Words From The Master - 30 April 2008

Samsara & Nirvana

Samsara is our ordinary worldly life and nirvana is liberation, moksha or bliss. We continuously experience Samsara with the hope of ultimately experiencing and attaining nirvana.

What we do everyday appears to be monotonous or troublesome only because we have kept nirvana out of these actions.

We make samsara a ‘living aspect’ and nirvana the goal. But what we fail to understand is that the path itself is the goal, not just the destination.

If bliss can’t be attained while living, what use is it when we leave?

Nirvana is the state of ultimate bliss and is the very nature of our being or soul. We seek joy or bliss in all our actions simply because this is our inherent nature.

Where we err is that instead of infusing bliss into samsara we expect bliss out of it. We are always looking for returns when we are actually in a position to give. We are always seeking for that ‘something’ which we are already. It is like a king asking a beggar for alms – for can he ever be satisfied?

Samsara should always be experienced as an expression of nirvana or bliss, never as something to be attained. Only then does a man live ‘life’ completely, and is awakened.

If man is the coin on which samsara and nirvana are impressed upon, he can experience both in the same space any time. He experiences infinity beyond space and time. He can explode in all directions of samsara by being true to his nature, of nirvana or bliss.

To experience nirvana or bliss amid samsara is the very essence of life. Such a person goes about samsara in a completely detached manner, always overflowing with the very ‘nature’ of his being: bliss.

Having forgotten one's own nature, man seeks to attain something that he already is, was and always will be. We are not human beings undergoing a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings with human experiences.

Here is a simple Tibetan Buddhist meditation technique which will help you experience the very nature of your being which is ananda or bliss.

Mahamantra Meditation

Close your eyes throughout this exercise

Stage 1: 21 minutes
Sit and relax. Keep your head, neck and spine straight.
Start humming with your mouth closed, but loud enough to be heard by the others near you. Try to (for as long as possible) create a vibration in your body. Feel like a hollow tube that is filled completely with the vibrations of humming.
Stage 2: 10 minutes
Be still; just be a witness.

Words From The Master - 29 April 2008

Religion & spirituality

Religion and spirituality are the most misunderstood subjects today. When religion is awash with logic then much of what it retains will be washed away and, what remains, will be pure spirituality. Religion minus superstition is spirituality. Religion is but a tool.

Spirituality is nothing but ‘Life Engineering’. It enables you to focus, not on material things, but on the sweetness of life, miracles of existence. You are part of a macrocosmic orchestra that is being conducted by Existential Energy. This keeps you liberated within, enabling you to perform – in the outer world – intelligently and effortlessly. It also keeps you in tune with Existential Energy.

Man has always been curious about creation, this beautiful universe. He has asked questions about the creator. He concluded that there was a Life Force or Energy that made all this happen. He began to establish a connection with that Energy.

The first people to do this were the Rishis. They found techniques for future generations to realise this Energy. These different techniques snowballed into different religions.

What has to be understood is that even though the formula of each rishi was different they were all talking about the same experience of Existential Energy. But today we tend to cling to the formula and eventually forget the purpose. As a result we never get a glimpse of the real experience.

Those who fight in the name of religion have never had any spiritual experience. They never become ‘spiritual fruit’. They have not understood the purpose of religion and tend to miss the point.

When religion takes you to spirituality, you will understand that spirituality is nothing but life itself. Religion is quantity; spirituality is quality. Because religion is quantity we turn towards spirituality at the fag-end of life. But religion is a stepping-stone to understanding one’s spiritual nature and, living in peace.

Words From The Master - 28 April 2008

Pain can lead to enlightenment

Pain is a basic necessity of our lives; in the absence of pain we may start styling our faces and limbs as we do our hair everyday! Pain is a sign of our body wisdom and renders us integrated humans.

Emotionally and mentally, pain arises out of our resistance to the present. Such pain is additive and creates a negative energy field around us that we can refer to as the ‘Pain Body’.

Emotional imbalance disturbs the physical body; sexual repression leads to back pain; a sense of bearing high responsibilities causes shoulder pain; when you are in unfriendly company your body seems to shrink.

Pain calls for our attention; because attention is energy.

We invite pain upon ourselves through a lack of moderation in whatever we do, and often enjoy the pain as it brings us attention.

It is established that a human being can stay alive without food for 90 days but could develop serious mental trauma if he or she is not paid any attention to for 14 days.

To sustain ourselves, we create a low energy pool of ailments, and gladly suffer cold and cancer.

Pain and dis-ease are often substitutes for a lack of attention. They are signs that we are desperately seeking, begging and demanding attention.

The next time you experience some pain, try this. Lie down in a dark room with your eyes closed and focus upon the point of pain to the exclusion of all else.

As you experience the point of pain, drop the notion of ‘pain’ from your mind. Focus all your attention at this spot and soon you will find it shrinking.

Concentrate further and you find that the pain has disappeared and in its place you experience pleasure; pain and pleasure are the same sensation with different tags. Your awareness of pain has caused it to disappear and bring in the positive energy of pleasure.

When you examine the phenomenon of pain deeply, you realise that you are not the body. No pain can affect the real You. When you overcome pain, you experience the rare freedom arising out of non-attachment.

You then exist as an Atman, an enlightened Master. Pain can be the gateway to bliss, your key to enlightenment.

