you choose to enjoy the path first.

Tomorrow is also going to come to you as today. You can either enjoy in this moment or never! It is your choice.

Words From The Master - 24 March 2008

What you express gets expressed in others!

YOUR emotions are very powerful. They change you and influence other people’s behavior towards you. Whenever some emotions arise in your system, it is like rain. The emotion is poured; like rain, it happens inside your system, in your Being. It floods you. Scientists support this view.

These emotions are generated in your brain as chemicals, neuropeptides. So, an emotion is nothing but a chemical ultimately. There are particular cells which catch those emotions. For example, if you think about anger, there are particular cells which catch that anger emotion. Not only do they just catch and stay, they will start reproducing. This cell will create at least four or five more cells that can receive this emotion.

These cells that catch the anger emotion start reproducing and each cell creates five or six more cells. Next time, when the anger shower happens, when the anger rain happens, all these cells will also catch the same emotion. They become the size of the original cells. They come to this same original size. Now, these cells also start reproducing. The third time, when the shower happens, all these cells grasp and store the emotion.

That is why, every time when you are showered with the same emotion, it becomes stronger. You get addicted to that emotion; you are unable to control that emotion.

First time, if anger is showered on you, if you are affected for 10 minutes, then the next time, it will surely become 20 minutes. Third time, it will naturally become half an hour. That is how the emotion becomes stronger and stronger.

In your being, again and again, when you cooperate with these negative emotions, you create the same type of mood, the same type of that lifestyle in you.

One more thing: not only will this emotion get recorded into you, the big problem is that you will express the same thing on others. What you have is what gets reproduced in others.

If you are working to strengthen your greed, you will be caught by the emotion of greed and you will radiate that emotion of greed. You will throw that emotion of greed on others. You will torture others also with that same emotion.

So, if you learn to generate calmness and radiate calmness, you will generate calmness around you. Over time, calmness will be built into you and around you. You will be walking bliss!

Please express what you wish others to express towards you!

Words From The Master - 23 March 2008

What do you do when you do?

DO YOU know that when you sleep, you are actually not sleeping? You will not know how to sleep well until you learn to live in the present.

Psychologists say that a person living in western countries never sleeps for more than 14 minutes at a stretch — more often it is less. After 14 minutes he comes back to the dream state or wakeful consciousness or just floats in the dream level. Again he goes back to sleep for a maximum of 14 minutes. Then he comes back to the dream level. Again he goes back to sleep. They call this the rapid eye movement or REM sleep pattern.

You never sleep totally even when you sleep. There are levels of mind in which you will never have dreams. You never need to have any dreams. You can directly enter into deep sleep, if you know how to live in the now, the present moment.

If you know how to live in now, you will know the art of eating, the art of sleeping, and the art of doing everything. That is the art of living.

Can you try to remember one incident from your day in complete detail? You are more dead than alive even when you are awake. You almost live like a man in half sleep. You do things without fully knowing what you do. You do recall brushing your teeth; but do you remember the sensation of cold water in your mouth? Do you remember the feel of the taste of the toothpaste in your mouth or the pressure of your toothbrush upon your gums? And how did you feel after brushing? Or how was the water being poured on your body in the shower? How did the whole thing happen? What is happening after you have eaten your food?

Look at your life; look at your face; you are all almost bored. Somehow you are pulling along. Life is just a drag. Why? Because, all you do, all that you know to do for everything is how to postpone. Your mind never sits with your being. Your mind never lives in the same moment that you are in. You are always in the space of tomorrow or in the space of yesterday. It is never in the space of today, now, the present.

Live in the present. This is the secret art of living.

Words From The Master - 22 March 2008

When love turns to violence

WHAT is lust? The truth is that we don’t know. Humans know only how to reproduce. We do not know what lust is.

When animals mate they experience pure lust. They enjoy themselves. But humans are different. Our lust is born from imagination. It’s built on fantasies from movies and books. It is borrowed from others ideas. It is not natural for us.

Our struggles with lust begin from early childhood. From a young age onwards we begin to form ideas about how our ‘would be’ partner ‘should be’. This idea about ideal partner contaminates every relationship we have.

We begin to compare and contrast a real partner sitting next to us with the person who lives in our imagination. When we do this, the real partner becomes a poor substitute for the person in our mind. The partner, who lives in our cerebral layer, leaves us with a feeling of being cheated in the present.

Men feel they are being deprived. Women feel exploited, used, disrespected. Men operate from their Muladhara, root chakra, contaminated with lust and greed. Women receive the energy through their Swadishthana, spleen chakra with fear and insecurity.

Our lust and sex are contaminated with the dirt of our imagination. We can only mentally relate to another. Even when our partners are sitting next to us, we take the permission of the mental picture to live.

The Hindu scripture Shiva Sutra has a profound way of illustrating this. A verse says: If you are a couple in bed, there are four of you in bed together. Each of you is accompanied by the other’s fantasy of yourself; the man sees the woman and his fantasy about her; the woman sees her mate and her fantasy about him.

Fantasy, imagination, mental picture, these are the words we use to describe lust. The lust isn’t pure. It is tainted by our imagination; it is built on our fantasies and thrives on the hope of finding that person to match the one in mind.

