Be in bliss: Enjoy your suffering!

There are three simple ways to reach bliss, three keys.

The first key is acceptance of life. Never grudge or grumble. If you accept, you will have the intelligence to accept life!

A middle-aged lady went to Buddha with her son’s dead body one early morning, and pleaded: please revive him. Buddha knew that what ever he might say would be unacceptable to her. He said: go and get a handful of mustard seeds from a house where no one has died. She went from house to house, and was unable to find even one such house. Just like her, everyone had lost someone. There is no house in this world where someone had not died.

You worry and you feel others do not have worries. If you realize every one else has worries too, you will not worry. You need to see others unhappy to reduce your unhappiness.

When the lady understood the truth she became a nun. She said, ‘Even if you had given my child life, my life would have gone on as usual. Now I am transformed.’

Giving life is not a miracle; transforming one’s life is the miracle.

If you welcome all that happens with intelligence, you will be ever blissful.

The second key is the conscious decision to live joyfully.

The great master Abdullah was always happy, in laughter, in bliss. Some one asked him: how you are so joyful? Please teach me the secret of your bliss.

He said: every day when I get up I ask Abdullah, ‘what do you want today? Joy or suffering?’ Mind says, ‘I want bliss.’ I say, ‘have bliss’ that’s all.

It is like the radio that is tuned to a particular station. You get what you consciously tune in to. If you tune to bliss, you will get bliss.

The third key is this.

Abdullah is asked what happens if the mind chooses suffering instead of bliss. Abdullah says, ‘if your mind wants suffering, enjoy the suffering!’

The problem is the conflict that you have when you want something and you cannot enjoy when you get what you wanted. It’s like ordering food in a restaurant and not wanting to pay the bill. You do not like the consequences of what you desire. You forget that pleasure is not forever; pain may follow.

So if suffering happens, enjoy it as your choice.

Follow these three techniques, and your path and goal will be bliss.

When worship become a chore!

If our heart is not fully engaged in an undertaking, it immediately becomes a chore.

Even worship becomes a chore when our heart isn’t in it. When we feel involved, all hard work becomes a joyful worship.

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

Many in India chant the 1000 names of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi everyday. They are proud of our practice. They think they are doing a great job. They are proud that they don’t eat a morsel until we finish their prayers.

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

This is true even when we perform daily rituals. We perform the rituals regularly, automatically, thinking of something else all the time. We fear that our greedy desires will remain unfulfilled without these rituals.

We simply can’t focus on chanting, prayer or the spirit of worship. We have no awareness of what we are doing. We do it like automated robots.

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

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

For such people, work and worship merge into one.

Where are you headed this time?

A traveler started his journey towards the holy city of Varanasi. He started from his hometown after making a few preliminary enquiries.

Having traveled far and fearing he may have lost his way, the traveler asked a sanyasin who seemed to be returning from Varanasi, Oh Master, how far away is Varanasi from here?

The sanyasin said: Before I reply, you must answer two of my questions.

The traveler found this strange, and having no choice agreed.

The sanyasin asked: Do you clearly know why you want to go to Varanasi?

The traveler felt that this question was foolish and the answer was obvious. He said: Oh, Varanasi is a holy place. I will be blessed if I go there, scriptures say.

The sanyasin asked the second question: Before starting, have you thoroughly enquired about the path to reach Varanasi?

The traveler felt that this too was irrelevant and said: Yes, I enquired a little bit. I left it at that, thinking that I can find out more as I travel further.

The sanyasin calmly said: If you had had clarity as to why you should go to Varanasi and had known clearly all the details about Varanasi, you would not have asked me as to how much distance you should travel further to reach Varanasi.

Thoroughly confused and irritated, yet still polite, the traveler said: Oh master, you have not replied my question at all.

The sanyasin said: You have already come forty miles beyond Varanasi.

We are much like the traveler not knowing where he is going and why.

We rarely question: Why we have taken birth in this world? Why do we continuously struggle and suffer so much? Where are we headed?

All of us lead our life in search of some goal or other. It may be any material goal like a good education, good job, fame or wealth, or it may be something different. One’s mental set up determines the type of desire one has.

The desires may be many, but the aim of all these desires is only one: Peace, Joy, Bliss. Every one journeys in his own way, only to achieve these goals.

There is nothing wrong at all in this journey, this searching. Problems arise when you embark on the journey without knowing the path.

Spirituality through meditation helps you define the path. Once you are in the right path, the destination happens by itself.

Free to Grow

All major religions say that they have derived their authority from the Divine. Founders of all great religions are considered to be realized Masters.

Scriptures are the communication media between these founder Masters and their followers. In most cases these scriptures are considered to be of divine origin, though they were committed to writing long after the Masters left the earth.

In Hindu religion, correctly stated as Sanatana Dharma and translated loosely as the Eternal Conduct, Scriptures are two fold, sruti and smruti. Sruti are the truths experienced by the great sages of yore. Though literally sruti means that which is heard, the right translation is that which is experienced.

Sruti is theoretical inner science, whereas smruti is applied inner science. One cannot exist without the other. Smruti are the societal regulations that follow from the experiences of the rishi, the great Masters. From the spirituality of the experienced truth that was sruti, smruti emerged as religion.

Sanatana Dharma is the only philosophy that says its scriptures can be changed. It provided at its very inception the freedom to change the smruti. The great Masters allowed this freedom to their disciples to add, modify, comment upon their recommendation by separating them from their experienced truth.

Vivekananda has said that without freedom no growth is possible. That is why even after nearly 10,000 years after these truths were expressed, they are still followed. Sanatana Dharma, the Vedic religion, now called Hinduism, gave this freedom and is the oldest philosophy and religion that is still practiced by such a large number of people. It is the only religion that has spread without coercion, conversion and proselytizing. That is the reason why it will survive and grow many more thousands of years.