When you transcend both pain and pleasure, which are both one and the same, you experience bliss, which is perfect harmony, inner silence and total peace.

To live life without pain and suffering, become aware of the emotion of pain. Then accept the present — the here and now.

Awareness with acceptance is the way out of pain and suffering. Suffering is important, in life, for growth. When you understand suffering, you will realise how unnecessary it is!

Meditation is the key to that awareness and acceptance.

Words From The Master - 24 April 2008

Mind your mind

In its own way the mind leads us, sometimes in strange ways – in the way it ‘thinks’ and ‘responds’. Thoughts rise and fall in a chaotic manner in our mind; nothing is logical; thoughts rise, live and fall. It is not thought; it is just association. Association is jumpy, not logical. This is why there’s so much confusion.

When the thinking process is brought into consciousness our desires too become conscious.

At the moment they are mostly unconscious. You realise after a while that whatever it is that led to a problem is just the association, not desire. It’s like sitting in a car that moves on its own – something that you are not controlling.

A mind that is moving in association with unconscious desire is dangerous.

We try to suppress desire or we fulfil it. But suppression does not work. Fulfilment does not remove desire, it only creates more desire. Bring your desire to consciousness from unconsciousness. If the desire is really worth fulfiling, it will have its own energy for fulfilment.

If this is not so, it will disappear. However, either way you will be in a state of relaxation. Without consciousness, either suppression or fulfilment will lead to suffering, guilt and tension.

Psychologists say that if you make a wrong choice your unconscious mind is your first and worst enemy – which tries to ensure that you fail.

Whenever your unconsciousness does not recognise your desire it works against the desire.

The unconscious part of you is 90 per cent of the mind. They say the mind's safety mechanism works against the fulfilment of wrong desire, which results in much disappointment.

Once desire enters the consciousness it energises you.

Energy is the source of desire.

The same energy – converting food into muscle, blood circulation – moves the body. Between body and energy desire happens; it is closer to energy than the body; it is more powerful than the body. If you change your desire your whole body can change. Writing is the best way to raise desire to awareness.

Once a week give yourself an appointment for 30 minutes, and ask your ‘Being’ what it wants. Just listen to your mind and make a few points. Whatever is necessary will stand, whatever is not, will disappear.

We never verbalise many desires, we never bring them to light; many of them are not even our own deep desires; they are the desires of others. We have life and energy only to ‘experience’ our own desires.

In order to mind your mind, you need contemplation, concentration and meditation. To guide the mind contemplation is needed; to focus on a subject concentration is necessary. When the mind disappears into the subject and there is no mind left, it is meditation.

Meditation makes you aware of reality. It is liberating.

Words From The Master - 23 April 2008

Are we qualified?

Many people want to know if they are qualified for a spiritual awakening. We are constantly in doubt about our own potential. We are part of the divine. The problem is that we do not remember that we are. When someone does tell that we are, we think that such people are crazy.

A man once asked Ramana Maharishi whether he was qualified enough to pursue the spiritual path and the Sage countered: “Are you alive?” The person said: “Of course, yes.” The Maharishi said with finality: “Then you are qualified enough.”

Religious orders and their priests create this doubt in us, so that we may become dependent on them for our qualification. We may need to ask them what qualifications they themselves possess to ask us the question.

A Master never would. Organised religions often counter spirituality. Spirituality is about discovering who we are. It is the search for the ultimate Truth about us and our relationship with our Creator. Religions once organised are more concerned about power and whatever leads to power, whether control, fear or money. It’s the confusion between religion and spirituality that also leads to this question in us. We are constantly told that we are sinners and so incompetent to enter the doorway of our Creator. This is nonsense.

If one keeps questioning one’s capability, even after decades of rigorous sadhanas one would feel unqualified. The concept of qualification, as with guilt, is brought in to exploit and bind you mentally. As with guilt it needs to be dropped for us to move on successfully.

A beautiful Zen story goes thus: A man asks a Master, “Master, am I qualified for spiritual progress? I feel there are many obstructions.” Replied the Master: “The word obstruction is the only obstruction, nothing else.”

Patanjali’s yoga sutras define various steps to enlightenment. The first step aayama comprises five steps, all quite strenuous: celibacy, truth, non-violence, not stealing, not possessing. Only after you practise all these steps and master them are you qualified to move up to the next step in yogic accomplishment.

A man came and asked me: “Swamiji, I am not qualified in these steps; I have never practised aayama and niyama; how can I learn yoga?”

I said to him: “If you are already qualified in these steps you do not need yoga!”

Maturity and meditation help each other and help us all. Maturity comes with knowledge and experience and gives us energy; and the energy reinforces maturity. Meditation helps us focus that energy in the right direction to make spiritual progress.

In the present-day world Patanjali’s techniques take a lot of time. To realise Truth through yoga of any form would probably take many births, and you will forget what you started in this birth, when you start your next!

Dhyana or meditation is the answer to enlightenment in this age. It’s foolproof and without side-effects. The only side-effect is bliss and realisation of your own Self. To start dhyana, all you need to be is a human being, nothing more. A Being with Consciousness is the only requirement to embark upon a spiritual path. The very desire that you wish to start on this path is a true indication that you are qualified.

It is said in Tao: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Once you are on the path, the path helps you on. It’s the first step that breaks the inertia and get you moving.

