Words from the Master

We will now enter into the Anahata chakra. This chakra is located in the heart region.

In Sanskrit, Anahata means ‘that which cannot be created’.

This chakra is locked when you seek attention and love from others, and it flowers when you express selfless love without expecting anything in return!

Meditation Technique: Mahamantra Meditation – a Tibetan Buddhist technique)

The Anahata chakra is concerned with love, sentiments, and similar emotions. This chakra gets locked when we constantly seek attention from others instead of exuding love from ourselves. Its very meaning is ‘that which cannot be created’ and it signifies that real love can never be created from outside and put into you; it can just happen in you, that’s all. It can happen when a deep awareness enters you.

When real love happens, we will stop seeking attention from others and become a source of Energy ourselves.

What do we mean by attention-seeking?
You see: Whatever we do, whatever we think, we are subconsciously seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us - in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone. We may not do this in a very obvious fashion, but if you analyse deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. This endorsement, this approval, is what we call ‘attention-need’.

80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and note down, in a day, how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in society, you will see.

You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signatures from family and society.

All your activities, all your efforts, are to get the signature of the others around you. In a big register you make a column - Good Father, and every thing that you do for your children, you do, and expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend etc. and wait for them to sign under it. You are requesting for approval signatures all the time, that’s all.

Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you! Each of us is continuously on a signature campaign. We need to collect as many good opinions as possible from society and prove our worth to ourselves and to society.

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

Words from the Master

Swamiji, When I want to do good, for eg., when traveling in a bus, I see an old man and I want to offer my seat to him, but I decide against it when I think that I have to stand for the rest of the journey. Whereas, when I want to smoke a cigarette, I get a total concurrence from inside me to go ahead, saying that one cigarette will not ruin my life. Why am I not able to control myself and do what is really correct?

You see, when you take in something with your mind, something that has been told to you from outside, you don’t see its benefits clearly and deeply, although you understand it at the intellectual level. But when you experience something deeply yourself, it becomes your own understanding and so you stand by it without any problem.

The cigarette has merged with your Being. You have experienced it yourself. It is not through someone else’s preaching; it is your own experience. So your heart accepts it.

But the happiness that you get by offering your seat to someone in the bus is something that you have not experienced deeply. You have been told by people that it is good to offer your seat to an elderly person in the bus, that’s all. At the most, you will feel a certain satisfaction at having followed social etiquette, that’s all. In the case of the cigarette, you have become the experience itself.

What you have not experienced for yourself, will not attract or pull you to it. If you had really experienced the joy of helping others, you would have offered the seat to the old man.

For true experience to happen, meditation is the way. When we meditate, our heart, which is as hard as a stone, will flower and become as soft and sensitive as cotton, and we will feel the need to help others.

At present, we either read in some magazine or we have been told by elders that is good to give our seat to elderly people in the bus, that’s all. Instead, what should happen is, that feeling of helping should flower within us and we should offer help.

Sensitivity will become a way of life only if meditation has happened in you, else it will remain just skin deep. To push the preaching received through the mind to the heart requires a drilling machine - that is meditation. Then, justice, honesty and similar virtues taught to us will become a way of life and there will be a certain juice that you will feel when you follow it.

Else, all these virtues will remain as intellectual knowledge without turning into experiential knowledge.

When we get into the real subject this afternoon, you will get a more detailed answer as to why you are acting in an unconscious way in spite of knowing what is right.

Alright, enough for now. We will meet after lunch and get into the subject straightaway.

Thank you.

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

A Zen Master was walking with his disciple towards his city.
On the way, there was a river that was flowing.
There was a beautiful woman standing near it.
When she saw them, she requested the Master to help her cross the river.
The Master promptly carried her to the other side of the river, left her there and returned.
The disciple was totally disturbed by what he saw. He was burning inside with what he saw.
As they walked along towards the city, he couldn’t resist asking, “Master, how can you, as a Master, touch and carry a young girl?”
The Master replied, “I left her there long back, why are you still carrying her?”

(Laughter!)

Masters always answer the questioner who is asking the question, never the question itself. In this story, the Master could have as well explained his supreme state as a Master to the disciple and made him understand that it doesn’t matter to him whether it is a male or female who he carried. But he did not do that. He made the disciple understand that the block was in the disciple’s mind, not the Master’s act!

If you feel you cannot give up non-veg food without craving for it, eat until it drops on its own. Mind you, this does not mean that I am advocating non-vegetarian food. For my own life, body and mind, vegetarian food is conducive and so I eat it. If you wish to adopt my way of life, become vegetarian - that’s all!

But don’t give it up and crave for it, and torture other people also to give it up. We all take up small issues like vegetarianism and contemplate on it for hours together; that is the problem.

There are three categories under which you can fall:

First would be, not to eat non-vegetarian food and not to think about it. The second category would be, to eat it and forget about it. The third category would be, not to eat it yourself, but feel deprived and hence torture people around not to eat it as well! Please don’t fall in the third category, that’s all!

Yes…?

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

Words from the Master

Yes…

Swamiji, what would you say about eating vegetarian food and eating non-vegetarian food?

(Swamiji laughs!)

First, don’t go around telling others not to eat non-veg food. In departments unknown, it is better not to involve yourself and get into trouble! You see: Certain issues cannot be resolved by logical reasoning. If we tell people not to eat non-veg food, they will ask you that like animals, plants also have life and why are we eating plants? What will you tell them? There is no end to this subject.

This much I can tell you: I am a pure vegetarian. I eat vegetarian food because it is conducive to my body, that’s all. There have been many Enlightened Masters who ate non-veg food. Of course, when Enlightened Masters do certain things, we cannot pass judgment on them because their actions cannot be interpreted by our common dictionary. We will be misconstruing and missing the whole thing.

Just one thing: Don’t categorize people based on their eating habits and don’t force people to give up eating non-vegetarian food.

A small story:

At the time the television was introduced in India, a new television was bought in a certain House of mendicants.
All except one of them used to watch the programs on the television.
This man who never watched the television used to go to the President of the house and complain about how the others were watching television for hours together.
After a few times of complaining, the President told him, “You too watch television from tomorrow.”
The man was shocked and asked why he said that.

The President replied, “You are not happy abstaining from watching and hence you are grumbling about them doing it. You have the desire to watch but you don’t watch it because you want to feel solid inside yourself. But this suppression is causing you to complain against them.”

