Words from the Master

A small story:

A young sannyasi lived across the road from a beautiful courtesan.

The sannyasi was all the time trying to meditate.

The courtesan on the other hand carried on with her way of earning money.

Many men came and went from her house.

The sannyasi used to try his best to concentrate on his meditation, but his attention was more on the young woman and he kept cursing her for the kind of immoral life that she was leading.

The courtesan on the other hand was not even aware of the sannyasi staying across the street.

Despite her lifestyle of offering pleasure to men, the courtesan was immersed in her love for Lord Krishna and spent as much time as she could in praying to Him and playing with His image.

The sannyasi and the courtesan died on the same day and reached the gates of Lord Yama – the Lord of death.

After their records were analysed, the courtesan was sent to heaven while the sannyasi was sent to hell.

The sannyasi expressed deep feelings about the unfairness of the whole justice of Yama.

Yama calmly explained to the sannyasi: “All your life, under the guise of meditating, you were harboring lust for the courtesan. She, on the other hand, despite whatever she was doing, was totally focused on the reality of God.”

Moralists live a superficial, fearing and shallow life. They don’t live totally. They are in constant fear of stepping out of morality. Their true intentions are kept well covered under the guise of morality. That is the problem when you simply operate out of moral codes instead of your inner intelligence.

When you operate from your intelligence, there will be a certain purity in you. When you operate simply from the periphery, from moral codes, there will be no beauty or purity in you.

Those who are afraid and unsure of themselves, set up moral codes and follow them. Those who are intelligent, just act spontaneously and do the right things with a deep centering and no fear, that’s all.

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

Once there was a moralist who normally walked on the streets with carefully measured steps.
One day it suddenly began raining very heavily.
The moralist just followed the crowd and ran along.
After running for a while, he realized that he was careless about his manner.
He said to himself, “What am I doing! Running is undignified. A gentleman must correct his mistakes regretfully if he has made any.”
So he returned in the rain to the place where he had begun running, and walked again, with measured steps.

(Laughter!)
Morality makes you totally dull and dead!

Understand one thing: When I tell you this, I am not telling you that this is a free world and you can do anything you like. I am telling you that you have to develop your own intelligence and live so that rules will only be a confirmation of what you already know and feel. This is real intelligence. Any proper rule will only be a confirmation of what the rightly flowered intelligence feels. So drop your fears and try to find your inner intelligence, your inner voice, your inner Master.

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

Words from the Master

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.

The first lesson that you need to learn from all your education is that, you should do the right thing at the right time and move on. Somehow, this is the last lesson that we learn thoroughly! After having gone through all the other lessons, we learn this lesson!

Procrastination is something that you bring about yourself. But the rest of the fears, society instills in you. Society makes you afraid of your own self, of others and of God. It makes you afraid of yourself with simple things like morality, names and forms, prestige and what not.

In the name of morality, it makes you lose confidence in yourself and that is why you are so unsure of yourself when it comes to morality. When you start following morality out of fear, there will be no chance for your inner intelligence to guide you. When people see me traveling with women, they ask me, “Swamiji, how can you, being a spiritual head, travel with women? Will people not talk about you?”

First of all, they are forgetting that they are talking to an Enlightened Master. If they are completely aware whom they are talking to, they will not even come up with the question. Anyhow, I have to answer them in their language and so I tell them, “I have faith in myself and the women have faith in me, why are you bothered?!”

They are simply shocked when I say this.

In our lives, morality is nothing but a poor substitute for a lack of intelligence. When you act out of your own intelligence, you can be confident of yourself. But when you act out of rules and regulations, you can never be sure of yourself, because you are not yourself to start with! You are not centered in yourself; you are centered on the rules.

If you live out of intelligence, these types of fear will never grip you. People who preach morality are so deeply in fear. That is why they preach about it. They are afraid either because they are unsure of themselves or because they know to be moral only with fear. Moralists can become neurotic with their concept of morality and discipline.

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

Words from the Master

In our meditation programs, we take people through a guided meditation wherein they are told to visualize that they are going to die in just 24 hours time and that they should complete all the things that they would like to complete before they die. It is a beautiful meditation technique. They are also made to visualize their own death ceremony.

Once after this meditation, a young girl shared her thoughts.

She said, “Swamiji, I saw a poster in a shop which said, ‘When you plan, plan concretely taking into account the future years to come. When you execute, execute like you are going to die the very next minute. After doing this meditation, I understand what it really means!”

I said, “Beautiful!”

You see, when you plan, you 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 you execute, you have to execute in such a way that every sub-task that you take up in the master plan is completed successfully without any loose ends.

Even if you 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 you work without procrastination in every sub-task that you take up.

Often, procrastination is what takes you to poverty. Poverty is your own choice. When you defer decisions, you take your steps towards being poor. But you are blissfully unaware of this. You feel you have not been treated right by God and that life has been too short for you to realize your dreams. If you had used all your energy in the proper channel and with clarity, you will not feel this way and you will be ever ready to die.

If you just look at the mirror everyday and tell yourself that today is the last day in your life, you will stop procrastinating. You need not tell yourself this all your life; just a month will do. Automatically, you will start living your life without procrastination. Not only that. Your fears about losing your prestige, embarrassment, pride, expectations will all dissolve, because you will know that you have nothing to lose.

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

Words from the Master

We all leave our bodies unconsciously, with a lot of suffering – the pull and push of unfulfilled desires torture us on one side and the body tortures on the other, saying that it has had enough. The mismatch between the mind and the body tortures us while we are alive and at the time of death also. When we are alive, if we live inside our boundary, inside our body, we will also leave our body peacefully. The problem is, when we live, we are always outside our body, never inside.

Let me explain this to you:

Just look deeply into the way of your life. Early in the morning, when you brush your teeth, what are you doing? You are already thinking of going to work. When you are at work, you are thinking of catching the bus to go home. When you are at home, you are thinking of work next day! When you are on vacation, you think of your office and when you are at office, you think of going on vacation.

Wherever your body is, you can be sure that your mind is not! You have never lived any moment of your life with fullness. You have always lived either in the past or in the future. This is what is called ‘not living inside your boundary’. This is why at the time of death, you feel so pre-occupied and unfulfilled and unwilling to go. This is why you fear death.

You may ask why you need to know about dying consciously. Let me tell you: Only when you know about death, can you live with the right understanding of life. Else, you will not live life the right way.

In life, you keep postponing everything. You postpone your enjoyment, you postpone your work, you postpone everything for tomorrow. You have to understand that ‘tomorrow’ also comes in the form of ‘today’ only! When it comes as today, you say ‘tomorrow’ again! It is a game that you are playing with yourself.

