How the mind works

Following Nithyananda article first appeared in Common Ground, a Canadian online publication. [external link]

IN LIFE, we constantly create either shafts of pain or joy. Once you create a shaft of pain, you try to break it. In the same way, if you create a shaft of joy, you try to elongate it. But you don’t understand that you can neither elongate the joy shaft nor break the pain shaft – simply because the shaft itself doesn’t exist.

I would like to share with you an interesting learning from my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern India, the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. This is actually a hunter’s trap for birds.

You may think, “How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?” Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope; that’s all. When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird’s own weight turns the whole stick upside down; it turns topsy-turvy. The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance, it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds on to the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, “If I unclutch from this stick, what will happen? I will fall and die.”

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head. But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose its freedom, it loses its life too because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don’t realize that if you just drop your mind, that very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird’s fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can’t let go; if it does, it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, “I can’t let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent… I might be lost.”

After four or five hours, the hunter comes leisurely, takes the bird, puts it in the cage and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn’t know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away.

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security – your education, your mind, your life, your relationships or your bank balance. Death ultimately comes to remove the stick – your identity. Then you are neither a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching because the stick itself is an illusion.

If the bird lets go and relaxes, it may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying. Just let go and you will never fall and die. You will only become liberated to your full potential. All you need to do is trust that you are unclutched even if you don’t trust that it is still the truth.

When we unclutch, the first thing that will happen to us will be an inner healing effect – a deep silence and peace in us. Second, that inner healing will start radiating as physical well-being, which is our health. Third, naturally it will start radiating in our relationships also. Fourth, because these three are going beautifully, we will be creative and productive.

An instant meditation

You can try this technique of unclutching at any time, whenever you remember. The moment you see a thought coming, do not give meaning to it. You give it meaning only if you connect it with your past. Without giving meaning to it, just remember to unclutch and see what happens.

The moment you remember, “Let me unclutch from this thought; let me not give meaning to it,” for a few seconds there will be a small, silent gap. The moment you are aware that there is a silence, it will become one more thought. Then unclutch from that thought also. Then again there will be a gap of a few seconds. Then one more thought will come: “I am in silence” or “I am unclutching.” Unclutch from that thought also. Just the gap or the silence should become longer and longer. That is the whole idea.

Paramahamsa Nithyananda visits Vancouver March 10-16. For a schedule of his free talks and to register for his workshops, visit www.LIfeBlissCanada.org or call 604-628-4479. Nithyananda is recognized in India as one of the great spiritual teachers. His meditations, yoga and life solutions techniques are popular with more than two million people. (See www.youtube.com)

Words from the Master

A man was asked what the difference between his past and present was.

He replied, “Earlier I used to sit on the floor on a mat and eat. Now I sit at a table.”

You see, in the past and the present, his mouth is the same. If there is no radical change in you, your life will seem only this much different. Like how beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, the taste lies in the tongue that experiences it. Your mental setup defines the quality of your life.

Most often, we know that we need to change but somehow we fall back comfortably in the present set-up of ours. We get caught in the same wheel again. One side of us tells us that we need to change and the other side unconsciously slips into the familiar patterns again. Even if you are presented with many opportunities to change, you feel cozy in your present state and miss them.

This mental set-up becomes such a solid reality in you. You simply radiate it.
Try to change it. Let me tell you: If you live with such a solid mental set-up, there is one more danger in it. There is every possibility that your children will imbibe it from you.

I am reminded of a joke:

A husband and wife were both pick-pockets by profession.
They would often discuss that if they had a child, it would be very prosperous!
Soon, they had a baby.
The newborn baby however had its right hand closed very tightly. They could not get it to open it.
The doctor attending to it tried all sorts of things and finally took out his gold chain and dangled it in front of the baby’s eyes.
The baby slowly opened its hand and inside it was the mid-wife’s gold ring!

(Loud laughter!)

This is only a joke, but understand that as parents, you have every possibility of passing on your mental set-up to your children. So, be aware every moment and work upon your consciousness and awareness; work on cleaning the inner chatter and framework inside you.

We always try to control children and make them into puppets. Children are wild energy. We try to box that energy so that it becomes convenient for us to handle them.

A small story:

Two dogs were walking down the road.
The first one said, “My name is Sandy, what is yours?”
The second one paused a while and said, “I think mine is No No Roger.”

(Laughter!)

The dog’s owner must have kept telling the dog ‘No no Roger’ when the dog did something mischievous. The dog has started thinking that its name is No no Roger! Like this dog, children also start absorbing and learning from our words and body language. When children are very young and they start wondering about something, they immediately refer to our past words or actions related to that particular matter and form their conclusions based on that. So when you are with children, be even more aware and try to keep their intelligence alive instead of simply trying to curb them all the time.

Mothers are continuously trying to do this. For example, if it rains, the mother will tell them to get in immediately saying that they will catch a cold. A few repetitions of this incident will automatically tune the child’s mind towards cold when it sees rain! Even if it drizzles next, the child will start sniffling.

Actually I tell you: Man’s body is the most intelligent, self-correcting, auto-immune system. But somehow, we trust our mind rather than the inherent intelligence of our body. There starts the problem and all our worries.

A small story:

A father camel was explaining to the son camel the body structure of their species.
He said, “You know, we have humps so that we can store water in it for days together when we are in the desert.”
The son asked, “Why are our eye lashes so long?”
The father replied, “To protect our eyes from sand storms.”
The son then asked, “Why do we have such bulbous feet?”
The father replied, “So that we can travel fast in the desert.”
Dad, asked the son, “What are we then doing in this zoo?”

(Loud laughter!)

You see, our body has been designed so beautifully. If we just allow it to run on its natural intelligence, it will function well. The moment you bring in your conditionings and impose them upon your body, you start experiencing difficulties.

In the Himalayas, the sadhus - wandering mendicants - live inside caves. They are the healthiest people ever. Come sun or rain or snow, they continue to live; their body adjusts itself automatically. We just have to trust nature and the immune system associated with it. But somehow, we keep imposing our worries, our mental makeup on our body functioning. This is the root cause for all our dieases.

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

Words from the Master

Just think of a river: When you put your leg in the river the first time and take it out and put it in the second time, is it the same river? No! The river has changed faces, the same water is not there anymore; fresh water has flowed, is it not?

So don’t strive to identify yourself with anything; life is ever changing. Because of your narrow scope of beliefs, your spiritual growth gets stalled and curbed. You become like a horse that has only a limited view of the road ahead of it. A broad perspective is essential in life.

Our forefathers gave us a lot of food, but not the tongue to taste it. It is up to us to experience this world with joy. The joy is in the way you experience it, not in the outer world objects themselves. This has to be very clearly understood. Your mental setup is what makes your life joyful or miserable.

If you are happy with your current mental setup, it is absolutely alright. But if you feel that you need to prune it a little, then somewhere there’s a problem. You often try to prune your mental setup like pruning a plant. A plant that is pruned grows faster!

Either you live with your current mental setup or uproot it and create a new one. You cannot dye your mental setup like you dye clothing to make it look different. You cannot chisel your mental setup to correct it. A complete transformation has to take place, else there is always a danger of slipping into the old ways again.

When you have a clean mental setup, you will never worry. Only when you are confused with complex thought patterns and words, you will be worried always. I always tell people: When you are not sure of yourself, you will be worried about where the planets are! You will start analyzing which planet is centered where and how it is influencing you. The actual problem is you are not centered.

Work on your mind when you have time. Look in and house-keep it. After all, you are with your mind 24 hours of the day, is it not? Why not then keep it clean?

I have seen these ‘house-proud’ people who maintain their houses so beautifully. They use the vacuum cleaner and keep it absolutely dust-free. They cannot tolerate any speck of dust. They will clean the carpet till it gets a hole in it! What about cleaning the house in which you are living 24 hours? Your mind? You are with it 24 hours; every single thought or action of yours involves it.

You bring in Vaastu Shastra, Feng Shui etc. which are all sciences to keep the space inside your house in a pure and energized condition. But you fail to understand one thing: You need to continuously energize your home only because you are contaminating it with your negativity. This is the truth.

When you contaminate the space in your house with collective negative thoughts, with your worries, the space starts radiating the negative thoughts back to you and you get caught in a vicious circle of negativity the moment you enter your house.

How many times have you felt that you are perfectly alright until you entered your house?! The moment you enter, you feel gripped by a force of familiar negative thought patterns. This is nothing but your own thoughts that you have managed to fill your house with. What do you then do? You call an expert in vaastu shastra to change the layout of the house, or call a temple priest to perform some fire ritual and cleanse the house or you apply Feng Shui ideas to your house.

When these things are done with sincerity, they will no doubt do the needful to your house. But you have to understand one thing: These are only supplementary methods. The actual thing is, to clean your own self and radiate a blissful mental set-up so that automatically, the space in which you live radiates that.