Likewise, our love is tainted by this imagination. We love someone as long as that person does what we say and obeys us. A mother says: I loved my daughter deeply until she married someone, who was not my choice.

We don’t know love. Our love is a desire to possess. What we think as love is actually violence. Only when you let go the need to control and possess can you really love.

Words From The Master - 21 March 2008

There are no Miracles in Life

At one time or another we all experience the phenomenon of precognition. We feel that some one is about to call us, and sure enough that person calls.

You are watching TV and suddenly you feel that the character you’re watching is about to say something, and sure enough she obliges. You are about to sit down for dinner, the door bell chimes, and you know who is at the door; sure enough, it’s the old school mate you haven’t seen in years.

I find that in my discourses often over 40% of the audience responds positively when I ask if they had experienced a similar phenomenon at some point in their lives. When this happens, most of the time we brush it off saying that it’s a coincidence. When to some this happens repetitively we attach the tag of a ‘gifted’ person, similar to those who see auras and sense the vibrational energy of people and places.

When the magnitude of the experience is far greater we no longer term it a coincidence. Someone predicts disasters rightly time and again, and forecasts deaths. Others heal people who had been given up as lost cases by doctors. Some produce substances out of thin air. We then call them miracles.

What we see as coincidences or miracles, depending on the degree of unexpectedness of the incident, are those where we do not see the causal linkage between these incidents and what we understand to be scientific laws. Anything that is not supported by what is termed as ‘science’ is either barbaric or a miracle.

There are no miracles in life. It is just that we do not yet understand the laws that govern occurrence of such incidents which seem to defy ‘scientific’ laws. Once we understand that this universe supports laws that go beyond the ‘scientific’ laws that have been so far discovered by humans, we start understanding the cause and effect linkages behind many of these inexplicable happenings and start appreciating the mysteries of our Universe.

Astrophysicists talk now about the parallel universe. They have discovered that each time a star system dies as a black hole another star system is born in a big bang somewhere else in the universe. Every action produces a reaction.

Chaos Theory now says that action and reaction do not need to be proportionate. There is no linearity in nature. A butterfly fluttering its wings in China causes a tornado in Mexico! This is science, not imagination.

Matter and energy were totally different entities till Einstein established their linkage. Even after Einstein, it was either matter or energy, never both in the same time and space. It is only recently that the principle of ‘singularity’ that allows matter and energy to exist simultaneously in a common time and space framework has been understood. ‘Singularity’ is the common universal platform the Universal Consciousness that we call Brahman.

Making contact with Brahman is not impossible, once you know how. With thoughts crowding our mind, all that we normally do is to flit from one zone to another, from regrets to speculations, with no time to ground ourselves in the present. However, once we allow ourselves to settle in the here and now, in the present, thoughts gradually disappear. When thoughts disappear there is an expansion of our ability to expand in time and space, which allows us to traverse past, present and future simultaneously.

Once we are in the present, miracles become common place, and we do know that they are no longer miracles but a natural flow of the universe.

Words From The Master - 20 March 2008

Surrender

A bank manager used to take all the cash to his home everyday and bring it back with him the next day morning. He did this for a month and could not do it any more. He found himself trembling while driving back home and was not able to sleep at home with the money in his custody. He finally wrote a letter to his boss asking to be relieved of the job. His boss told him that even if the money was lost, he would not be blamed and that he could continue with his job. The manager slept peacefully from that day onwards.

Although he is doing the same job, the fear is not there any more. Why? Because responsibility has shifted to a higher authority, that’s all. This is what Surrender is. Do your duty, leaving the responsibility to Existence.

You need not surrender to God or to any Guru. There is a Life Force conducting this world. It is this Life Force that is causing the breath that goes into you to come out, and the food that you eat to digest. Simply surrender to this Life Force. The work that you do in your lifetime for your survival is lesser than the work required to convert a handful of food into blood inside your body. A research was once conducted to simulate the conversion of ‘one piece of bread into blood’. They found that the industry for it extended to 3 kilometers! This is the kind of mechanism inside you! Do you think that the Life Force that sustains this mechanism cannot sustain our lives? It very well can. Only we don’t have faith.

A seed has to surrender to the soil to blossom as a tree. It has to have faith in the soil and allow itself to rupture in order to blossom as a tree. In the same way, we have to place our faith in Existence and surrender so that a new life, a life of Eternal Bliss can blossom.

How do you do it? Every time you feel heavy in the heart or mind, just tell yourself that the Life Force that runs the world will take care of you also and move on, that’s enough. When you do this, you will see that all your depression and worries disappear and creativity blossoms in you. A deep peace pervades your Being. You begin to live in the moment.

Surrender is your shortcut to God! It is the ultimate technique to merge with Existence.

Be Blissful!

Words From The Master - 19 March 2008

To Love is to be non violent

Patanjali in his Yoga sutras has laid out eight fold path for enlightenment. The first step is Yama: loosely translated as discipline. This means tuning yourself to the ultimate; it is not a set of dos and dont's. It is a set of instructions to tune yourself to your Self. Within this Yama the first step is Ahimsa.

Ahimsa means non-violence with understanding; Ahimsa is not a moral condition but a technique.

