Now and here or nowhere?

GAUTAMA Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was, with his disciple Ananda, passing through a town. He was talking to him when suddenly a fly came and sat on his forehead. As he was talking, he moved his hand over his forehead to chase the fly away. Suddenly he realised that the movement of his hand had been unconscious, mechanical. As he was talking consciously to Ananda, the hand had chased the fly away mechanically. He stopped and although the fly had gone, he moved his hand again consciously over his forehead.

Ananda asked his Master: What are you doing? The fly has gone away. Buddha replied: The fly has gone away... but I have committed a sin, because I did it in unconsciousness.

The word sin was used by Buddha in its right meaning. The word sin originates in the roots of the word, which means forgetfulness, unawareness, unwatchfulness, and doing things mechanically. Our whole life is almost mechanical — like robots. I tell you, never allow a mechanical feeling to take possession over you. Do everything watchfully. This is the only secret of transformation.

When you do everything consciously, you become a luminous phenomenon. When you act without awareness or in an unmindful manner, you miss the world of light; you are like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes of awareness. When you understand and practice this mindful living, you will understand the power of now. Your life is more now; more in every way: physically, emotionally and spiritually. When you understand that life is now, all your physical pains and psychological pains disappear. You will see that a tremendous sense of freedom happens in you.

Buddha says, “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, nor to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

If you don’t live now and here, you will reach nowhere. When you live in the now and here, you will never bother about the next moment. Every moment is going to come to you only as now, here. If you can manage now, here, you can surely manage the next moment which comes as now, here. Every moment takes birth only from this moment. Life is a succession of moments. To live each one in the now is to succeed.

Be Blissful!

Make peace with 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. We gloat about how much we can drink, how late we can party, how hard we can party, how hard we can work, and how badly we can treat ourselves and our body. No wonder we need more food to stop feeling hungry, more drugs to overcome illness, more wine to get drunk, and more TV to stop feeling bored.

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, such as breathing, digesting, maintaining our balance or even regulating our sleep wake cycle. If we needed 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 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! 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.

Both our mind and body are expressions of the same consciousness. They cannot and do not function separately. Unless we respect both equally, we can never be integrated individuals. Contrary to what some yogis may believe, I say that the way to spirituality is only through the body.

Make peace with your body. You can then sense what the body needs, even before you become consciously aware of the need. 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 by deeply understanding your body, with clarity and compassion, would you be able to find a way to go beyond it.

Not for sale, but God can be purchased!

GOD can never be sold, but he can be purchased. That is the paradox!

In Hindu mythology there is a story of a fight between Brahma, the creator of the world and Vishnu the sustainer, as to who was greater. Siva, was sought to resolve this. Siva appeared as such a huge shaft of light that his ends, head and feet, could not be seen. He said: “Whoever finds either of my ends is the greater.”

Brahma went up towards his head as a flying swan. Vishnu went down as a boar to find his feet. They searched for ages. Vishnu realised he could not find what he sought, decided to surrender his ego, and told Siva to forgive his ego in trying to seek his feet. Siva blessed him for his honesty.

Brahma could not accept his failure. He saw a flower as he flew up and asked it where it was coming from. It said it had fallen from Siva’s ears. Brahma asked: “ How long have you been traveling?” The flower said: “Four ages of Brahma!” Brahma was shocked and realised he had no hopes of finding Siva’s head, but he did not want to accept his failure. He asked the flower: “Can you be the witness that I brought you down from Siva’s head?” The flower agreed reluctantly.

Both went down and Brahma told Siva that he had seen his head and had brought the flower as witness. Siva was angry at the lie and punished him saying: “You will never be worshipped hereafter”, and told the flower: “You will never be used in my worship.”

Vishnu is the authority of wealth or desire. Brahma represents knowledge. This story shows that neither wealth nor knowledge can reveal God. Desires will only make us go for more and more. We can never attain God through it. Vishnu realises this and surrenders. Trying to find God through knowledge is also futile as is the case with Brahma. We can never know God through the head.

Then how to purchase God? How to achieve Him? Only when you sell yourself, your ego, can you purchase Him.

Your ‘I’ and mine’ are your ego. A devotee from the US came to our ashram in India. He said he wanted to buy land around the ashram and settle down there. I asked him, “Fool! Can you not enjoy anything without possession?” Enjoy everything without trying to make it yours. The more ‘mine’, the less joy. When you give up ‘I’ and ‘mine’, the whole Universe becomes yours and God possesses you.

Be blissful!

Awareness is the way out of pain

A MAN used to complain bitterly about the lunch he brought to work every day. He would open his lunch box and look at its contents and complain. His friends one day finally asked him why he didn’t ask his wife to cook something he liked to eat, rather than suffering this way.

He replied: What wife? I am not married. I cook my own lunch.

We all live our lives much the same way. Through lack of awareness, we invite pain upon ourselves, complain about it and resort to painkillers. We fail to identify ourselves as the cause of the problem. Responsibility for the pain is always some else’s, never our own.

Pain is caused by absence of attention. It can be relieved by our attention. Pain is a negative energy; it does not exist by itself; it is the absence of a positive energy.

How to get over pain?

Next time you have some pain, just try this small exercise: Lie in a dark room with eyes closed and focus upon the area of pain to the exclusion of everything else. As you experience the area of pain, drop the notion of ‘Pain’ from your mind. Focus all your attention on this spot; soon you will find it shrinking. Concentrate further and you will find that the pain disappears and in its place you experience pleasure; pain and pleasure are the same sensation with different tags. Your awareness of pain causes it to disappear and bring in positive energy of pleasure.

When you feel hurt and angry through other people’s actions, you need to watch these emotions without judgement of who is right or wrong. Suppressing these emotions can cause harm to you. Enter the feeling of hurt or anger; just watch it; don’t feel sorry for yourself; do not direct the anger against another person. This awareness itself will simply transform the negative emotion to a positive one.