Only people of courage and intelligence can say that their truths are open to be commented upon. The Vedic rishi were of that caliber. How can regulations that were relevant a thousand years ago be relevant today, when the societal structure has changed so dramatically, and with it the political and religious structures? In the Vedic tradition, no one was considered a true Master unless he had studied, internalized and commented upon the scriptures in an original and creative way.

Any philosophy that is bound and frozen in the name of divinity will die. A living religion must have the courage and flexibility to change based on the underpinning of its spirituality.

Eyes are the doorways to our mind!

Let us scan a day in our life. From the moment we are out of bed to the time we return to it, it’s filled with unreality. Almost everything we do is a sham.

Even our smile is phony. In fact, we use our smiles as masks. We sport broad smiles even when our hearts are boiling. When we smile, we don’t want the other person to know what is on our minds. We avoid looking into each other’s eyes. Why?

Eyes are the doorways to our mind. We can see a person’s nature mirrored in their eyes. Eyes hide nothing. When we want to hide something from another person, we don’t look into their eyes. We cannot. Our eyes reveal everything.

We think that we need to prepare, to hide, even from our experiences. We live with a constant inner chatter. We are always thinking while preparing to talk. We are scared to show the world that our inner chattering is our thinking.

Without preparation, we are worried that our inner chattering will spill out. We aren’t open to experiencing whatever comes our way. If we have experienced, then there is no need to prepare. Do you prepare to answer if someone asks your name? Do you need to carry hints?

What we have experienced we don’t need to prepare. If something hasn’t become a part of our experience, then we need to prepare. If we need to prepare to deliver a lecture, or we are afraid of public speaking, then it doesn’t come from our inner experience. It simply means that we are not truthful to ourselves. Our life is then becomes untruthful as well.

Why are we afraid of public speaking? We are afraid that we might speak our thoughts. We fear that we might spell out whatever is happening inside. We know that there is so much negativity inside us. We are scared that something might erupt out or something unpleasant might tumble out.

That is why we must prepare whatever we need to speak about. If we don’t we are afraid that we might start saying something that is really in our mind. We prepare to make sure that we don’t speak anything else. We prepare to hide the truth of our inner chattering.

Learn to be spontaneous. Let what happens inside be what is seen outside. That will be the first step to bliss.

You never die, not even once!

All our fears are actually fears of death but under various disguises, that’s all.

Every single fear is related to the fear of death, but in a convoluted way. Because it is convoluted, we don’t see it as fear of death.

So what is death?

If I ask you, you will tell me that death is something that happens at the end of our lives. If death is nothing more than that, it would be so easy! But, it is something that happens every moment of our lives. Every act of ours is unconsciously related to our fear of death, the fear of dying. Our fear of death changes the very quality of our life. Death to us is not the end; it is the climax of our lives, towards which our whole life has been oriented.

Death is always looked upon as a discontinuity and that is why people suffer when they see death. The basic understanding of death eludes us. Death is never a discontinuity. It is continuity in some other form, or simply liberation, that’s all.

When we understand this, we will realize how foolish it is to suffer on this account. We are so attached to the physical form; that is why we suffer so much.

The body is a mere vehicle for the spirit. This has to be understood very clearly.

When we accept death as just continuity in another form, our capacity to enjoy life is transformed; our whole body relaxes; our consciousness expands; our living capacity increases. Whether we accept it or not, every moment of our life, the fear of death lingers in the subconscious mind. By understanding death and facing the fear of death, our life will turn out to be rich; not wealthy may be, but rich. Richness is what is important in life.

Unless death becomes a conscious experience, fear of death will never leave you. But you can do one thing: Repeatedly read these words; develop a conviction about them; try to see how your minor and major fears are actually related to the fear of dying. Understand how the fear of death is really the fear of losing your identity. Understand how your true identity can never be lost.

As the great Master says in Bhagavad Gita, you are the spirit and the spirit is immortal.

Ego is the gateway to hell!

People ask me: you say the key lesson of Gita is to surrender, to drop the mind. You also say that the ego and mind do not exist. How to drop something that does not exist?

You are absolutely correct. I do say and all others in the lineage of masters have affirmed that ego is an illusion. However, you live in and with that illusion. It is reality for you, though not the truth.

You cannot surrender ego when you are unaware - because you don't know how. Of course, you cannot surrender it when you become aware either - because then you realize that there is nothing left to surrender!

What you have heard, read, and been taught - 'surrender the ego in order to attain Self-realization' - this is an utterly nonsensical idea. It can happen only the other way round. Self-realization dawns, and suddenly you cannot find the ego anymore. The surrender has already happened, just like that.


Suppose you are sitting in a dark room. You want the darkness to disappear. But can you push it out? Can you fight darkness and force it to leave the room? No! No matter how long you keep trying, you are ultimately going to be defeated - and that too by something which does not exist!

The ego is like darkness, it has no positive existence. Just like darkness is simply the absence of light, the ego is nothing but the absence of awareness. To struggle to kill the ego is like struggling to push the darkness out of the room. To really expel the darkness, what you need to do is to forget all about dealing with the darkness. Focus your energy on Light instead. Just bring a small lamp into the room, and you will find that the darkness has fled on its own!

So, I tell you to forget all about the ego. Instead, focus on bringing a lamp of awareness into your being. When your entire consciousness has become a flame, you will find that the ego is no more.

I am glad if such a question has arises in your being. The ego is the root cause for all your anxieties, sorrows, and tension. It is your doorway to hell. To actively feel that you want to drop the ego, to feel the need to be rid of this burden is itself a step towards awareness. It shows that you are stirring from your sleep!

You are one with God

Our minds aren’t individually separated entities of the universe. They’re all one. They’re the same. Our minds are interlinked and directly affect each other. This is Collective Consciousness.

