Swami Nithyananda Answers April 08

Life is almost always experienced as hardship and misery.
People don't know

about the Supreme Bliss that can be experienced in their Being continuously.
Mere curiosity and an open mind is enough for anyone to attain this blissful
state.
-- PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA
Every moment in life can be an advantage or an inconvenience; it depends on

the person perceiving it.
Thursday, May 1, 2008

Words From The Master - 01 May 2008
You are a spiritual being!
We have always been trained to think that we are human beings looking for spiritual
experience. Now I tell you: You are a spiritual being looking for human experience. This
is the truth. If you develop a firm conviction about this truth, it is enough; you will start
experiencing it.
I tell people: I am not here to prove I am god; I am here to prove that you are god! People
look at me with shock and fear when I tell them this. But it is the truth. When I say this, I
don’t mean that you should develop a spiritual ego; I don’t mean that you should go
around claiming that you are god. Just understand that by nature you are an ego-free
spiritual being and because of societal conditioning, you feel that you are a human being,
and so you start searching for spiritual experiences.
When this point is understood deeply, you will understand that all emotions like fear,
jealousy, desire, ego and discontent become baseless! A spiritual being can never come
under the clutches of these emotions. But you have been reduced to an ordinary human
being; that is the problem. All terrorism and violence that goes around in the world today
are because we don’t understand that we are a high-level being. Not only that: People
start looking for powers like black magic, materializing things and what not. They think
that these are all a measure of being spiritually powerful. The whole concept needs to
undergo a 180-degree change.
As long as we feel we are human beings, we will be focused on gaining material wealth;
all our actions will be towards that; we will continue to run behind material things. At the
end of it, even if we have gained all that we wanted to, there will be a void in us, a
yearning in us; something will be missing.
That something is nothing but a deep awareness that we are high-level beings. If this is
understood, the focus will shift from material wealth to living a sweet life. Wealth is not
the real richness; the capacity to be un-clutched from the wealth is the real richness!
When you can be un-clutched from material life, life will become so sweet.
When you understand that you are a spiritual being, you will be able to watch the whole
of life as a big drama; you will be able to play your role joyfully without getting caught in
any of the emotions; you will then understand that your real nature is neither spiritual nor
material; it is beyond both! When you understand this, you fall into the middle path and
you become liberated! Moving towards understanding this is the goal of life itself. That is
why I say, ‘Bliss is the path and the goal.’
Be Blissful!
Series: Words From The Master
Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Words From The Master - 30 April 2008
Samsara & Nirvana
Samsara is our ordinary worldly life and nirvana is liberation, moksha or bliss. We
continuously experience Samsara with the hope of ultimately experiencing and attaining
nirvana.
What we do everyday appears to be monotonous or troublesome only because we have

kept nirvana out of these actions.
We make samsara a ‘living aspect’ and nirvana the goal. But what we fail to understand is
that the path itself is the goal, not just the destination.
If bliss can’t be attained while living, what use is it when we leave?
Nirvana is the state of ultimate bliss and is the very nature of our being or soul. We seek
joy or bliss in all our actions simply because this is our inherent nature.
Where we err is that instead of infusing bliss into samsara we expect bliss out of it. We
are always looking for returns when we are actually in a position to give. We are always
seeking for that ‘something’ which we are already. It is like a king asking a beggar for
alms – for can he ever be satisfied?
Samsara should always be experienced as an expression of nirvana or bliss, never as

something to be attained. Only then does a man live ‘life’ completely, and is awakened.
If man is the coin on which samsara and nirvana are impressed upon, he can experience
both in the same space any time. He experiences infinity beyond space and time. He can
explode in all directions of samsara by being true to his nature, of nirvana or bliss.
To experience nirvana or bliss amid samsara is the very essence of life. Such a person
goes about samsara in a completely detached manner, always overflowing with the very
‘nature’ of his being: bliss.
Having forgotten one's own nature, man seeks to attain something that he already is, was
and always will be. We are not human beings undergoing a spiritual experience, but
spiritual beings with human experiences.
Here is a simple Tibetan Buddhist meditation technique which will help you experience
the very nature of your being which is ananda or bliss.
Mahamantra Meditation
Close your eyes throughout this exercise
Stage 1: 21 minutes
Sit and relax. Keep your head, neck and spine straight.
Start humming with your mouth closed, but loud enough to be heard by the others near
you. Try to (for as long as possible) create a vibration in your body. Feel like a hollow
tube that is filled completely with the vibrations of humming.
Stage 2: 10 minutes
Be still; just be a witness.
Religion & spirituality
Religion and spirituality are the most misunderstood subjects today. When religion is
awash with logic then much of what it retains will be washed away and, what remains,
will be pure spirituality. Religion minus superstition is spirituality. Religion is but a tool.
Spirituality is nothing but ‘Life Engineering’. It enables you to focus, not on material
things, but on the sweetness of life, miracles of existence. You are part of a macrocosmic
orchestra that is being conducted by Existential Energy. This keeps you liberated within,
enabling you to perform – in the outer world – intelligently and effortlessly. It also keeps
you in tune with Existential Energy.
Man has always been curious about creation, this beautiful universe. He has asked
questions about the creator. He concluded that there was a Life Force or Energy that
made all this happen. He began to establish a connection with that Energy.
The first people to do this were the Rishis. They found techniques for future generations
to realise this Energy. These different techniques snowballed into different religions.
What has to be understood is that even though the formula of each rishi was different
they were all talking about the same experience of Existential Energy. But today we tend
to cling to the formula and eventually forget the purpose. As a result we never get a
glimpse of the real experience.
Those who fight in the name of religion have never had any spiritual experience. They
never become ‘spiritual fruit’. They have not understood the purpose of religion and tend
to miss the point.
When religion takes you to spirituality, you will understand that spirituality is nothing but
life itself. Religion is quantity; spirituality is quality. Because religion is quantity we turn
towards spirituality at the fag-end of life. But religion is a stepping-stone to
understanding one’s spiritual nature and, living in peace.
Monday, April 28, 2008