You see: If you are not completely happy abstaining from eating non-veg food, you will compel others to become vegetarians. When you are doing something totally, you will never force another person to do it. Only when you are doing it with a doubt or half-heartedly, you will pull other people also into it. This is the scale to see if you are in something totally or not. When you are total, you are enough unto yourself with no regrets and so you will not trouble anyone else. You will allow them to have their freedom.

In fact, I would go on to say that those who eat non-veg food for one hour a day and forget about it, are better off than those who eat vegetarian food and think about non-veg 24 hours a day!

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

Words from the Master

Yes…you want to ask anything?

Swamiji… how would you define spirituality in a nutshell?

Spirituality is nothing but the flowering of four things in you: Physical health, mental health, smooth inter-personal relationships and the ability to respond spontaneously - what I call responsibility.

Physical health is being free from disease. When you visit a doctor, he should give you a report saying that you are clinically alright.

The second – mental health, is being free from all subconscious and deeply engraved negative thought patterns and being free from worries, pain, jealousy, discontentment, ego, lust etc.

The third – interpersonal relationships, is having a smooth relationship with everyone around you. It is not enough if you are merely cordial with everyone. You should be able to go through any amount of interaction with any kind of person, without feeling pressure or pain. The moment you feel pressure or pain, it means that there is some block inside you, some block in your mental health.

The fourth – The ability to respond spontaneously, is what I call responsibility. When you are able to take on responsibility, when you are able to say yes to anything spontaneously, you will expand that very moment of saying yes and Energy will flow through you to accomplish it. Of course, it is up to you to use that Energy to accomplish that task. When you keep doing this, you keep expanding.

So if these four things flower in you, then you are spiritual. Then, it does not matter which profession you are in or whether you are married or unmarried or whether you are young or old or anything for that matter.

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

Words from the Master

I always say: There are two types of people: One who fight with others and win and the other who fight with themselves and win. It is easy to fight with others. It is not a big deal. But it is difficult to fight with yourself. When you are courageous, you will fight with yourself and win. You will destroy what you are not and emerge as a blissful Being; you will flower.

The greatest challenge for man is to realize his entire potentiality. This can be done only when he moves inwards and keeps purifying himself again and again until he becomes intelligent enough not to gather more dust inside.

Actually, the word Swami means, one who has realized his full potential. All our difficulty on planet Earth is because we are not able to realize our potentiality. There is a saying that goes: The lion that is not allowed to be a lion will become a fox. If we are not allowed to realize our true potential Energy, we will start expressing it in a wrong way – either self-destructive or destroying others.

So the creative Energy, or the potential Energy, should be allowed to express itself in a freely flowing way. Society should allow us, that is one thing, and we should also know the technique to express it. Swami means a man who has realised his potential power, who is expressing himself as he is; who is completely in tune with his Being; who is Blissful!

You have tremendous potential in you. Time and again psychologists and mystics have said that man is not living up to his full potential. Where are we missing it? Where are we stuck? Why are we not able to realize our full potentiality?

We need the courage to let go and explore, that’s all. We will then know the answers to all these questions. When you start exploring sincerely, you will experience a shift in Consciousness and this shift will open a Space in you for you to flower.

When you flower, you become a King. You will then live like a Lord on Earth. People may have all the possible comforts, money, knowledge and what not. But they will remain beggars if they have not found their inner Space. To find your Being is to become rich. Inner richness is real richness.

We have become so caught up with what goes on outside us that we remain completely ignorant of our inner selves. We are so caught up in the outer world adventure that we miss the wonderful adventures of the inner world. We miss what the great Rishis and Masters experienced in their lives. This experience is what I want to share with all of you.

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

Words from the Master

You see: As I said earlier, bliss is continuously happening in us. This is the basic Truth. But we continuously stop the flow of bliss, and this is what we experience as misery in our lives. Bliss is not something that you need to get from outside and keep inside yourself. No. It is your inherent nature. When you arrive in this world, you are in a state of bliss. As society conditions you, you become an expert at moving as far away as you can from this bliss and then start searching for ways outside of yourself to attain it.

These few days, we are going to see how to stop the stopping of this bliss that is continuously happening in us. When I say bliss, I don’t mean the ordinary happiness that we feel in our everyday lives. The ordinary happiness that happens in our lives is a result of something that happens outside - some happy occasion, some material benefit, some happy news, some relationship that worked out or something to do with a person or thing in the outside world.

This kind of happiness is purely dependent on the people and circumstances outside of us. And this kind of happiness leads us to sadness also, because people and circumstances keep changing. They are not the same. Their behaviour is different at different times. And when their behaviour changes, our happiness too is affected.

The bliss that we are talking about is different. It is purely a state inside yourself, which is in no way affected by outer world incidents. It is your core, your permanent state. And when you have found this, you will be a mere witness to the outer world. You will become a blissful watcher. You will participate in it fully but without losing your bliss.

A small story:

There was an old man in a family who could not be pleased at any cost.
He remained stubborn and grumpy, no matter how much his family tried to keep him in good spirits.
His children and grandchildren would all come and visit him and try to cheer him up, but he would remain the same way.
Suddenly one day, overnight, he became very gentle and cheerful.
His family was shocked at the sudden transformation.
One of his grand daughters was courageous enough and asked him, “Grandpa, how come you have changed so suddenly?”
The old man replied, “All my life, I tried my best to get a contented mind, but never succeeded in getting it. So I have decided to be contented with it now.”

(Laughter!)

Everything is a projection of our mind! With the help of our mind, we have stopped the flow of bliss from within. We can never get bliss from outside. It is already there inside us. We just have to look in, that’s all.

Understand: There is a Universal Consciousness that fills the entire Cosmos and there is an individual Consciousness that fills us. Man’s whole purpose is to try to establish a connection between these two. When this connection happens, man is said to be Enlightened or in Eternal Bliss or in Nithyananda. Nithyananda means Eternal Bliss.

Through listening to all the lectures and practising all the meditation techniques, we become more and more aware of this connection and try to experience it with more awareness. This is the sole purpose of all our efforts.

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

Words from the Master

Swamiji, we have read in many books that our mind is nothing but maya or illusion and that all our questions are only an illusion. Please can you tell us something about this?