If we catch a cold from someone, we may suffer physically for a few days and we may eventually get over it. But when we catch thoughts from people, we suffer mentally forever. Not just once, but forever. Similarly, our thoughts affect people around us. Our thoughts affect not only those touched by it, but every living thing on our planet.

This connection doesn’t end at the mental level. A deeper connection exists at the deeper levels of consciousness. We can perceive these as energy layers of our body. There are seven energy layers: Physical, Pranic, Mental, Subtle, Causal, Cosmic, and Nirvanic.

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

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

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

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

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

Stop your mind and get off

Our mind is a minefield; it is a madhouse; it is a monkey.

The only thing certain about our mind is its absolute uncertainty. The only thing factual about our mind is that it is totally and absolutely illogical, irrational, random and unconnected.

If we were to sit down and pen our thoughts over even five minutes with no editing, we would think that these belong to a madman. There would be no logical sequence, as one would assume in our mind’s working.

Thoughts flit through our mind, past to future, future to past, back and forth. At one level, it is thoughts, ideas, and concepts. At another level it is memories of past experiences leading to anticipation of future possibilities. Then there are dialogues and rehearsals about how we could have done things better and how we should do things better. Imaginations, fantasies, and dreams follow. Then follow a spate of emotions from lust, greed and anger through fears and jealousy to discontent.

There is always in the background a constant chattering noise of worries.

We have no control over any of these activities of our mind. The more we try and control the more vigorously the thoughts that we try to control break out.

Just imagine a situation if someone tells you not to think of a monkey. The only certainty then would be that you would think of nothing but monkeys!

Suppression of thoughts is impossible. It only ensures creation of more such thoughts. That is why people trying to follow the path of renunciation and celibacy as monks and priests erupt into behavior patterns that they so desperately try to suppress.

All that you can do to stop your mind is to refuse to get involved in its shenanigans. Watch your thoughts as if you are an observer, without getting involved, without being an actor in the drama. Watch your thoughts as you would watch clouds in the sky with no involvement. Your mind loses interest, your thoughts will slow down and you will move towards a no mind zone. You need to say, stop; I want to get off.

Meditation leads you into the awareness to stay uninvolved with your thought process. It helps you stay in the present moment, without being tossed to and fro into the past and future. Meditation alone can still your mind.

Drop Guilt, move into bliss!

Just spend a few minutes writing down all your thoughts, as they arise, without editing.

You will find no logic to your thought process. Thoughts will constantly flit from past to future and future to past. In the past reside your regrets and guilt. In the future lurk your wants and speculations.

Some of the powerful feelings which cause the mind to stress out are of guilt and regrets for past mistakes and failures. We keep thinking of all the opportunities we have missed, and those we may lose in future. We are often consumed by guilt for things we have done or said. Sometimes this goes to such an extent that we even begin to hate ourselves!

What we have to understand is that our realization of past mistakes and failures is part of our own growing up; it is part of our updated wisdom. No one can evolve without making mistakes. The errors that we commit along the path of life are indicators that we are now more aware of ourselves.

Each one of us reflects the essential duality of the cosmos. For every strength that we possess, we also have some corresponding weakness. The basic aim of spiritual progress is to overcome our weaknesses and garner our strengths. So if you have made mistakes, tackle the weakness which caused them, instead of concentrating on the mistakes themselves.

Guilt is totally negative. It is the greatest sin you can commit. Religious and social organizations conspire to breed guilt in us, so that they can control us, not to make us better.

This is why I say that you fully accept your past mistakes and get rid of any feelings of guilt. Regretting the past will only spoil the value of the present. Just learn from it, accept it and move on. Even if you cannot accept it for some reason, just accept that you cannot accept. Once this happens, you will find that a great load has been lifted from your mind. If you accept what you are, what is, the grip of the negative mind will disappear and bliss will rise in you.

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 walk the path of ecstasy!

So drop your mind, your guilt and simply walk the path of ecstasy!

You too can get enlightened!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software of our mind

Nine out of ten people, if asked where their mind is, will point to their head, where we think our brains are!

Brains are not where our minds are. Mind is all over our body; within each cell, within the cell structure, embedded in the intelligence of the DNA and other building blocks of the mind body system that we are. There is as much mind in our little finger as there is in our head or our heart.

Mind is not fixed and permanent; not our cells as well. Cells die and are recreated every second. Our entire mind body system undergoes renewal every so often. What we are now is not what we were a year ago, not what we will be a year from now. Our mind body hardware is constantly renewed.

Yet, we behave the same way as we did a year ago or ten years ago, by and large. We are just as greedy, just as angry, just as depressed as we were a year or many years ago unless we have taken dramatic measures to change. We seem programmed in our behavior pattern.

We are programmed. We are programmed in our belief systems and attitudes based on our past experiences and memories of these experiences. It is these memories that drive us in all our actions. Unfortunately, all these memories lie in our unconscious mind.

We are driven by our unconscious, not by our rational mind as we wish to imagine.

We call this software of emotion filled memories that lie buried deep in our unconscious, samskara. Samskara are the embedded memories of our past, sometimes of previous lives, that drive us into action in the future. Since samskara are from the unconscious, we are unable to do anything to stop them, to control them or modify them. Unless, a big unless, we learn to penetrate the unconscious.

We can indeed penetrate the unconscious and dissolve our samskara, so meticulously built by our mind since childhood.

All we need to do is to bring ourselves into the present moment. In the present moment, no samskara exist, as these are products of our past. In the present moment, we have neither regrets nor anticipation. We just are.

Meditation leads us into the present moment. Meditation leads us into awareness of our samskara and from there into their dissolution. Meditation gives us control over our life, taking it away from the embedded software of our mind.