Pain can lead to enlightenment
Pain is a basic necessity of our lives; in the absence of pain we may start styling our faces
and limbs as we do our hair everyday! Pain is a sign of our body wisdom and renders us
integrated humans.
Emotionally and mentally, pain arises out of our resistance to the present. Such pain is
additive and creates a negative energy field around us that we can refer to as the ‘Pain
Body’.
Emotional imbalance disturbs the physical body; sexual repression leads to back pain; a
sense of bearing high responsibilities causes shoulder pain; when you are in unfriendly
company your body seems to shrink.
Pain calls for our attention; because attention is energy.
We invite pain upon ourselves through a lack of moderation in whatever we do, and often
enjoy the pain as it brings us attention.
It is established that a human being can stay alive without food for 90 days but could
develop serious mental trauma if he or she is not paid any attention to for 14 days.
To sustain ourselves, we create a low energy pool of ailments, and gladly suffer cold and
cancer.
Pain and dis-ease are often substitutes for a lack of attention. They are signs that we are
desperately seeking, begging and demanding attention.
The next time you experience some pain, try this. Lie down in a dark room with your
eyes closed and focus upon the point of pain to the exclusion of all else.
As you experience the point of pain, drop the notion of ‘pain’ from your mind. Focus all
your attention at this spot and soon you will find it shrinking.
Concentrate further and you find that the pain has disappeared and in its place you
experience pleasure; pain and pleasure are the same sensation with different tags. Your
awareness of pain has caused it to disappear and bring in the positive energy of pleasure.
When you examine the phenomenon of pain deeply, you realise that you are not the body.
No pain can affect the real You. When you overcome pain, you experience the rare
freedom arising out of non-attachment.
You then exist as an Atman, an enlightened Master. Pain can be the gateway to bliss, your
key to enlightenment.
When you transcend both pain and pleasure, which are both one and the same, you
experience bliss, which is perfect harmony, inner silence and total peace.
To live life without pain and suffering, become aware of the emotion of pain. Then accept
the present — the here and now.
Awareness with acceptance is the way out of pain and suffering. Suffering is important, in
life, for growth. When you understand suffering, you will realise how unnecessary it is!
Meditation is the key to that awareness and acceptance.
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Mind your mind
In its own way the mind leads us, sometimes in strange ways – in the way it ‘thinks’ and
‘responds’. Thoughts rise and fall in a chaotic manner in our mind; nothing is logical;
thoughts rise, live and fall. It is not thought; it is just association. Association is jumpy,
not logical. This is why there’s so much confusion.
When the thinking process is brought into consciousness our desires too become
conscious.
At the moment they are mostly unconscious. You realise after a while that whatever it is
that led to a problem is just the association, not desire. It’s like sitting in a car that moves
on its own – something that you are not controlling.
A mind that is moving in association with unconscious desire is dangerous.
We try to suppress desire or we fulfil it. But suppression does not work. Fulfilment does
not remove desire, it only creates more desire. Bring your desire to consciousness from
unconsciousness. If the desire is really worth fulfiling, it will have its own energy for
fulfilment.
If this is not so, it will disappear. However, either way you will be in a state of relaxation.
Without consciousness, either suppression or fulfilment will lead to suffering, guilt and
tension.
Psychologists say that if you make a wrong choice your unconscious mind is your first
and worst enemy – which tries to ensure that you fail.
Whenever your unconsciousness does not recognise your desire it works against the
desire.
The unconscious part of you is 90 per cent of the mind. They say the mind's safety
mechanism works against the fulfilment of wrong desire, which results in much
disappointment.
Once desire enters the consciousness it energises you.
Energy is the source of desire.
The same energy – converting food into muscle, blood circulation – moves the body.
Between body and energy desire happens; it is closer to energy than the body; it is more
powerful than the body. If you change your desire your whole body can change. Writing
is the best way to raise desire to awareness.
Once a week give yourself an appointment for 30 minutes, and ask your ‘Being’ what it
wants. Just listen to your mind and make a few points. Whatever is necessary will stand,
whatever is not, will disappear.
We never verbalise many desires, we never bring them to light; many of them are not
even our own deep desires; they are the desires of others. We have life and energy only to
‘experience’ our own desires.
In order to mind your mind, you need contemplation, concentration and meditation. To
guide the mind contemplation is needed; to focus on a subject concentration is necessary.
When the mind disappears into the subject and there is no mind left, it is meditation.
Meditation makes you aware of reality. It is liberating.