Words From The Master - 22 April 2008

Happiness is living in the now

For many of us having more choice is a good thing. We believe we have more freedom and more freedom of choice. One of the choices that most people who come to me are struggling with is to choose between material life and spiritual life.

To such people, material life which represents all that they have in life, physical, emotional, economic and intellectual, appears to bring them unhappiness.

On the contrary, spiritual life is the greener grass that beckons, that they do not have, and which seems to represent all that is missing in their life.

I tell them they need not choose. They can, and should be all right leading both lives together.

Doing one’s duty, one’s dharma well is the key to spiritual progress. That duty, that responsibility, can be your material life as well.

You need to be aware about everything you do; you need to be 100 per cent involved in whatever you do, in order that you carry out your dharma properly.

Being in the present is the key to awareness; awareness is the door that opens to bliss. To be in the present one needs to reach a ‘no mind’ state – without thoughts. Once we reach this point the seeming contradiction of being in the spiritual space while straddling the material space disappears.

Being in the ‘here and now’ helps to transcend barriers of time and space – one can become omnipresent. This is also the state of enlightenment as the ego or mind breaks down at this point. In Buddhism it is called the mindful state.

Many of us even while we are eating are actually not eating. We do everything else but concentrate on the task at hand – eating. We talk, watch TV, or read books but little attention to the food we consume. The food energy in turn pays very little attention to us. It turns into garbage and stays on our waist and hips instead of being the energy it should be.

Stay in the present with whatever you are doing; when you take the next step; when you brush your teeth; when you smile at someone, try and concentrate on what you are doing at that particular moment in time.

You are what the scriptures say a ‘trikala jnani’; one who knows the past, present and future, one for whom the universe holds no secrets.

You will be a Master of the Universe.

Words From The Master - 21 April 2008

The many perils of comparison

A poor man had no land and prayed to God for some land. God appeared to him and told him that all that he could cover from dawn to dusk would be his land.

The man set off the next morning without sleeping a wink. Though he had covered enough land to satisfy his needs, very soon, he began to run and run filled with a desire to own more land, more than anyone else.

By dusk he had covered a lot of land. But he fell down dead, exhausted.


Usually this is the story of most of our lives.

Desires that are real and are born out of a genuine need will have their own energy and will sustain them.

However, most of our desires are created out of jealousy and have a negative energy.

When we are not able to bear the excellence of others, we get jealous. Comparison is the seed, jealousy is the fruit.

Comparison and jealousy are actually non-existent. We create such thoughts ourselves and talk endlessly on how to overcome them.

Imagine that the room you are in is dark. Can you remove it if you wanted to?

Can you take it to another room? Of course not.

The reason is that darkness has a negative existence. It does not really exist.

If you bring light into a room, the darkness will at once cease to exist. In the same way, jealousy has a negative existence. You cannot deal with it directly. Even if you tell yourself repeatedly not to feel jealous, you cannot overcome it. If you queue up all the people in the world in an ascending order of money, where would you be?

You will be somewhere in the middle. You will not even be able to count the number of people who are on either side of you in the queue. Now, you will have to decide if you are going to look at the queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the queue behind and feel relaxed and grateful to God.

Everything is in your hands.

We will never face failure if we live our lives competing with ourselves. Win yourself with yourself, never with others.

Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in the path of progress. A great problem in the rat race is that even if you win you are only a rat. To stop comparisons, you need to be aware of your own worth; you need to realise your uniqueness without being proud. Meditation leads you into that awareness of who you are and what your potential is.

You will then soar beyond comparison; for you are freed from jealousy.

Words From The Master - 20 April 2008

You don’t have to pay the bill

Nitti Mudaliar went to a restaurant and ordered one each of everything on the menu. He ate everything. He ordered for some dessert and coffee. He was soon ready to leave. Then the waiter stopped him with a bill. Nitti, in exasperation, said: “I never ordered this bill. Why have you brought it to me?”

Most of us live and behave like Nitti. We have no recollection of asking for the bill as we go about acquiring things, and building on our expectations of acquisitions.

When we finally get the bill we are startled and upset as we had not expected it. There is a saying: be careful what you wish for, for it may come true.

We are driven all our life by our vasanas and samskaras. These are unfulfilled desires that are deeply embedded in the unconscious.

Most of the time we are not even aware of the existence of these samskaras. But they shape our future decisions. They drive us into illogical and irrational decisions, even decisions that harm us.

You enjoy a drink or smoke once in a while. But you enjoy it so long as you have the freedom to give it up.

When you get addicted to “them” “they enjoy you”.

Addiction happens when you do not enjoy the habit but cannot do without it. You can get addicted to food, TV, newspapers, gossip, so many things. When you are addicted, food “eats you”, cigarettes “smoke you”, and liquor “drinks you”. When you do not have freedom you are “used”; you are not in control; your desires control you.

Vasana is the hangover of desire or desire not fully lived; samskaras are desires that are lived but those which leave a thread for continuous enjoyment of those desires. Karma is fulfilment.

Vasana is the seed, samskara nourishment, and karma the tree. Nirvana also means moksha, liberation.

When all the vasanas, samskaras and karmas are finished you reach liberation through their extinction. At this stage you will experience a new kind of space, a new kind of understanding and a new life.