(Swamiji laughs...) The famous question about maya asked one more time! See the first thing: Don’t confuse yourself with complicated reading. Second thing: Understand very clearly that there is nothing to be understood with the mind. The mystery of Life cannot be solved with your mind. You cannot know the purpose of your life with your mind. That is why they say that your mind is an illusion.

The first step to solving the mystery of our life is ‘dropping your mind’. If you allow your mind to play, you will continue to play, that’s all. Life after life, you will play. Your deep inner thirst will remain unquenched. Probably your seeker-ego will get fulfilled, but that is of no use. You become only more confused deep inside you.

Try to move your centre of operation from your mind to your heart or Being. If you operate with your mind as the centre, questions and more questions will follow. With questions, you cannot know. Only with awareness you can know.

If you operate with your heart, awareness and understanding will happen in you and then automatically your questions will start dissolving; Like how when the sun rises, the darkness simply disappears, when awareness happens in you, understanding will happen and your questions will dissolve.

You will start understanding things even before you come to the question! And like that the questions will dissolve. It is difficult to understand this, but once you get an experience of it, you will know exactly what I mean by awareness. Questions will disappear and understanding will continuously engulf you.

If you understand this much, you need not worry about maya or illusion. In addition to intellectual understanding from my words, Meditation can help you switch to this mode of awareness easily. We can talk for hours together about maya and illusion, but you will only get more confused.

Instead, it is worthwhile learning the solutions that will help us to live intelligently, that is enough. One thing I want to tell you - maya or illusion is everything that your mind projects, so that is why I say - simply drop your mind, that’s all.

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

Words from the Master

Swamiji, we are looking to destroy all our negativities and be reborn as a new person in these few days…

Understand: There can be no destruction on Planet Earth. There is always only transformation. All your so-called negative emotions can be transformed into positive emotions like pure love and awareness.

Society always teaches you to divide and destroy yourself. It never teaches you to become integrated. It places a wedge inside you between you and You, so that it can take control of you. It always talks to you in the language of lower and higher. That is why you suffer so much.

It makes you think that you are inferior. It makes you fight with yourself. Society can rule you only if you feel chaotic inside yourself. It first makes you feel that you are no good and then comes up with remedies for it. That is why you start talking in this kind of language.

A small story:

A man was suffering from a common cold.
He visited the doctor and asked for medicine.
It was just an ordinary cold and the doctor looked at him for a while and said, “Why don’t you do something. Just go out for some time in the night and get the chill wind to touch you for a while. Then come back.”
The patient was shocked. He said, “But Doctor! I will catch pneumonia if I do that.”
The doctor said, “Yes. I can cure pneumonia in no time.”

(Laughter!)

Society makes you become something and then teaches you ways to come out of it. Now I tell you: There is no higher or lower; there is only transformation. When you learn to look in with awareness, automatically you will be transformed. This is always the Master’s approach. He teaches you to look in. He never divides you. He always integrates you.

He never tells you that you are negative. There is no negative. What you call as negative and positive are just the two extremes of the same spectrum. Negative is not any physical entity for you to throw out. If you transform, you move in the spectrum towards higher positive energies, that’s all.

As I said earlier, this transformation is possible if you are just open and receptive to what is happening here.

Yes…?

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

Words from the Master

In the first chapter of the Bhagwad Gita, Arjuna Vishaada Yoga, which is the Yoga of Arjuna’s grief, Arjuna talks throughout and Krishna remains silent. It is only when Arjuna finally surrenders, saying “I know nothing!” that he is at last ready to receive Krishna’s message.

Although Krishna and Arjuna were friends and childhood playmates, though there might have been hundreds of other more relaxed situations, the Bhagwad Gita was not delivered to Arjuna anytime earlier.
Why?
Because until then, Arjuna was not ripe to receive the Gita! It is only when he utters the words, “I don’t know” that he becomes qualified to know. The basic condition for spiritual progress is to know very clearly that you don’t know. This is the first step towards really knowing.

Yes, any questions...?

Let me tell you, please feel free to ask questions. This is not going to be a sermon from my side. So please be interactive and ask questions, or rather express your confusion and I will try to bring in clarity! One more thing: When you ask questions, I can be assured that you have not gone to sleep!

A small story:

A Bus driver and a great preacher died and reached Lord Yama Dharma’s court – the court of the Lord of death.
First, the bus driver was questioned about all his deeds in his lifetime. His records were verified.
Then, he was given a golden key and a staff and sent to a luxury room.
The preacher was waiting for his turn and watching all this.
He thought to himself, “If the bus driver himself was given a golden key and other luxurious things, then surely, I will get something much more than that.”
After all, he had preached about God all his life.
His turn came and his records were presented.
The verdict was pronounced. He was sent to hell.
He became very angry. He could not believe the verdict.
He demanded to know the reason.
Lord Yama explained, “We don’t bother about what you have done in your lifetime; we only see the results of your actions. When the bus driver was driving, his driving was such that the people in his bus were continuously thinking of God. Whereas when you were preaching, although you spoke about God, the people who were with you were sleeping most of the time.”

(Uproarious laughter from the group!)
So, please be present and alert here, if not for your sake, for my sake, so that I may be received properly at the court of Lord Yama! Ask questions and make things clear for yourself and for others. Only if you ask questions, things can be worked out in a more practical way, in a way more adaptable to your life.

Some of you may think that you may look like a fool if you ask some of your questions. I tell you: If you ask questions, you will only look like a fool; If you don’t ask questions, you will remain a fool! So if there is any concept that you don’t agree with, please raise your hand and clarify. Yes…

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

Words from the Master

Whatever I may be telling you these few days, just listen with complete awareness and try to catch the central chord, the composite thread that runs in the whole thing. If you do that, you will create a space in you for the transformation to happen. Otherwise, you will simply be collecting words and seeking all the time. Unless a transformation happens in you, all words are useless. And transformation is possible only if you look with deep awareness.

And be very clear: Even if you are thousand people in this hall, I am talking to you. When I say you, I mean Y O U. I have a thread running with each of you; so don’t ever apply what I am saying to others; you will simply miss the whole thing.

We have a general tendency: When we hear anything about our health being discussed, we will immediately apply it to ourselves and see where we stand; we will see whether we have any symptoms of what is being discussed. If I talk about the skin, you will feel your skin and see; if I talk about the heart, you will feel your heart beat and see.