If you are established in non-violence, even wild animals, when they face you, will turn peaceful. You will radiate love and compassion. Patanjali says: If a man is established in non violence, in his presence, enemies and animals will drop their animosity and radiate love.

Sankara, the great enlightened master, walked all over India on foot, village to village, begged door to door for food, and lived with the common man, to update himself with what was happening around him. This was required of him as a teacher, as a master. As he went he learnt from various masters, universities, and temples which are spiritual universities. He wanted to create his own University to spread his message of advaita (non-dualism), where the energy of love will speak. In a forest on a full moon night as it drizzled he saw a frog about to hatch its baby and a cobra spreading its hood to protect the frog from the rain; frogs and cobras are born as natural enemies; when Sankara saw this he decided here’s where I should have my University where animals lose their enmity, and pure oneness and love starts happening. Once you experience this love you will never be violent; non-violence, ahimsa, will happen to you.

When we are established in love nothing touches us. We do not need to defend ourselves against anything. Defending is what creates the thought of offending. All countries say that they have armies only to defend themselves. Who then is offending? The more you try to defend you enter into offense. Violence starts. Violence starts with defense. This is what Jesus meant when he said to turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. What he said is not impractical. This can be practiced. What have we achieved by protecting ourselves, except suffering? On the other hand, if you radiate love, you will be a God on planet Earth. Can you defend yourself against death? By defending yourself you may add some years to your life; by trusting, by loving you will add life to your years. What would you like to do, add years to your life or add life to your years?

Words From The Master - 18 March 2008

Cosmic Consciousness Is Order In Chaos

The Universe, the macrocosm, is in apparent chaos and the individual body, the microcosm, is in apparent order. Energy in each atom is chaotic. In that chaos there is order. Chaos with order is Cosmic Intelligence. The stars and planets move in order, with no apparent regulatory authority. Nature is not just matter and power; it is also Intelligence.

Believing that the Universe is just matter is what causes conflict. If we believe that the universe is Intelligent Energy, that it reponds to us, then peace prevails. There are those who are spiritual who believe in innate intelligence and those who live to control others, believing themselves to be more intelligent than nature.

Cosmic energy responds to us. In Messages from Water, Masaru Emoto describes his experiments with ordinary water. He bottled water in different containers and labelled them: love, hate, greed, compassion and terror. To each bottle of water he spoke everyday for 10 minutes in line with its label; he projected his thoughts with awareness on them. To water labelled love he spoke on love with love; to the one labelled terror he spoke on terror with terror.

At the end of a month he froze the water in these bottles separately and studied the frozen crystals of each under a microscope. The crystals of water labelled love shone brilliantly like diamonds; those labelled terror seemed misshapen, and fearsome. Water responded to Emoto's thoughts and words. Water constitutes more than 80% of our body system. You can imagine the power of words, our own and those of others upon our body system. The rest of the universal energy responds simiarly to us.

The universe responds to the state of your being. State of being brings you status; not the other way around. Status without a positive state of mind only brings you grief and suffering.

For most of us God is a dustbin. Whatever we do well we take credit for it. Anything that goes wrong we blame God for it. God is great if He answers our prayers. Please remember God is even greater when He does not make your prayers come true; because only He knows how dangerous your prayers are to you.

As part of this universe we are also part of its potential, chaos and order. When we try to be in control of ourselves and others, when we try to be perfect, we violate this cosmic order. Perfectionaism is a disease; it can lead to insanity. Orderly people inflate their ego and suffer.

We try to maintain order because we believe we have boundaries. Let go your boundaries, your need for order will disappear; joy will appear. When you realise the cosmic consciousness within yourself, you will discover the order that is inherent in you, without doing yourself harm. You will accept yourself as you are and others as they are.

When you experience the order in cosmic chaos, you experience bliss; when you realise the chaos within you as order, you exude compassion; that compassion then leads you to enlightenment. Be in nithya ananda (eternal bliss).

Words From The Master - 17 March 2008

When a Shoe is not a Shoe!

Nirvana means extinction, extinction of vasanas and karmas. Only when vasanas and karmas die will you start living. As long as they are alive in you they live through you, and never let you enjoy life.

Vasana is the hangover of desires or desires not fully lived; samskaras are desires that are lived but those which leave a thread for continued enjoyment of those desires. Karma is fulfillment. Nirvana also means moksha, liberation. When all vasanas, samskaras and karmas are finished you reach liberation through their extinction. You see a new kind of space in you, new kind of understanding in you, new kind of living in you.

When you drink or smoke once in a while you enjoy them. As long as you have the freedom to drop them you enjoy them. When you get addicted to them they enjoy you. Addiction is when you do not enjoy the habit but can not do without it. You can get addicted to food, TV, newspaper, gossiping. When you are addicted, food eats you, cigarettes smoke you, and liquor drinks you. When you do not have the freedom you are used.

You are in a mall and see a shoe. The thought, the vasana takes hold of you to acquire it. You move on. After a week or later you see the shoe again. This time the feeling is stronger. Samskara has logic. It tells you that if you get the shoe you can jog and you will be healthy and so on. Vasana is any seed that falls on ground. Samskara connects the vasana to you with logic and makes it grow. If you are spiritually inclined the samskara will tell you that with healthy jogging you can meditate better. Vasana is blown through samskara into an imprint. Then you buy the shoe. This is karma, the full blown tree that arises from the seed of vasana. After two weeks the shoe is stored in the cupboard never to be used again. The cycle then repeats.