You have no control over when, how and why things happen. All you can do is to choose whether to suffer from it or learn from it. If you use the opportunity of that pain experience to look inside you, you will discover that you are the cause, and that only you can be the solution.

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

Be Blissful!

Ultimate truth is timeless

I WAS traveling with a professor of comparative religions. I asked him for percentages of different religious groups in the United States. He asked do you want published figures or real figures of those who practice these religions sincerely. These two figures are very different, he said. When I studied statistics at least 25% of all Americans have practised one form of yoga or another. At least 10% practice regularly.

Edison discovered light. Once discovered it belonged to the whole world. Patanjali, an Indian sage who lived thousands of years ago, discovered the truth of inner light and made it available to the whole world. There was no copyright fortunately. Patanjali is great because he did not create an organisation. Once an organisation is created truth is cremated. A real rose is beautiful and God given. A plastic rose is not. The difference between truth and organised religion is the same as between a real rose and plastic roses.

Another great Master J Krishnamurthy said after creating his organisation that the organisation has only the right to publish his teaching and writings, but not to comment upon them. If Krishna and Jesus meet they will hug each other; but Krishna’s cows and Jesus’ goats will bicker and fight with each other. Masters are truth, followers are corrupt. Organisations and followers create complications so as to exploit people, to control people.

Patanjali says when my teachings are no longer true, this book will die; let it live as long as it is the ultimate truth. I want only truth to survive. If I create an organisation, my followers will try for the survival of the organisation not the truth. If Krishna and Buddha descend today their temples will not welcome them; it will disturb their vested interests.

This openness is what makes me call Patanjali a saintist, a saint and a scientist, a mystic and scientist combined in one. He created this book to understand how to reach the ultimate truth and then is ready to stand by and let his book be replaced if some one else comes up with a greater truth. We still cannot add a single word to enhance his sayings. Only a person who is so confident can be so open. It is like a money-back guarantee, which is possible only if you have absolute confidence in yourself and what you believe in and say.

It’s all conditioned by your mind

FREUD says: all your thinking is association. If you see a dog in the street, you start thinking about all the dogs you have seen from childhood. Then you remember your childhood, you remember a teacher when you were a child. There is no logical connection. When you start verbalising you miss reality. Every day the sun rises; every day the sun sets; every day something new happens. To you it’s one more Friday, one more Saturday, another Sunday. The moment you label it as Friday, you think you know everything about that day. You just take it for granted. Because you take people for granted you don’t enjoy your relationships. You judge people first and collect arguments to support your judgement.

You can never step into the same river twice, because by that time it has moved. People also move, they change, they are not the same as who you met before. By the time you meet them again your husband/wife has changed; something is added to them; either intelligence or foolishness. But you don’t agree. You hold on to the same mental setup.

Sushruta wrote 5,000 years ago. He talks about open heart surgeries and transplants. He was a great enlightened Master. He said: every six months your liver replaces itself completely. Not even one part is same. Once in 21 days your intestine replaces itself. Modern day physiologists agree. Every cell is replaced continuously.

Sushruta says: your mental structure plays a major role when these changes take place. A disciple asks him: why do we carry diseases over a number of years? Why does the new liver carry the same disease? Sushruta replies: you don’t believe you have changed, that’s why. You carry the same mental frame despite body change. That mental frame retains the disease. You don’t let go of that frame, you don’t let go of that disease. You don’t let go of your samskara. Samskara is the powerful mental root that drags you to travel the same path.

Like Pavlov’s dogs which came running and salivated even when no food was served but the bell was rung, whenever you remember that past situation or person you react the same way, you move in the same rut. In the morning you worry about office, by evening you worry about your wife and children, unconsciously, without reason. The mood remains low even if you do not realise why. You do not live based on intelligence, you live based on information.

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 organisation who takes up responsibility and performs his tasks can inspire an entire organisation 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-centred, 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! 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!

Ananda yoga – the path of ecstasy!

Nanda means something that can reduce in quantity. Ananda means that which cannot reduce in quantity. Ananda means bliss! It is not joy. Ordinary joy brings suffering with it. Ananda is beyond joy. It comes without a reason. It just is.

Joy is what you feel through your senses, based on an outer object — music, a fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you feel joy without sensory inputs, not even inputs of forms of God, just from your inner core, your soul, it is bliss! There needs to be no reason. It simply comes from within. That is ananda.

Yoga is not physical exercise or breath control; these are just parts of yoga. Yoga literally means union; the union of the self with the divine; union with the cosmic power. It is the cessation of the mind, to take it beyond the mind, to be one with existence. The blissful technique to unite your self with the divine is ananda yoga. It uses bliss itself to unite.

Ananda yoga is the path of ecstasy, not the path to ecstasy. The very path, the very travel itself is ecstasy. Life has no goal, it has only purpose. It is not something you find at the end, you find it all along the way. Living has a purpose. If life is a goal, it’s a rat race. In the rat race, even if you win you are only a rat!

The very living is bliss when you go without a goal; only with the purpose of enjoying the path.

You cannot look at God as a goal. You cannot run towards God. In the inner world, the logic is very different. Goals are not reached by running towards them. Zen masters say: When you stop seeking, you will find it. Seeking makes you tense; it makes you miss your purpose.

Just look at all your guilt, mistakes, and failures; just look with deep acceptance. Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax; guilt will drop from your mind. If your mind is tense, it can never stop. Only when you relax it can cease.

You have to drop being goaloriented. If you accept what you are, what is, the mind will lose its roots. Mind and bliss cannot stay together. When mind is, bliss is not. It is either mind or bliss.

So drop your mind and simply decide to walk the path of ecstasy!

Be Blissful!