But when we hear anything about spirituality, somehow, we always apply it to others, our family, our friends, our neighbours, never to ourselves! The problem is, whatever I say, you think, “Ah! I know myself well. This message is for my husband. Swamiji is saying this so that my husband can change his ways. I hope he has got the message from Swamiji.”

(Laughter!)

When I talk about worries, you will immediately think of how much your mother worries. You forget how much you worry. I am telling you because you also worry. Probably your mother worries more than you, but that is not the point.

Understand that every word is for you. It will come like an arrow bringing with it the Energy; don’t dodge it. Just allow it to go in and transform you. So don’t keep looking at other people to see if they are showing signs of understanding. If you do this you will miss it for yourself.

If you really know about yourself, you will not have any worries, or discontentment or pain or fear or lust or jealousy or ego. But you have all of this in you. That itself shows that you don’t know everything about yourself. First of all, know that you don’t know. Then at least you know that you don’t know! If you don’t even know that you don’t know, then you don’t even know that you don’t know!

Yes…?

But Swamiji, we are traveling towards knowing ourselves, so at this point we may know partly…

Let me tell you one thing: In a deep spiritual experience, there will be no traveling. It is a moment’s experience, that’s all. All our so-called knowing is only creating a space inside us towards fully knowing. But ultimately, in the deeper sense, either we know or we don’t know. But when we know more and more, we become clear that we don’t know! That is enough. That will motivate us to really knowing.

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

Words from the Master

We ignore our Being completely because we are so immersed in the outer world. We need to be centered in our Being and perform the outer world things as just a role in a drama. Instead, we are so deeply involved in the outer world things and we are completely off-center inside.

Unless we are centered, we will not experience a totality; we will not experience fulfillment. In our outer world achievements, we might be filled, but not fulfilled. And because we are not fulfilled, there remains a yearning inside. We keep thinking that we are missing something, and we start searching again in the outer world. When you are centered inside with awareness, you will have fulfillment every minute whatever you may be doing in the outer world, because the fulfillment does not come from what you are doing outside; it comes from inside.

So we need to look deep into what the Masters have been saying time and again. All the so-called seekers have missed the Masters life after life. They simply went on seeking without stopping to get one glimpse of the Truth and Energy behind the Master’s words. They are eternally on a journey, traveling inside.

This concept of traveling is like ‘trying to pick up a book but not picking it up!’ Can there be anything such as trying to pick up a book?! You either pick it or not. How can you try to pick it up? When you say that you are trying to pick it up, you are cheating yourself! You can’t cheat others because they know how foolish it is.

It is something like this: People who don’t have the capacity to make money, claim that they are very honest and therefore unable to make money. Actually, they don’t have the capacity, that is the truth; but they justify it with reasons.

When we are unable to take a real leap into spirituality, and at the same time we are not ready to confess that we don’t know anything about it, in order to keep our ego alive, we create our own philosophies and go around saying: “Short of enlightenment, I know everything about spirituality!”

I tell you: Mere clarity on the fact that we are spiritually poor is enough to allow the transformation, the alchemy to start happening in us. Honesty and Truth will lead to it automatically. But we don’t want that. We use the ‘Seeker’s Ego’ as a buffer between the Truth and us.

Like how the car has shock absorbers to keep us from getting hurt on the road, the seeker ego keeps us away from reality. It serves as the buffer between the Truth and us. In the comfort of this buffer, we happily conclude that we were seekers all our lives!

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

Words from the Master

Time and again, ancient Rishis and Masters have said that man’s true nature is Bliss. Over the years, so many Masters have happened on Planet Earth. Whether it was Buddha or Christ or Krishna or Mahavir, the core of their message was the same. They all said that Man’s true nature was bliss and they all gave methods or techniques to reconnect with that core, with that bliss.

Their expressions might have been different but their message was the same. Of course, again and again people miss the Masters’ message because they cling on to the Masters’ personalities instead of their message. This is the root cause for fanaticism, religious wars and all other things that are happening on Planet Earth.

Anyhow, all these Masters had the same message, that Man’s core is bliss. And all of Man’s efforts are actually in seeking this inner space, this space of bliss within him. But over time, due to social conditioning and distractions, man forgets his purpose and starts seeking this bliss in outer world things, in material things, in names, in forms, in labels given to him by society, in relationships, in careers and what not.

A small story:

An old man went with his family to watch a movie in a theatre.
The movie had just started when the man suddenly started groping about in the darkness on the floor.
His grand daughter who was sitting next to him got annoyed and asked him what he was doing on the floor.
He said, “Dear, I have lost my chewing gum. It has fallen out.”
The child got irritated and said, “Grandpa, it’s alright, leave it. We will buy some more chewing gum. Now watch the movie.”
The old man said, “I want only that chewing gum.”
The child said, “Grandpa, don’t behave like a baby. We will get more chewing gum.”
The old man said, “But dear, my teeth are in it.”

(Loud laughter!)

You see: What we are really seeking is something, but we are seeking it in the name of something else! And at the end of it, we find that even after achieving all the outer world things, that we seek, there is a certain void in us. There is a certain yearning in us. This yearning is because we are all actually searching for bliss. But we search for it in the name of other things. That is why we never feel fulfilled. This yearning is the call of the Being.

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

Words from the Master

Alright, now I want you all to go around and introduce yourselves to one another. We will be creating a group energy when we are here together for these few days. Go around and introduce yourselves to each and every one in the group. Even if they happen to be your family, introduce yourself! Remember: each one is a different person every minute. Don’t think that you know your family well. You can’t know them because they are changing every minute. So now, go around and introduce yourselves.

(The people go around and introduce themselves amidst much talk and laughter…)

Alright, now that you have finished, you must be feeling more comfortable, more at ease. You will not worry about sitting with strangers anymore!

We will be discussing a lot of things in the next few days. Just listen to everything and allow a space in you to open up wherein you can imbibe what you hear. Remember: I don’t want you to preach what I am saying; I want you to practice it. And the best time to start practising is now. So don’t search for a good time to start. It is now here or nowhere!

When you listen to whatever I say, there are two ways in which your mind will work. One is, with doubt and the other is, with belief.