Don’t offend or defend, just befriend!

All over the world, the military forces of all the countries are called defensive armies.

Then who is offending? Every country claims that its army is an army for defending itself. Then who is offending?

We then call our God to our defense. Whoever has got a bigger army or more powerful arsenal, his God become mightier.

With this approach we all lose. Understand clearly, no one’s God is better or greater; all Gods are the same. All truths are the same. When we differentiate between my God and your God, we are offending Divinity. Existence becomes our enemy!

Imagine if the sun were to disappear one day; do you think you could be alive without the rays of the sun? If the air were to disappear, can you survive? If you are dependent for your very survival on the sun which is billions of miles away from you, how can your boundary end where the physical boundary of your body ends? Or where your tribe, or Country ends?

Please be very clear: you are deeply related to Existence; one Existence; one God.

Studies on cells in organisms establish that each cell can only act in one of two ways at any given time. It can either focus on growth or it can focus on self-protection. It cannot do both simultaneously.

A cell placed in a dish moves spontaneously towards a nutrient if it is placed on another part of the same dish. If instead of the nutrient a toxin is placed in the dish, the cell will move away from the toxin. If both the nutrient and the toxin are placed at the same time in the dish, the cell is in a dilemma.

When the mind body detects a threat, either external or internal, a series of actions are initiated to divert the energy flow from growth centers to the limbs for protection. As long as the threat remains, growth is sacrificed in favor of protection. The mind body either fights or it flees the threat. When this happens repeatedly, your body destroys itself.

Please be very clear: If you live with the attitude of enmity, even when you live, you will be dying. When you live with the attitude of enmity with the whole, constantly, you will be tortured. When you live with the feeling of friendliness, with the attitude that Existence is your friend, and all who coexist with you are your own, naturally, you will feel a deep sense of happiness.

Silence yourself, not others!

In the olden days in India, people did not stitch clothes after sunset.

This is because all stitching was done by hand with a needle. In the dim candle or kerosene lamp light it was not possible to see properly and one could get hurt by poking the fingers with needle.

Even now in India, some people will not stitch with a needle after sunset. Even seamstress and tailors will not do it though we now have electricity and lights. They may not even stitch by machines!

When we don’t have the necessary understanding of a practice, it becomes a dead rule, a superstition. With understanding, any rule can become a technique, a tool that helps us to lead life happily.

With deep understanding, it will dawn upon us that all rules were basically created to help people live blissfully and happily. The rules were meant to ensure that you were in peace with yourself and the others around you. Today, we have forgotten the basis for these rules. We create hell for ourselves and others with these rules.

There are people who truly believe that meditation and prayer will save their lives. They have been told so! They fuss a lot before they begin to meditate at home. They silence the children and all others around. They turn the whole household upside down. All for the sake of ten minutes of meditation!

Let us see how the meditation proceeds. The moment meditation begins, they doze off! After a minute or two, they will start swatting mosquitoes. A couple of minutes later, a major itch manifests on some part of their body. Then, the back will begin to ache. Enough is enough, they decide, ‘I will continue this tomorrow. It is enough for today.’

Meditation is done for the sake of peace and silence. Why meditate at all, if inner awareness cannot be created?

It is like a speaker trying to silence the listeners by out shouting at them. Will it help? If the listener is not interested however much one shouts, it is of no use. You cannot silence your inner chatter by making others quiet. You need to become silent, not others.

We follow rules and tradition blindly. That is why religion has such a powerful hold on us. Let us awaken to the powers that are within us! Nature has endowed us with unimaginable energy to be free. Be alert, awake and reach for this liberation!

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Question to end all questions!

WHEN we ask a question, many a times the answers we get are unexpected. One such question is: Who Am I? We will certainly ask many questions in our lifetime. This question is central to all our other questions. The other questions supplement and compliment this central question.

We ask many kinds of questions. Some people question out of innocence, like a child, out of curiosity. We ask some questions to exhibit our knowledge and ego. Sometimes we ask questions to check out if others are more knowledgeable. Often we ask questions out of ignorance. Our questions often express our confusion.

Laura, a teacher, was instructing the last class of the academic year. She prepared a few questions to get feedback from students on her teaching style.

One question in the questionnaire was: “Have I influenced your attitude towards the subject?”

A student answered: “No, I still like it.”

When people meet me, they start conversing with me about enlightenment and God. They begin to say that they wish to follow the spiritual path with my guidance. They ask esoteric questions on karma and moksha. I change the subject to other matters. We talk about their personal lives, families, businesses, everything under the sun, except anything remotely spiritual. They never return to their original question on spirituality. It does not matter to them really.

The fervour with which they started their queries was only to impress me with their keen interest and knowledge. Such fervour will not sustain. Their enthusiasm will evaporate rapidly.

‘What is Brahman,’ asks Arjuna to Krishna in the Gita. Krishna says, “If I ask you to repeat the question, you would have forgotten what you asked.”

We keep asking questions about all external objects and issues, who is this, who is that? But we never turn our questioning inwards and ask, Who Am I?

If we are spiritual, we would be interested asking ourselves, ‘Who Am I?’ It will answer our other questions. The questioning attitude itself will dissolve. Our mind survives by questioning. More answers means more questions.

Questions are the fuel for our minds. Unless we answer that central question, ‘Who Am I?’ we can never come out of the cycle of questions. An answer to a question can lead to another question.

Ask yourself this question repeatedly. It will finally extinguish all questions. The more we ask this question, the clearer we become in our mind. This is a path to bliss.

Does Life need to have a purpose?

A very young terminally-ill girl wrote out a beautiful poem on her hospital bed. It ends with these simple lines:

Life is not a race, do take it slower
Hear the music, before the song is over.