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

Words from the Master

If you are open, Existence showers. Existence is continuously showering, only we don’t know how to be receptive to it. We are looking elsewhere all the time. We are so immersed in our Manipuraka chakra! We are so busy collecting words!

When you learn to be with yourself, you can commune with Existence. But we are never with ourselves. We are all the time with people, with noise. We identify ourselves with others, not with ourselves. We are so afraid of being with ourselves. We feel alone and scared if we are with ourselves. We feel depressed if we are with ourselves.

You were alone in your mother’s womb and that is your true nature. But what happened after that? You started thinking that you need people to make you happy. You laugh with people, you cry with people, you talk to people, you suffer because of people and what not. You don’t know how to celebrate with just yourself.

The moment you find yourself alone, you start scrambling inside, your inner chatter takes over, your worries take over; you start thinking of how to create noise or whom to call up and talk to or whom to chat with on your computer and all sorts of nonsensical things.

If you all the time need to be with people and noise, you are clearly afraid of being with yourself. You are afraid of looking inwards and so you look outwards. When you become a meditator, you will slowly understand that you don’t need to depend on relationships to make you happy. You are enough unto yourself. When you cannot be in peace with yourself, you will remain at the periphery of your Being, caught in the so-called relationships.

You need to have a relationship with yourself first. When this is strong and steady, relating to others will become just incidental. Right now, what needs to be at the periphery is seen as the core and what should be the core is treated like the periphery. You have to reverse the situation, for which you have to turn your gaze inwards. You need to establish peace inside yourself.

For this, you need to have the courage to go behind your mind. You are ready to give appointments to everyone but not to yourself. You give appointments to others because it is ego-fulfilling. You don’t give an appointment to yourself because you are afraid that the truth might surface and you might not be able to take it. You are comfortable searching for bliss in all the wrong places and complaining that it is eluding you. If you really want to find bliss, you will find it. But you need courage.

Actually, we are all searching for the same thing - that is bliss. But we are continuously searching for it in the wrong places. If I ask a youngster what it is that gives him happiness, he will readily say ‘drugs’. He is also searching for bliss, for everlasting peace, but in the wrong direction!

We have moved so drastically away from our path, that our original thinking system has been completely replaced by our negative thought patterns. Our life is drastically different from what it is supposed to be. By consuming drugs, can you find bliss? By consuming drugs, you are escaping from yourself and also worsening the situation because sooner or later, your health will be in trouble. Look at the foolishness in the whole thing.

This sounds foolish to you because it is something drastic. This hits the morality scale and so it hits you. But your other subtle activities aimed at finding happiness, are also similar attempts but on a different scale, on a not-so immoral scale, so you don’t think they are foolish. Whenever you get time, do housekeeping of your mind and you will know what I am trying to say.

Just look into yourself with awareness and observe how your mind works, how your worries take root. We all keep collecting words, creating opinions and going over them in a repeated fashion. This is how worry takes root and reinforces itself.
When your son comes home late on just one day, you assume that he has probably been with some bad company and that is why he is late. This becomes a recording inside you. The next time, even if he comes home late after attending classes, this recording in you will surface and you will react accordingly.

This not only causes your son to get frustrated but also forces him to resort to truly wayward ways simply to defy you. You need to understand that everyone is evolving and fluid and that it is not going to help if you are in your own frame of imagination.

It is easy to live with imagination. But I tell you: 98% of what you believe is wrong. You will realize that there is a big screen between yourself and the other person. If you wear spectacles tinted green, you will see the whole world as green, that’s all.

Mohammed Nabi says, “When you see the world as something, that something is You.” When you talk or complain to me about someone, you may claim that you are worried and so you are telling me these things, but actually you are clearly showing your own mind because you see things only as you want to see them, never as they are. When you see only what you want to see, you miss so much.

Let me tell you something that actually happened:

A few years back, I used to travel everyday with the same driver from the ashram to the city center.
One day, I wanted to go to a particular street and recalled the street to the driver by referring to a mosque that was near the street.
He claimed that there was no mosque in that place.
I tried recalling to him a famous hotel near the mosque, but that also he failed to acknowledge.
I finally told him that there was a Hanuman temple in that place.
His face immediately lit up with recognition.
He then went to that street and I showed him the mosque that was right there next to the temple and five times as big.
He was shocked!
He was such a staunch Hindu that he had not even seen the mosque in all those months.

I tell you: Don’t be fanatic or cling to anything in life.

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