Doubt is the way of the intellectual mind. With doubt, too much logic and reason will come in the way of receiving me into yourself. When this happens, you will miss me completely.

With belief also, if you straightaway believe in me, you will miss. Understand: You don’t need to believe in anybody, leave alone in me. The so-called believers are the weakest people, because it takes great courage to live without beliefs. When you don’t have a belief, you don’t have a fall-back system to support your actions. You don’t have a readymade idea to tell you what to think and how to act. To be without a belief requires great courage, because then, you have to depend on your own intelligence for everything and this makes you feel unsure and insecure.

Both doubt and faith are two sides of the same coin – that is your Mind. At a very deep level, your greatest doubt will carry some faith and your greatest faith will have some doubt in it. I can assure you that!

Then what should you do? How to listen?

Just listen with trust, that’s all. Trust is the energy, the ability to translate teachings into practical life. When I tell you, “The sun rises in the east”, you neither need to believe nor doubt – you simply know, that’s all; am I right? Or if it is something you haven’t noticed, you can always get up the next morning and see for yourself – as an experiment! Yes? This is the attitude I want from you. I want you to take in everything with an open mind and experience what I am saying, every moment in the various situations you might encounter during the day.

So have trust, not faith. Take what I say as a hypothesis; integrate it into your life and see for yourself whether it works or not. To know that an apple is tasty, you don’t have to believe or doubt. Just take a bite and you will know!

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

There was a great Zen Buddhist monk, an enlightened Master.
One day, the Governor of Japan came to visit him.
The Governor sent in his visiting card to the Master. It had the words, ‘Zak-San - Governor of Japan’.
The Master took one look at the card and said, “I have no business with this idiot! Ask him to leave this very minute!”
Zen Masters can be very harsh when they want to break somebody’s mind, somebody’s ego. They will never hesitate to use harsh words. The energy behind their words can simply pierce and transform a person.
The disciple came back to the governor, gave back his card and repeated what the Master had told him.
The Governor saw the card and understood. He was an intelligent man… not just intellectual, but intelligent also!
When the card and message were returned to him, he quietly struck out the words, Governor of Japan, and gave back the card to be shown to the Master.
The Master took one look and said, “Show him in!”

All our titles, our designations, are all mere labels pasted on us by society. They are all just labels that society pastes on us. And we go about thinking that we are these labels. We by and by forget that we are not the labels but the stuff inside. We feel great about the labels. But you can never approach a Master with these labels. You can never know Existence with your labels.

What the Governor did cannot be called wrong. It might have been the right way to approach society, to be in accordance with the social protocols, but not the right way to approach a Master!

So when you come in, leave your governorship outside! Otherwise you will miss a lot. Here, something transpires between the Master and the seeker. We are going to share something of the inner world. Labels of the outer world will stand in the way when this is happening. Forgetting your personality is spirituality, because personality is societal. We are here to find our individuality – our inherent nature, our aloneness that we enjoyed in our Mother’s womb, our connection with Existence – the only connection we need to find and celebrate!

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

Words from the Master

Alright, let us alter the seating arrangement a little. When you sit, don’t sit with your relatives or friends or people known to you. Sit at random, next to anyone whom you don’t know much, whom you are not very familiar with. When you sit with familiar people, you will be compelled to exchange glances, exchange words while I am talking. If you sit with strangers, you can absorb me better, alone.

And understand one thing: I always tell this during my talks: When the session is happening, there will be a beautiful flow, an Energy that is created and vibrating in the room; a deep communion between you and me. Don’t interrupt it by coming in late. The flow will be broken.

It is just like encountering a speed breaker when you are going smoothly on the highway. The speed breaker is only a small interruption, but to cross it, you have to slow down, go over it and pick up speed again. The smooth flow will be broken.

And please switch off your mobiles phones. They are another very common speed breaker today! In fact they can cause the journey to be totally bumpy – one speed breaker after another! I am sure each of you has a cell phone here!

When you are here, don’t be serious and heavy. Be sincere in listening and listen with an openness and lightness. Don’t come here expecting that in the very first session, you will experience God! In a light and easy mood, without expectations, you will be able to receive much more from me.

If you come with a prejudiced mind, full of expectations, you will be thinking only of your expectations. You are not here to focus on your expectations. You are here to focus simply on what I say.

The next thing: Leave all your social ego outside and try to be an ordinary person while you are here. The ashram and the presence of the Master is the best laboratory for you to experiment with yourself, to let go of your ego, to shed your illusions, and understand that you are just a part of Existence, and experience your Being.

So even if you are somebody in society, try to be ordinary here and mix with everyone with your heart. Not only my words, but every moment of interaction, every moment of just being here, can cause a transformation in you. You just need to be aware, that’s all.

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

Words from the Master

You see: There are three types of knowledge. The first is intellectual knowledge – the knowledge of the mind. For this, you need only your mind, nothing else. If you are attentive and have a good memory, it is enough. If you can apply logic well, if you have a little common sense to connect things and understand, it is enough. This is the kind of knowledge that you gain in school, with your books. To learn mathematics and science, your mind is enough. You can become a great mathematician or a great scientist.

The second type of knowledge is knowledge of the heart. Here, you need to use your heart also in addition to your mind. Art, Music, Poetry, Dance – all these come under this category. For all these, you cannot use only your mind; nothing will happen if you use only your mind. You have to use your heart also. To paint, to write poems, to sing, you need to emote.

All these are creations. They are creations from your heart. They are expressions of your heart. Can you write a poem with no feelings at all? Can an artist draw and paint with just his mind? No! He needs to connect with his heart and then he will simply flow.

You can pick up certain points, certain techniques about writing poems with your mind or about painting, but ultimately the stuff will come from your heart only. No one can teach you to write poems or paint. They can teach you certain techniques, that’s all. You have to then absorb things and start doing on your own.

The third type of knowledge is spiritual knowledge – knowledge that is neither of the mind nor of the heart, but of your Being! Actually, we can’t even call it knowledge; it is just a deep understanding beyond logic. This can neither be taught nor picked up. It can simply happen out of a deep communion at the Being level.

I always tell people: I cannot teach you spirituality, but you can learn! You can learn by just absorbing the Master’s words at the Being level – like Energy. The energy behind the Master’s words is so powerful that if you allow it, it can penetrate you and touch you at the Being level. It can bring about a transformation that cannot happen with just words of the mind and feelings of the heart.