We spend hours recording music instead of listening to it live. We waste time capturing experiences on film, while we should be savouring the experiences. We are forever rushing to be some place, and when we reach there, it is rarely the place we wish to be!

Is there a purpose to life? Is it to gain fame, success, and wealth? Do these acquisitions make us happy?

Look at animals. Animals go through life instinctively and naturally. They hunt when they are hungry, mate when they feel the urge and sleep when they are tired. They exist fully in the present.

Man is not happy with the world around him. He is forever at odds with nature. He would like to change the world to suit his wants, instead of living with nature to fulfil his needs.

We are constantly in a rat race, forgetting that even if we win this rat race we still remain a rat!

But how can one live without goals, you may ask. Let me then ask you this? How many of the goals you set out and achieved have given you true happiness? While working towards these goals did you feel happy or stressed out? After reaching these goals, did you stop to enjoy the result, or did you plod on mindless towards other distant goals?

Why don’t you try instead, for a change, to just enjoy what you are doing, without worrying about the result? Ask any successful and wealthy man who is also happy, and he will tell you that he did what he loved to do, not because it would make him wealthy.

When you enjoy the journey, the destination is always the right one for you. Within you there is awareness of what is right for you. All that you need to do is to let that happen. Do not resist, just accept what life dishes out to you; flow with it in acceptance.

What results is Ananda, bliss! Ananda the attitude, it is the path of ecstasy, rather than the path to ecstasy. Ananda is already there inside you, you only have to recognize it and set it free.

Be Blissful!

The Thrill of Breaking Rules!

This is a true incident.

A young man was addicted to smoking cigarettes. He asked for my help. ‘Master, please help me to 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 this from a distance. He thought I 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. I then 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 strong urge or provocation into doing 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, go beyond it. How many of us speed until we see a cop? We say no to our parents to prove that we are now grownup. We think that we become an adult only 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 only 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.

We feel that we have matured into adulthood, become man or woman, simply by saying no to our parents. 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.

Saying no is almost like an addiction. When we say no, we try to prove that we are someone special. We feel by saying no we become someone different.

Breaking rules will not make you an adult. To be an adult you need an understanding of what you do and why. Only then, even if you break a rule, you will do it without guilt.

Life too is a game!

When the Indian cricket team does well, the whole nation is in jubilation. When it fails, the entire country goes into mourning. Heroes turn into villains overnight, and again into heroes when they manage to win.

It is sad; not the team not doing well, but a whole nation caught up in something so insignificant. Ours is a country with a tradition and culture that is well over 5000 years old. Not even the marauding Moguls and the colonizing Europeans could destroy our culture. This culture was built upon the teaching that one should look at success and failure in the same manner, with equanimity.

An imported game that one writer famously said was eleven fools playing and eleven thousand fools watching is now taking a whole nation on a roller coaster of emotional rides. What for!

You may say, it is only a game. I say to you, you whole life is a game!

When you watch you team play poorly and you cringe as the wickets fall, it is not a game for you. So many things seem to be at stake; your pride, for instance. The patriotism that you never felt when a fellow Indian asked for help in a foreign land suddenly surfaces and your blood boils. How can these guys let my country down?

You watch a movie. You know it is not real. Yet, you cry, you laugh, you jump and shout. When the projection stops, all you have is a blank screen.

So is your life. Whatever you experience is another game and another movie. It is real when you experience it. It is very real when you get hurt, when you bleed and you are in pain. It is very real when you eat your favorite sweet and you enjoy the taste.

When you treat life as a game, and the game too as a game, you truly start enjoying the experience. You can leave your emotions behind as the experience passes.

Do not carry the emotions with you. It is that connection which disturbs you. When you expect the team to win, and they lose, you feel sorrow. When you hope to get promoted, and your colleague is promoted instead, you feel sorrow, jealousy and vengeance, all combined.

The choice is yours, whether to watch the game knowing it is only a game and enjoying it, or to wallow in sorrow treating it as real.

Wish your pain away!

During my monastic wandering, I was once doing the circumambulation around the holy river Narmada.

For a while I lived with the tribal people in the forests in that area. They were very simple, honest and sweet people, extremely hospitable. One day in front of the hut I was staying in, across their temple, they erected a new hut. When I enquired they said that this was for a festival.

Later that day, a pregnant woman walked into that hut. Ten minutes later, she walked out smiling, a baby in her arms. No one went in with her. There was not a squeal when she was in that hut. Soon after, they dismantled the hut.

I asked a village elder about the festival that was to take place. He simply said that the birth of that child was the festival. Next week the same exercise was repeated. Another hut, another pregnant lady, another child and another festival!

This time I could not contain my curiosity. I asked the elder, ‘I am amazed at the simplicity with which the ladies deliver their babies; no doctors, no midwife even and no pain. How is this possible?’

In my experience I had never seen something like this. Mothers have so many examinations, check in to hospitals, and scream in pain at delivery; but here it was so different.

The old man said, ‘pain, what pain? Why should there be pain while delivering a child? Yes, there is pain if an animal attacks and hurts you or you break an arm or leg; but, at child birth, why?’

In their language there was no word for pain. They had no concept of pain during child birth. They asked, ‘animals deliver their off springs naturally and do not cry, why should humans?’

I had no answer. I could not comprehend what I was seeing.

It was only after meditating upon these incidents I understood that pain is a result of our verbalization. These words such as pain, hurt, and suffering create the feeling of pain in us.

Our mind drives our body. Our mind creates thoughts and concepts and embeds them as verbalized and visualized realities within us. Pain has no reality outside of our mind. The neuro sensors that evoke the pain response cannot create the pain unless our mind accepts the fact that there can be pain. Pain is a matter of conditioning; and you can decondition your mind away from pain.

Be a Royal Beggar!

It is said that when Buddha used to beg for alms, He used to look like a king and the kings would look like beggars in front of Him!