Man creates God in his own mould

EVERY man lives in one of the seven chakras, the energy centres. If you are in the lowest level, that is the Muladhara chakra, you are caught in lust and desire. You worship a God who can grant all your boons. That is why God is understood as a giver of boons and is very popular. People are caught up in fantasy, expectations and desires and whoever fulfils these becomes their God. The moment they miss giving a single boon, their Gods will get dethroned!

Next is the person who is caught in the Swadishthana chakra. You worship the God who gives confidence, who you believe will take care of you; you go behind the idols that have many weapons and many hands. You experience God as a protector. The third level person stays in the Manipuraka chakra. You continuously worry and remain confused. You worship the God who gives clarity and peace. Next is the person who lives in the Anahata chakra. Here, you are attracted towards the God who showers love on you. You worship the God who gives emotional fulfilment. Next, if you are raised to the level of the Vishuddhi chakra, the God of creativity or Energy appeals to you. You experience God as the creator. If you are centred in the Ajna chakra, you are locked in ego. Somebody in the egoless state attracts you: rishis, seers, sages, prophets and Masters attract you. The egoless man becomes your idol.

That is why I say man creates God in his own mould! You simply relate to God or the Masters from these six levels; a relationship doesn’t happen — you simply reduce them to mere mortals. You have a concept in your mind and you are demanding from them that concept — it is simply a monologue.

In the Ajna chakra, the dialogue starts. Only in the Sahasrara chakra, the communion happens! If you understand you are actually relating to your Gods and Masters from these chakras and that you need to go beyond this and catch the transcendental expression of the Divine, all your problems will dissolve! When you are in the Muladhara chakra, the Master drills into you like a crowbar. At a little higher level, he is like a knife penetrating you. At the level of the Sahasrara chakra, he is like a fragrance! If you are alert and aware, the Master can transform you. You just need to be passive for the alchemy to happen. If you are alert and aware, you can catch the smell and experience it!

Drop your past and move on

YOUR thoughts bridge your past to the future. Your mind is constantly in motion, without a purpose. Its purported purpose is to provide a rational link between your past and your future. However, there is no such rational link. Neither the past nor the future exists.

Your past is dead, it is gone, it is finished. As the poet Omar Khayyam said in Rubaiyat, “the moving finger writes and having writ moves on; nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.” No regret, no penance will recreate your past differently. Reliving the past is an exercise in futility and foolishness.

The future does not exist yet. To create the future is speculative. You do not even know whether you will breathe your next breath. What arrogance, therefore, to think of creating your future.

Worse still is to flash back into the past so as to create the future. If you think you will learn from your past mistakes to create a faultless future you need to think again.

You do not have the intelligence to learn from the past and make new mistakes; you will keep making the same mistakes again and again.

What exists in reality is your present. The present is all that there is. Once you suspend thoughts you are grounded in the present, the state of truth and the state of awareness. When you are in the present truly, in deep awareness, you become aware of your past and present as well. You become a tri kala jnani, an enlightened master who is in all three time zones past, present and future, all at once.

A great Zen master was asked: what is the difference that you found when you became enlightened? He said simply: I eat when I eat and I sleep when I sleep. When you become aware and mindful, you live in the present all the time. You focus on what you do at that moment. Your mind is where your body is.

Normally when you are at work, your mind wanders and takes a vacation; and when you are on vacation at a beach, your mind worries about your work that you should have done, but did not. Once you learn to be in the present, dilemmas disappear; your mind becomes clear.

Drop your thoughts, now, and you will be at peace.

Be liberated! Drop your samskaras!

IN SOME parts of India, if some one sneezes as another person is about to leave on an important mission, it is considered a bad omen, and the mission is aborted. People may call this superstition.

Some people must do everything by a set routine. Before leaving home they will check half a dozen times whether the lights are off, whether doors are locked and so on. Psychologists call this obsessive compulsive neurosis.

You wear a blue shirt once to an important event and you are successful. From then on you always wear blue for any critical event. You call it your lucky charm.

You tend to follow what worked for you in the past; what someone tells you worked for them in the past; what, therefore, you believe will work for you in future. Your mind stores these past impressions and memories, as well as the emotive reactions associated with these experiences continuously, whether you remain conscious of these experiences or not.

Mind never sleeps, not for one moment. Data stored by the mind based on past experiences with an emotive overload are called samskara in Sanskrit.

Your samskaras define you. They lead your life. Samskaras drive you to take illogical, unconscious and irrational decisions. Samskaras keep you in bondage. They are the root cause of all suffering. When Buddha said desires are the root cause of suffering, he was referring to the effect of these samskaras, these unfulfilled desires that drive you irrationally, blindly. The problem is samskaras drive your actions unconsciously and without your awareness, letting you believe that whatever you are doing is rational.

Your ultimate liberation lies in infusing silence, injecting light, bringing thoughtless awareness to your unconscious zone. When the unconscious samskara arises, when you remember something that disturbs you, you create an energy clot, an energy block within yourself; you contract; there is less space in your Being. When you meditate on your inner space or inner silence you expand. That is possible only when you do not have samskara, no energy clots within you, which disturb you.

These samskaras can only be eradicated through meditation, through awareness; by being witness to and not being a participant in thoughts. You have nothing to lose but your samskara, when you meditate! Drop your samskaras and be liberated!

Living within your boundary

WHEN you drop the idea of having more and more and start living in the present moment, you start living inside your boundary.

What do I mean by start living inside your boundary?

One thing is for sure: if you are here, your mind is not here. Your mind never stays where your body stays. This is the life style of asking for more and more. You run, run and run, without even knowing what you are running for.

It is a rat race. In a rat race, even if you win, you are still a rat! When you run with all your energy, you forget to enjoy; you forget to live.