When I talk, I talk from my experience of the Ultimate Truth; from my Being. When you listen, listen totally, from your Being. Only then can you get a glimpse of my Experience. I am not here to give you just words. I am here to take you beyond words. If you are here with acute awareness and silence, you can go beyond words and get a glimpse of your own Being.

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

Words from the Master

I welcome you all with my love and respects.

You have all come here with some expectation, some hope, to enhance your knowledge; to get a new perspective of life; to see if you can live your life in a better way.

I want to tell you a few things before we get into the subject so that you can get the maximum benefit from your stay here.

You might have gone to many other places, listened to many other lectures, practised many other techniques before coming here. All that is alright. Just one thing: When you are here, just be totally here, that’s all.

Just leave behind all the knowledge that you have gathered earlier in other places and then come in here. You would have seen a board outside that said, ‘Leave your shoes and mind outside’. You might have wondered what it meant. It means: When you leave your shoes outside, just decide and leave your mind also. Just leave all your gathered knowledge next to your shoes and come in. You can take it back when you go out. Don’t worry about that! No one will take your mind away. It will be perfectly safe.

At least your shoes, people might take, but your mind, people will not touch; I will guarantee you that! People are unable to handle their own minds; they will surely not touch and experiment with yours!

When you come in with an empty mind, with no prejudice, you can absorb what I am saying in its totality. If you come in with your knowledge, you will be constantly comparing every word of mine with what you know about it, with what you have heard about it from someone else earlier, and you will simply miss what I am trying to tell. You can absorb me only if there is some space in you to take me in. If you are already full, you cannot take me in.

A small story:

A learned professor from the West went to meet a Zen Master in the East, in Japan.
The professor was very learned and had done a lot of research in many areas of study. He went to meet the Master to acquire some spiritual knowledge, to discuss various issues with him, to understand spirituality in a better fashion.

He arrived at the Master’s place and found the Master brewing tea.

The Master saw him and gestured for him to sit and continued to brew the tea.

The professor sat down and after a while, started talking of his background, of all his studies, his discoveries, his travels all over the world, his experiences with different people, his conclusions on various subjects and what not.

The Master finished brewing the tea and placed two cups between them.

He began pouring tea into the professor’s cup. He poured and poured and slowly the cup started overflowing. The tea spilt over the saucer and flowed onto the table.
The professor was watching what was happening. He could not contain himself any more. He screamed out, “Master, what are you doing? Stop pouring! The cup is overflowing!”

The Master stopped and calmly said, “So are you.”

The professor was shocked but understood what the Master was trying to tell him.

The professor was so full like the teacup that could not hold any more tea. Anything that the Master might have told him would have only overflowed outside, not into him. The professor understood from that one word of the Master, what he meant, what he was trying to tell him!

So understand: If you want to experience me, if you really want to gain something for having taken the time out for these days, just be like an empty cup here. Be totally open and receptive. Be like a child, innocent and curious; like a sponge, ready to absorb; that is enough.

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

Changing the world we live in!

OUR true nature is bliss. However, negativity fills much of our lives. This leads to suffering. We then wonder why we are unhappy.

We can control anger and depression by meditation. Just by analysing the seven chakras that are in our body, and the individual consciousness, we can remove negativity and control the mind. We are like an onion. A human body is made of many energy layers. Just like we peel an onion layer by layer, we need to explore the emotional and energy layers of our body. Let us peel away all the layers of the onion. What do we find inside? Emptiness. The onion, which looks solid and feels solid, when opened layer-bylayer, reveals its emptiness. It is just empty within.

Similarly, we each think that we are our mind and body. But when we begin to peel the layers of individual identity, we find nothing inside. What we’ll find therein is the Collective Consciousness. We term this Divine, God or whatever name we wish to give something that is beyond us and which we do not understand. Remember always that we are much more than our body mind. We are all interconnected and connected to a vast energy source. We are not individual islands but a collective ocean. This truth will help us to prevent the anger or depression.

The Collective Consciousness is an experience. It can be taught. This science is unfortunately no longer taught. The education system designed and developed by the ancient sages of the East, called the gurukulam system, is now extinct. It has been replaced by a mindless system of competitive race for selfdestruction termed as education.

That’s why we suffer despite being educated. We suffer through our life. In childhood when we are taught that we’re separate from others. In school, we’re taught that we should be better than others. Then, as adults, we’re taught to compete and destroy others. This is totally wrong. This is completely foolish. The truth is that we are all one. We each mirror the Collective Consciousness. We have lost touch with this truth. That’s why I conduct Life Bliss Programs every week all over the world.

If we re-educate ourselves and change the way we educate our children, different from the way we have educated ourselves, without judgment, without comparison, without competition, with our focus only on learning about the truth, and experiencing the truth, we can learn to live without suffering. We can transform ourselves as well as the world we live in. We can be in bliss, nithyanandam.

The Beauty of Purposelessness

According to the sacred Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, as long as you work with ego, you will think that life has got a purpose and run behind the purpose.

When you realize the beauty of the purposelessness of life, you have dropped your ego. A man with ego searches with purposes and misses the reality. He misses the beauty of Existence.

The way you live your life you do not understand how purposeless it is. What you think as worthy is not worthy, what you think as being purposeful is not purposeful. Your ego constantly strives for purpose. In doing so it misses the reality of the present.

You need to understand the purposelessness of your goals and ambitions. What you think are the greatest treasures to obtain in this world are meaningless.

Desires for material assets grow each time a desire gets fulfilled. We are fuelled by fear, greed, lust and jealousy in constantly expanding our wants. These desires bring with it guilt and suffering. This is no life. This is not the purpose of life.

When you drop your goals in life, then you start realizing the divine purpose, the divine play. You start enjoying the drama, without being part of it, and life becomes meaningful. You become a witness, and not a player, and bliss happens.

Living your life blissfully is the ultimate goal of your life. There can be no other goal or purpose. When you run after other goals you stop experiencing life; you are already dead. Your ego masks this true purpose of life from you. When you realize the purposelessness of what you do, a new consciousness awakens within, a joy fills you, Bliss simply happens.

Life itself is the path, not the goal. When you have a goal, you will run and when you run, your feet will not touch the ground and you will miss the beauty of Existence of nature. When you drop the goal, the emphasis will be on the path.