In the outside world what you thought you would achieve you do not achieve; you do not enjoy. In the inner world you create room for more vasanas, samskaras and karmas. You have created the habit. While losing the capacity to enjoy you have created the habit to desire more. More you have, less your sensitivity to enjoy. When you have too many things you cannot enjoy these acquisitions. One who has ten clocks will never keep time. Your energies are spent in vasanas, samskaras, and karmas instead of in enjoyment. You have no energy left to enjoy. You take things for granted. You lose the sensitivity to enjoy.

Words From The Master - 16 March 2008

What’s the big hurry?

A young woman confidently smiles at us from the billboard. Her daily routine is written beside her smiling visage. Every hour of her day is filled from the time she wakes up at six till she goes to bed at eleven. At eleven she takes a pill to take care of her headache before she goes to bed so that she can get up fresh the next morning. It’s an ad for a headache pill and that’s why she is smiling.

It’s weird and yet it has become normal. Whatever moves faster is better. Communication is @ speed of light. The world is a global village. Electronic mails have to be responded to within the hour. We all are always in a tearing hurry. Doing what?

Where are we all running to? Rather, what are we all running from in such a great hurry?

We are driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us that we are going to lose. So we hurry not knowing what we are going to lose, not knowing what its value is.

We cram more hours into a day, more years into a life time. We multitask and multilive. We try to enjoy cerebrally without a trace of joy.

A young man came to see me. He said, Swamiji, I have everything sorted out. I am building a house with a 25 year loan. By that time my daughter (a two year old holding his hand) will be ready for marriage. My son (an infant that his wife is carrying) will be in a good job. The house would be very valuable and we can get a lot of money by selling it. We will invest most of it and settle down with you at the Ashram.

He had finished off 25 years of his life in 10 minutes. He feels that his calling is spiritual. Is mortgaging the present for the future spiritual?

This constant running is a reflection of our inner restlessness. We then feel we have missed the bus or the train or the plane. We certainly feel we have missed out on life. Has the running been worth it?

There is good reason to plan for tomorrow, it’s important. However, let’s not forget to live today! We need to learn to do whatever we do with total focus, with enjoyment, and live that moment fully.

Lao Tzu calls this mindfulness Wei-wu-Wei, action with no action. It is to enter into each activity totally, playfully, spontaneously, in such a way that work is play and effort is fun. It is the way a child tackles her work enjoying each moment, not worried about how soon it is to be finished, blowing bubbles if she is washing dishes. An adult mind can never do this. There is rarely enjoyment in what we do, just the attitude of getting it over with, even if it is doing something pleasurable. We are driven.

We keep running because we are afraid to stop; afraid to stop and reflect on what we are doing and why. To be silent can be terrifying as it makes one vulnerable to oneself.

People are afraid to meditate because of this fear to be silent. In Zen, meditation is about just sitting still and doing nothing, but consciously. Stopping the body and mind is healing the body and mind.

Next time you are hurrying through something ask your nearest one to shout out STOP! This will startle you into awareness and who knows, perhaps into enlightenment!

Words From The Master - 15 March 2008

When worship becomes a chore!

IF OUR heart is not fully engaged in an undertaking, it immediately becomes a chore. Even worship becomes a chore when our heart isn’t in it. When we feel involved, all hard work becomes a joyful worship.

When our heart isn’t engaged in a task, we are distracted. Even as we pluck flowers, or prepare offerings for our favorite deity, our thoughts stray on something else, or someone else. We might be thinking about our office work or other events in our life. We fear that we will invite the wrath of God by not praying.

Many in India chant the 1,000 names of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi everyday. They are proud of the practice. They think they are doing a great job. They are proud that they don’t eat a morsel until they finish their prayers.

But, the truth of our chanting is different. From the moment we begin to chant or soon after we begin to chant, we are anxious to see the verse number. We are desperate to know how much more we have to chant. We want to keep ourselves happy by seeing how close we are to the end. Sometimes, we want to follow the verses to chase boredom away. We feel tired. Our mind has no rest, even when we worship. Chanting becomes another chore for us.

This is true even when we perform daily rituals. We perform the rituals regularly, automatically, thinking of something else all the time. We fear that our greedy desires will remain unfulfilled without these rituals. We simply can’t focus on chanting, prayer or the spirit of worship. We have no awareness of what we are doing. We do it like automated robots.

When enlightened masters pray or chant they do it for an entirely different reason. They don’t make anything, even the seemingly insignificant task like plucking flowers, a ritual. They neither chant nor pray out of fear or greed. Worship isn’t another ritual for them. The only reason they do anything is because they want to. They do it because they have a deep urge to do it.

They do it from the depth of their heart. They express their love through worship. Their love, during worship, exudes out of them, from the very depths of their heart. An enlightened master is in love and in tune with nature. An enlightened master is in tune with God.

For such people, work and worship merge into one.

Words From The Master - 14 March 2008

You too can get enlightened!

WE ALL live at three levels. At the first level, we live in our head. We live using our intellect and logic. The second level is our heart. When we live with our heart, we use our emotions. In the third level we live at the core of our very being. We live in our identity.