Meditation is the path for dissolving and burning your samskaras. Meditation leads you into a “no mind state” where samskaras do not exist.

Meditation brings you into the present, the here and now, where you are aware of what is buried in your unconscious and have the energy to destroy your samskaras.

You become liberated.

We can live in joy without ever feeling afraid of having to pay the bill.

Words From The Master - 17 April 2008

Path to stillness

Whoever comes to a teacher, whether he is a spiritual teacher, scientific teacher or otherwise comes to acquire knowledge. There is a transmission process. For this wisdom transfer to take place effectively and effortlessly, one’s mind has to be empty and still. Only then the teaching, learning and above all, the transmission can happen.

Knowledge is packaged in three ways. Basic knowledge that we all learn from childhood, the knowledge we learn our three ‘r’s with, is intellectual knowledge. To read, write, and calculate we use our head, our mind, to acquire the knowledge needed. At this level of knowledge transfer communication happens. Another type of knowledge requires the involvement of the heart; one’s head is no use here. Can you become a poet using your head; can you become a singer or a painter using your head? You need passion to be a master.

The son of a potter watched his father and picked up the art. He became famous as a master craftsman. People came to him and asked to be taught the way he learnt it. He said, “I don’t know how to teach you. If you like just watch me and do the same.”

Music was learnt this way in India under a gurukul system for centuries; from master to disciple by hearing and singing, never a note written down. So were the scriptures taught. No art can truly be taught, they must be learnt. They must be absorbed, like a sponge soaks up water. What was merely an intellectual communication becomes collaboration between master and the taught.

Spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the highest kind; it is not knowledge really but wisdom. This knowledge can neither be taught nor learnt. Spiritual wisdom, the Truth of the Universe, has to be experienced, by transmission from an enlightened master who is willing to transmit it from his Being to your Being. At this level, it is a communion of beings, far beyond collaboration and communication.

Communication is verbal and intellectual; collaboration is emotional involvement; in communion all that you need is silence. When words turn into silence the transfer of wisdom is 100 per cent.

When you decide to embark upon a path of spiritual enquiry, drop all your old knowledge and empty your mind. Go humbly to the master and in silence you will learn. Spiritual wisdom happens; it’s not taught or learnt. It happens in the silencing of your mind. It happens when your chatter, both inner and outer, are stopped.

Meditation is the key to silencing the mind. No spiritual knowledge is possible without the aid of meditation. Ego fills the mind otherwise.

To go beyond ego, to go beyond mind, to go beyond chatter, meditation is the answer.

Words From The Master - 16 April 2008

The real miracle

The moment we hear the word miracle, we become excited. What do we call a miracle? When we don’t know the cause-effect relationship between certain things that happen, we use the word miracle, that’s all.

For example, a bell is placed on a table. If I hold it in my hand in front of you, it is normal; you see it, you don’t say anything. But if the bell suddenly, comes out of nowhere, and falls into my hand without my having done anything, then you will call it a miracle. You become excited. Because you don’t know the cause-effect relationship in what you saw, you call it a miracle. You don’t know what caused the bell to ‘make its way’ into my hand, and so you call it a miracle. Actually, there is no miracle. Let me explain how these things work.

What is actually happening is teleporting. The bell, which is matter, is converted into energy, transported in space. Then it converts back into matter, that’s all. When you don’t comprehend this science, you think it is a miracle. But a real miracle is not happening.

Real miracles are happening around us all the time but we don’t see them because we are too busy searching for things that we think are miracles. Turning Man into God is a miracle.

Our body itself is a miracle. Turning one piece of bread into blood is the real miracle. An experiment was conducted in the US to convert bread into blood with the help of machinery. What a miraculous system our body is.

The power of coincidence is another miracle – we experience this so many times without even knowing it. For example, we think of someone, and suddenly, that person appears before us. Or, we may call up someone, and the person says he was about to call you. This is nothing but the power of coincidence. These are the real miracles. These are the events that reveal the beautiful harmony of the whole show.

If we can see these miracles, life becomes beautiful. But what do we do instead? We take these things for granted. We think they happen by chance. We are so out step with the grand show that is going on and we keep looking for other miracles of the materialistic kind. But when you fall in line, material wealth comes to you naturally.

Conviction and awareness are needed. You must feel that you are a part of it. Be grateful all the time; grateful towards all of Existence, not just towards a person. That is enough. You will soon become aware of the real miracles.

When you understand and enjoy these miracles around you, life becomes an eternal celebration and you flow effortlessly like a river.

Be happy.

Words From The Master - 15 April 2008

Start living!

Great Masters have said that the Truth is within us, but we always seek it outside. We're proud to be 'seekers'. This is like you trying to pick up a book in front of you.

Instead of picking it up, you keep trying! Can there be something called 'trying', when you actually have the choice of doing it or not?

Our seeking is like a buffer between the Truth and us and we continue seeking! We develop a 'seeker ego' that keeps us comfortably cushioned from the reality of life.

Seekers are like window shoppers. They go from one Master to another, from one philosophy to another, gather intellectual knowledge and start playing with words instead of trying to experience anything. Deep down you will be confused, but you will talk great philosophies outside.

When you understand that you don't have to seek and that you only have to live and experience the Truth inside, it will start revealing itself to you in every passing moment.

