Break free from your ego

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Drop what hurts and transform yourself

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Awake from your waking state!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Master, the ultimate master surgeon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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