Outward possessions cannot make you regal; it is the inner bliss that radiates and makes you regal.

There was a great saint called Dakshinamurthy Swamigal who lived in Tamil Nadu. When he was alive, when he was with the body, a king came to meet him. Dakshinamurthy Swamigal lived the life of a Paramahamsa. The sky was all that covered his body; he never wore any clothes. He lived just like a child, happily in bliss.

One day, he was sitting under a big tree and meditating blissfully when the king came to see him. The king expected that the Swami should stand up and receive him with all the respect. The Swami, however, did not bother; he did not even care about the king. The king, egoistically said, ‘What! You are an ordinary beggar. I am a king; don’t you know how to respect me?’

The Swami started laughing. He said, ‘Actually, you are the beggar. You are begging respect from me. You feel respected only when somebody gives you respect. But, I don’t feel respected even when somebody gives me respect and I don’t feel disrespected when somebody doesn’t give me respect. Whether somebody respects me or not, it is in no way related to my consciousness. I am not asking you why you are not respecting me. I am not bothered about that. The moment you ask, be very clear: you are a beggar.’

Then he says, ‘Your personality or your ego can be shaken when all your army leaves you, when your people leave you, and when your ministers leave you. Your being king is dependent on somebody else.’

Be very clear: that is why always these leaders are in trouble. Never think these leaders are leading you. You are leading the leaders. Just as much as you are bothered about their ideas, they too are bothered about your ideas. Continuously, they are bothered about what you think of them.

Dakshinamurthy Swamigal says, ‘You are king as long as your citizens accept you. In my case, that is not true. Whether somebody accepts or not, I am quite blissful. So, be very clear: the moment you ask for respect, you are a beggar; I am not.’

To Change is to grow!

When I visited USA I saw something funny. In one state, gambling is illegal. In the neighboring state, gambling is legal. A river separated the two states. The border line between the states passes through the river. The casino is built right on the river! On one side of the casino it is legal to gamble, on the other illegal!

What is the scale, or basis, for saying something is right or wrong? For some people or in some cultures, a particular food is considered to be tasty, ambrosia. For another person the same thing is poison!

What is the scale to measure the right and wrong? There is no scale. It is like weighing two different things with one scale. It is like comparing apples and oranges.

Ancient sages gave a lot of thought for this problem. They offer a solution. The correct name for Hinduism is Sanatana Dharma. It means the eternal principle in Sanskrit. Ancient sages gave two scriptures for followers of Santana Dharma, not one. All other religions have only one book, the ultimate! They have only one book that is all!

Sanatana Dharma has smriti and sruti. The smriti has social rules of conduct. Sruti are the Veda and Upanishad; they contain the ultimate laws of enlightenment and divinity. They are the core truths. These concepts will not change.

There is another major difference between Sanatana Dharma and other major religions. Not only does Sanatana Dharma have two scriptures but in addition the authors of these books have proclaimed that the smriti have to be updated! Not revised, not edited, but updated.

Many religions say that their holy books cannot be updated! In our life, we update everything- cars, computers, cell phones, camera, clothes, and even our homes. The software that we use in the computer to run its programs and perform tasks for us needs to be updated frequently. Everything in life, everything around us is constantly updated. So, why cannot we update the holy books that are the basis of our beliefs?

As our society changes, the smriti also changes. That is why the ancient sages declared that smriti can be changed; in fact needs to be changed. From time to time, enlightened Masters create new smriti because no morality can remain forever. No law remains a law forever. Law and morality are based on the time and space!

Embrace the change. Grow with it. This is the path to bliss.

Do you bathe when you bathe?

EVERYDAY, early in the morning, a Zen Master asked his disciples: How many of you have bathed this morning? Almost all the disciples raise their hands dutifully. Next question: How many of you are aware you bathed when you did?

Not a single hand was raised.

Bathing is an act. Bathing with complete awareness that you are bathing is different. Today surely all of you must have bathed and all of you must have brushed your teeth. How many of you were aware of what you were doing when you did that?

When you brushed your teeth how many of you were aware that you were brushing your teeth? When you bathed how many of you were aware of the hot water on your body? Were you aware that your body was just getting ready after the bath, and your life was getting rejuvenated after the bath? How many of you were aware of all these things when they happened?

A small Zen story:

A king went to a Master, and asked: ‘Master how can I become enlightened? Tell me about all the practices you do. What did you do to become enlightened? Please teach me’.
The Master says: ‘Oh! I eat when I eat; I sleep when I sleep. That is all I do’.
The king could not understand.
The Master explained: ‘When I eat I only eat, I do not do anything else when I sleep I only sleep I do not do anything else’.

But what do we do? Recall how you eat. You will remember that you were watching TV or reading a magazine when you were eating. Or it could be that you were talking to someone or continuously thinking of something. If you were calm, sitting quietly and eating your wife would have been there to report some problems in the house.

So in one way or another, when you eat, your mind does everything else but focus on the food and eating. You do everything except eat.

You treat food with such scant respect. It is just a form of garbage that is stuffed through your mouth. That is why the food treats you like a garbage bag. It withholds its energy unless you become aware of what you eat. If you treat your food with respect and are aware of what you eat when you eat, wellness results.

This is true even when you sleep! When you sleep you do everything else except sleeping. Because, only when you sleep you dream, you have your nightmare and fear strokes. You then have disturbed sleep.

Catch yourself in the act. Become aware. That will set your inner transformation in motion.

Letting others rule our minds!

HOW to control the mind without allowing the world from outside influence our thoughts? Most of us have no control over our minds. We’ve heard people talk of it. We’ve only heard of it. We’ve never been able to practise it. We’ve never experienced it. Control over mind is only told, only heard, not practised. If we only hear of something that’s beyond the realm of our experience, we decide that the statement is wrong.