The other life style, where you live inside your boundary, where you live in the present moment, creates a new mental setup. You start to live more intensely, with awareness, what Buddhists call Zen, Mindfulness. Your living is centred on your Being; you feel fulfilled. Life opens a new dimension.

You continuously feel dissatisfied because you are threatened by your desires. Just observe carefully: the moment a desire arises, there is a deep uneasiness in you.

If the desire is fulfilled, you start worrying about whether you will get to experience the same joy again or not.

Also, you often experience guilt on fulfilment of a desire. On the other hand, if your desire is not fulfilled, there is a hangover, a deep craving to fulfil the desire.

Both ways, there is no fulfilment. This is how we waste our whole life. We plan to enjoy but never enjoy; we never experience fulfilment.

If the quality of the mind is such, what is the use of getting a weekend to enjoy our vacation? We will be in a different place but we will be carrying the same mind with us there also!

When you postpone enjoyment, when you postpone living in the present, when you constantly hope to live in the future, the habit of postponement soon becomes a mental attitude.

Work to increase not the height of the bed, but the depth of your sleep.

As to what happens to us in life, we may have little or no choice. But as to how we deal with it, we have total choice. Live life in the present, in order to live it to the fullest.

Enjoy things now.

Be Blissful!

Don’t worry, be happy

THERE was a popular song a while ago that went: Don’t worry, be happy. It became an instant hit, and no wonder.

We all have a laundry list of worries all the time. It is very difficult for us to predict when we are likely to be joyful, but very easy to say when we shall be worried, which is almost all the time.

We worry when we have no money; we also worry when we have money. We worry if we have no children; we also worry when we have children, as our children quite often are the cause of problems, especially when they emulate us.

Worry follows desires just as night follows day. Just as desires have no end, worries too are endless.

Nitti Mudaliar went to a restaurant and ordered one of each item on the menu. With great enjoyment he demolished all that was brought to him. After he finished with his dessert and coffee, he got up to leave. The waiter stopped him with a bill. Said Nitti in exasperation: I never ordered this bill. Why have you brought it to me?

Most of us live our life like Nitti. We have no recollection of asking for the bill as we go about acquisitions and expectations of acquisitions. When the bill does finally arrive we are startled, and depressed as this is not part of our expectation.

Desires are not harmful by themselves. Desires are energy, as long as the desires are your true deep desires. Problem is that most of our desires are borrowed. They arise out of jealousy and greed and nothing to do with what we need.

Ramana Maharishi said about this beautifully: The Universe can cater to the needs of every single inhabitant. However, it can not fulfill the wants of even one single person.

In your own life, just think of all the things you wish for right now. Make a list. Now make a list of the things that you already have. Which list makes you happy, and which list makes you uneasy?

The answer is obvious.

Why don’t we focus on what we have, offer gratitude to the Universe for providing all that we have instead of worrying about what we don’t have? Whether we want to keep begging for more or be thankful for what we have is a choice that we make. It is a choice between happiness and sorrow.

Empty your mind for wisdom

A POMPOUS professor came to a Zen Master to learn. Instead of listening, he started blowing his own trumpet. The Master asked for tea and when it was brought, started pouring a cup for his guest. He kept pouring tea into the cup without stopping. The cup overflowed and the tea spilt on the table. Irritated, the professor shouted: stop, can’t you see the cup is full?

The master said: so is your mind. Unless you empty it what can you learn? Acquiring knowledge is a transmission process. For this transmission 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 comes in three varieties. Basic knowledge that we all learn from childhood, the type that learn our three ‘R’s with, is intellectual knowledge. To read, write, and calculate we use our head, our mind, to acquire the needed knowledge. At this level of knowledge transfer what happens is communication.

Another type of knowledge needs the heart to be involved; 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 want just watch me and do.” What was merely an intellectual communication becomes collaboration between master and the taught, when the heart is involved.

Spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the highest kind; it is not knowledge really but wisdom. This 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.

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.

Surrender is the shortcut to God

A BANK manager used to take all the cash to his home everyday and bring it back with him the next 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 the 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 three kilometres! 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 grow into 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!

The expressway to suffering

IT’S weird and yet it has become normal. Whatever moves faster is better. Communication is at the 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?

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

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 just ten minutes. He still 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 certainly feel we have missed out on life. Has the running been worth it? This is the fastest route to suffering, the expressway.

There is good reason to plan for tomorrow, it’s important. However, let’s not forget to live today!

We take ourselves too seriously. What we do in our lifetime hardly matters in the bigger picture. It is lost in the vast expanse of the universe.

Things go on silently in the universe; so peacefully without any contradictions; millions of solar systems function with such beauty! Things happen in nature in spite of us not because of us.

When we realise this we relax into ourselves. We feel centred in our being. There is a deep sense of trust and peace that envelops our being. When this happens, we will not find the need to hurry through our lives.

If you don’t mind, mind your mind

MOTHER was trying on her new fur coat. It was very expensive. Her young daughter watched her curiously and remarked: imagine how much suffering the poor animal would have had to undergo for you to have this fur coat! Mother turned to her daughter angrily: how dare you speak about your poor father like this. These days you young people have no respect for elders!

Our mind leads us its own way, sometimes strange ways, in the way it thinks and responds. Thoughts rise and fall chaotically within our mind; nothing is logical; they rise, live and fall. It is not thinking; it is just association. Association causes dilemmas. Fathers turn into poor animals.

When we bring your thinking process into consciousness our desires too become conscious. As of now they are mostly unconscious. You realise only after a while that whatever led into a problem is just association, not your desires.

We try to suppress desires or fulfil them. Suppression does not work. Fulfilment does not remove desires, it creates more desires. Bring your desires to consciousness from unconsciousness. If the desire is really worth fulfilling, the desire itself will have its energy for fulfilment. If not it will disappear. Either way you are in relaxation.