If you can simply witness what is happening around you and inside, every moment you can have a growing awareness of the Truth within.

Becoming a witness is the first step to stop seeking and start living.

Realizing the Ultimate Truth is a moment's experience, but creating the inner space to realize it is what we can do every moment.

This cannot be done merely through reading great philosophies. Though intellectual knowledge gives clarity, clinging onto it is where the problem starts.

All the great scriptures and meditation techniques given by Masters are only to create that inner space in you to flower and realize the Ultimate Truth. Just try closing your eyes and sitting by yourself for a few minutes everyday. Listen to all the sounds around you. Don't pass any judgment on them.

Become a deep witness to everything and one with all the sounds. You will see that there is a central chord that is running through the whole thing, through the whole show. That central chord is Existence! Just feel it deeply; that is enough.

When you start doing this, you will start watching yourself, your emotions, without getting involved in them; you will start appreciating nature and Existence; your body language will become soft and fluid because you will start moving in tune with Existence; Intelligence and understanding will grow in you; you will not unnecessarily connect incidents of the past and cause misery for yourself and for others.

This is what I mean by 'starting to live' - something we are actually seeking. But instead of involving in the act of living, we are caught up in the act of seeking. Stop seeking and start living. Be Blissful!

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Contact: Sri Nithyananda Dheera
Phone: 626-205-3286
Email: registerLBF@lifebliss.org

Event Duration: 1 hour
Event Dates: April 22nd(Tue), 29th(Tue), May 6th(Tue), 13th(Tue)
Times on all days: 9pm - 10pm EST which is 6pm-7pm PST

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Participant Access Code: 1096527#
Participant: When prompted, enter the assigned access code, followed by the # key. Once connected to the live conference, every caller will be able to talk.

Registration details available at http://lifebliss.org/LBM_phone.asp

Words From The Master - 14 April 2008

Five elements

Existence or Cosmos is made up of the five elements that are – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. All these elements are different forms of the same Existential Energy which we call God or Jesus Christ or Krishna or Allah and so on.

The basic thirst of man is to find a connection with this Existential Energy. All religions have been born with the idea of finding a connection with Existence through the five elements. Let me explain how this is achieved:

Take the first element – the Earth element. Idol worship is nothing but trying to find a connection with the Existential Energy through the Earth element. Idols are made up of earth or clay. Through worshipping idols, we are actually trying to find a connection through the Earth element.

Here, one point has to be clearly understood: We are not worshipping the idols; we are worshipping through the idols. If this point is understood, there will not be so much of fight and fanaticism over forms and idols. The Energy that everyone is worshipping is one and the same. This has to be very clearly understood.

Next, we come to the water element. It is a spiritual practice to take bath in sacred rivers. This is actually a technique to try to realise the Existential Energy through the water element.

Next, we perform so many fire rituals at our homes and temples. This practice is to realise the Existential Energy through the fire element.

The next element is the air element. Chanting mantras is nothing but trying to connect to the Cosmic Energy through the air element. When we chant, we are playing with our breath, which is nothing but the air element.

Finally, we come to the element which is the subtlest form of the Existential Energy – the Ether element. Meditation is nothing but trying to connect to Existence through the ether element.

The earth element is the first plane of tuning ourselves to the Energy and ether is the final plane of tuning. We can start with the earth element – idol worship, but we tend to get stuck there and there starts the problem. You can start education by going to kindergarten school, but you cannot stay in kindergarten, is it not? In the same way, you can start with idol worship so that you have something tangible when you try to connect to the Cosmic Energy, but you have to ultimately graduate from it and start meditating to fine tune yourself with Existence.

Once you start doing this and experiencing the joys of meditation, you will find yourself expanding and exploding in 360 degrees. Ritualistic worship always draws tight boundaries around you. It keeps you in a closed circle. But once you have had a taste of meditation, you will start becoming an expanse. Then, when you go back to rituals, you will look at them from a different dimension and enjoy them even more! When this happens, growth has happened in you.

If you understand the underlying concept of the five elements, you will be able to enjoy Existence continuously instead of getting stuck in different forms of worship. So, just try to understand this and start resonating with Existence!

Words From The Master - 13 April 2008

Aloneness leads to enlightenment

WE ARE constantly searching outside for answers. It is almost as if the answers to all our questions and problems can be found outside, somewhere, somehow.

How often do we succeed in that? Never. None of our questions can be answered fully from outside of us. All our questions have answers from within. Listen to the voice within. People often ask me this question: What is man’s eternal quest? I reply: Man’s eternal quest is to find himself. Some one asked me: Are you God? I said: I am not God. I am above that. God is your imagination; Self is real and superior. The person said: If I say that they will send me to an asylum!

A small story:

Jawaharlal Nehru, then the Prime Minister of India, went on a visit to a mental asylum. There he met an inmate who thought he was Nehru. When Nehru introduced himself as Nehru to this inmate, this guy came up close to him and whispered, “Don’t worry. That’s what I too said when I came here. If you stay here for six months they will cure you too!”

Such is the nature of the world. Even if God himself comes and stands before them, in human form, or any other form, they will resist the idea. Even if God appears in front of you now, you will demand some kind of identification. “Show me your ration card or ID card” you will say. If I say that Self is superior, it is real, and our search should turn inwards, you will wonder, what is this man saying.