When our intellect is heightened, when it ripens, it shines forth as common sense or intelligence. Although called common sense, it is a rare treasure, an uncommon thing on this planet Earth.

Emotions can ripen. Deep emotions ripen into faith. When our being ripens it leads to enlightenment.

What is enlightenment? People have several strange notions about this word and concept. Let me explain it in simple words.

Enlightenment is simply the experience of our inner energy. Enlightenment is related to the understanding and experience of our inner energy. It is not based on our physical activities, as we presume.

This concept although simple is not easy for people to understand or follow. Many people misunderstand this concept. Be clear: enlightenment is our individual experience. It is our experience of the inner energy.

There is no one who is barred for any reason, an alcoholic, man or woman, this caste or that caste, a criminal, each one is equally eligible for enlightenment as any one else is. A man has no edge over a woman. In fact, a woman lives in a higher energy plane than a man.

A person who claims to have led a pure and chaste life may not get enlightened at all. He has no edge over another who may be considered a sinner by religion and society. They both have the same chance of achieving enlightenment. Anyone can attain this status.

If you ask me, I will say that neither our activities nor actions are related to enlightenment. Enlightenment is within the reach of one and all. Everyone is eligible for enlightenment.

Many people may take this as a licence to do whatever they want to do. They can create even bigger problems in the world. Masters realise the potential problems this assertion can cause to the uninitiated public. That is why they don't speak about it, freely and generally in public.

Let us all work towards our enlightenment. Everyone can reach it, everyone is eligible and everyone is entitled to it. Nothing we do can stop us from reaching that state.

Words From The Master - 13 March 2008

You are one with God

OUR minds aren't individually separated entities of the universe. They're all one. They're the same. Our minds are interlinked and directly affect each other. This is collective consciousness.

If we catch a cold from someone, we may suffer physically for a few days and we may eventually get over it. But when we catch thoughts from people, we suffer mentally forever. Not just once, but forever. Similarly, our thoughts affect people around us. Our thoughts affect not only those touched by it, but every living thing on our planet. This connection doesn't end at the mental level. A deeper connection exists at the deeper levels of consciousness. We can perceive these as energy layers of our body. There are seven energy layers: physical, pranic, mental, subtle, causal, cosmic, and nirvanic.

We all seem different entities, with many differences, at the physical level. We, God and master are physically removed from each other at this level. There is a great deal of distance at the physical level. When we love someone intimately at physical level, his or her love and suffering affects us. We don't want to suffer but we cannot escape from it. We suffer again and again, whether it's a physical pain or mental suffering or spiritual bondage. It comes and goes out of your being.

We suffer because we aren't aware that we're a part of the collective consciousness. Until we become aware and realise that we are a part of collective consciousness, we think that we've an individual identity, a separate ego. In the deeper levels, we don't have an individual entity; we are a part of collective consciousness.

Let us dive a little deeper, move from the physical level and enter into the next level, the pranic level. The distance is somewhat reduced. Travel farther down, dive deeper to the subtle level the distance between us and master get further reduced. This in turn reduces the distance between us, God and master. The distance between God, master, and us constantly shrinks as we enter into deeper energy layers.

Our journey ends at the nirvanic level where there is no distance between God, master, and us. We are all one. We reach the centre of the universal energy.

Yes, it is very difficult for the intellect to believe or accept it. Your mind will resist it. But, this is the truth. You are God and you become aware of it as you ascend the energy layers.

Words From The Master - 12 March 2008

When we're aware, our energy flows!

TWO years after her marriage, one woman went to a lawyer and told him: "I want a divorce; please work on it." Lawyer: "Divorce? You must have some reason for it."
The woman replied: "Oh! Reason! What sort of reason?"
Lawyer: "For instance, he doesn't give you enough money." The woman said: "Money? I give him money."
Lawyer: "Perhaps he abuses you continuously and tortures you."
Woman: "Beating me! No, I am the one who beats him."
Lawyer: "What about the fidelity? What about being truthful? Is he truthful to you in love?"
Lady: "In love? Yes. Now we have got him. This is the right reason. He is not the father of our third child!"

When we try to give reasons, when we try our best to dig up reasons, we end up in with this type of logic and fault-finding.

When we do not live the reality of life, we live with the lies. Our mind will travel one way; we will be going in another way. If we don't live truthfully, we create a new energy field around us called pain body.

In real life we are so busy trying to live in the past or live in the future. We are not available in the present to our bodies. We are not in our system. When you are not present, the energy flow inside our system can't happen totally and properly.

Blood flow has nothing to do with energy flow. Energy flow is far deeper. It is like this: if we are present, the energy flow will be present. If our presence is not there, then the energy flow will not be there. If the energy flow is perfect, our intelligence will be perfect. We will be spontaneous. We will have the ability to respond spontaneously. The energy flow creates a tremendous awareness on spontaneity.

Whenever we live outside our body continuously, some portion of our body does not get enough attention. So it just begs us saying I am not attended. Please attend to me. That begging is created in the form of pain. When you give your attention you will see that the pain simply disappears. We suffer from all kinds of pain, physical, emotional, and psychological due to inattentiveness.