Energy is the source of desire. The same energy that converts food into muscles, circulates blood, moves your body. Between body and energy desires happen; they are closer to energy than body; they are more powerful than body. If you change your desires your whole body can change. Writing is the best way to raise desires to awareness.

Once a week give an appointment to yourself for 30 minutes and ask your Being what it wants. Just listen to your mind and note down. Whatever is necessary will stand, whatever is not will disappear. Many of our desires are not our own deep desires. We have life and energy to live only our own desires.

To mind your mind we need contemplation, concentration and meditation. Guiding our mind is contemplation; centring on one subject is concentration; when mind disappears into that subject and no mind remains it is meditation. When you become aware of this table it is contemplation; when you centre yourself on the wood it is concentration; when your mind become the wood it is meditation.

Meditation makes you aware of the reality. It liberates you.

Stop postponing, start living now

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 realise 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 a 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 maya.

As Krishna says in the Bhagwad Gita, do your duty but don’t crave for 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.

Living life in reality

IN HIS Yogasutra, Patanjali, the great sage, the greatest writer of them all, talks about eight ways to reach enlightenment. The second element in the first way, yama, of Patanjali is brahmacharya. Normally this word is translated as celibacy. This is wrong; totally wrong. Celibacy is suppression, perversion. Brahma means existence, reality; chariya is to walk in it, to live with it; brahmacharya is living with reality.

People ask: to become enlightened, do I need to leave my wife and children? I tell them: renounce only what you do not have; do not renounce what you already have. Live comfortably, intensely, happily with what you have. If you have a wife, live fully with her; not with the fantasy of some other woman. Renunciation is brahmacharya; it is dropping your fantasies. Brahmacharya is accepting reality as it is. When you drop your fantasies and accept your beloved for what she is, your life becomes heaven.

The idea of beauty is just an idea. As long as distance is maintained things look beautiful. Close-ups are always ugly and flat. Even if you marry the Miss Universe the idea of beauty will not last more than 15 days. The moment you start living together reality comes in; glamour wanes and fades. That’s why you call the first few days honeymoon, not honey sun.

When you drop your fantasies you can live with reality for ever. That’s why in Sanskrit there is no word for divorce. If you feed your fantasies you can change your partner any number of times and still be unhappy. Only in fairy tales do people live happily for ever. All legendary lovers, Romeo and Juliet, Laila and Majnu, were never married; had they married their stories would have had different endings.

People forcing themselves into celibacy are sitting on a volcano. They cannot look into your eyes for fear you will see their suffering. If you meditate and practice celibacy, Hindu mythology says that the gods above send celestial beautiful women to disturb you. Nobody sends women to disturb you; if that’s true everyone will start meditating. These meditators start hallucinating because of their suppressions, suppressed fantasies. Brahmacharya cannot be practised as morality, but as an understanding. When you accept your partner as he is or as she is, your fantasies drop, and you start accepting yourself as you are. Your partner then becomes your beloved.

Present is your very presence

MANY masters have spoken of being in the present. They teach you how to be in the present. Many of you have many ideas of what it is to be in the present.

When you are in the present, there should be no need for you to announce that you are in the now or in the present. If the need arises to announce this fact then be sure that you are not in the present. Your very presence will disturb others, will confuse others and will threaten them. Your inner chatter will be so loud that though you cannot hear it, others will want to run away.

You may become like some meditators who insist on everything around them being silent and undisturbed. They create chaos around them so that they can be centred and be in order. This does not work. It is your own mind that you need to bring to order, not other people’s minds.

People should smell you if you are in the present. They should be able to smell and feel your very presence. If they don’t you are not. Your very presence will centre them, calm them and move them into their present moment when you are yourself in the present moment. You have no need to advertise that fact.

If you are one of those who constantly have to keep telling people how much in the present moment you are, be sure you are not where you think you are. You are caught in your own inner chatter. You are caught in the greed of your speculative future and the regrets of your unlived past.

The more you are caught in your past and future, the higher the frequencies of your thoughts are and the louder and faster your inner chatter is. You have read about being in the present. You wish to be in the present. You feel guilty that you are not. So, you need to announce to the world that you have arrived, though you have not even started.

Presence and being in the present does not happen through seeking. It just happens. It happens when you do not seek, when you do not try, when you relax into it, when you let go. Understand that your thoughts are not logical or connected as you think. No one thought leads to another. Each is independent. We connect one thought with another and create shafts of pain and pleasure, of fear and greed. Instead of witnessing the thought in the present moment and letting it go, we extend it to either the past or the future.

Once you understand this truth, you move naturally into the present. I call this being in the unclutched state, the state of nithyananda, eternal bliss.

Life is beyond logic and reason!

PEOPLE again and again tell me, “Master, my son is not taking care of me.” In traditional societies as in India and other Asian countries children, especially sons, are still expected to take care of their parents in their old age. The logic of parents is that they took care of their children when they needed care and therefore, children should take care of them when they need support.

Of course, this may have been the case in the west in the past, but certainly no longer. After 18, connection between parents and children seems to get severed. As yet, this is not so true in Asian countries. Tradition seems to survive.

Be very clear, your son may be the first enemy for you. You are also the first enemy for him. You have given him so many rules, so many regulations. You had given him so many laws, so you were almost the master for him when he was young. Naturally, in one part of his mind he will have respect; the other part will always rebel against you. The other part will be just waiting to take revenge on you. Because you imposed rules and regulations on him, it is a basic rule that naturally he will be against you.

This reality holds good in our relationship with any rule giver, whether societal or religious. All these institutions try to impose their rules in us in subtle ways. They exploit our fear and greed by showing, talking, and convincing us about hell and heaven. They make us aspire and desire for heaven and develop a fear of hell.

They create so many concepts of hell and heaven in us. They say, “If you practise these types of teachings you will be rewarded with heaven; if you practise other type of teachings you can only go to hell.” This concept of heaven and hell is a subtle way of exploiting our being. When we are given some rules based on greed and fear, we start creating a deep sense of guilt in ourselves.

And one more thing! There is one law which is difficult to understand but it is one of the ultimate laws. The law states, “Nobody can live their lives based on any law.”

When I say nobody, I mean nobody. When I say any law, I mean any law. Life is far superior to laws. All the laws, rules, regulations are based on some, partial understanding of life.

People ask me, “Why is this life created at all?” I tell them, this why can never be answered. Because this why is based on logic.

Logic is not truth. With logic one can only travel as long as reasoning has power. Life is beyond that. Life is expansive and beyond logic and reason.

Don't let rules ruin your life!

A SMALL story. A man was addicted to smoking cigarettes. He asked for my help. “Master, please help me quit smoking. I don’t know how I became addicted. Please help me.”

I asked him, “How did you start smoking?”

“Master, I never wanted to smoke. In fact, I hated that smell,” he said. “One day I was talking to my friend on the street. My friend was smoking a cigarette. My father saw us from a distance. He thought I too was smoking. When I went home, he started yelling and shouting at me. He did not listen to me. Then I decided, how does it matter if I smoke now? I have already been punished for it. So, I started to smoke.”

We all get a thrill, a feeling of adventure, satisfaction in doing what we are not allowed to do. When we are asked not to do something, we feel a strong urge to do it. We feel a kind of joy and satisfaction doing it. This is the basic tendency of every human being.

When there is a strict rule, we always try to work around it and go beyond it. How many of us overspeed until we see a cop? We say no to our parents to prove that we are now grownups. We think that we become a man, an adult when we say no. Adults have the power and authority to veto anything by saying no. By saying no, we assume that we also have become adults.

We feel that as long as we say yes, we are children. We feel that we are not mature. When we say no, we think, we assume, that we have become adults. We think that we have matured. This is the basic tendency of every human being.

In western countries, that is why there are so many rebellious groups, gangs and other problems. These people develop a deep satisfaction and taste in saying no. They think it is an expression of self esteem. It is not; it is an emotional illness. Saying no is also an addiction. It is an addiction to one’s identity. It is an addiction to rebelling without reason. It is another way of expressing your ego.

In the ’70s in the US and many other western countries a counter culture developed. That counter culture such as the hippie movement in western USA was a rebellion against society. So long as you are working against something you are likely to get nowhere. You need to work towards something to get somewhere.

Go beyond rebelling against rules. Understand why the rule was created. Work towards that understanding. Then you can either follow the rule or bend the rule or break the rule without guilt, fear or anger.

Choose joy over worry!

IF I were to tell you that you choose your worries that make you suffer, you will disbelieve me. That is the truth!

Each one of us carries our personalised version of worry. Undoubtedly, the commonality of this worry is that we each have our personalised laundry list. Our worries are not the same as our neighbour’s. Our worry is completely based on our perceptions. Worries are based on individual desires.

Sarah was moving to a new house. She watched over the movers pack her household articles in preparation of her move. One man was handling her antique vase and she warned him, ‘Please be careful, that is over a hundred years old’ The man looked at her and said, ‘Don’t worry ma’am, I will handle it like it is brand new’.

Possessions and desire to possess bring about most of our suffering. Greed fuels many of our worries. We are bothered when our neighbours and friends possess things we do not have. If a neighbour has bought a new refrigerator it increases the temperature in our kitchen! When a friend buys the latest model automobile, we immediately feel that our last year model looks like a vintage car.

Our desires are plenty. When these desires are unfulfilled, we begin to worry. Our worries do not arise from a genuine need for what we really require. We create and invent new wants by comparing ourselves with others.

Desires, by themselves, aren’t harmful. If our desires are deep and pure, then they become true. Such a deep, true desire has power. Desire is energy.

We all have a problem here. Our desires are borrowed. They arise out of jealousy and greed. We develop the desires by comparing with others. Our desires have no connection with our true needs.

Ramana Maharishi, a realised master, explained the nature of desires with clarity: The Universe can cater to the needs of every single inhabitant. However, it cannot fulfil the wants of even a single person.

We worry about everything. We are trapped in a circuit that leads from desires, to worry, to greed. Every time we are worried or stressed about something, we are generating an energy block.

Look within instead of around. Stop craving for what others have. There is no need to renounce what you have to reach spiritual freedom. It is enough if you renounce what you do not have.

Renounce your fantasies to possess what others have. Enjoy what you already have. This is the path to eternal joy, Nithyanandam.

Many bodies, more joy!

WE ARE all interconnected through our bodies and thoughts. Each of us influences another and one another. The moment we understand how deeply, totally, and intensely connected we are interconnected, we’ll open many new dimensions of living. We experience bliss. This is the ultimate spiritual experience.

Every day in our lives we are stressed. We are continuously disturbed. We think that we have too much to do. We think that we have one body, one small body, to think or enjoy. And the troubles and trials the body faces everyday is too much for some of us. All our troubles melt away when we disappear into the Collective Consciousness.

When we disappear into the Collective Consciousness, we’ll have so many dimensions, so many possibilities. These are unimaginable now. Sometimes we have so much fun, so much joy bubbling within our body. Suppose we have two bodies, imagine how much joy can pour forth from it. Being in the Collective Consciousness, disappearing into the Collective Consciousness, is simply multiplying that joy many fold.

It is something like having three different bodies in three different continents living in three different cultures. The bliss or joy of living in the Collective Consciousness is beyond all of these.