Each one of us is unique. We are perfect as we express our true nature. In that state no one is brighter, much perfect, and more beautiful than any other. Try this simple exercise. When we are alone we try to relate mentally with others. Drop that. Do not blame others for our loneliness. Allow the loneliness happen to us without resistance. We will then feel alone even when people surround us. To start with, we need to experience physical loneliness. Once the joy of aloneness happens, it stays with us even when we are not physically alone.

To have aloneness we need to do nothing; it’s our reality. For material comforts we need to work and struggle. To be alone you just need to let go. Aloneness leads to Enlightenment.

A disciple asked a Zen Master: How long does it take to be enlightened?
Master said: Just the time it takes to blink your eye. You are already enlightened. You only need to declare.
Disciple asked again: What happened when you became enlightened?
Master: Nothing! I decided to live in my enlightened state from that day.

Blink and be in Bliss!

Words From The Master - 11 April 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 6 am till she goes to bed at 11 pm. 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 the speed of light. The world is a global village. Electronic mails have to be replied 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 lifetime. We multi-task and multi-live. 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) will be ready for marriage. My son (an infant) 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 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 a 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 complete focus, with enjoyment, and live the 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 can never do this. There is rarely any enjoyment in what we do, it’s an attitude of getting it over with, even if it is doing something pleasurable. 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 of being silent.

In Zen, meditation is about sitting still and doing nothing, but nevertheless doing it consciously. Stopping the body and mind is healing the body and mind. Next time you are hurrying through something ask the person nearest to you to shout Stop. This will startle you into awareness, and who knows, perhaps even into enlightenment.

Words From The Master - 10 April 2008

Listen to your body

A popular sports gear advertisement reads: If your body tells you to stop, tell your body to shut up.

Most of the time we tell our body to shut up instead of listening to it as we ought to. No other living creature needs an alarm clock to wake up or a sleeping pill to go to bed. We, in fact, pride ourselves on how we abuse our body.

Our body has tremendous intelligence built over 600 million years of evolution as a living being.

A vast majority of our body activity is controlled by the autonomous nervous system that takes care of us with no inputs from us consciously.

We breathe, digest, maintain our balance or even regulate our sleep-wake cycle without any conscious effort on our part. If we had to worry about doing these things we would be tied up in knots.

Our body survives in spite of us, not because of us.

This is the miracle of body intelligence.

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, carriers of our genetic code, are embedded in 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.

Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over 85 per cent 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 the plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they were told that they were allergy-causing substances.

What was more amazing was when the allergy-causing leaves were placed on their skin and the name of a non-allergy-causing plant was mentioned, there was no allergic reaction in the patients.

Make peace with your body. The body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully integrated.

Be aware of your body – for then you can sense what the body needs, even before you consciously become aware of the need.

Your body tells you what it needs – remember this, for you have the intelligence to listen to it.

Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots – this causes pain to yourself – when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it.

Trust in your body wisdom.

Only through meditation will you ever learn to understand your body, with clarity and compassion.

You will then be able to find a way to go beyond the body.

Life Bliss Galleria: 10 Apr 2008

Upcoming Release: "Songs of Eternity... silence speaks" -- a coffee table book with a rare compilation of pictures and incisive messages from the Master.

Words From The Master - 09 April 2008

Having a purpose in life

We do not understand how purposeless life is, the way we live it. We believe that our life becomes worthwhile by giving vent to our feelings, by trying to fulfill whatever our immediate desire or impulse is.

What we think as worthy is not worthy, what we think as being purposeful is not purposeful. Our ego constantly strives for purpose. In doing so the reality of the present is missed; the truth and the purpose of life are missed. We need to understand the purposelessness of our goals and ambitions. What we think are the greatest treasures to obtain in this world are meaningless.

Living your life blissfully is the ultimate goal of your life. Life’s purpose is bliss. There can be no other goal or purpose. When we run after other goals we stop experiencing life; we are already dead. Our ego masks the true purpose of life. When we realise the purposeless of what we do, a new consciousness emerges, joy fills us, bliss happens.

When you are focused on material benefits such as your monthly salary or whatever is your time-based goal, you can experience at best, joy on that day. Fear, greed, lust and envy block peace; they demand more and more, even as you acquire more and more. This is not life.

When we drop what we think is our purpose, our goals in life, then we realise the divine purpose, the Lila, the divine play. You start to enjoy the drama without being part of it, and life becomes meaningful. You become a witness, not a player, and bliss happens.

As long as you work towards a goal, life has no meaning. Only when you realise that life has no purpose at all, can you really start living. You then walk the path with no destination in mind, and enjoy each step. You experience bliss. There is a big difference between living and life. You can only be alive and living when you understand that purposelessness of life. Otherwise you just inhale and exhale; so do people in a coma; the only difference is that you are in a walking and waking coma unlike the ones in ICUs. Meditation helps you understand the uselessness of life, the meaning of life as it should be, and the meaning of self, and existence. Meditation helps you realise that the path is the goal. Meditation leads to the awareness that bliss is the path and the goal.

Words From The Master - 08 April 2008

Renounce what you don’t have

A beautiful Zen story: Two Zen monks came to a river in spate. As they were about to cross, there came a young maiden who requested their help to cross the turbulent river. One of the monks without any hesitation lifted her in his arms and carried her across the river.