Learn to create and respond to your awareness. Discover how to build your attention, and create your presence on the place where you have pain. Awareness can transform everything.

Words From The Master - 11 March 2008

What Do Dreams Mean?

Once a Zen master woke up from bed and started weeping. Zen masters are unpredictable. Their ways of teaching are mysterious, untraditional. One disciple asked the master: Why are you weeping?

Master said: Last night I dreamt that I was a butterfly and flying in the garden.

Disciple asked: It was just a dream, why are you crying?

Master said: I do not know whether I dreamt that I became a butterfly or whether the butterfly is dreaming now that it is a master with so many disciples.

Both thoughts were transient, not permanent. But do we understand? We always think that whatever we are is permanent. We try to possess it, identify with it.

We have 4 states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and one more. There are two states of thoughts and two states of consciousness, overlapping. In waking state we are with thoughts and I consciousness. In deep sleep we have neither thoughts nor I consciousness. In the dream state, we have only thoughts but no I consciousness. Once we think of I, we come out of the dream. There is a fourth state where there are no thoughts but we know who we are. This state is called turiya, and is unknown to Western psychology.

Every student of spirituality needs to understand these states. These are different layers of our Being. In the waking state you use the physical body. In dream state you see your subtle body. The third body is karana sarira that is used in deep sleep. It is conscious, sub conscious and unconscious states in these three states. Whatever is unfulfilled in conscious state, anything you suppress is brought back in your dream or sub conscious state. If you fast while waking, you dream of feasting at night. If you are afraid of snakes, and suppress thoughts of them in the conscious state, you will dream of snakes. If your boss mistreats you and you can not deal with him consciously you will seek revenge in your dreams. Your suppressed anger, hidden fears, violence or sexual desires will come out in dreams.

In the unconscious deep sleep or karana sarira state your mind is processing all information you have collected. If you see hundred things you look at only two things, you observe and take in only two things consciously. The rest goes into your unconscious and subconscious states and come back to you in your dreams.

Words From The Master - 10 March 2008

Don’t tell your body to shut up

A person practicing yoga tells me that books tell him that he must experience pain before he progresses; he must have injuries before he can be adept.

We are taught from childhood that we are heroes if we ignore our body; if we push it beyond its limits. We are taught to tell our bodies to shut up if they complain. Ignore pain if you want it to go away we are told.

If you wish for pain to go away, focus on the pain. Next time you suffer from pain instead of wishing it away focus on it. When you pay attention to the pain, the body part that has the pain, it leaves you.

Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. Vedanta says: When you stop thinking, You ARE. Descartes could not reconcile the mind body connection. There is no mind and no body; it is mindbody; it is one.

Scientists now know that intelligence resides at the cellular level; not in our brains. Every single cell of our body is gifted with intelligence to carry out its own functions and to coordinate with the functions of related cells. DNA, carrier of our genetic code, is embedded with our memories and emotions, imprinting not merely physical but mental, emotional and psychic characteristics as well. As our DNA is, so is our perception of the world!

This is the miracle of body intelligence.

Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over 85% of our physical ailments are influenced by the mind and are psychosomatic. The mind has the power to both cause and cure diseases.

In a path breaking experiment in Japan on allergies it was found that patients reacted even when plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they were told that these were the allergy causing substances. Even more amazingly, when the allergy causing plant leaves were placed on their skin and they were given the name of a non allergy causing plant, they had no allergic reaction.

Make peace with your body. Body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully integrated. Become aware of you’re your body and you can then sense what the body needs, even before you become consciously aware of the need. Your body tells you what it needs and you then have the intelligence to listen to it.

Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots causing yourself pain when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it. Trust in your body wisdom. Only through meditation you will learn to understand your body, with clarity and compassion. You would then be able to find a way to go beyond it.

Words From The Master - 09 March 2008

When you are aware, you need no script!

LET us say your friend left a message for you. He wants you to call him back immediately. Won't the suspense kill you? Slow down. Watch your mind. Before you pick up the phone to return the call, how many thoughts come into your mind? How many fears does it rise? How many expectations does your mind build up?

If you watch your mind with awareness, you will notice a rush of thoughts, events, and imaginations in your mind. Do you want to know why this happens?

The truth is, no matter what the situation is, you create your own script. Your mind projects only what you want to hear or see. You want to be projected only how your mind wants to be projected. You dare not present yourself as you really are.

The rush of thoughts, the reactions are all creating a script written by your mind. The mind continuously creates scripts, and when you are there in the play, you don't remember the script. Sometimes your mind changes the script instantly.

Even before going to the friend's house, you have a complete mental rehearsal about what should happen. Your mind prepares you for what you should speak and if she asks something, how you should reply. You decide how to evade questions, or answer them cleverly or smartly. This is your friend your mind is planning about.

If you are scared about speaking to your friend, then imagine how much your mind will spin when you have to talk to your boss, manager, or colleagues.

The truth is that you are afraid to face your friend. You fear to express truth because it keeps you out in the open. You are afraid that every time you express truth, you are expressing yourself. By speaking the truth you are exposing your true nature, your core, your being, and your true self.

When you speak lies, you have a big problem in your hands. Because everything has to be carefully woven into the web of lies and a single truth can disrupt all your lies. You need to remember the whole thing that you have said so far or plan to utter.