Does this mean that the outside events, or other minds, can still influence an individual’s mind and thought processes? Let us examine this. If we’re married, we know that our spouses can influence our thought process. It happens verbally when we give orders. It can also happen without words.

Here is an example. You decide to come for the meditation camp. Let us say your spouse puts on a long face. But you decide to come anyway. Your spouse hasn’t said anything. There’s no negative body language or verbal arguments regarding this matter. Watch what happens when you are in the meditation retreat and getting into a joyful mood. A thought of your spouse wriggles into our mind. Your energy will change. Your entire mood will change.

Even without their physical presence our spouses influence our meditation. We’ll be meditating on the negative energy of the spouses. Just the memory triggers so many reactions in us. It lands us in low energy field and negative mood.

So it is true that others can influence our mind. They needn’t express their thoughts. They can be a memory. This operates even if we haven’t met a person. This is brought about by pattern of thought. The best way to change this thought structure is to become aware. When we’re aware of our thoughts we can change the mood or the habit. We can choose to be happy.

Human beings can make a conscious choice. We can decide whether we’d like to live with intelligence. Animals and non-living things don’t have this choice. They are intelligent by birth and remain intelligent. Their intelligence is not from their intellect. Human beings have a choice; they can choose to become fools or intelligent. We choose to use our intellect and become foolish.

I think, therefore I am, said a western philosopher who did not even know how his mind worked. In contrast, our scriptures said many thousand years ago that you discover yourself, your true divinity when you stop thinking.

You have a choice as to whom you listen to!

Faith is beyond intelligence!

IT IS easy to acquire intelligence. If we work continuously using our intellect, it matures into intelligence. There are a number of meditation techniques that can help us sharpen our intellect. The peak of intellect is intelligence.

Emotions arise from the heart. Ancient masters have taught us many meditation techniques and methods to work on our emotions. Any of these meditation techniques will change our emotion to faith. The peak of emotion is faith. Our thoughts have a lot of power. Be clear about one thing: if you believe in a particular god or guru, believe with all your might. Do not bother about whether he has power or not. Your faith has the power. Ramakrishna used to narrate this beautiful parable to his devotees.

A learned scholar, a great pundit, had his home on one bank of a river. All provisions for his home used to come from the other bank. A milkmaid used to bring him fresh milk every morning.

One morning she was late, very late. The pundit was very angry with her. “My morning prayers have been delayed because of you,” he ranted, “don’t you have any responsibility?” She apologised profusely. “Master, the river was in spate and the boats refused to ply. That’s why I was late.”

“Don’t give me excuses” roared the pundit, “if the boats couldn’t come you should have walked on water. How can you make the gods wait? Have faith and cross the river.” The milkmaid meekly listened and went away. She was never late gain. A month later it rained profusely for a week and no boats could ply. Yet, the milkmaid came on time and delivered the milk.

The pundit asked the milkmaid how she managed to come at all. She simply said, “you told me how to do it. I believed in you and walked on the water ever since that day!” The pundit was shocked. Disbelieving her, he took her to the riverbank and told her to cross the river, which she did with ease. “If this milkmaid can do it believing in me, I should have greater powers” thought the pundit. Lifting his dhoti with one hand he stepped into the water and promptly sank.

“Oh! Master! What faith do you have? How can you cross the river if you believe your dhoti would get wet?” You do not need an enlightened master to liberate you. All you need is absolute trust. A stone can liberate you. Ramakrishna was enlightened through his unshakeable faith in the statue of Mother Kali.

When you live with such trust and surrender your mind, body and senses to the entity you trust in, you are automatically enlightened!

Rely on Your Instinct to Rouse the Unconscious

How does the mind process 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.

Cosmic Consciousness Is Order in Chaos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore in All Directions With Quantum Spirituality

There are no controversies or contradictions in existence. But human beings are always in conflict. We live in a dilemma.

In science, before the concept of quantum was accepted, there was conflict between matter and energy. Postquantum this conflict disappeared. Matter and energy exist together. There is now a concept of singularity. Once you reach the spiritual zone, controversies disappear. Only when you play with words intellectually you create conflict and enter into a danger 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 spiritual life as a vertical line. When you try 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 be in conflict.

The mind enslaves you, making you believe that you can only travel one way: horizontally or vertically. That is why you do not grow in spiritual sadhanas which force you to choose between the material and spiritual. We only wish to try to transform; we really do not wish to transform; yet we like to proclaim our wish to transform. We go to a discourse, visit a temple on a holiday; we practise parttime spirituality. This fills us with hypocrisy and guilt. Even 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 itself becomes 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, 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 beginning. An ultimate experience is not the last experience. You ask, how can I retain the bliss of a meditation programme? The moment you wish to retain 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.

You ask what you have to renounce to be spiritual. I say, please do not renounce what you have. Renounce what you do not have.

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. Everything is divine, nothing is excluded. If you wish to be enlightened drop the idea of enlightenment. You are then in the zone of quantum spirituality.

Verily, guilt is the gateway to hell!

WE ALL have our own ideas about where we shall go after death. We all have our belief systems that define what we should do to go to what we believe are heaven and hell.

People worry constantly about heaven and hell and ask me again and again whether they will go to hell because of what they did. It is religions that tend to control through fear of hell in a world that we are yet to reach. All you need to fear is the hell in this life as a consequence of your actions and not hell in another life or after this life.

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

People believe that sins are punished after a time, since the wheels of God grind surely but slowly. They are therefore not overly concerned about immediate repercussions.

You never know: God may forget, He may have other more important things to do, and if He does remember I can always bribe Him to let me off. Sad to say, many sins attract immediate punishment; though the punishment may not seem either tangible or connected.