The monks then went on their way to a monastery nearby. After many hours the second monk exclaimed, “I am disappointed with you. You should not have touched that woman.” The first monk answered: ‘I put that woman down many hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”

When you live in the present, you stop carrying the baggage of your past into your future, which guarantees misery. Many people come to me saying that they wish to renounce the life of a householder and become an ascetic, a sanyasin. They see the way I live in bliss all the time, and think that once they too don saffron robes they will be blissful. Not so. I tell them, renounce what you do not have; there is no need for you to renounce what you already have. I tell them, stop worrying about becoming a sadhu; a householder with no baggage on his spirit is far more likely to attain truth than a sadhu who has not still renounced what he does not have.

It is the desire for what one does not have: the dreams, fantasies and the deep desires, that lead us into trouble. These then are the first list of baggage that needs to be discarded. Buddha said: Desire is the root cause of all sorrow. The desire that Buddha talked about is the desire for what we do not already have, what we do not need, what we can do without; desires that are not our own, but are born out of greed, fear, lust and jealousy. There is no end to desire. There is none amongst us who can truthfully say that once we achieve what we desire today, we shall be satisfied. Tomorrow is another day and brings forth more desires than what we had yesterday. Desire breeds desire; desires are never satiated upon fulfilment.

For most people material life is the way to live. Renouncing material life in search of an unknown spiritual goal is foolishness. What is needed is to reach the balance between material life and spiritual life that leads to enlightenment. This is possible and certain. We should live in the present. Living in the here and now, in space and time, within the boundaries of our own being guarantees enlightenment. Meditation is the key to being in the present – it leads you into enlightenment and bliss.

Words From The Master - 07 April 2008

Rely on Your Instinct to Rouse the Unconscious

How does the mind processes information?

When we see something through our eyes called chaksu, which is a digital signal processor, the digital file goes to memory or chitta, and then to mind or manas, and finally takes a leap into ego. Chitta decides what the information is not, to arrive at what it is, through a process of elimination. The mind says, this is a man conducting a class; it identifies the object as a man. Then it leaps into the ego, which, based on past experience, decides whether to sit in the class or go out. Ego decides and you express and act on that decision.

The ego zone is not under your control. There are impressions, past memories, or samskaras. They force you to take illogical, unconscious decisions. You decide to smoke, knowing fully well that it is bad for health. You go ahead anyway. You have no control. Samskaras create conflict and suffering.

Let’s suppose that the time taken from eye to mind is T_p. Till here the process is logical and clear. The time taken for unconscious process — from mind to ego, through samskaras — which distort your file, and twist your decisions, is T_q. As long as T_q is more than T_p, you will be more aware of your unconscious. If not, you are unaware and act on instinct. You are restless. You decide without knowing what you are doing.

When samskaras are more, and they move fast without your knowledge, you are in trouble. If time taken for conscious process is more than the time taken for the unconscious, if T_p is greater than T_q, you act instinctively. If T_p equals T_q, you are in Intelligence level. You will live your life without guilt. When T_q is greater than T_p, you are in super conscious level; your unconscious is infused with silence and intuition.

When you infuse consciousness and silence into this unconscious zone you burn all your samskaras, you become Shiva, you reach superconscious level. When T_p is less than T_q you operate on instinct; if equal, you are operating on intelligence; if T_q is greater, you are operating on intuition.

To awaken your intuition, give your conscious mind a rest. There is a state of mind where you have no thought. Consciousness remains. Modern psychology has no word for this state as it is not aware of this state of meditation, intuition or thoughtless awareness. In Sanskrit, it is called samadhi. If you can experience this state you can experience creativity, courage, confidence; you can take spontaneous decisions; you take responsibility; you decide based on limited data, with no precedence. You get the power and courage to do anything. Your relationships can change.

How do you differentiate between intuition and instinct?

When you act instinctively, you will feel drained: For instance, when you react in anger, you feel guilty. When you act intuitively, you feel energised.

Meditation helps you reach this state. Whenever you find time, be silent, be aware, be conscious; some part of your being wants to express itself more. Tune into the higher energy of intuition and creativity.

Words From The Master - 06 April 2008

Responsibility-the way to go!

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 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. The person who passes the buck and relaxes will never progress 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! 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 wealth 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 - 05 April 2008

Who created the Universe?

FROM the earliest days of humanity there has been intense curiosity about how it all came about; how man and woman were created and how the Universe was created.

Each religion, each culture developed its own answers, its mythology. Christianity and Islam adopted the Judaic version of creation, as laid out in the Book of Genesis. God made the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh. He created man and from the man’s rib made the woman. Hindu mythology had a different version. So do other cultures and religions. Was God then independent of the Universe? Where was He before the Universe came into being? Where would He go after the Universe is destroyed?

Buddha said: Universe was never created. Universe will never die. Universe has been in existence always, and will be in existence always.

Sanatana Dharma, the philosophy of Hinduism, supports Buddha. The Brahman always was, is and will be. Brahman is Existence. Existence is the universe. There never was a time it did not exist, and there never will be a time it would not exist.

Different parts of the Universe will die and new ones will be created. The Big Bangs and Black Holes will occur at different spaces and different times in the Universe randomly and in a chaotic manner. But the Universe will exist forever and ever. While modern science talks about the Big Bang theory, no scientist has an answer to what was there before to cause the Big Bang, if it is considered to be the seminal act of creation.