So if you live with the truth there will be no need for any more activity of the mind. There will be no need for any more hide and seek games. You will be relaxed. You can be total. You don't need a script anymore.

________________________
This article was first published in the Economic Times, an Indian Newspaper.

Words From The Master - 07 March 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Q. Isn’t meditation also a doing?

A. In the beginning, yes. Even to sit silently is to do something. Even to watch your breath is to do something. In fact, in the beginning, meditation may seem more like a
doing than anything else – because you are doing something that is not natural to you.

Even when you are doing something perfectly natural – like just sitting, it can seem like an effort when it is formally imposed upon you.

Do you know, there is a Zen meditation technique called just sitting? But even there, participants struggle to achieve!

Yes, at the start, it is definitely going to be an effort. But in a deeper sense, meditation is not a doing – because when you do it the right way, when you really succeed in meditating, all effort disappears.

When you become totally relaxed, when you stop trying to achieve results, when you simply enjoy the meditation, you will gradually stop even being aware that you are meditating.

Then it will no longer be a doing!

______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

Words From The Master - 06 March 2008

Towards Meditative Living

How to enjoy meditation

Make time

Every day, make sure you keep aside at least half an hour for meditation. Even if you plan on practising anytime-anywhere meditations, always include a half-hour of sit-down meditation.

In the beginning, you need to cultivate discipline in your meditation. Also, you need to practise consciously, in an environment set aside for the practice of meditation.

During this time, ensure that you are undisturbed. Don’t accept any engagements. Let your family and friends know that during this time, it is important for you to be alone. It is preferable to keep the timings the same every day. The body and mind get accustomed to routines very fast. If you practise at the same time every day, you will find that you can slip into the meditative state more easily at that
particular time.

Make space

Choose a clean, uncluttered, silent space for meditation. If you can, set aside a room in your home as the Meditation Room. If you already have a prayer-room in your home, that would be the ideal place. A space that has already been used for worship or meditation will have a high energy level, which will help you meditate better. It is better to meditate in the same place everyday. If the space is indoors, ensure
that there is sufficient sunlight and plenty of ventilation. If you are meditating outdoors, say in the garden, make sure that it is a private space where you won’t be disturbed by ‘garden noises’.

Be comfortable

Unless you are physically comfortable, there is no way you can meditate! Meditation requires you to forget the body, and if the body is putting you in pain, how are you going to forget it and move beyond?

Many techniques require you to squat on the floor. If you are not used to this, use a chair – but keep trying. Use a cushion as a seat if you want. For lie-down techniques, don’t lie on the bare floor. Use a carpet or a straw mat.

Ensure that some time has passed since your last meal - at least two hours.

Initially, you may feel sleepy during meditation. This is the tamas (lethargy) that is weighing down your system. Don’t try to fight the sleep – ultimately, you will be able to neither sleep nor meditate! And don’t feel guilty about feeling sleepy. If you are sleepy, just go to sleep. When you finish sleeping,
you can get up and meditate, that’s all!

(to be continued.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

FLASH NEWS: 05 Mar 2008

On the web, Mohan's World, Dubai. Nithya Spiritual Healers' interview is available at Mohan's World (#00068) [Direct Link to .mp3 file].

00068 The Greatest Gift
We share this world with millions of people. While selfishness and greed alienates us from others, compassion unites us. For the hungry, food is the God.One of the greatest gifts that we can give to our fellow beings is the gift of Food.Everyone may not have the right infrastructure to consistently carry out this noble deed.This discussion is about the platform that Paramahamsa Nithyananda has created for our expression of deepest love and compassion.

Words From The Master - 05 March 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Thorns on your path
(continuation from earlier post)

How do you handle the mind?

Just like I said abut the ego – don’t fight with the mind. You cannot achieve anything by struggling against your mind. In fact, you cannot even struggle – because even struggling is a function of the mind! So it will be one part of your mind struggling against the other part. Instead, simply become a witness to the functioning of your mind.

This is not going to be easy. Especially on this path, the mind is a very dangerous companion! Initially, it will create all sorts of fears and doubts in your mind. When you start trying to witness your thoughts, it will convince you that you are actually witnessing. But if the mind tells you that, it means the mind is at work. If you are actually witnessing, there will be no opinions, no judgment, not even the idea, These are thoughts. I am witnessing them.

But be very clear: the mind is not your enemy. There is nothing wrong with thinking. It is just a process like any other. Don’t put yourself into a fighting position. Just be an observer of the mind, an observer of your thoughts. Enjoy the play of your mind!

As you start watching your thoughts, you will see that they start flowing more and more slowly. As your awareness becomes deeper, you become aware of gaps in the flow. A gap that you experience like a flash – you glimpse it, then it vanishes. A gap in which you experience a beautiful silence. By and by, the gaps start happening more frequently. Don’t become attached even to this experience! Don’t wait for the gaps. When the gaps become wider, you will be able to see with intense clarity – not just the outer world, but into the inner world as well.

This is the experience of no-mind.

Don’t think that this is too much for you!

When you practise with sincerity, with totality, it will happen.

(to be continued.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

Words From The Master - 04 March 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Thorns on your path
(continuation from earlier post)

The biggest spokesperson of the ego is the mind.