Are we qualified?
Many people want to know if they are qualified for a spiritual awakening. We are
constantly in doubt about our own potential. We are part of the divine. The problem is
that we do not remember that we are. When someone does tell that we are, we think that
such people are crazy.
A man once asked Ramana Maharishi whether he was qualified enough to pursue the
spiritual path and the Sage countered: “Are you alive?” The person said: “Of course,
yes.” The Maharishi said with finality: “Then you are qualified enough.”
Religious orders and their priests create this doubt in us, so that we may become
dependent on them for our qualification. We may need to ask them what qualifications
they themselves possess to ask us the question.
A Master never would. Organised religions often counter spirituality. Spirituality is about
discovering who we are. It is the search for the ultimate Truth about us and our
relationship with our Creator. Religions once organised are more concerned about power
and whatever leads to power, whether control, fear or money. It’s the confusion between
religion and spirituality that also leads to this question in us. We are constantly told that
we are sinners and so incompetent to enter the doorway of our Creator. This is nonsense.
If one keeps questioning one’s capability, even after decades of rigorous sadhanas one
would feel unqualified. The concept of qualification, as with guilt, is brought in to exploit
and bind you mentally. As with guilt it needs to be dropped for us to move on
successfully.
A beautiful Zen story goes thus: A man asks a Master, “Master, am I qualified for
spiritual progress? I feel there are many obstructions.” Replied the Master: “The word
obstruction is the only obstruction, nothing else.”
Patanjali’s yoga sutras define various steps to enlightenment. The first step aayama
comprises five steps, all quite strenuous: celibacy, truth, non-violence, not stealing, not
possessing. Only after you practise all these steps and master them are you qualified to
move up to the next step in yogic accomplishment.
A man came and asked me: “Swamiji, I am not qualified in these steps; I have never
practised aayama and niyama; how can I learn yoga?”
I said to him: “If you are already qualified in these steps you do not need yoga!”
Maturity and meditation help each other and help us all. Maturity comes with knowledge
and experience and gives us energy; and the energy reinforces maturity. Meditation helps
us focus that energy in the right direction to make spiritual progress.
In the present-day world Patanjali’s techniques take a lot of time. To realise Truth through
yoga of any form would probably take many births, and you will forget what you started
in this birth, when you start your next!
Dhyana or meditation is the answer to enlightenment in this age. It’s foolproof and
without side-effects. The only side-effect is bliss and realisation of your own Self. To
start dhyana, all you need to be is a human being, nothing more. A Being with
Consciousness is the only requirement to embark upon a spiritual path. The very desire
that you wish to start on this path is a true indication that you are qualified.
It is said in Tao: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Once you are on the path, the path helps you on. It’s the first step that breaks the inertia
and get you moving.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happiness is living in the now
For many of us having more choice is a good thing. We believe we have more freedom
and more freedom of choice. One of the choices that most people who come to me are
struggling with is to choose between material life and spiritual life.
To such people, material life which represents all that they have in life, physical,
emotional, economic and intellectual, appears to bring them unhappiness.
On the contrary, spiritual life is the greener grass that beckons, that they do not have, and
which seems to represent all that is missing in their life.
I tell them they need not choose. They can, and should be all right leading both lives
together.
Doing one’s duty, one’s dharma well is the key to spiritual progress. That duty, that
responsibility, can be your material life as well.
You need to be aware about everything you do; you need to be 100 per cent involved in
whatever you do, in order that you carry out your dharma properly.
Being in the present is the key to awareness; awareness is the door that opens to bliss. To
be in the present one needs to reach a ‘no mind’ state – without thoughts. Once we reach
this point the seeming contradiction of being in the spiritual space while straddling the
material space disappears.
Being in the ‘here and now’ helps to transcend barriers of time and space – one can
become omnipresent. This is also the state of enlightenment as the ego or mind breaks
down at this point. In Buddhism it is called the mindful state.
Many of us even while we are eating are actually not eating. We do everything else but
concentrate on the task at hand – eating. We talk, watch TV, or read books but little
attention to the food we consume. The food energy in turn pays very little attention to us.
It turns into garbage and stays on our waist and hips instead of being the energy it should
be.
Stay in the present with whatever you are doing; when you take the next step; when you
brush your teeth; when you smile at someone, try and concentrate on what you are doing
at that particular moment in time.
You are what the scriptures say a ‘trikala jnani’; one who knows the past, present and
future, one for whom the universe holds no secrets.
You will be a Master of the Universe.

The many perils of comparison
A poor man had no land and prayed to God for some land. God appeared to him and told
him that all that he could cover from dawn to dusk would be his land.
The man set off the next morning without sleeping a wink. Though he had covered
enough land to satisfy his needs, very soon, he began to run and run filled with a desire to
own more land, more than anyone else.
By dusk he had covered a lot of land. But he fell down dead, exhausted.
Usually this is the story of most of our lives.
Desires that are real and are born out of a genuine need will have their own energy and
will sustain them.
However, most of our desires are created out of jealousy and have a negative energy.
When we are not able to bear the excellence of others, we get jealous. Comparison is the
seed, jealousy is the fruit.
Comparison and jealousy are actually non-existent. We create such thoughts ourselves
and talk endlessly on how to overcome them.
Imagine that the room you are in is dark. Can you remove it if you wanted to?
Can you take it to another room? Of course not.
The reason is that darkness has a negative existence. It does not really exist.
If you bring light into a room, the darkness will at once cease to exist. In the same way,
jealousy has a negative existence. You cannot deal with it directly. Even if you tell
yourself repeatedly not to feel jealous, you cannot overcome it. If you queue up all the
people in the world in an ascending order of money, where would you be?
You will be somewhere in the middle. You will not even be able to count the number of
people who are on either side of you in the queue. Now, you will have to decide if you
are going to look at the queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the queue behind
and feel relaxed and grateful to God.
Everything is in your hands.
We will never face failure if we live our lives competing with ourselves. Win yourself
with yourself, never with others.
Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in the path of progress. A great
problem in the rat race is that even if you win you are only a rat. To stop comparisons,
you need to be aware of your own worth; you need to realise your uniqueness without
being proud. Meditation leads you into that awareness of who you are and what your
potential is.
You will then soar beyond comparison; for you are freed from jealousy.
Sunday, April 20, 2008

You don’t have to pay the bill
Nitti Mudaliar went to a restaurant and ordered one each of everything on the menu. He
ate everything. He ordered for some dessert and coffee. He was soon ready to leave. Then
the waiter stopped him with a bill. Nitti, in exasperation, said: “I never ordered this bill.
Why have you brought it to me?”
Most of us live and behave like Nitti. We have no recollection of asking for the bill as we
go about acquiring things, and building on our expectations of acquisitions.
When we finally get the bill we are startled and upset as we had not expected it. There is
a saying: be careful what you wish for, for it may come true.
We are driven all our life by our vasanas and samskaras. These are unfulfilled desires
that are deeply embedded in the unconscious.
Most of the time we are not even aware of the existence of these samskaras. But they
shape our future decisions. They drive us into illogical and irrational decisions, even
decisions that harm us.
You enjoy a drink or smoke once in a while. But you enjoy it so long as you have the
freedom to give it up.
When you get addicted to “them” “they enjoy you”.
Addiction happens when you do not enjoy the habit but cannot do without it. You can get
addicted to food, TV, newspapers, gossip, so many things. When you are addicted, food
“eats you”, cigarettes “smoke you”, and liquor “drinks you”. When you do not have
freedom you are “used”; you are not in control; your desires control you.
Vasana is the hangover of desire or desire not fully lived; samskaras are desires that are
lived but those which leave a thread for continuous enjoyment of those desires. Karma is
fulfilment.
Vasana is the seed, samskara nourishment, and karma the tree. Nirvana also means
moksha, liberation.
When all the vasanas, samskaras and karmas are finished you reach liberation through
their extinction. At this stage you will experience a new kind of space, a new kind of
understanding and a new life.
Meditation is the path for dissolving and burning your samskaras. Meditation leads you
into a “no mind state” where samskaras do not 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 in joy without ever feeling afraid of having to pay the bill.

Path to stillness
Whoever comes to a teacher, whether he is a spiritual teacher, scientific teacher or

otherwise comes to acquire knowledge. There is a transmission process. For this wisdom
transfer to take place effectively and effortlessly, one’s mind has to be empty and still.
Only then the teaching, learning and above all, the transmission can happen.
Knowledge is packaged in three ways. Basic knowledge that we all learn from childhood,
the knowledge we learn our three ‘r’s with, is intellectual knowledge. To read, write, and
calculate we use our head, our mind, to acquire the knowledge needed. At this level of
knowledge transfer communication happens. Another type of knowledge requires the
involvement of the heart; one’s head is no use here. Can you become a poet using your
head; can you become a singer or a painter using your head? You need passion to be a
master.
The son of a potter watched his father and picked up the art. He became famous as a
master craftsman. People came to him and asked to be taught the way he learnt it. He
said, “I don’t know how to teach you. If you like just watch me and do the same.”
Music was learnt this way in India under a gurukul system for centuries; from master to
disciple by hearing and singing, never a note written down. So were the scriptures taught.
No art can truly be taught, they must be learnt. They must be absorbed, like a sponge
soaks up water. What was merely an intellectual communication becomes collaboration
between master and the taught.
Spiritual knowledge is knowledge of the highest kind; it is not knowledge really but
wisdom. This knowledge can neither be taught nor learnt. Spiritual wisdom, the Truth of
the Universe, has to be experienced, by transmission from an enlightened master who is
willing to transmit it from his Being to your Being. At this level, it is a communion of
beings, far beyond collaboration and communication.
Communication is verbal and intellectual; collaboration is emotional involvement; in

communion all that you need is silence. When words turn into silence the transfer of
wisdom is 100 per cent.
When you decide to embark upon a path of spiritual enquiry, drop all your old knowledge
and empty your mind. Go humbly to the master and in silence you will learn. Spiritual
wisdom happens; it’s not taught or learnt. It happens in the silencing of your mind. It
happens when your chatter, both inner and outer, are stopped.
Meditation is the key to silencing the mind. No spiritual knowledge is possible without
the aid of meditation. Ego fills the mind otherwise.
To go beyond ego, to go beyond mind, to go beyond chatter, meditation is the answer.

The real miracle
The moment we hear the word miracle, we become excited. What do we call a miracle?
When we don’t know the cause-effect relationship between certain things that happen, we
use the word miracle, that’s all.
For example, a bell is placed on a table. If I hold it in my hand in front of you, it is

normal; you see it, you don’t say anything. But if the bell suddenly, comes out of
nowhere, and falls into my hand without my having done anything, then you will call it a
miracle. You become excited. Because you don’t know the cause-effect relationship in
what you saw, you call it a miracle. You don’t know what caused the bell to ‘make its
way’ into my hand, and so you call it a miracle. Actually, there is no miracle. Let me
explain how these things work.
What is actually happening is teleporting. The bell, which is matter, is converted into
energy, transported in space. Then it converts back into matter, that’s all. When you don’t
comprehend this science, you think it is a miracle. But a real miracle is not happening.
Real miracles are happening around us all the time but we don’t see them because we are
too busy searching for things that we think are miracles. Turning Man into God is a
miracle.
Our body itself is a miracle. Turning one piece of bread into blood is the real miracle. An
experiment was conducted in the US to convert bread into blood with the help of
machinery. What a miraculous system our body is.
The power of coincidence is another miracle – we experience this so many times without
even knowing it. For example, we think of someone, and suddenly, that person appears
before us. Or, we may call up someone, and the person says he was about to call you.
This is nothing but the power of coincidence. These are the real miracles. These are the
events that reveal the beautiful harmony of the whole show.
If we can see these miracles, life becomes beautiful. But what do we do instead? We take
these things for granted. We think they happen by chance. We are so out step with the
grand show that is going on and we keep looking for other miracles of the materialistic
kind. But when you fall in line, material wealth comes to you naturally.
Conviction and awareness are needed. You must feel that you are a part of it. Be grateful
all the time; grateful towards all of Existence, not just towards a person. That is enough.
You will soon become aware of the real miracles.
When you understand and enjoy these miracles around you, life becomes an eternal
celebration and you flow effortlessly like a river.
Be happy.

Start living!
Great Masters have said that the Truth is within us, but we always seek it outside. We're
proud to be 'seekers'. This is like you trying to pick up a book in front of you.
Instead of picking it up, you keep trying! Can there be something called 'trying', when
you actually have the choice of doing it or not?
Our seeking is like a buffer between the Truth and us and we continue seeking! We
develop a 'seeker ego' that keeps us comfortably cushioned from the reality of life.
Seekers are like window shoppers. They go from one Master to another, from one
philosophy to another, gather intellectual knowledge and start playing with words instead
of trying to experience anything. Deep down you will be confused, but you will talk great
philosophies outside.
When you understand that you don't have to seek and that you only have to live and
experience the Truth inside, it will start revealing itself to you in every passing moment.
If you can simply witness what is happening around you and inside, every moment you
can have a growing awareness of the Truth within.
Becoming a witness is the first step to stop seeking and start living.
Realizing the Ultimate Truth is a moment's experience, but creating the inner space to
realize it is what we can do every moment.
This cannot be done merely through reading great philosophies. Though intellectual
knowledge gives clarity, clinging onto it is where the problem starts.
All the great scriptures and meditation techniques given by Masters are only to create that
inner space in you to flower and realize the Ultimate Truth. Just try closing your eyes and
sitting by yourself for a few minutes everyday. Listen to all the sounds around you. Don't
pass any judgment on them.
Become a deep witness to everything and one with all the sounds. You will see that there
is a central chord that is running through the whole thing, through the whole show. That
central chord is Existence! Just feel it deeply; that is enough.
When you start doing this, you will start watching yourself, your emotions, without
getting involved in them; you will start appreciating nature and Existence; your body
language will become soft and fluid because you will start moving in tune with
Existence; Intelligence and understanding will grow in you; you will not unnecessarily
connect incidents of the past and cause misery for yourself and for others.
This is what I mean by 'starting to live' - something we are actually seeking. But instead
of involving in the act of living, we are caught up in the act of seeking. Stop seeking and
start living. Be Blissful!

Upcoming Event:Life Bliss Meditation in your living room!
Learn how to meditate powerfully over the phone!
Contact: Sri Nithyananda Dheera

Phone: 626-205-3286
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Series: Upcoming Event
Five elements
Existence or Cosmos is made up of the five elements that are – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and
Ether. All these elements are different forms of the same Existential Energy which we call
God or Jesus Christ or Krishna or Allah and so on.
The basic thirst of man is to find a connection with this Existential Energy. All religions
have been born with the idea of finding a connection with Existence through the five
elements. Let me explain how this is achieved:
Take the first element – the Earth element. Idol worship is nothing but trying to find a
connection with the Existential Energy through the Earth element. Idols are made up of
earth or clay. Through worshipping idols, we are actually trying to find a connection
through the Earth element.
Here, one point has to be clearly understood: We are not worshipping the idols; we are
worshipping through the idols. If this point is understood, there will not be so much of
fight and fanaticism over forms and idols. The Energy that everyone is worshipping is
one and the same. This has to be very clearly understood.
Next, we come to the water element. It is a spiritual practice to take bath in sacred rivers.
This is actually a technique to try to realise the Existential Energy through the water
element.
Next, we perform so many fire rituals at our homes and temples. This practice is to
realise the Existential Energy through the fire element.
The next element is the air element. Chanting mantras is nothing but trying to connect to
the Cosmic Energy through the air element. When we chant, we are playing with our
breath, which is nothing but the air element.
Finally, we come to the element which is the subtlest form of the Existential Energy – the
Ether element. Meditation is nothing but trying to connect to Existence through the ether
element.
The earth element is the first plane of tuning ourselves to the Energy and ether is the final
plane of tuning. We can start with the earth element – idol worship, but we tend to get
stuck there and there starts the problem. You can start education by going to kindergarten
school, but you cannot stay in kindergarten, is it not? In the same way, you can start with
idol worship so that you have something tangible when you try to connect to the Cosmic
Energy, but you have to ultimately graduate from it and start meditating to fine tune
yourself with Existence.
Once you start doing this and experiencing the joys of meditation, you will find yourself
expanding and exploding in 360 degrees. Ritualistic worship always draws tight
boundaries around you. It keeps you in a closed circle. But once you have had a taste of
meditation, you will start becoming an expanse. Then, when you go back to rituals, you
will look at them from a different dimension and enjoy them even more! When this
happens, growth has happened in you.
If you understand the underlying concept of the five elements, you will be able to enjoy
Existence continuously instead of getting stuck in different forms of worship. So, just try
to understand this and start resonating with Existence!

Aloneness leads to enlightenment
WE ARE constantly searching outside for answers. It is almost as if the answers to all our
questions and problems can be found outside, somewhere, somehow.
How often do we succeed in that? Never. None of our questions can be answered fully
from outside of us. All our questions have answers from within. Listen to the voice
within. People often ask me this question: What is man’s eternal quest? I reply: Man’s
eternal quest is to find himself. Some one asked me: Are you God? I said: I am not God. I
am above that. God is your imagination; Self is real and superior. The person said: If I
say that they will send me to an asylum!
A small story:
Jawaharlal Nehru, then the Prime Minister of India, went on a visit to a mental asylum.
There he met an inmate who thought he was Nehru. When Nehru introduced himself as
Nehru to this inmate, this guy came up close to him and whispered, “Don’t worry. That’s
what I too said when I came here. If you stay here for six months they will cure you too!”
Such is the nature of the world. Even if God himself comes and stands before them, in
human form, or any other form, they will resist the idea. Even if God appears in front of
you now, you will demand some kind of identification. “Show me your ration card or ID
card” you will say. If I say that Self is superior, it is real, and our search should turn
inwards, you will wonder, what is this man saying.
Each one of us is unique. We are perfect as we express our true nature. In that state no
one is brighter, much perfect, and more beautiful than any other. Try this simple exercise.
When we are alone we try to relate mentally with others. Drop that. Do not blame others
for our loneliness. Allow the loneliness happen to us without resistance. We will then feel
alone even when people surround us. To start with, we need to experience physical
loneliness. Once the joy of aloneness happens, it stays with us even when we are not
physically alone.
To have aloneness we need to do nothing; it’s our reality. For material comforts we need
to work and struggle. To be alone you just need to let go. Aloneness leads to
Enlightenment.
A disciple asked a Zen Master: How long does it take to be enlightened?
Master said: Just the time it takes to blink your eye. You are already enlightened. You only
need to declare.
Disciple asked again: What happened when you became enlightened?
Master: Nothing! I decided to live in my enlightened state from that day.
Blink and be in Bliss!
Friday, April 11, 2008

What’s the big hurry?
A young woman confidently smiles at us from the billboard. Her daily routine is written
beside her smiling visage. Every hour of her day is filled, from the time she wakes up at 6
am till she goes to bed at 11 pm. She takes a pill to take care of her headache before she
goes to bed so that she can get up fresh the next morning. It’s an ad for a headache pill
and that’s why she is smiling.
It’s weird and yet it has become normal. Whatever moves faster is better. Communication
is the speed of light. The world is a global village. Electronic mails have to be replied to
within the hour. We all are always in a tearing hurry. Doing what?
Where are we all running to? Rather, what are we all running from in such a great hurry?
We are driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us
that we are going to lose. So we hurry not knowing what we are going to lose, not
knowing what its value is.
We cram more hours into a day, more years into a lifetime. We multi-task and multi-live.
We try to enjoy cerebrally without a trace of joy.
A young man came to see me. He said, “Swamiji, I have everything sorted out. I am
building a house with a 25-year loan. By that time my daughter (a two-year-old) will be
ready for marriage. My son (an infant) will be in a good job. The house would be very
valuable and we can get a lot of money by selling it. We will invest most of it and settle
down with you at the ashram.”
He had finished 25 years of his life in 10 minutes. He feels that his calling is spiritual. Is
mortgaging the present for the future spiritual? This constant running is a reflection of
our inner restlessness. We then feel we have missed the bus or the train or the plane. We
certainly feel we have missed out on life. Has the running been worth it?
There is a good reason to plan for tomorrow; it’s important. However, let’s not forget to
live today! We need to learn to do whatever we do with complete focus, with enjoyment,
and live the moment fully. Lao Tzu calls this mindfulness Wei-wu-Wei, action with no
action. It is to enter into each activity totally, playfully, spontaneously, in such a way that
work is play and effort is fun. It is the way a child tackles her work enjoying each
moment, not worried about how soon it is to be finished, blowing bubbles if she is
washing dishes. An adult can never do this. There is rarely any enjoyment in what we do,
it’s an attitude of getting it over with, even if it is doing something pleasurable. We keep
running because we are afraid to stop; afraid to stop and reflect on what we are doing and
why. To be silent can be terrifying as it makes one vulnerable to oneself.
People are afraid to meditate because of this fear of being silent.
In Zen, meditation is about sitting still and doing nothing, but nevertheless doing it
consciously. Stopping the body and mind is healing the body and mind. Next time you
are hurrying through something ask the person nearest to you to shout Stop. This will
startle you into awareness, and who knows, perhaps even into enlightenment.

Listen to your body
A popular sports gear advertisement reads: If your body tells you to stop, tell your body
to shut up.
Most of the time we tell our body to shut up instead of listening to it as we ought to. No
other living creature needs an alarm clock to wake up or a sleeping pill to go to bed. We,
in fact, pride ourselves on how we abuse our body.
Our body has tremendous intelligence built over 600 million years of evolution as a
living being.
A vast majority of our body activity is controlled by the autonomous nervous system that
takes care of us with no inputs from us consciously.
We breathe, digest, maintain our balance or even regulate our sleep-wake cycle without
any conscious effort on our part. If we had to worry about doing these things we would
be tied up in knots.
Our body survives in spite of us, not because of us.
This is the miracle of body intelligence.
Every single cell of our body is gifted with intelligence to carry out its own functions and
to coordinate with the functions of related cells. DNA, carriers of our genetic code, are
embedded in our memories and emotions, imprinting not merely physical but mental,
emotional and psychic characteristics as well.
As our DNA is, so is our perception of the world.
Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over
85 per cent of our physical ailments are influenced by the mind and are psychosomatic.
The mind has the power to both cause and cure diseases.
In a path-breaking experiment in Japan on allergies it was found that patients reacted

even when the plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they
were told that they were allergy-causing substances.
What was more amazing was when the allergy-causing leaves were placed on their skin
and the name of a non-allergy-causing plant was mentioned, there was no allergic
reaction in the patients.
Make peace with your body. The body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully
integrated.
Be aware of your body – for then you can sense what the body needs, even before you
consciously become aware of the need.
Your body tells you what it needs – remember this, for you have the intelligence to listen
to it.
Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots – this causes pain
to yourself – when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it.
Trust in your body wisdom.
Only through meditation will you ever learn to understand your body, with clarity and
compassion.
You will then be able to find a way to go beyond the body.
Life Bliss Galleria: 10 Apr 2008

Upcoming Release: "Songs of Eternity... silence
speaks" -- a coffee table book with a rare compilation of pictures and incisive messages
from the Master.
Series: Life Bliss Galleria

Having a purpose in life
We do not understand how purposeless life is, the way we live it. We believe that our life
becomes worthwhile by giving vent to our feelings, by trying to fulfill whatever our
immediate desire or impulse is.
What we think as worthy is not worthy, what we think as being purposeful is not
purposeful. Our ego constantly strives for purpose. In doing so the reality of the present is
missed; the truth and the purpose of life are missed. We need to understand the
purposelessness of our goals and ambitions. What we think are the greatest treasures to
obtain in this world are meaningless.
Living your life blissfully is the ultimate goal of your life. Life’s purpose is bliss. There
can be no other goal or purpose. When we run after other goals we stop experiencing life;
we are already dead. Our ego masks the true purpose of life. When we realise the
purposeless of what we do, a new consciousness emerges, joy fills us, bliss happens.
When you are focused on material benefits such as your monthly salary or whatever is
your time-based goal, you can experience at best, joy on that day. Fear, greed, lust and
envy block peace; they demand more and more, even as you acquire more and more. This
is not life.
When we drop what we think is our purpose, our goals in life, then we realise the divine
purpose, the Lila, the divine play. You start to enjoy the drama without being part of it,
and life becomes meaningful. You become a witness, not a player, and bliss happens.
As long as you work towards a goal, life has no meaning. Only when you realise that life
has no purpose at all, can you really start living. You then walk the path with no
destination in mind, and enjoy each step. You experience bliss. There is a big difference
between living and life. You can only be alive and living when you understand that
purposelessness of life. Otherwise you just inhale and exhale; so do people in a coma; the
only difference is that you are in a walking and waking coma unlike the ones in ICUs.
Meditation helps you understand the uselessness of life, the meaning of life as it should
be, and the meaning of self, and existence. Meditation helps you realise that the path is
the goal. Meditation leads to the awareness that bliss is the path and the goal.

Renounce what you don’t have
A beautiful Zen story: Two Zen monks came to a river in spate. As they were about to
cross, there came a young maiden who requested their help to cross the turbulent river.
One of the monks without any hesitation lifted her in his arms and carried her across the
river.
The monks then went on their way to a monastery nearby. After many hours the second
monk exclaimed, “I am disappointed with you. You should not have touched that
woman.” The first monk answered: ‘I put that woman down many hours ago. Why are
you still carrying her?”
When you live in the present, you stop carrying the baggage of your past into your future,
which guarantees misery. Many people come to me saying that they wish to renounce the
life of a householder and become an ascetic, a sanyasin. They see the way I live in bliss
all the time, and think that once they too don saffron robes they will be blissful. Not so. I
tell them, renounce what you do not have; there is no need for you to renounce what you
already have. I tell them, stop worrying about becoming a sadhu; a householder with no
baggage on his spirit is far more likely to attain truth than a sadhu who has not still
renounced what he does not have.
It is the desire for what one does not have: the dreams, fantasies and the deep desires, that
lead us into trouble. These then are the first list of baggage that needs to be discarded.
Buddha said: Desire is the root cause of all sorrow. The desire that Buddha talked about is
the desire for what we do not already have, what we do not need, what we can do
without; desires that are not our own, but are born out of greed, fear, lust and jealousy.
There is no end to desire. There is none amongst us who can truthfully say that once we
achieve what we desire today, we shall be satisfied. Tomorrow is another day and brings
forth more desires than what we had yesterday. Desire breeds desire; desires are never
satiated upon fulfilment.
For most people material life is the way to live. Renouncing material life in search of an
unknown spiritual goal is foolishness. What is needed is to reach the balance between
material life and spiritual life that leads to enlightenment. This is possible and certain. We
should live in the present. Living in the here and now, in space and time, within the
boundaries of our own being guarantees enlightenment. Meditation is the key to being in
the present – it leads you into enlightenment and bliss.