Finally, when death comes, you are so unprepared! You feel there is so much to be done. You feel cheated by life itself. The truth is, you have been deceiving yourself all along. But you land up blaming life for everything. That is why a clear understanding of death is necessary for you to live. Then there will be no delusions and you will be ready to die when the time comes.

Procrastination is the mentality by which we lose out on many things in life. People ask me, “Swamiji, how are you able to do so many things in such a short period of time?” It is amazing for them to see my calendar for the year! They are amazed to see the various things happening throughout the year across the world. I tell them, “It is very simple – I live totally in the present. I don’t procrastinate like you.”

Your tendency to put off things simply makes you feel like a loser. Even though you feel like a loser, you don’t make an effort not to procrastinate.

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

A disciple was caught in a river one day.
He was terrified of his losing his life and he shouted out to his Master to save him from drowning.
The Master said, “Stand up!”
The disciple screamed out, “How can I? I am drowning.”
The Master said, “Have I not taught you to help yourself? Now stand up!”
The disciple said, “Master, you are preaching to me at this moment of my impending death. Why don’t you just save me!”
The Master persisted, “I said, stand up.”
The disciple was enraged at the Master’s persistence.
He simply stood up. The water came up only to his knee!

(Laughter!)

I tell you: All your fears are nothing but the fear of your fears. If you shake off your fears and allow your intelligence to surface, you will find that your fears are just shadows of objects that don’t exist.

If you deeply analyze the fear of death, you will come to know that people are afraid to die because unconsciously, they feel that they should have been somewhere higher up than where they are now. They feel they have not reached their actual place in life and so they are not ready to leave.

Some people feel that others have cast eyes on them and so they have not been able to progress! The truth is: You have not cast your own eyes properly on yourself. That is why, even in your last days, you prolong your death.

If you properly analyze and understand your desires, fear and other emotions, you will not blame anyone for anything.

People who live their lives without any of these convoluted fears, will be able to live their death also. As I told you earlier, there are so many stories of living Masters who told their disciples exactly what time of what day they would die and they died that way.

So many of their disciples have learnt from their Masters’ death what they failed to learn from their teachings when they were alive. When we mean that they lived their death, we mean they were able to announce that they were going to die and died consciously. In their case, their death is literally ‘leaving their body’, that’s all.

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

Words from the Master

Yes…?

Swamiji, how do we overcome fear for small things?

First of all understand that all small fears are mere projections of the ultimate fear of death. Second, don’t resist the fear in you. Just keep repeating to yourself that you are scared and go through it, that’s all! You will soon find that the fear is no longer there because you saw it through. Start doing this every time you feel fear.

When you consciously work on this, you will understand that what you call fear is nothing but your response or reaction to an incident or thought. Depending on how you respond, you can claim that you did not have fear or had fear. And, with more and more awareness, you can respond towards fear without fear!

Remember one thing: No one can claim to be fearless. One can learn to handle fear without fear, that’s all. If anyone professes to be fearless, be very clear that they have not analyzed deeply the subject of fear and human response to it. Don’t start thinking that they are superhumans and you are a lesser mortal.

Yes…

Swamiji, I remember how you made me overcome my fear for spiders!

(Swamiji laughs!) Yes yes, tell them how ma!

(A young girl says) While in our discussions one day, I jumped up when I saw a spider and you laughed at me for it. You told me to meditate on the spider every time I saw one. I followed this meticulously and every time I saw one, I looked at it with awareness and concentration. Slowly I started wondering why I was scared of it after all!

Yes, did you all hear that? It is only a question of bringing awareness into our fears. You will then wonder what it was that caused the fear in you!

(Another young girl) Swamiji I remember when we were all standing around you in the Ganges river in the Himalayas, there was a small water snake that came up to where we were. While I squealed and scrambled in the water, Anupama was calmly looking at it even while it brushed past her. You then scolded me for not bringing in awareness at that moment, in your presence that too.

Yes! Now you are able to connect to what I mean when I say awareness.

The only way to get out of these fears is to visualize them and go through them as a reality with the power of your visualization. You can even sit by yourself and imagine that your fears are happening to you. In your imagination, confront them with deep awareness and calmness. If you suffer in the process of visualization, it is alright. Don’t suppress it or punish it. If your body shakes with fear, let it. Just co-operate with your intelligence and allow yourself to flow with it. Anything when lived out completely will have no effect over you. All your fears are simply fear of your fears, that’s all!

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

Words from the Master

Yes…any questions to be answered?

Swamiji, is it that fear is normally associated more with women…?

You see: Men are mainly caught in the Muladhara chakra and women are mainly caught in the Swadhishtana chakra. That is why men are more lustful and women are more fearing. The fact is, they both know this and exploit each other appropriately!

The man knows where exactly to touch the woman’s weak chord. He will play with her insecurity and fear and exploit her. Similarly, the woman knows where the key lies with the man! She will play the game appropriately and exploit him. This is what goes on all the time in marriages.

Actually, at the time of Hindu marriages, a vow is taken wherein the man and woman vow to each other that they will both work towards exhausting each others’ karmas – unfulfilled actions and desires - in a smooth way, without accumulating any more karmas in this life.

But these days, people are not even aware that they have taken such a vow because they are not the ones who are getting married; the priests are the ones who do all the chants and get married!

It is such a beautiful vow that they take. You see: We have accumulated enough and more karmas in our lives. The only concern for us should be to exhaust them all at least in this birth, and attain liberation.

But what do we do? We exploit each other and play a cunning and vengeful game. We add to each others’ karmas and get further caught in the cycle of life and death. Still worse, we blame each other for it. If you watch the drama of marriage from outside, you will understand how each one creates karmas for themselves and end up blaming the whole world for it.

Only when you watch from outside you will understand what a foolish game is being played. I always tell people: For actors and actresses it would be so easy to watch life as a game because they are all the time assuming roles and enacting them. They are the closest to seeing life as a great drama. The rest of us are so caught up with our roles that it becomes a solid reality for us.

Women are more fearful because they are psychologically built that way. Man and woman are not only physiologically different but psychologically different as well.

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

Words from the Master

All your fears are because you don’t clearly know that there is nothing to lose. Just one encounter with near death can show you that there is nothing to lose and that all your fears are baseless. The Master simply makes you understand this in his own way.

So don’t try to escape from the Master. Understand that he is here only to show you what you actually are. Your inherent nature is fearlessness. Over years, you have been instilled with fear. The Master tries to break the layers of conditioning that you have taken upon yourself over the years, that’s all. If you just allow him to work upon you, with trust and love, you will see yourself transform in front of your own eyes.

Let me tell you a small story about a Swami whom I was acquainted with:

This Swami, used to have a number of clocks in his room, and each of the clocks would show a different time!