Just like the body, the mind too should be an instrument in your hands.

The mind is a wonderful instrument, tremendously powerful. It is a marvel of creativity. It is a masterpiece of design. And the mind is a social necessity - without the mind, we would not survive in this world.

But we forget that the mind is only an instrument – we ourselves become an instrument of the mind! We are totally controlled by our mind.

The great trick that the mind plays on us to separate us from reality is the use of language.

Words are what separate us from reality. The moment we perceive something, we try to verbalize it. When you see a flower, you tell yourself, This is a flower. We absorb all of
life though words, through abstract concepts. But words are not the experience!

The word flower is not the flower, the word love is not love, the word enlightenment is not enlightenment. Words form a barrier between you and reality.

Meditation has no need for words. Meditation is the direct experience of reality.

But the mind carries on this constant chatter of words. The mind doesn’t let you relax for a single moment. The mind is constantly creating ideas, concepts, opinions for you. It uses words to distort reality.

(to be continued.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

Words From The Master - 03 March 2008

Doubt

Doubt is the most deadly weapon that the ego has! The ego will continuously create doubts and questions in your mind. In the beginning it will make you worry,

Can I really meditate?
Can I sit for so many hours with my bad back?
Is this path really for me?
What if I get drawn too deeply in?
What will happen to my family?
Will my friends call me crazy?
Am I really crazy?

If you are working with a master, it will bring up doubts against the master!

Is the master really authentic?
Does he know which technique is right for me?
What is his purpose in teaching me meditation?
Is this some kind of hypnosis?

So if you find these kinds of questions coming up, don’t bother. Simply drop the questions and continue with the meditation. Don’t feel guilty about having these questions! These questions arise naturally in everyone’s mind. And don’t try to struggle with these questions. Don’t make the mistake of struggling with the ego! Because the ego is just something imaginary, it has no positive existence. Ego is nothing but the lack of awareness. Just like darkness is a state of no-light, ego is a state of noawareness. If you are in a dark room, can you fight the darkness and push it out, to make the room bright? Does it make sense to struggle against the darkness? In fact, your solution has nothing to do with the darkness. You have to simply ignore the darkness, and bring in a lamp. The darkness will disappear on its own! In the same way, don’t waste your energy fighting with the ego. Focus on bringing awareness into your meditation. By and by, the questions will drop on their own.

(to be continued.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

Words From The Master - 02 Mar 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Thorns on your path
There is only one real obstacle on the path of meditation: the Ego. Whatever other issues come up, whatever problems you face, be clear: they are just the different voices of the ego.

What is the ego?

The ego is nothing but your sense of self, the collection of ideas and concepts that you have about yourself. Be very clear: the ego is nothing but a collection of ideas! It is an imaginary thing. The ego doesn’t even have any real existence. Yet it is this ego which is controlling your life! It is the ego which creates a sense of separateness in you. At birth, it separates you from your mother. Until the moment of birth there is no ego, no boundary. The baby is simply part of the mother. At the very moment of birth, when the umbilical cord is cut, the baby senses its own boundary for the first time. In the very first year after birth, the ego builds your picture of yourself and the world. The ego is responsible for your sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Throughout your life, the ego puts you into the position of ‘me versus them’. It separates you from your parents, from friends and strangers, from nature, from all of Existence. Whenever you utter the word ‘I’, you are breaking away from
Existence. You cannot really break away, because you are an intrinsic part of all Existence – but in your mind you break away. You create for yourself a world in which you are separate from all. This world exists only in your mind – it is just a mental concept - but we allow this concept to rule all our actions.

You have always heard people say, The ego is the root cause of all our misery. Why?
Because the ego thrives on hostility, on conflict. Any environment which creates a sense of isolation is the survival ground for the ego. The ego may be a product of your own imagination, but it is a cunning animal! To stay alive, the ego creates a distorted version of reality in which all things are in a state of disharmony.

Look at your own life. Whenever you experience pain, anger, jealousy - it is always
the result of feeling separate from someone else, of feeling alone, of feeling cheated. In times of misery, you always experience yourself as being all alone. In times of joy, you feel naturally connected with everyone and everything
around you. When you are joyful, happy, laughing – these are the times when your ego is at its weakest.

(to be continued.)
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation

Words From The Master: 01 Mar 2008

Towards Meditative Living

Transformations you will see
(continuation from earlier post)

The flowering of intuition

Intuition, not in the sense we normally use it.

Although some of you will develop greater physical sensitivity, receive visions and so on, these are not important. These are just by-products of the growth process. Real intuition is the clarity to understand and fulfil yourself.

We all go through life wearing a variety of masks. For every role, for every occasion, we have a mask. Mother, Father, Husband, Wife, Doctor, Housewife, Boss, Socialite… the list is endless! We live and think according to the roles that society has imposed upon us. These roles ultimately become our Personality.

With meditation, we move inwards. We start living out of our own Being. We become integrated. We move towards Individuality.

Your personality can change, but your individuality is unchangeable. Every individual is unique. With meditation, you touch your own individuality. You naturally start moving in the direction which expresses you, which fulfils you in the ultimate sense. This is intuition at work.

(to be continued.)
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation