Be careful what you wish for

HARI goes to a bar and orders drinks for everyone around. He has a great time with everyone back-slapping him and telling him what a great guy he is. As he is about to leave, the bartender gives him the bill. Rattled, Hari says, I only ordered the drinks. I didn’t order the bill.

Most of us live our life like Hari, just as foolishly, just as brainlessly. We have no recollection of asking for the bill as we go about acquisitions and expectations of acquisitions. When the bill does finally arrive, we are startled and depressed as this is not part of our expectation. There is a saying: be careful what you wish for, for it may come true.

We are driven all our lives by our Samskara. These are our unfulfilled desires that are deeply embedded in our unconscious mind. Most of the time, we are not even aware that these samskara exist. However, they are what determine what our decisions will be. They become our will. They drive us into illogical and irrational decisions, even decisions that are harmful to us.

When you drink or smoke once in a while you enjoy them. As long as you have the freedom to drop them you enjoy them. When you get addicted to them they enjoy you. Addiction is when you do not enjoy the habit but cannot do without it. You can get addicted to food, TV, newspaper, gossiping, so many things. When you are addicted, food eats you, cigarette smoke you and liquor drinks you. When you do not have the freedom you are used; you are not in control however much you believe you are; your desires control you and lead you into a vicious cycle of suffering.

Often people tell me that they have good samskara. These memories help them improve their lives. As long as you live in the past you cannot improve your life. You cannot drive forward by looking backwards.

Meditation is the path to dissolve and burn your samskaras. Meditation leads you into a no-mind state where samskaras cannot exist.

Meditation brings you into the present, the here and now, where you are aware of what is buried in your unconscious and have the energy to destroy your samskaras. You become liberated. We can live our life in joy, without the fear of having to pay the bill.

Consciousness, not conscience matters

From our childhood we have been told to act out of our conscience. These were just social rules that were laid down by society for some justice and peace to prevail in society. But it is very important to understand the difference between conscience and consciousness.

A man, who has real consciousness, can't hurt others or kill others, because he feels others as an extension of himself. A person with conscience may not kill with knife, but he will kill with words because his being is violent. With conscience, we may be socially non-violent, but with consciousness, our being will be non-violent.

Morality should be based on consciousness, not on conscience. When this happens there will be no need for rules. Because our love for ourselves and society (which is only an extension of ourselves) will be so great that we will never think of disturbing or harming anybody.

A serial killer has no consciousness, which is why he does what he does. The fact that he does not abide by societal rules, what religion and moral studies would term as conscience, is only a secondary issue arising out the first. If he had consciousness of his existence, he would be aware that he is the same as every other being and would not harm another being.

Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness. In the meditation program called NSP (Nithya Spurana Program), I help people to experience at least one glimpse of consciousness, so they can start living with consciousness instead of conscience. Anything based on conscience is skin deep, it's not eternal, but anything based on consciousness is eternal. We should work for conscious experience. Just because we don't have conscious experience, we should not compromise with the conscience. Our morality, understanding, lifestyle everything should be based on consciousness. When it's based on conscience, it's based on fear and greed.

If the idea that we should not speed on the highway is based on fear, when we don't see a cop's car we will speed up. It becomes tempting to break laws, and we feel courageous. Whenever anything is followed because of fear and greed, we will be waiting for the chance to break the rule. Kids saying no to parents have a similar basis, and it makes them feel they've proved themselves. If morality is based on conscience, we will always do something to violate it, directly or indirectly.

Accept guilt and move on

ANANDA is bliss. Nanda is something that can die out, disappear and related to suffering. Ananda is that which can never disappear from your being, it is bliss. It is not joy. Joy brings suffering in its wake. Ananda is beyond joy. It is eternal bliss, nitya ananda.

Pleasure is what you feel through your senses based on an outer object; music, a fragrance, a beautiful sight, physical touch. When you meet nature, a mountain, a sea, a forest, you feel joy. When you feel ecstasy without sensory inputs or nature, not even inputs of forms of God, only from your inner core of energy, your atman, without any external input, it is bliss. It can be with no reason. It comes from within. That is Ananda.

Yoga: It’s important to understand what yoga is not. Yoga is not physical exercises or breath control; these are but a part of Yoga. Yoga is union; the union with the divine; union with the cosmic power. It is chitta vritti nirodaha: it’s the cessation of the mind, to take it beyond the mind, to be one with existence. The blissful technique to unite your own self with the divine is ananda yoga, using bliss itself to unite.

Life has no goal, it has only purpose. Living has a purpose. If life is a goal it’s a rat race; even when you win this race, you are still a rat. The very living is bliss when you go without a goal, only with a purpose of enjoying the path.

You cannot look at God as a goal. You cannot run towards God. In inner world, logic is vey different. Goals are not reached by running towards them. Vivekananda says: Arise, awake and do not stop till the goal is reached. I say: arise, awake, stop; goal is reached.

Seeking makes you tense, will make you miss your purpose. In a relaxation course you are so tense that you lose the purpose.

I say accept all guilt, all mistakes, and all failures; even if you can not accept, accept that you can not accept. You will then relax; guilt will drop from your mind.

If your mind is tense it can never stop. Only when you relax it can cease. You have to drop goal orientation. If you accept what you are, what is, mind will lose its roots. When mind is, bliss is not. It is either mind or bliss.

Create your children in a better mould!

Till the age of 7, a child is like a sponge. Anything that the child is exposed to, the child absorbs. Its mind body grows at an amazing rate.

In this phase, the child is in visualization phase. Whatever the child sees is imprinted and embedded into its unconscious. The embedded memories start replaying as the child grows into adult. These embedded memories drive adult decisions.

Between the age of 8 and 14, the growing child is in verbalization mode. The child starts learning languages and verbal imprints, not merely visual images, start getting embedded. Using words like happiness, suffering etc instantly evoke appropriate pictures and therefore emotions.

During this entire period, the child is controlled by its parents or parent substitutes. Most of what is embedded in their unconscious comes from the elders close to them, mainly parents. So, children imitate their parents.

People ask, do we inherit the sins of our parents? Do their karma become ours? No, don’t worry; you do not inherit the sins and karma of your parents. But, unfortunately you do inherit something that is equally powerful; something that can either be very positive or very negative.

You do inherit the mindset of your parents. You inherit the way they think and act. You inherit their values and beliefs. You get conditioned by them. You inherit the mindset to commit the same sins, to inherit the same karma.

So, I say again and again, be careful as parents in how you bring your children up.

If the mother always complains, whether of a headache or the husband or the neighbor, the child learns the words and the behavior. If the father coming home flops down on the sofa at seven in the evening saying he is tired, the connection between seven in the evening and tiredness becomes hardwired in the child’s mind. If a father comes home and displays keen interest in playing with the child that behavior too is imprinted.

Why is it that you rarely see an ugly child? Why is it that you rarely see a beautiful adult? If a child is being natural and playfully rowdy, we cannot tolerate such behavior as an adult and we must control. We have to make the child as insipid as we are, as ugly as we are. Let them be natural. Let them grow into beautiful adults. It is in your hands to do that.