When we completely experience that we’re consciousness without boundaries, it is an inexplicable experience. It’s an unbelievable experience. It’s difficult to imagine or visualise or express this experience. At the end of the programmes I conduct, I’ve seen people filled with ecstasy. In their exalted state of ecstasy they forget their name, identity, social status, education, qualifications, wealth, and religion. They forget everything. They forget what they are and what they have. They simply begin to respect another person. In fact, they respect everyone. They fall at each other’s feet.

I’ve seen a father-in-law falling at the feet of his daughter-in-law. In India this never happens. It’s too much to ask for from the traditional people. But this has happened at the end of the programmes. He did it because he glimpsed the divinity in her. A grandparent touches the feet of a granddaughter. The bosses touch the feet of their staff.

We need to go layer by layer, level by level, to realise that we are a part of Collective Consciousness. We’ll realise that we’re more than a part of the Collective Consciousness. We’re the Collective Consciousness.

Mountains become mustard seeds!

WE CRINGE when questions come our way. We try to avoid searching questions that cause us to look within. Only questions that lead us towards the experience of peace will give us bliss.

Bliss or joy is grossly misunderstood. We equate it with the excitement of a new acquisition. Think of the excitement we have when we acquire something new: like a car or house. How long does it last? Not for long. Once we achieve the goal, the excitement and happiness disappear. This is not the joy or bliss that spiritual masters refer to.

Ramana Maharishi, a realised master of the 20th century, defines this condition beautifully. He says: before you get it, even a mustard seed looks like a mountain; after you acquire it even a mountain looks like a mustard seed.

Do we know what we want? Unfortunately, none of us do. We think we know. Are we happy with our success? We can’t be. We will never be. Till we know what we want we will never be satisfied with whatever we achieve and acquire. Otherwise at the end we will find that whatever we have acquired is of no value to us. We are chasing desires. This chasing leads us into an endless cycle of desires and wants. Most of these desires are not our own. They are borrowed from others. The possessive feeling and labelling of things and relationships as ‘mine’ is the most dangerous trap that mind can set for us. It is never ending, never fulfilling and always leading to suffering. Why are we so uncomfortable asking ourselves why we seek something? We run without resting in order to fulfil desires based on comparison with what others have. Once we get what we are running for, we do not understand what we have been running for. So, the discontent stays.

How can we end this confusion or suffering? We will continue to suffer and be disillusioned until we know who we are, the question of what we want cannot be answered.

The smallest but greatest book I have ever read is a book of sayings by Ramana Maharishi titled Who Am I. Let us dare to ask this question. This question will lead us into a long journey. Our question transforms itself into a quest. Our urge becomes urgent.

We often think answers will end our questions or problems. Any question that is directional and leads to an answer will only add to our confusion. Only when the question leads us towards experience will we experience bliss.

Awaken this intelligence, this bliss, this joy that is undiminished. Watching our mind is one way to awaken it.

Winner of a rat race is still a rat!

HEAR yourself when you speak. When I ask people who they are, they tell me they are doctors, spouses of someone or another, or friends of someone or another. These tags, doctor, engineer, husband, wife, father, daughter and friend, are labels given to you by the society. These tags are not you. “Who am I” is a deeper question beneath all these labels.

These labels serve well in the outside world. They mean nothing internally. Let us ask ourselves how to succeed in the outside world. You will say, “it is hard, Master”; you will advice me, “we should be ahead of the crowd in ideas, information, possessions, and even relationships.” I will ask you again, “Are you happy with everything you have?”

You will say, “Master, there is no such thing as a happy state. We have to keep moving to be the leader in the pack.”

You are living and describing a rat race. The problem of winning a rat race is that even after winning you are no better than a rat.

People are concerned that they haven’t yet reaped the benefit of success. Sometimes failure is better than success. Look at the other side of failure. With failure you have still hope that you can succeed; but if you are successful you have nowhere to go, if you are still dissatisfied.

You may have climbed very fast but the climb would have led you to no place in particular. In fact, you might be stuck in a place where it makes no sense to you at all. You are totally disconnected from your inner being. This kind of success brings depression. Depression of success is worse than the depression of failure. People ask me, “what will meditation do to help achieve what I want?” They want to know whether it will give them what they want.

I say to them, may be not, meditation may not give you the power, the shakti, to make your dreams a reality, but will certainly give you the wisdom, the buddhi, to know that your entire reality is only a dream. Let this be clear.

Meditation creates a space for the inner being to flower. It creates peace amidst the chaos that rules your life. Meditation creates the space where you have neither answers nor questions. You will simply be aware. This awareness is precious. Where there is pure awareness, there is enlightenment. This is true freedom.

This inner being, the inner intelligence, the inner energy guides us in our path. Vivekananda says: till inner intelligence is awakened no book will help you; once it is awakened you do not need any books.

Break free from your ego

LOSING ego is the only way to reach enlightenment. How does one lose ego? Existence is continuously changing. If you trust that existence changes and you also change, you can never get settled with your ego. Your ego is nothing but a rigid mechanism, a definite pattern.

Only a person who is ego-less can trust that the universe is changing and he is also changing. The man who sells his time will never understand that the universe is changing because he is caught in a routine. Not being caught in a routine is a basic discipline for enlightenment!

If you are in a routine, you become so unaware that you stop believing, you stop realising that existence is changing. I have seen some government servants working for 30 years in the same office. They would not even have moved their table from one place to another and eventually forget that their table can be moved!

Even in your house, don’t live with the same kind of furniture arrangement for years together. Shuffle it so that your mind does not get stuck with a single attitude. Once in a few months, change the order; create a little bit of chaos! Otherwise you will become dead.

I have seen people — they will have ten rooms and because of their habit, they will follow a certain track in their own house and as a result would not have stepped foot in eight rooms for months together.