Sacrificing one’s life for the sake of the goal is not the way to live. If you live this way, only the payday will be sweet. Life has to be lived with satisfaction every moment. Else every time you achieve any goal, you will only repent that you have wasted life on something insignificant. Drop the goal and enjoy life.

Many Paths, One Goal?

All spiritual literature can be classified into 3 categories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live life with Gratitude

A beautiful verse in the Puranas (epics) says: Ananda (bliss) attracts fortune.

Even modern day psychologists say that if our mind is blissful, we attract happy people, happy situations around us; If we are sad and depressed, we attract unhappy people and sad incidents.

Our being is like a dish antenna. If we tune ourselves to joy, we attract bliss; if we tune ourselves to depression, we attract suffering and pain.

When we are blissful and deeply grateful, we are showered with more and more. In life, we are not just given what we need; we are actually showered. However, if we don’t understand this, however much we are showered with, we will remain dissatisfied.

A small story:

A King saw a small boy beg for alms at the palace gates. He felt pity on him and asked him to stay in the palace for a few days. The boy was expecting a royal room with servants waiting on him but it was not so. The next morning, the boy expressed his dissatisfaction to the King about the room and other things. The King was furious with the boy and ordered his guards to throw him out.

The boy met a Sufi Master and told him all that had happened. The Master asked the boy to disguise himself and accompany him back to the King’s palace. On reaching the palace, the King invited the Master and the boy to stay in the palace for a few days. The Master profusely thanked the King for the offer. He was given the same room the boy had been given earlier. The next morning, the Master expressed deep gratitude to the King for giving him all the possible comforts. The King was overjoyed and handed the Master a thousand gold coins and offered him the guest room to stay in for as long as he wished to. The Sufi Master thanked the King again and went on his way.

From this story you see how our attitude towards life makes a difference. The Sufi Master was deeply grateful for whatever he was given, so he was showered with more whereas the boy was dissatisfied with what was given to him and hence he was chased away. When you live with an attitude of gratitude to Existence for all that it showers you with, you will enjoy life and live it to the fullest.

Be blissful!

Live as though it’s your last day

Living each day as if it were to be our last, and living life to the fullest are the best ways to extract the maximum juice out of life and living. To understand the process and meaning of death is to live.

We do not have to wait till a death sentence is pronounced upon us to change our priorities and to question the way we live. Start today!

When we plan, we have to have a futuristic plan, so that too many things don’t have to be re-structured for at least a few years. But when we execute, we have to execute in such a way that every sub-task that we take up in the master plan is completed successfully without any loose ends.

Even if we are going to die then, up to the point of what has been executed, everything will be perfect and the master plan will still be there as a reference for people to follow or amend as the situation demands. This can be achieved only if we work without procrastination in every sub-task that we take up.

Often, procrastination is what takes us to poverty. Poverty is our own choice. But we are blissfully unaware of this. We feel we have not been treated right by God and that life has been too short for us to realize our dreams. If we had used all our energy in the proper channel and with clarity, we will not feel this way and we will be ever ready to die.

If we just look at the mirror everyday and tell ourselves that today is the last day in our life, we will stop procrastinating. If we do this for just a month, automatically we will start living without procrastination.

People who have had a near death experience in some way, like a narrow escape from an accident or a cure from cancer or something like that, will be able to live more fearlessly because they will know that they have nothing to lose! They will also live their lives with greater clarity and with more intelligence. Remembering that we’ll be dead soon could be the most important tool we might ever encounter to help us make the right choices in life.

Living in the now, welcoming reality will take us to a different dimension, where we will be able to use our creative energy to fulfill our true desires. Live every moment with total awareness. Enjoy this journey, this gift of life! This will automatically lead you to joy, bliss and ecstasy!

Life is Insecure

Insecurity is the very basis of life. When we hear this, we are totally shaken. We are overcome with fear. We do not want to listen further. We like to believe that everything about life is assured and that life is in our hands.

In reality, life is nothing but a risk. Death is the only certainty in life. We are not bothered about life, but in the name of security we make many efforts to live a risk free life.

We try to seek security in many ways. We try to look for security in the form of money, power, relationship and so on. We definitely need money to live life. Wanting enough money to live our life is alright. But there are people who live just for amassing money or wealth. Such people do not make money for basic living, they live for making money! Thinking money will give them the needed security in their lives they begin to run after it. They become possessed by it. They run without stopping and lose the capacity to enjoy the money that they make. They end up running into their graveyard itself.

We search for security through relationships. If a particular person gives us a secure feeling in terms of comfort, attention etc., we seek security through them. In our life, most of the time our energy is wasted in thinking of our wife, husband or relative who gives us security. If we truly see, these other persons do not enjoy security in themselves. They also seek security through you or others! What security can they then give you?

Still we look to them for security. When they are not able to give us the security, we talk ill of them and say that they have breached our trust in them. Truly, only if we get the clarity of thinking that no one can guarantee security to anyone, we can enjoy the people around us. Try to understand: In truth no one can guarantee anyone security, because the basis of everyone’s life is insecurity. The only security is Existence or God.

When we deeply contemplate on this truth, a permanent and real security which is God-awareness happens in us. Then we will not run after the objects of the external world for security. We will enjoy a deep and secure state within where there is permanent peace.

Be blissful!

Life has no purpose

According to the sacred Hindu scriptures, the Upanishads, as long as you work with ego, you will think that life has got a purpose and run behind the purpose.
When you realize the beauty of the purposelessness of life, you have dropped your ego. A man with ego searches with purposes and misses the reality. He misses the beauty of Existence.

The way you live your life you do not understand how purposeless it is. What you think as worthy is not worthy, what you think as being purposeful is not purposeful. Your ego constantly strives for purpose. In doing so it misses the reality of the present. You need to understand the purposelessness of your goals and ambitions. What you think are the greatest treasures to obtain in this world are meaningless.

Desires for material assets grow each time a desire gets fulfilled. We are fuelled by fear, greed, lust and jealousy in constantly expanding our wants. These desires bring with it guilt and suffering. This is no life. This is not the purpose of life.

When you drop your goals in life, then
you start realizing the divine purpose, the divine play.
You start enjoying the drama, without being part of it, and life
becomes meaningful. You become a witness, and not a player, and bliss happens.