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

There is no greater sin than refusing to let go of one’s past. There is no greater sin than hanging onto one’s feeling of guilt and constantly punishing oneself for it.

Once we learn the lesson from our past mistake and determine not to repeat it, we should drop the guilt. Worrying constantly about past mistakes that you have truly regretted only creates problems.

Confessing to a sin as a ritual without any real sense of regret and feeling cleansed quite often makes one ready to repeat it with greater fervour. Doing this only enhances the coffers of religious institutions, does not in any way enhance your spiritual status.

To redress a sin one must cleanse one’s own self internally, truly regret the sin and be aware not to repeat it.

Meditation brings that awareness to you and into you. Meditation liberates you from guilt and sin.

Consciousness, not conscience matters

FROM our childhood we have been told to act out of our conscience. These were just social rules that were laid down by society for some justice and peace to prevail in society. But it is very important to understand the difference between conscience and consciousness.

A man, who has real consciousness, can’t hurt others or kill others, because he feels others as an extension of himself. A person with conscience may not kill with knife, but he will kill with words because his being is violent. With conscience, we may be socially non-violent, but with consciousness, our being will be non-violent.

Morality should be based on consciousness, not on conscience. When this happens there will be no need for rules. Because our love for ourselves and society (which is only an extension of ourselves) will be so great that we will never think of disturbing or harming anybody.

A serial killer has no consciousness, which is why he does what he does. The fact that he does not abide by societal rules, what religion and moral studies would term as conscience, is only a secondary issue arising out the first. If he had consciousness of his existence, he would be aware that he is the same as every other being and would not harm another being.

Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness. In the meditation program called NSP (Nithya Spurana Program), I help people to experience at least one glimpse of consciousness, so they can start living with consciousness instead of conscience. Anything based on conscience is skin deep, it’s not eternal, but anything based on consciousness is eternal. We should work for conscious experience. Just because we don’t have conscious experience, we should not compromise with conscience. Our morality, understanding, lifestyle everything should be based on consciousness. When it’s based on conscience, it’s based on fear and greed.

If the idea that we should not speed on the highway is based on fear, when we don’t see a cop’s car we will speed up. It becomes tempting to break laws, and we feel courageous. Whenever anything is followed because of fear and greed, we will be waiting for the chance to break the rule. Kids saying no to parents have a similar basis, and it makes them feel they’ve proved themselves. If morality is based on conscience, we will always do something to violate it, directly or indirectly.

Don’t tell your body to shut up

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

We are taught from childhood that we are heroes if we ignore our body; if we push it beyond its limits. We are taught to tell our bodies to shut up if they complain. Ignore pain if you want it to go away, we are told. If you wish for the pain to go away, focus on the pain. When you pay attention to the pain, the body part that has the pain, it leaves you.

Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. Vedanta says: When you stop thinking, You ARE. Descartes could not reconcile the mind body connection. There is no mind and no body; it is mindbody; it is one. Scientists now know that intelligence resides at the cellular level; not in our brains. Every single cell of our body is gifted with intelligence to carry out its own functions and to coordinate with the functions of related cells. DNA, carrier of our genetic code, is embedded with our memories and emotions, imprinting not merely physical but mental, emotional and psychic characteristics as well. As our DNA is, so is our perception of the world!

Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over 85% of our physical ailments are influenced by the mind and are psychosomatic. The mind has the power to both cause and cure diseases. In a path-breaking experiment in Japan on allergies it was found that patients reacted even when plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they were told that these were the allergy causing substances. Even more amazingly, when the allergy causing plant leaves were placed on their skin and they were given the name of a nonallergy causing plant, they had no allergic reaction.

Make peace with your body. Body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully integrated. Become aware of your body and you can then sense what the body needs. Your body tells you what it needs and you then have the intelligence to listen to it. Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots causing yourself pain when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it. Trust in your body wisdom. Only through meditation you will learn to understand your body, with clarity and compassion. You would then be able to find a way to go beyond it.

Life’s not suffering, it is bliss

A HOUSEWIFE has sent all her children to school and is cleaning her house. She hears the door bell and opens the door. Two preachers are at the door and ask her whether they can have a few minutes with her to teach her how to live her life eternally.

She says no, thank you, I don’t think I can stand any more of this life, forget about living it eternally, and slams the door shut.

We all feel life is a curse and is a result of our past karma. Again and again people ask why our life is like this; please teach us a way not to have another birth. You feel life is suffering, punishment, an effect of past karma. There are only two groups in this world, wise and otherwise.

The wise ones feel that life is ananda, bliss, that their being is bliss, their consciousness is ananda. Thousands of enlightened masters have said this time and again. When you ask them how, each one offers his own method. One says you be a vegetarian, another says you fast, another says you practice this meditation or that, another says you marry, another do not marry and so on. If two rishis say the same thing, it is said, one is a fake. Each expresses in his own way the path to enlightenment and bliss. But they all concur that consciousness is bliss. If all agree it means that this fact is essential.

In daily life we find that it is misery, it’s a punishment. There is a gap between our experience and that of masters, between the wise and otherwise. Somewhere we have lost the essence of life. We have misunderstood the basic principle of how to live.

The last word of science, said Einstein, is the first word of spirituality. Like there is no gap between matter and energy outside, inside us there is no gap between your body and mind. Ordinary people identify with their body and mind. Spiritual seekers lose this clarity. They know they suffer through identification with body and mind, and this increases their suffering. There is one more suffering, how to disconnect and how to reach liberation.

Not only are you not body and mind, but there is no need to disconnect from body and mind. There is nothing you need to do. Bliss is continuously happening within you without gap of time and space. As long as you associate your bliss with a particular time or a particular space you will lose the bliss. The gap between sufferings becomes bliss for you. Being in the present allows for this bliss to happen continuously within you.