I asked him about it one day.
He replied, “Time is not my Master. I am the Master! Whatever time I want it to be, I simply choose the time from that particular clock.”

This Swami had already predicted that he would be leaving his body on a particular day and time.

On the night before his death, the Swami asked all his disciples to gather around him and sing hymns.

One of the singers was somewhat arrogant about his musical abilities. He never sang on this occasion.

As was the custom, the Swami wrote something on a piece of paper and passed it on to him.

The disciple was flattered, thinking that it was a request for a particular song.

But when he opened the note, he saw that the Swami had written, “Please don’t sing after my death!”

Even on his deathbed he was in a humorous mood!

Later that night, he instructed his disciples to take good care of the orphans who lived in the ashram. He said, “Especially tomorrow, you will all be busy with preparations for my cremation. Don’t forget to arrange for food for those children!”

Till the last minute, his concern was for the people he was leaving behind.

The next morning, exactly at the time he had mentioned, he joined his hands in a namaskaar to all - and his hands dropped - simply like a drama.

What a beautiful, calm and courageous way to face death! That is the way we should all go to death and that is the way we should look upon death even when our own family and relatives pass away. When you understand this, your whole idea of fear will slowly dissolve, because as I said, the underlying basis of fear is death itself.

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

Words from the Master

A Master is one who will throw you upon the utter insecurity of life. He is the only one who gives you complete freedom. That is why with him, you feel insecure; you feel afraid. Freedom creates fear.

You will never feel utterly insecure in your other relationships because there is always some push and pull of greed, fear and anger that keeps you well settled in the familiar patterns of relationships. But with a Master, you are totally free. So you become afraid.

A small story:

A man was in prison for 20 years.
On the day of his release, he appeared very worried and tense.
His friend in the prison asked him, “What has happened to you? Why are you so worried?”
The man replied, “I am afraid. What will I do when I go out?”

The prison has created such a solid pattern of security for the man that he does not know what he will do when he goes outside! This is the danger of getting caught in patterns and security.

A Master will never offer you the security you are looking for. He will never offer you the patterns you are looking for. When you don’t get the security you are looking for, you will grow with deep centering within yourself; you will grow fearlessly because you know there is nothing to lose; and when you know there is nothing to lose, you have no fear.

To show you that there is nothing to lose, the Master throws you upon utter insecurity. Out of his deep compassion for you, out of deep concern for your growth, he doesn’t offer you security. When you don’t find the mundane security, you will find God; you will understand Existence.

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

Words from the Master

Understand: Fear and love can never co-exist. If there is pure love in a relationship, there can never be fear. If there is fear, there can never be pure love. Be very clear: There is some vested interest in the relationship; there is some purpose, some objective, some expectation of security or greed or returns in the relationship. That is why fear sets in.

We look for security in every relationship. We need some security to settle down with comfortably. This is actually a kind of imprisonment that we enjoy. People talk of freedom, but I tell you: They are so afraid of it! They like only imprisonment. In the comfortable cushioning effect of imprisonment, they think they are free.

A small story:

A small girl asked her father one day, “Dad, what is the meaning of the word guaranteed?”
The father replied, “It means that something is made well and it will last for a long time.”
That night before going to sleep, the girl called out, “Good night guaranteed father!”

All of us look for security continuously in our lives. But we say that we are looking for freedom. If we are really looking for freedom, why are we looking for security? Why fear? As long as you have fear in you, you will look for security. Till then, you can only delude yourself by saying that you want freedom.

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

Words from the Master

Live with the deepest individuality that you can manage. Live to your complete satisfaction. You will lose your fear of death.

And one more thing: If you live totally, without any hangover of any feelings, when you live your emotions with great clarity and totality, you will never fear losing your family and relatives also.

You see: You fear someone’s loss only because you feel you have not justified that relationship in some way in your life; you feel you have not been in it in totality; you are not ready to let go. Physical separation is only one aspect of the fear; the real reason is lack of fulfillment in the relationship.

The word ‘justification’ comes into relationships because you have always been taught to live for the sake of others, fulfilling their needs and desires. You always feel the need to justify relationships by doing these things. And if you don’t do these things, you get into the cycle of guilt and fear. If you just live totally, with deep clarity of the whole play of society, you will never be gripped by such compulsions.

You can live with total fulfillment and still not lose out on any love in relationships. We have discussed this while talking about the Anahata chakra. The fear of physical separation is always because of a feeling of guilt with respect to that relationship. If you live totally, not with a transaction type of relationship but with just pure loving Energy towards the other, there will be no room for guilt or fear. Even if the person passes away, you will continue to feel love towards him or her, that’s all, never fear of any separation.

Even when you are living with the person, try to live with more clarity and awareness. Most often, relationships suffer because of insecurity and the lingering fear of losing one another. If you deeply analyze fear in any relationship, you will understand that because our relationships are just transactions of some sort, this fear is there.

Between a husband and wife, there is fear that the other may start looking outside of marriage. Between mother and son, there is fear that the son may start paying more attention to the wife instead of the mother. Between father and son, there is the fear that the father may not pass on the inheritance to his son or the son may not keep up the family prestige.

Like this, in any relationship, there is a core expectation, which needs to be satisfied and guarded, and this gives rise to fear. I tell you: You can never satisfy any relationship totally. Any one who has tried to please their whole family will only become dropouts!

If a relationship is based out of pure love, with no underlying purpose - the kind of love that we talked about during the Anahata chakra, there will be no fear element at all.

You don’t know what liberation it is when you can move from fear to love. Fear is always imprisoning, love is always liberating. But unless society instills fear into you, you will not listen to it and so it instills fear in you through all possible means – through insecurity, rules, regulations, worship and what not.

Society tries to make saints out of you – saints who fear Existence and everything all the time. I am not here to make saints out you. I am here to make you blissful. When you are blissful, you will be full of life, alive and alert.

Anyhow, fear is what takes the form of jealousy also in our relationships. Fear is the underlying emotion for most of our actions and emotions. Jealousy, anger, greed – all these emotions are rooted in fear. But we are not aware of this. We don’t know that fear is the causative factor for all these. That is the problem. That is why we continue to be in the dark as far as our behavioral patterns are concerned. That is why relationships turn out to be traumatic.

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

Words from the Master

A small story:

Once a Zen monk was ordered by the king to be put to death. He was supposed to be killed the next day.
The monk remained calm and silent.
One of his disciples, shocked by the monk’s calmness, asked him, “Do you realize you have only 24 hours to live? Are you not afraid?”
The monk replied calmly, “I have lived, therefore I have no fear of dying.”

He means to say, “I have lived every moment of my life, moment to moment. Every single moment has been so much for me! Why should I be afraid?”

If you look deep inside, you will realize that most of us are not afraid of dying, but we are afraid that we haven’t lived our lives enough. We are afraid that we have lived a pseudo life. We feel a kind of deep unexplainable regret about the whole thing. We feel we have not lived as we wanted to live; we don’t feel fulfilled – and there starts the fear of death!

Continuously compromising for the sake of others, trying to live out a life that is not natural to us, trying to fit into a mould that society has prepared for us…all these things lead to a lack of fulfillment! The fear of life is what is reflected in the fear of death.

When you have lived in the deepest possible way, to your full satisfaction, you will not be in fear of death. Live without fear.

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

Words from the Master

Unless death becomes a conscious experience, the fear will never leave you. But you can do one thing: Repeatedly listen to these words; develop a conviction about them; try to see how your minor and major fears are actually related to the fear of dying; bring some clarity into all your day-to-day fears; see how interrelated all your fears are; bring awareness into your fears; then you will steadily evolve and come closer to the Truth.

We can categorize all our fears into five major categories: The first is fear of losing our wealth, our comfort, name and fame, prestige, and other outer world things. The second is the fear of losing our health, parts of our body through some accident or disease - the fears concerned with our physical health. The third is the fear of losing our mental health, our mental stability. The fourth is the fear of losing our loved ones, their love. The fifth is the fear of the unknown – fear of God, fear of ghosts and fear of Death itself.

Actually, if you deeply analyze our fears, all the five categories of fear are fear of death only. They manifest themselves in different ways, that’s all.

The main reason why people fear death is, they have not lived their lives totally. They are afraid because they feel desperate that they have not lived life enough. They feel this way because throughout their lives they have lived in memories of the past, in the anxieties of the future, for the sake of others, never in the present and what not.

Every action of ours has been due to the pull and push of each others’ ego, each others’ desires, each others’ emotions etc. If you deeply analyze your own life, you will understand what I am trying to say. You start your life where your parents left off. You simply take over the crown of desires, guilt, fear etc. that was passed down for generations and live your life and pass it down to the next generation before leaving, that’s all. You have never lived totally.

What do I mean by living totally? Try to live with more clarity, that’s all. Make the other people see sense in whatever they try to impose upon you. With clarity, you will be able to clearly identify what your own desires are, what others have imposed on you and what desires you have borrowed from others. The first set of desires alone need to be fulfilled without any harm to any person or property. The other two need to be dropped with the help of clarity.

If you live this way, you will no more be fulfilling others’ desires and you will be no more living others’ lives. You will live your own life, and experience fulfillment, and you will be ready to die when the time comes. You will have no lurking confusion and fear of death. I am not asking you to be selfish. I am only asking you to bring clarity into the whole thing.

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

Words from the Master

Because of your capacity to accept death as just a continuity in another form, your capacity to enjoy life is transformed. Your whole body relaxes; your Consciousness expands; your living capacity expands. Whether you accept it or not, every moment of your life, the fear of death lingers in the subconscious mind. By understanding death and fear of death, your life will turn out to be rich, not wealthy may be, but rich. Richness is what is really important in life.

But if I tell you all this now, you will not believe me. You will think that I am talking about impractical things.

A small story:

A man who had been born blind was promised a cure by a doctor.
The doctor assured the man, “After this operation, you will be able to see! You won’t need to use your stick anymore!”
Hearing this, the blind man became afraid.
He said, “Doctor, I understand that I will be able to see. But how can I possibly walk without my stick?”

The stick had become such an integral part of the blind man that he could not even relate to the fact that he can walk without the stick once he gets his vision! How can you explain to a blind man that once he gains his vision, he simply won’t need the stick? Right now he is too afraid. So all you can do is, perform the operation, and let him see for himself, that’s all. He will throw away the stick on his own!

In the same way, even if I tell you: All your fears are only the ultimate fear of death, your Self is immortal, it is only your body which perishes, and what not, you will still hold onto your own ideas of fear out of sheer fear, because you haven’t experienced it!

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

Words from the Master

Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi got his enlightenment through a conscious experience of death.

When Ramana was a young boy, one day he was just lying on his bed in his uncle’s house in Madurai in India.

Suddenly he got the feeling that he was going to die! He felt that death was coming upon him.

He had two choices – either to resist the feeling, or to accept it and go through it.
Usually people resist, so they pass into coma and leave the body in a state of unconsciousness.

99% of us leave the body in a state of unconsciousness.

Though we know from the moment of birth that our life will culminate in death, we never try to visualize it, we never try to actualize the possibility, we never try to welcome it.

At least once if you go through it with consciousness, you will lose your fear for it automatically.

Ramana was courageous enough to choose the second path. He co-operated with the feeling.

He allowed death to happen. He decided to see what would happen during death.
He saw clearly one by one, the parts of his body dying.

Slowly, his whole body was dead. He saw his body turn into ashes.

Suddenly he realized that something remained even after that; something which cannot be destroyed. It hit him that he was pure Consciousness at that time, beyond the beyond and mind. He was simply a witness to the whole thing!

That knowledge was tremendous and it never left him and when he came back into his body, he was Bhagwan Ramana Maharshi – an enlightened Master.

When you conquer the fear of death, you conquer death itself, because death is just one more imagination! Just as in the Muladhara chakra, our greed makes us imagine the world to be more beautiful than it actually is, here our fear makes us imagine death to be more frightening than it actually is.

We wear glasses of greed and fear, which don’t allow us to see reality. When you experience death psychologically, you release the energy that has been locked in the Swadhishtana due to death-fear; when the Swadhishtana opens, the whole quality of life changes.

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

Words from the Master

Although the only certain thing on planet Earth for man is death, he is always taken by surprise when it actually happens! This is the most surprising thing about man.

A small story:

A lady was celebrating her 100th birthday.
Her entire family was there for the occasion.
They were opening all the gifts and reading all the cards that had been received from family and friends.

They showed the lady one card that had been sent by her friend who was 94 years old.
The lady shrieked, “God! She is still alive!”

(Laughter!)

We are able to apply death to everyone else except us! We are all like this. Everything in life we are prepared for except our own death. The irony is, everything in life is so unpredictable except death; the only certain thing in life is death. But the last thing we would like to be told is that sooner or later we are going to die!


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

Words from the Master

We all live in constant fear of death. We are ready to escape it at all cost. Death is seen upon as our greatest enemy.

A small story about Socrates:
Socrates was killed by being forced to drink the juice of the poisonous herb called hemlock.

Just before he drank the poison, one of his disciples asked him, “Master, are you not afraid of dying? You appear to be so calm.”

Socrates replied, “Why should I be? I know that only two things can happen after death. Either I will continue to exist, in some other form or name, or I will cease to exist after death. In the former case, there is nothing to worry about; in the latter case, who will remain to worry?! So either way, there is nothing to fear!”

Socrates was fearless of death purely because he had a clear understanding of death and its consequences. Death is always looked upon as a ‘discontinuity’ and that is why people suffer when they see death. The basic understanding of death is lacking.

Death is never a discontinuity. It is continuity in some other form, or simply liberation, that’s all. When man understands this, he will realize how foolish it is to suffer on this account. Man is so attached to the physical form; that is why he suffers so much. The body is a mere vehicle for the soul. This has to be understood very clearly.


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

Words from the Master

Death is the Guru that gives enlightenment itself. Normally, in all our lives, death is the only thing that comes on time! We cannot ask for even one minute extra. And in our lives, death takes away everything from us – our relatives, our wealth, everything. But for Nachiketa, death gives everything and also enlightenment! Why this partiality? What is the difference between Nachiketa and us?

The only reason is: We are all running away from death while Nachiketa faces death.
Four things need to be understood from this wonderful story. The first thing: When we go in search of death, when we face death, it will not be there. Second thing: Even if death is there, it is not the terrifying thing that we think it is; it is loving and giving. The third thing: Death is our greatest teacher ever. The fourth thing: Death is the thing that can give us the ultimate gift - Enlightenment!

Somehow, for most people, life never goes beyond the Swadhishtana chakra. Life never goes beyond fear of death. We live and die between the Muladhara and Swadhishtana chakras – between desires and fear. We don’t know any other way of life; or we don’t have the courage to take on any other way of life.

In earlier times, people lived without the life security that we have today. There was no vaccination available against fatal diseases. There was no satellite-based advance warning of natural calamities. There was no security against famine or floods; so people were always mentally prepared for struggle, even for death. Especially the warrior class had to be ever-ready for death.

The Samurai warriors of ancient Japan knew the way to face death calmly. If they were defeated in battle, they would simply pierce a long needle into the Swadhishtana chakra. This is a highly professional technique, by which the life energy contained in the Swadhishtana chakra is released, resulting in instantaneous and painless death. The process was known as hara-kiri.

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

Words from the Master

When we want to bring in conviction about something, we can do it in two ways: One, we can experiment and see for ourselves, what the truth is. Second, we can take reference from someone who has already undergone the experience of it. I will now give you a reference from the Upanishads.

There is an Upanishad called Katopanishad, which is the wonderful release of a personal interview, a direct dialogue that a child had with Lord Yama – the Lord of Death. In Hindu mythology, the presiding deity for death is Lord Yama. He stands for death.

There was a famous King by name Uchaishravas. He was suddenly possessed by a desire to control the entire world and so he performed a VaajaPeya yaga – a fire offering that is done when one wants to rule the whole world.

According to the rules of this offering, one has to give away as offering, all the things of great attachment and of great value. Only then, one can get the position of the Lord of the world.

Kings are always good businessmen; they have to be, otherwise they cannot be kings and have control over such vast property. They will see what minimum they can give and what maximum they can get out of it.

This King, started giving offerings - cows that were at the fag end of their lives; that had given all the possible milk they could give for a lifetime; that had given birth to as many calves as possible in their lifetime; that were ready to die.
He was offering all such worthless things.

His son Nachiketa, about 7 years of age, was watching what was happening.
Nachiketa is the hero of this story.

He knew that his father was not doing the right things but he did not know how to tell him.

You see: Children are very sharp and intelligent. You can’t cheat them. Society has not yet corrupted and conditioned them.

He was watching his father all the time and finally went up to him and said, “Father, you have to give away all your highly priced possessions. I am one of your highly priced possessions. To whom are you going to give me as an offering?”

The king understood that his son was digging at him for what he is doing; but his ego didn’t allow him to give way.

He continued with his worthless offerings.

Once more, the boy asked him the same question and the king kept quiet.

The third time, the boy shook him and asked him to whom he was planning to offer him.
The king got very angry and just blurted out, “I will give you to Lord Yama. You go to Yama.”

An ordinary boy would have said, “Why should I go? You have lived a full life; you go!”

But Nachiketa was a very sincere and committed boy.
Commitment and honesty possessed him like a ghost.
To respect his father’s words, he decided to go and meet Lord Yama.

Remember: The first and the last person on planet Earth to go and meet Yama was Nachiketa. Normally only Yama comes to meet people. For the first time, Nachiketa goes to meet Yama.

He reached the abode of Yama, but Yama was not there!
He had gone out.
For three days Nachiketa waited.

Understand one thing here: A great truth is established at this point of the story. When we go in search of death, or we have the courage to face death, death will not be there as we know it!

Anyhow, Yama returned after three days.
His servants told him about the young boy who was waiting for him.

Yama rushed to see Nachiketa.
He apologized for not being there to receive him.
He further told him, “For having made you wait for three days, I grant you three boons. You may ask for any three boons, and I will grant them to you.”
For Nachiketa, death turned out to be a God that granted him boons!
He asked for three boons.

The first boon was: “My father’s sins should all be washed away.”
Yama granted him the boon.
The second boon was: “My father should accept me when I go back to him after visiting you.”
This boon was also granted.

The third boon was: “Tell me, what happens after death? Some say that man lives after death; some say that man is not alive after death. What is the Truth?”
Yama was shocked at Nachiketa’s question.
He told him, “Please do not ask me this question. You are asking the very secret of death which I cannot deliver to you; If I deliver it to you, you will become enlightened. I will give you immeasurable wealth if you wish, but please don’t ask me this question.”

But Nachiketa was insistent.
He said, “Even if I take all this wealth from you, I will be a mere trustee to your wealth for about 100 years to 1000 years, that’s all. I have to come only to your abode once that period is over! It is not going to be of any use to me. So please tell me the secret of death instead.”

Yama saw the maturity and commitment of the boy to know the truth.
He decided to offer the boy, the conscious experience of death itself.
The experience he took the boy through, became the experience of the soul for the boy and Nachiketa flowered and became enlightened.

This is a beautiful story from the Upanishad. Don’t analyze whether this story is a fact or not. Don’t start looking for dates and history. It conveys the truth – that is enough. Use it as a ladder to reach the truth, instead of clinging onto the ladder and missing the truth.

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

Words from the Master

All great religions and world philosophies have arisen out of trying to answer one question: What happens after death?

In trying to answer this one question, different life solutions have taken root.

The cultures, which believe in a single life, with no concept of reincarnation, have poured all their energies into excelling in life. They have achieved the peak in terms of assimilation of information, gaining of knowledge and material comforts.
These cultures have given rise to Science. Science helps us live life at its optimum. Science helps us get the maximum out of this life.

The cultures, which believe in reincarnation, have turned the focus of their life inwards. Their search is different. They are not motivated to live life in a hurry, because Eternity is granted to them.

You can see the play of this concept clearly in the behaviour of the people. In India, if a programme is scheduled to start at 6 o’clock, you can be sure that it won’t start before 7.30! Because they have eternity before them!

Our whole mental set-up, the course of our lives, our society, our culture, our religion – everything is based on nothing but our idea of death. We try our best not to think about death – but death pervades every moment of our life!

When we understand the depths, the secrets and mystery of death, we understand the secrets of life. We need to solve death and see it as a mere continuity in a different form. Else, we will miss life itself.

If we understand that death is nothing but continuity in another form, we will not fear death. And when we stop fearing death, we will know to what extent we have been missing life.

We take life for granted, we live so superficially, we miss many aspects of life. Death will simply teach us to look into life with more awareness. Death is the greatest Guru ever.

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

Words from the Master

Now we will get into the Swadhishtana chakra which is located 2 inches below the navel.

Swadhishtana means ‘Where your Being is established’ – from swa which means ‘Self’ and adhishtana which means ‘established’.

This chakra is locked by fear, especially the fear of death and it can be made to flower by acceptance of fear; acceptance of Death itself.

(Meditation Technique: Nirbhaya Dhyana - a Tantric meditation)

All our fears are actually fear of death but under various disguises, that’s all. Every single fear of ours 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. Without fear, the word death itself loses the meaning that we have been associating with it.

So what is death?

If I ask you this question, you will tell me, “Swamiji, death is what happens at the end of our lives.” If death were nothing more than that, it would be so easy!

But death is not something that happens at the end of our lives. It is something which is happening every moment of our lives. Every act of ours is unconsciously related to our death, the fear of dying. Death changes the very quality of our life. It is not the end; it is the climax of our lives – towards which our whole life has been oriented.

Why do I say that?
Because our whole life is controlled by our concept of death. Even our social structure is dictated by our concept of death.


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

Gratitude – the key to true happiness

IN TODAY’S world, any action needs a reason. When there is utility there is action, or else justifying the action becomes difficult. Real gratitude can never have a reason. It happens as a causeless flowering within you. Does the flower bloom for a reason? No! It blooms because it is its very nature.

Gratitude is our real nature. It has just been covered by layers of conditioning from society. Society doesn’t know the language of gratitude. It knows only the language of utility. It straightaway instils greed and fear in us so that we will give it the needed results. Society doesn’t know there is a path of gratitude that will give much better results than the paths of fear and greed. That is the problem.

There are endless reasons to feel gratitude. This life itself is a gift that we have received. To be born with human consciousness is the first blessing we have received. Our gratitude should start right from there. Just for being we should feel grateful.

Understand, if ever you feel life is dull, that it is not as juicy as it should be, it is because gratitude has not happened in you. Gratitude is the energy that makes your life intense and exciting every moment. When you carry causeless gratitude in you, life will be sweet all the time irrespective of external circumstances. When you miss gratitude, very often you will be gripped with the feeling that life is sour, but you won’t know the real reason for that feeling.

Receive every small thing in life as a gift. When you take your plate to eat, see the plate as a gift. When you serve food on the plate, see the food as a gift. When you sit down on the chair to eat, see the chair as a gift. When you wash your hands after eating, see your fingers as a gift. There are people who don’t have a plate on which to eat. There are people who don’t have fingers with which to eat! We only look at those who have a diamond ring on their fingers. We never look at those who don’t have fingers. That is why we don’t feel anything in our life is a gift.

Every morning as soon as you wake up, before getting out of bed, just try to feel deep gratitude for just being, for just living as a human being in this wonderful Existence. Similarly, every night before you go to sleep, bring in deep gratitude for just being. Feel it in your whole body and mind. Put all judgements aside and feel gratitude.

When we start feeling grateful for small things, our whole sensitivity will increase. When sensitivity happens, every moment will pass in deep awe of the happenings in Existence. Be Blissful!

Live every moment in total awareness

EVERY one of us has intelligence. It is an inherent, inborn quality of life. Intelligence is not something to attain; every living being is endowed with intelligence. Most of us have lost touch with our natural intelligence; that is why we are not able to live life to its fullest potential.

We constantly mistake our acquired knowledge for intelligence. We have been conditioned to think that we have only limited capabilities, that ‘we cannot…’ So we have forgotten how to use our full potential. And because of this, we are not tuned to the technique to tap into all the dimensions of our being. We have a natural, spontaneous intelligence inside us. We have tasted it as children. As children, we looked at things in a very simple, straightforward way. That is why we were so spontaneous. What took away that spontaneity?

The societal conditioning has been telling us right from when we were children, ‘You are not enough…’ Because of this, we are constantly trying to become something else, to prove something to others. By constantly thinking that we are not enough, we try to imitate others and waste the wonderful natural energy bubbling inside us. Intelligence is being aware and spontaneous. Understand an important thing: when we are deeply aware, we cannot make mistakes!

With awareness, we don’t rely on what others have taught us. We don’t rely on the past conditioning that has gone inside us for many years. We act just out of the fresh intelligence that comes with awareness every moment. With deep awareness we are in the present moment. When we are in the present moment, we are alive and alert — what we call as intelligence. Our intelligence by its very nature is spontaneous. It is only a question of awakening it from within.

Most of the time, we continue to live in the dead past and miss the wonderful dimensions of life. Or, we get angry over what has happened and feel hurt. Either way, we are escaping from the problem by going to one extreme or the other. Instead, if we just look with deep awareness into the problem, an energy will awaken — the energy of intelligence — which is enough to bring about the solution. The very awareness is enough to awaken and break free even from the past conditioning — and we can act intelligently.

The light of awareness is enough to remove the darkness created by years of living by habit. The whole key lies in being aware so that our intelligence can function. Live every moment in total awareness. Live with intelligence.

Unique children of existence!

THERE is no scale to compare us with anybody. We are unique. Buddha says, “Nothing exists except in relationship.” Suppose you were the only person on a new planet, how could you compare yourself with anyone? Could you call yourself tall or short, ugly or beautiful, rich or poor, intelligent or dumb? Nothing! When there is no one with whom to compare ourselves, we just are!

We compare ourselves to others because we feel that we are somehow lacking in something. Honestly, we have no idea of our true, unique potential. If we did, we wouldn’t spend one second looking outside us for answers about how to live a creative, fulfilling life.

We compare ourselves because we have never understood ourselves. We are not aware of who we are and what we have. Society has conditioned us from our birth to evaluate ourselves based upon others. From childhood the comparison starts. In school, the grading system introduces a child to competition and comparison with others. The child gets used to judging and knowing himself by looking at others and comparing himself with them. He has no understanding of himself based on what he is. He knows himself only based on what others are.

Once a man was testifying in court about a road accident. Suddenly, the man noticed that the court reporter was writing while he spoke. As the man started speaking faster and faster he noticed that the reporter was writing faster and faster. Suddenly the man said to the court reporter, “Please don’t write so fast; I am not able to keep up with you!”

Every judgement we make about us is based on some comparison! We feel incomplete because we have not been able to express ourselves as we are. So the emptiness and lack of fulfilment inside makes us feel inferior to others.

Whether it is beauty or intelligence, we are unique. It is only when we don’t respect our uniqueness that we start comparing ourselves with others. Be very clear, even if our favourite cinema star or model is very beautiful, can we enjoy drinking even a cup of water through their body? No! We can only enjoy using our own body — our best friend. So accept and welcome yourself, your body. All of the confidence, intelligence and vibrant energy that we need exist inside us already. We have the potential to live like gods on earth. Just look in! Experiment, explore and discover the truth of your uniqueness for yourself. Then you will simply radiate all of these qualities effortlessly. Be Blissful!

Make yourself stress-proof

FOUR hundred years ago Rene Descartes, the French philosopher declared, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ He was right, and at the same time, he was wrong. This declaration has formed the basis of modern thinking. Billions of people in this world have followed Descartes for generations believing that unless each one outthinks the other they cannot succeed in this world.

He was right in that the human system does not know how to live without its mind, without thinking. As a result human beings have become slaves to their minds. They live in bondage. He was wrong in that it is possible to live without the mind!

Many centuries before Descartes, a vedic sage declared that man does not begin to exist till he stops thinking. Adi Shankara, the boy sage from ancient India, at the age of eight, faced his future master across the waters of the holy Tungabhadra river. The master asked him, ‘Who are you?’ In response Adi Shankara said, ‘I am not the mind, I am not the intellect, I am not the ego and I am not the senses. I am beyond all that. I am pure consciousness.’

We are merely a bio-machine as long as we think we are mind and body. We are just a shade better than the animals we ascended from as long as we allow our senses to guide us. The true potential of human beings is not in the power of the mind. The purpose of human life is to transcend the mind and reach a higher state of consciousness. In that state we are truly in the divinity that we descended from. Till we reach that state of unity with what we truly are, we are in turmoil. This turmoil between our true nature and what we pretend and strive to be is what we call stress or tension.

Stress is an inevitable part of life. There can be no life without what we term ‘stress’. However, we can make ourselves stress-proof, by simply choosing not to be affected by what happens outside us. Such an easy technique! This is not impractical. It is your conditioning that makes you get affected by what happens to you through events that are beyond your control. Nothing is inherently good or bad except what we judge them to be.

Drop your judgement about yourself, about people around you and about situations. You will see that suddenly you have become stress-free! That is all it takes to be liberated from stress. Meditation can help you with this liberation. It helps you reach the restful mindstate from which you can actively participate and yet be untouched by the events around you. You really have nothing to lose by trying, except your stress! Be Blissful!

Making decisions without stress

IF YOU take decisions consciously, you will never have any stress! Stress happens only when you take decisions unconsciously, when engrams interfere with your decision-making. Engrams are ‘engraved or past memories’ that can distort or disturb your decision-making capacity.

If things are straight-forward, you can take thousands of decisions and yet be completely relaxed. Your life will flow — just like a river! But if you are filled with engrams, after taking just two or three decisions, you will be completely tired. You don’t even have to work, just sit in your chair and think about work, and within half an hour, you will have shoulder pain! This means you are caught with engrams. They do not allow you to take decisions.

When the file on which a decision has to be taken takes a quantum leap from the mind to the decision-making zone what we call ‘ego’, each engram writes its opinion on the file! The more the number of engrams, the more the number of decisions. So when the file reaches the ego, it is completely confused! When three hundred opinions are there on the file, what decision will you take? Your ego will only say, ‘Do whatever you want, just leave me alone!’

If you continuously take decisions with no clarity, and you are sitting in the leader’s chair, be very clear, not only will you be suffering, you will be making others also suffer! Everyone is a leader in some way or the other. Either you are the leader of your team or you are the leader of your house.

One more thing: a person who is caught in engrams, who is always suffering with engraved memories, can never relax or have a vacation. You can see in your life, early in the morning when you get up and go from your bed to the bathroom, you might start brushing your teeth but your mind will already be in the office! If you are sitting in the office, the mind will already be in the beach. One thing is for sure: if your body is here, your mind is not here! A person filled with engrams can never relax. If a person is not in a relaxed state of mind, how can we expect creativity or unbiased decision-making from him? One who is caught in his engrams can neither have a vacation, nor can he live his life completely. He will only be passing judgement about each and everything and collecting more engrams.

If you just drop your judgement about yourself, about the people around you and the situations, you will be free from stress and decisions will simply happen in you consciously and effortlessly.You will start enjoying life as it is..

Everything is auspicious

THE whole of Existence is an auspicious happening. We are part of Existence, so everything happening around us is also auspicious! This is the truth of Existence. Nothing that happens in Existence is inauspicious. Everything is only a blessing. If we understood this clearly, we can see everything as extraordinary. Everything will appear as a miracle.

One day a duck hunter went to the market to buy a bird retriever dog. To his amazement he found a dog that could walk on water! He immediately took it home.

He invited one of his friends to hunt the next day and took the dog with them. When a flock of ducks came near, he took aim, fired and silently watched. The dog walked on the water and retrieved the bird. He looked at his friend for a reaction but the friend remained silent. He asked him, ‘Do you see anything unusual about my dog?’ The friend replied, ‘Yes, your dog is unable to swim.’

Miracles are continuously happening in front of our eyes, but we continuously miss them! Only because we miss them, life itself appears to be dull. When we start perceiving them, our entire life becomes a miracle.

In the whole world there are only two kinds of people. The first kind will try to judge, criticise and develop the things happening in the world according to their ideas. There is the other group which feels that whatever is happening is auspicious.

Whoever feels that whatever happens is auspicious, lives in eternal bliss, in celebration. The other group continuously suffers because it tries to change things all the time. Just accept and celebrate Existence with all its different dimensions and paradoxes. Everything has a message for us including death and disease.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the enlightened master, says this beautiful story:

Two men entered a mango grove. One of them sat and counted the number of trees. He studied the variations in their size, the number of branches, density of leaves and number of mangoes across the trees. He thought about where they would sell, what would be the cost, etc. The other man simply ate a few mangoes, enjoyed himself and left!

If we continuously use our logic to analyse and judge and try to bring things under our control, we will miss the whole beauty of the existential miracles.

So don’t judge anything. Everything has something to teach us. Accept and celebrate the very existence of the world with the innocence of a child! Nithyanandam.

Words from the Master

To be spiritual is neither easy nor difficult. It’s just the idea that you have. If you think it’s easy, it’s easy. If you think it’s difficult, it’s difficult. To be as you are, what is needed? Is it difficult or easy?

Easy Swamiji…

You cannot even use the word easy! It is as we are! You are already that, then how can you say it is easy to become that?

Just look in. Turn inward. A little trust in spirituality and a little meditation - that is enough! When you drop the fear that to be spiritual is very difficult, you will get the confidence that Yes, I can be spiritual. I can be Conscious. Then the question of ‘is it right to drop my values’, will not arise at all.

Right now you are afraid to drop your values because you have nothing else to hold on to! We know, once we drop our values, all the suppressed desires will jump out, the Pandora’s Box will open! And we know, if the Pandora’s Box opens, there will be only chaos! We are afraid of our subconscious. The fear of the subconscious is what prompts this question.

If you continuously practice meditation, your subconscious will be cleared. Then you will see, even if you open the Pandora’s Box, there’s nothing in there to jump out. You will see your face reflected in it; you will see a clear mirror! Do you follow what I am saying?

Yes…Now let us enter into a meditation technique called the Dukkhaharana meditation* that will act upon the Muladhara chakra and awaken the energy in it.

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

* To learn and experience Dukkhaharana meditation under a qualified instructor, kindly enroll for Ananda Spurana Program (ASP) at a center close to you.

Words from the Master

So ancient astrology is a proven science Swamiji?

This is what I was afraid of! The moment I say yes, you will all start running behind astrology! Tomorrow morning I will see a long queue before me carrying horoscopes, saying “Swamiji, please, just see this and predict my future!”

I tell you: Don’t worry so much about astrology!

Vivekananda gave a befitting answer to someone who questioned him about astrology. He told him, “Go, eat well, exercise well, sleep well. You will become strong, physically and mentally. Then you won’t worry about all these things!”

Only a person who is mentally weak depends so much on astrology.

Swamiji, does that mean that all the people who follow astrology are weak-minded?

No, you can’t say that. But the majority is weak-minded. Even people who are normally intelligent sometimes behave foolishly in these matters. They come and ask me, “Swamiji, if I wear such and such a stone or gem, will it be lucky for me?” How can you depend on a stone! You are Live Consciousness; you are nothing but God! I can’t imagine – I am teaching you the science by which you can harness this whole Cosmic Energy, and you ask me about stones!

You might have heard about Swami Yateeshwarananda. He was a great man, an enlightened person. When he traveled abroad for the first time, he started out during rahukala - an inauspicious hour of the day, calculated by using the positions of the planets.

Someone asked him, “Swamiji, how can you start during rahukala?”

He answered, “You fool! I am the energy that guides the planets! How can they control me?”

See the courage of the man! It is the courage that comes out of deep understanding.
I am teaching you the science by which you can control the planets! So why do you bother about where the planets are, how they will affect you, and all that? Pick up the science of meditation, that’s enough. Then nothing can touch you.

But this has become part of our value-system, Swamiji…

Be very clear: All our values are nothing but a substitute for Consciousness.
If you are conscious, aware of what you are doing, you don’t need values to tell you what to do. You don’t have to follow any rules; rules will be following you! All the virtues and the discipline and the spirituality will happen to you and you will naturally flower into a state of spiritual elevation.

Somehow, whenever we hear words like Consciousness or spiritual elevation, we always think, No, no - this is not for me! Without even trying any meditation technique, any practical way of elevating the Consciousness, we come to the conclusion that this is not for us. So we go in for a substitute, for pseudo-consciousness – which is called morality, conscience, values.

Values are fine when you are at the starting point – but not as the ending point!
Vivekananda says beautifully, “It is good to be born in the church, but not to die there!”

We should first drop the idea that to be spiritual is very difficult and different.

There is a song by Bhagwan Ramana:
Ayyai, ati sulabham, atmavidyai, ayyai, ati sulabham!
It means, ‘Oh, so easy, this spirituality, oh, so easy!’

In a later stanza he says,
If you want money, you need to work hard.
If you’re looking for name and fame, you need to work hard.
If you want self-realization, all you need to do is keep still!

If you can slip into deep laziness, you will fall into divinity. This laziness is not what we normally know as laziness. It is not physical laziness. It’s a kind of – mental laziness! If you can completely – I mean completely – calm yourself, you can verily be spiritual.

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

Words from the Master

Swamiji, you were talking about how there is no such thing as a perfect partner. Then what is the purpose of matching horoscopes before marriage?

Now if I start speaking on this subject, I will have to pull down the whole structure of astrology!

Not astrology itself, but the way we follow it today is foolish and nonsensical.
Understand: It is your life, you are living it, you should know the pros and cons – but you don’t know anything about your life, and you are going and asking others! Where is your intelligence?

To surrender your life to a stranger, to let him make your life’s decisions, just shows that you no longer even know how to run your own life. Be very clear: You have to take responsibility for your own life.

When people come to me with questions about their future, I tell them - don’t approach me to predict what your future is going to be. Approach me if you want my help to design a good future for yourself. All these predictions are only for the weak-minded, be very clear on that.

Ancient astrology was a pure science. There was truth in it.

Let me tell you how astrology evolved.

In the past, when a child was sent to the Master to study, to the gurukul, astrology was used to diagnose what kind of personality, what kind of attitudes and natural aptitudes he possessed. Accordingly, he would be trained.

Like this, earlier, the caste distinctions were not based on birth, they were based on character, on a person’s natural abilities.

When a boy was admitted into the gurukul, the Master would see what his natural tendencies were. If he had Brahmin tendencies where intelligence was the prime factor, he would be initiated into Veda Vidya - studying of the Vedic scriptures. If his personality was that of a Kshatriya, where bravery and strength were the most dominant, he would be trained in martial arts. If he showed Vaishya tendencies, wherein he exhibited many skills, he would be taught business. If he seemed to possess Shudra qualities, where he was happy giving his time to routine work, then he would be initiated into service. All four roles had equal value and earned equal respect.

This was the purpose for which astrology was used. It was a science used for diagnosis. Look around you today. Almost everyone is in the wrong place! A Doctor by nature has become an Engineer and an Engineer has become a Serviceman and what not! That is why there is a sense of total chaos in society. When a man who is a businessman by character enters into spirituality, what happens? Spirituality becomes a business!

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