Living your life blissfully is the ultimate goal of your life. There can be no other goal or purpose. When you run after other goals you stop experiencing life; you are already dead. Your ego masks this true purpose of life from you. When you realize the purposelessness of what you do, a new consciousness awakens within, a joy fills you, Bliss simply happens.

Life itself is the path, not the goal. When you have a goal, you will run and when you run, your feet will not touch the ground and you will miss the beauty of Existence or nature. When you drop the goal, the emphasis will be on the path.
Sacrificing one’s life for the sake of the goal is not the way to live. If you live this way, only the payday will be sweet. Life has to be lived with satisfaction every moment. Else every time you achieve any goal, you will only repent that you have wasted life on something insignificant. Drop the goal and enjoy life.

It is all in 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 verbalizing you miss reality. Every day sun rises; every day 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 judgment.

You can never step into the same river twice, because by that time the river 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 or wife has changed; something is added to them; either intelligence or foolishness. But you don’t agree. You hold on to the same mental set up.

Sushruta wrote 5000 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 that frame, you don’t let go that disease. You don’t let go 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 you wife and children, unconsciously, without reason. The mood remains low even if you do not realize why.

You do not live based on intelligence, you live based on information.

Why be in 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 judgment 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 realize how unnecessary it is and you grow!

Be Blissful!

God is not for Sale

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 - his head and feet could not be seen. He said, ‘Who ever 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 realized that 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 realized 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 through it. Vishnu realizes 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, you can purchase Him.

Your ‘I’ and mine’ are your ego.

A devotee from USA 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!

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 realize only after a while that what ever led into a problem is just association, not your desires.

We try to suppress desires or fulfill them. Suppression does not work. Fulfillment 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 fulfillment. 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, blood circulate, 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 we never verbalize, we never bring to light; many are not our own deep desires; they are of others which are not relevant to us. 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; centering 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 center 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.

Experience your inner space

We are all the time running after material objects of the external world. Most of us are not even aware that such a thing as inner space exists.

Deep within each of us, there is a silence. It is the source from which we came. We can never experience this silence by going behind the objects of the outer world. We can experience it only by going inward.

To go inward, we need to be aware of our mind and its workings. Mind is nothing but our thoughts. These thoughts by themselves are alright. But when you identify with these thoughts, it corrupts this inner space. Constantly by replaying the past and connecting independent incidents, your mind creates shafts, connections.

Supposing you have a pain in your shoulder, immediately the shaft of pain will come up. All the earlier pains that you have had will come up as a string of incidents. Be very clear: The pain you had 9 years ago is different from the pain you had 4 years ago and it is different from the pain you have now. All are unconnected, one-time, independent incidents and have no connection. It is your mind that makes the connection, which in reality does not exist. This series of connections is what I call a shaft.

You will see that these shafts create thought patterns, which are sets of thoughts that keep repeating themselves. For example, you may have a set of ideas about a person, a situation or a thing. Every time you interact with that person, these ideas surface and bias your decision-making. By judging in this manner, you simply miss the totality of that person or the situation and take wrong decisions about them.

Drop your ideas about everything and everybody. Just be friendly with everyone without having any past memories or ideas about them. Just behave the way you would when you meet the person the first time. Life will then be joyful. Your inner space will simply expand. You will be able to actualize your entire potential. Most often you are afraid to drop these shafts because these shafts give you your identity. Just understand that you are an un-clutched, independent being. Don’t try to clutch into these shafts.

Keep your inner space pure. Whenever thoughts arise, whatever they may be, just watch and be a witness to them. You will see that your awareness increases and slowly the number of thoughts in you decrease. You will become aware of the inner space within, which is pure bliss.

Be Blissful!

Chaos is Order

The cosmos, the universe, that vast space above and beyond has always fascinated, puzzled and inspired humans. We have sought to understand the functioning of the universe since the time of our creation; poets have sung about it, painters have tried capturing its mystique, and mystics have contemplated upon it.

The universe, the macrocosm or brahmanda as our ancient sages called it, operates with no understandable rules, with no visible ruler, and is apparent Chaos. Yet, it works, and has worked for billions of years. On the other hand the Individual body, the microcosm, or the pindanda, which scientists have dissected and analyzed to the last cell, is all in apparent order. We believe that we rule our body and mind.

Universe is energy and energy in nature is chaotic. Energy in each atom is chaotic. The mystery of sub atomic particles keeps getting unraveled only to present more riddles; are they particles, waves, quanta, strings or whatever, is a matter of continuous unfolding. However, in that confusion, in that chaos, there is order. Even if we do not always understand it, there is a cosmic rule that operates with Intelligence. The stars and planets move in order, with no apparent regulatory authority, though science is yet to find the source of this order. Our Universe is just not matter alone; it is also not just power; it is power with intelligence which is energy. This Cosmic Intelligence responds to our prayers.

Believing that Universe is just matter is what causes power struggles, terrorism and violence of all kind. When we realize that Universe is Intelligent Energy, that it is compassionate, and that it responds to us, seeds of peace are sown. World is divided into those who are spiritual who believe in its innate Intelligence and those who live for power and control over others believing themselves to be more intelligent than nature.

Cosmic energy continues to prove that it responds to us. In a book ‘Message from water’ Masaru Emoto describes the amazing results of his experiments with ordinary water. Emoto showed that water responded to his thoughts and words. Since 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.

Most of us believe in the power, the shakti, of the Cosmos; we believe in the power of what we term divine, to grant us our prayers, give us boons. However, we do not realize that Cosmos also has intelligence, buddhi.

Nitti Mudaliar goes into a restaurant and orders his fill. He eats with relish, with gusto. He then gets up to leave. As he is about to go out he is presented with a bill. Startled he says: I only ordered my food, I didn’t order the bill.

We specify to the divine what we want in explicit detail; when we get what we asked for we are often surprised unpleasantly. Like Nitti, we are happy to order, but reluctant to pay the bill.

For a change, just for a few days, let the universe decide for you; stop telling the universe what you want, and what you want it to do for you. Trust its intelligence the way you trust its power. You will be surprised at how much happier you are with what you receive. This is the power of prayer, when you give up the arrogance of what you believe to be your own orderliness and start surrendering to what you imagine is the chaos of the universe.