You are eccentric!

Your being is always centered. Your mind is always at the periphery.

Your mind constantly seeks outward led by the senses. Your being stays centered at the core and is directed inwards. You are constantly tugged between the center and the perimeter. When you are at the periphery you are mad, truly mad. You are overcome with fear and greed. You are consumed by lust, desire of power and wealth.

When you at the center, you are Siva. You are in cosmic Consciousness.

Over time, you develop the capability to stay some where in between. You have no choice. You have to choose madness otherwise, because your mind will not let stay at the center. You become eccentric, moving only briefly back and forth between the bliss of your core and the illusions of your periphery.

At the periphery your senses control you; they make merry. Once in a while, if you are intelligent, you realize that you are getting nowhere. You go wherever your senses lead you and try to enjoy the sense objects presented to you. Over time the enjoyment decreases; you need more and more of the same object, while the enjoyment gets less and less. You are about to get addicted. Some bit of intelligence in you warns to get out.

You move away from the periphery and try to move towards the center where you have experienced brief moments of great peace and happiness. Your awareness does not last long. Your mind gets restless and you go back to your old ways. You now move back towards the periphery.

Please understand that at the peripheral level you are in the grip of the need to survive and possess. You are governed by your ego, or ‘I’, based survival needs and ‘mine’ the need to possess. Your fear of losing your identity and your greed to possess more and more are the two strong forces that keep you tethered to the periphery.

Your ego reduces when you realize your connectivity with others, and when you understand that you can collaborate with others far more effectively than if you compete. Your need to possess more and more decreases when you develop the awareness in enjoying what you have with you, instead of rushing to acquire more.

As you move from being eccentric to the center, you move away from the past and future to the present moment. You move away from suffering into bliss.

Nithyananda
www.nithyananda.org

Words, Words and Words

Imagine for a moment that the first half of this column is empty. Imagine that the tape you are listening to you is silent and has no content for just two minutes. What happens?

Your mind races. Thoughts flood you. What has happened, you wonder, what has gone wrong? Why are there no words?

Nothing has gone wrong, nothing at all. Your mind cannot tolerate silence; that is all. Thoughts and words are a call of your Consciousness telling you that your center is unfilled.

There are two kinds of people. One kind is the people who follow words and seek meaning behind the words. Another kind is those people who ignore the meaning and seek the source of thoughts. The first kind is the Commissar and the second kind is the Yogi.

Seeking words and thoughts cannot fulfill you. When you seek words you move into the outer world. You move into the space of sense objects, which results in pain or pleasure. However many times you may experience the physical or sensual pleasure led by your thoughts, you still keep seeking the same pleasure. What one calls karma, is really the effect of these unfulfilled desires.

The meaning of thoughts and words is not to provoke movement towards these external experiences that can never be fulfilled but to move towards the center, the core of your being. Only there you will find the comfort in silence.

Words soothe your superficial mind the same way as scratching an itch seems to provide some comfort. In actual fact it makes the problem worse. It is the same with words. More words you use more confused you are. Be careful of all these scholars and philosophers who use highly complex language and words to propound their theories. They themselves do not understand what they are saying, so they are forced to confuse others by using complexity as a tool.

Whenever you ask questions, more questions arise. This is seen as the measure of intelligence in our system of education. When one really understands, one realizes two things. Firstly, one realizes that questions and answers do no lead to any understanding at all. Secondly, one realizes that understanding happens when thoughts cease.

Truth resides in silence. Truth resides in contemplation. As you move inwards towards the source of words and thoughts, mind become still in simplicity.
This stillness, this silence leads to fulfillment.

Nithyananda
www.nithyananda.org

Don’t you want to be born again?

To many followers of Western religions reincarnation is a difficult concept to accept.

One is so used to being told that this life is all that we have that the offer of another life, in truth, many more lives, can at the same time be very exciting and very dangerous. It is an adventure.

The Western religions and their followers believe we all live only once. What happens after death is a mystery. Because of this, the focus of the present life, sensory pleasures and material benefits is intense. It is do or die, before you die.

Western culture therefore has rightly focused on living life to its maximum in this one and only life time. It has developed much better than its Eastern counterpart, in everything related to the external world of sensory enjoyment, including science.

With Eastern religions it is a lot more relaxed. You have many lives to live. If you have not achieved in this life you still have a chance in the next and the one after. It is also an adventure. Like some one said, life is really like a candy box! You really do not know what you are going to get in your next life!

Any amount of empirical evidence, which now shows that reincarnation is a reality, is difficult to accept because of our conditioning. It is also as a result of the belief that life is all about body. The Western mind has only a vague concept of the spirit and soul, of which the Bible says a lot. The belief is that what is intangible and what cannot be held in one’s arms does not exist. This is the same conditioning that led to the belief for many centuries that the Sun revolved around the Earth.

Why is it more threatening to accept that the spirit returns to another body rather than believe that it burns in hell or frolics in an unseen heaven? The simple reason is that it is easier for religions and society to control us through greed and fear through the concepts of hell and heaven; that’s why.

Once you realize that you will return to another body on earth instead of being consigned to a heaven or hell forever, reduces the pressure on you to conform. You have the time to look within you and find the truth for yourself. You decide how you must live, not others.

Nithyananda
www.nithyananda.org

Why we cannot tolerate criticism!

A lady came to me complaining that she is hurt by even small criticisms coming from others. She said she was very sensitive.

I asked her to stop using that word. I said, ‘You are not sensitive. A really sensitive person will be porous; she will allow the words to pass through her. Only arrogant people get hurt. If you are hurt, please understand that you are arrogant. You are strong like a stone, which is why words come and hit you.’

A sensitive person would have allowed the words pass through her; she will never suffer. Even if someone is deliberately rude, a sensitive person understands where such a person is coming from and is not defensive.

Suffering is always from arrogance, never from sensitivity. A person who is sensitive will never suffer. A sensitive person will suffer on account of another person in distress, not for oneself.

You suffer from words when you stop them, when you resist them, when you create your own meaning out of them. When we do not create our own meanings out of words, we do not suffer. We play with words. We always choose nice words to support our ego. We do not say, ‘I am hurt because I am arrogant.’ We always use polished words such as, ‘I am hurt because I am sensitive.’ Please don’t cheat yourself with words. Let your words be unfiltered by your ego.

Let me tell you a small story:

Once, a contractor wanted to donate a sports car to an official. The official refused, saying, ‘I am an honest person and I cannot think of accepting this gift.’ The contractor asked him, ‘In that case how would it be if I sell you this car for ten rupees?’ The official replied immediately, ‘In that case, I will have two cars!’

When an untruth is wrapped in gift packing, you forget you have a problem. You accept it without a murmur. However, when truth is presented bare, you do protest. Presented bare, truth hurts; ego cannot tolerate truth easily.

We are so concerned about politically and socially correct statements, it seems no longer acceptable for anyone to speak the truth. But it seems to perfectly acceptable to lie in a politically correct manner.

Ramakrishna says beautifully, ‘Let your words and mind be straightened.’ Whatever is, let it be offered straight without filtering. Learn to accept truth bare. At least you will know you have a problem that you can solve.


Nithyananda
www.nithyananda.org