Science has as of today no answer even to how living matter was created. A biogenesis, the emergence of living matter from non-living material is still a mystery, though there may be hundreds of unproven theories. How the first particle of the chain of life, the amino acid or its constituents, came into existence is still a question mark.

Hindu scriptures say that living matter came out of the energy of the elements of the Universe. Taittreya Upanishad explains how from the energy of cosmos arose all other energies such as space, air, fire, water and earth, finally resulting in plants and humans. Science has a long way to go before it has an alternative explanation.

After reading the Upanishad, Einstein remarked: Spirituality starts where science ends. Unlike most other scientists, Einstein understood that there was never a time that the Universe and Life did not exist.

Words From The Master - 03 April 2008

Renunciation

Renounce what you do not have; there is no need to renounce what you already have.

It is the desire for what one does not have: the dreams, the fantasies and the deep desires, that lead us into trouble. These then are the first list of baggage that needs to be discarded.

Buddha said: Desire is the root cause of all sorrow. Stop desiring and you shall break the vicious cycle of samsara, which is perpetuated only through desire.

Desiring what we do not have generates envy, jealousy, greed, anger, hate and many other negative feelings against others who we perceive have what we do not have. Our actions born out of these negative feelings generate sorrow to others and ultimately sorrow in us.

There is no end to desire. There is none amongst us who can truthfully say that once we achieve what we desire today, we shall remain satisfied. Tomorrow is another day and brings forth more desires than what we had yesterday. Desires breed desires; desires are never satiated upon fulfillment.

True liberation and enlightenment can never take place in the presence of continuing desire. Renounce desire for what you don’t have, and you shall reach enlightenment.

Most people ask me how to renounce worldly life and become a Sadhu. I tell them that there is no need to renounce anything at all. Keep what you have and focus on doing what is right.

For most people material life is the way to live. Renouncing material life in search of an unknown spiritual goal is foolishness. What is needed is to reach the balance between material life and spiritual life that leads to enlightenment. This is possible and certain.

We should live in the present. Living in the here and now, in space and time, within the boundaries of our own being guarantees enlightenment.

Two Zen monks came to a river in spate. As they were about to cross, there came a young maiden who requested their help to cross the turbulent river. One of the monks with no hesitation lifted her in his arms and carried her across the river. The monks then went their way to a monastery nearby. After many hours the second monk exclaimed, “I am disappointed with you. You should not have touched that woman.” Answered the first: ‘I put that woman down many hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”

When you live in the present, you stop carrying the baggage of your past into your future, which guarantees misery. Stop worrying about becoming a Sadhu; a householder with no baggage on his spirit is far more likely to attain Truth than a Sadhu who has not still renounced what he does not have.

There is a beautiful story in Mahabharata. An aspiring sadhu lived across the street from a prostitute. The woman was for ever chanting the name of Krishna. She had no other means of support and had to entertain men for her living. The sadhu would look at what was happening across the street and seethe in anger. They both died on the same day. Chitragupta consigned the woman to heaven and the sadhu to hell. The sadhu raised the roof and appealed to Yama. Said Yama, you pretended to meditate and all you did was to salaciously watch the woman. She on the other hand had her mind and heart fixed on the lord, even if her body had to do what ever it had to. You both received what your intentions deserved.

Saffron robes do not mean enlightenment, pure thoughts do.

Words From The Master - 02 April 2008

Quantum Bliss

Bliss is continuously happening within us without gap of time and space. As long as we associate our bliss with a particular time or a space, we will miss the bliss. We then think that the gap between sufferings is bliss. In life, we seem to experience happiness only in gaps between sufferings.

If you associate pleasure with a particular space, say a fantasy home, or with an object such as a car or with a particular person, you feel happy when you are with these things. You crave to be around that space, object or person. Possession starts, and possession always takes revenge by trying to own the object or person. When you try to possess, you reduce people to matter, energy to matter. Possession always gives rise to hatred and jealousy because of your dependency on the person or object.

Associating bliss with time also leads to suffering. When you try to bring back the time that you felt happiness to experience it again, you find somehow that happiness is no longer the same. The joy is lacking. After a few attempts you feel depressed and sick. You don’t feel the energy of happiness.

When you understand that happiness does not depend on time and space, you enter the zone of Quantum Bliss. When you associate happiness with time and space, you stay within boundaries of suffering.

For example, you have a great desire to eat a sweet. When you eat the sweet, you feel joy. You associate that feeling of joy with the sweet and you wish to eat more of the sweet. If you keep eating more and more of it, at one point in time after you feel revulsion not joy; you cannot eat any more. If your joy was really associated with the sweet, then the joy should only multiply, is it not? But it doesn’t happen that way. What is it then that gave you that joy?

What happens is, when you feel that you are enjoying an object, the moment that object is near you, the number of thoughts in your mind reduces, and a feeling of peace and joy expresses itself. But you associate this feeling with the object, the sweet! The joy is actually because of the reduced frequency of your thoughts. When the frequency of thoughts reduces, you experience bliss, which is independent of any outer world object. When you experience this for longer periods of time, you have taken the jump into Quantum Bliss.

Be Blissful!

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.