Be very clear — the most definite thing on planet earth is your tomb, your graveyard! The more you live with definition and security, the more you are dying. That is why, when you live with a definite track in your house, your house will have the vibration of a graveyard. Once in a while, dance in the main hall of your house — the space will be purified. If you live with the same things, you will create a track of memory. You will then have very little access to your own being.

Your mind and your house are one and the same. Your being and your house are one and the same. If you don’t live in your whole house, be very clear, you are not living with your whole memory. Drop your rigid ego, break free from your mental patterns, understand change and discover the reservoir that you have within yourself. Explode in all directions and realise your unlimited potential!

Drop what hurts and transform yourself

A ZEN master was sentenced to death by his king. He was sitting unconcerned. His disciples asked him: are you not bothered you are going to die tomorrow. He said: how can I worry about a day later, even the next moment is a new miracle for me.

When you live in the present all your fantasies drop, all your fears drop. If some one complains that he cannot change, I say change is your nature, I am surprised that you are holding on to the same character. Let go and you will change. When they don’t listen and insist, I give them advice to confuse them.

You say give me a technique. It’s so difficult without a technique, a tool. The word difficulty is the greatest difficulty. When you know fire burns, drop the fire. Where is the difficulty? Be a little more intelligent. Drop what hurts. When you understand that the mental setup causes you trouble, drop it. You will then transform your being.

You ask, how will I survive if I drop? The seed always wonders what will happen to me if I break. Unless it breaks the plant cannot grow. Trust and open, trust and break, you will grow. If you make mistakes, it’s worth making mistakes. Perfectionism is madness. The more you are far from perfect the more God has grace for you.

Search for perfection is search for madness. Graveyard is the perfectly secure place. But it’s not the place to live; it is only for the dead. A ship is secure in the harbour, but it has to move out to function.

As you move from ego to spontaneity you will undergo pain, transition, that’s your penance. That’s the price you pay for a better life. Everything will be a miracle. When you take life for granted, what results is boredom and depression. You seek to acquire not to enjoy. You can increase the height of your bed not the depth of your sleep.

Meditation is the key to spontaneity. Do not keep track of what you have done in the past. It’s better to let go and grow without worrying about what happened in the past and also what will happen in the future.

Enlightenment is not a step by step growth process, it is a quantum phenomenon. Living moment to moment, in the present, without worrying about past and present is meditation. It’s a quality to be added to your life, not a quantity to be added to your life.

Awake from your waking state!

BUDDHA says: you dream when you are awake. You don’t have to fall asleep to dream. You will daydream even when you are awake. In the night you see stars. In the day they are still there but you cannot see, because of the sun. If you get into a deep well without water, you can see stars even in the day. When you are not active you dream. Because of continuous activity you do not notice your dreams, but you dream on.

People ask me: please tell me how I can worship and love an 18-handed Kali? I say, first start loving your two-handed wife. First understand your life and then you can go into religion. All your love for God is just a fantasy. That’s the truth. You dream even when you are awake. That’s why masters say that we are all asleep.

The great Russian master Gurdjeef had a disciple who asked him how to be enlightened. Gurdjeef taught him a technique and said you must do this for three months continuously without leaving this house. The disciple meditated for three months. At the end of three months his master Gurdjeef took him for a walk into the town. The disciple says I feel everybody here is asleep even though they are doing something. What has happened? The master says nothing has happened to these people, something has happened to you, you are now awakened.

You need to meditate to be awake. When you meditate you have no thoughts, your mind has stopped, but you are aware.

Meditation should be done playfully, not seriously, with a long face. We grown-up people find it difficult to laugh. Kids find it difficult to be serious; they can laugh all the time. You tell them to stop laughing, make them like you, you idiots. You want to be comfortable in your ignorance, in your rigidity, in your false beliefs.

Have you ever seen an ugly kid? You never can. Have you seen a single grown-up man who is beautiful or graceful? Seriousness makes you ugly. Seriousness is not sincerity. Be sincere but relax.

When I say relax, people ask what to do. Doing is natural, but relaxing is unnatural. Don’t ask for another technique to relax. Whatever you understand by relaxation you do. Relax from the idea that you should relax.

Master, the ultimate master surgeon

WHEN you see the Master, he says you are not what you think you are. He tells you that you are not a mere human being with spiritual experience, but a spiritual being having a human experience.

Not only are you not ready to believe him, you are acutely uncomfortable as well. You get frightened and run away.

After sometime, when the Master touches you in some way, you feel attracted to him, you stop resisting, you listen, but you are not yet convinced. After some time, the energy of the Master attracts you and you start remembering him even when he is not around; he becomes a part of your being. Still, you are not ready to give up your own value systems and beliefs; you play a game of hide and seek with the Master.

Once you start trusting him more, he forces you to experience your reality. This is initiation, or the first experience. But even after that experience, sometimes you deny it.

The Master is a person who removes the ultimate cancerous tumour that happens to our being, which is our ego. He does surgery directly on that tumour. He never allows you to be stuck or be comfortable with anything less than the enlightened state. Even as you start progressing spiritually, you may get stuck in some layer; you won’t even know you are stuck. In all these situations, the Master will push you again and again to move forward. He transforms your whole life.

Whenever a surgeon comes with a knife, you may think he is going to hurt you, but the knife of a surgeon is not for killing, it is for healing. The Master is the ultimate master surgeon to remove the ego at all levels, be it materialistic or spiritual. People have spiritual ego when they have the ‘holier than thou’ attitude. The more you allow his surgery to happen, the more you realise the truth. A few people run away from the operating table during surgery; that becomes dangerous. Before surrendering to the Master, do all the window-shopping, checking, verifying, and only then surrender; and once you surrender, allow him to work on you.

The Master has unconditional love for you. He seeks nothing from you. He is interested only in your liberation. To achieve this, he is willing to go to any lengths. The greatest gift to the human life is the gift of an enlightened master.