Rely on Your Instinct to Rouse the Unconscious
How does the mind processes information?
When we see something through our eyes called chaksu, which is a digital signal
processor, the digital file goes to memory or chitta, and then to mind or manas, and
finally takes a leap into ego. Chitta decides what the information is not, to arrive at what
it is, through a process of elimination. The mind says, this is a man conducting a class; it
identifies the object as a man. Then it leaps into the ego, which, based on past experience,
decides whether to sit in the class or go out. Ego decides and you express and act on that
decision.
The ego zone is not under your control. There are impressions, past memories, or
samskaras. They force you to take illogical, unconscious decisions. You decide to smoke,
knowing fully well that it is bad for health. You go ahead anyway. You have no control.
Samskaras create conflict and suffering.
Let’s suppose that the time taken from eye to mind is Tp. Till here the process is logical
and clear. The time taken for unconscious process — from mind to ego, through
samskaras — which distort your file, and twist your decisions, is Tq. As long as Tq is
more than Tp, you will be more aware of your unconscious. If not, you are unaware and
act on instinct. You are restless. You decide without knowing what you are doing.
When samskaras are more, and they move fast without your knowledge, you are in
trouble. If time taken for conscious process is more than the time taken for the
unconscious, if Tp is greater than Tq, you act instinctively. If Tp equals Tq, you are in
Intelligence level. You will live your life without guilt. When Tq is greater than Tp, you
are in super conscious level; your unconscious is infused with silence and intuition.
When you infuse consciousness and silence into this unconscious zone you burn all your
samskaras, you become Shiva, you reach superconscious level. When Tp is less than Tq
you operate on instinct; if equal, you are operating on intelligence; if Tq is greater, you are
operating on intuition.
To awaken your intuition, give your conscious mind a rest. There is a state of mind where
you have no thought. Consciousness remains. Modern psychology has no word for this
state as it is not aware of this state of meditation, intuition or thoughtless awareness. In
Sanskrit, it is called samadhi. If you can experience this state you can experience
creativity, courage, confidence; you can take spontaneous decisions; you take
responsibility; you decide based on limited data, with no precedence. You get the power
and courage to do anything. Your relationships can change.
How do you differentiate between intuition and instinct?
When you act instinctively, you will feel drained: For instance, when you react in anger,
you feel guilty. When you act intuitively, you feel energised.
Meditation helps you reach this state. Whenever you find time, be silent, be aware, be
conscious; some part of your being wants to express itself more. Tune into the higher
energy of intuition and creativity.

Responsibility-the way to go!
When you live with the attitude that you are responsible for everything, your whole life
will change. When you take up responsibility for everything that happens around you,
you will start expanding.
Expansion is the only growth; contraction is death. The more responsibility you take up,
the more you will expand and grow. You will become a leader. Most of us wait for the
status to descend on us and then take up the responsibility. Be very clear: Only if we take
up responsibility, the status will come! People who wait for the status will not take up
responsibility even after they get it. They will simply find another reason or excuse, that's
all. The person who passes the buck and relaxes will never progress in life.
Responsibility is Consciousness. The moment you feel responsible for what is happening
around you, that moment the Divine Energy will rush into you! These are all basic secrets
of Life that I am giving you.
As long as you are self-centered, you will be nothing more than a blocked bamboo stick
that serves only to carry the corpse. When you shed your ego and stand up with
responsibility, you will become the hollow bamboo that serves as a flute! Like how the
air that enters the flute leaves it as music, the air that enters you will flow as Energy!
When you work with no feelings of responsibility, you will work and feel like a slave.
When you work with responsibility, your capacity will expand and you will flower and
radiate Energy. Your worries and sorrows will dissolve and all unfinished work will get
finished. Umpteen excuses can be given for dodging responsibility, but they will remain
poor excuses.
With responsibility, a new kind of joy will engulf you. You will become a natural leader
and life will become a celebration! There is a beautiful story on Buddha: It is said that
when Buddha goes to beg, he would appear as a King and the kings who gave him alms
would appear as beggars! Seeming like a beggar or a king is not in the wealth that you
hold but in the state that is within you. When you take up responsibility for the entire
Cosmos, you will expand and look like a leader!
Feeling that you are responsible is the greatest quality you can possess. When you stand
up with a sense of responsibility, a new intelligence will awaken in you!
Who created the Universe?
FROM the earliest days of humanity there has been intense curiosity about how it all
came about; how man and woman were created and how the Universe was created.
Each religion, each culture developed its own answers, its mythology. Christianity and
Islam adopted the Judaic version of creation, as laid out in the Book of Genesis. God
made the Universe in six days and rested on the seventh. He created man and from the
man’s rib made the woman. Hindu mythology had a different version. So do other
cultures and religions. Was God then independent of the Universe? Where was He before
the Universe came into being? Where would He go after the Universe is destroyed?
Buddha said: Universe was never created. Universe will never die. Universe has been in
existence always, and will be in existence always.
Sanatana Dharma, the philosophy of Hinduism, supports Buddha. The Brahman always
was, is and will be. Brahman is Existence. Existence is the universe. There never was a
time it did not exist, and there never will be a time it would not exist.
Different parts of the Universe will die and new ones will be created. The Big Bangs and
Black Holes will occur at different spaces and different times in the Universe randomly
and in a chaotic manner. But the Universe will exist forever and ever. While modern
science talks about the Big Bang theory, no scientist has an answer to what was there
before to cause the Big Bang, if it is considered to be the seminal act of creation.
Science has as of today no answer even to how living matter was created. A biogenesis,
the emergence of living matter from non-living material is still a mystery, though there
may be hundreds of unproven theories. How the first particle of the chain of life, the
amino acid or its constituents, came into existence is still a question mark.
Hindu scriptures say that living matter came out of the energy of the elements of the
Universe. Taittreya Upanishad explains how from the energy of cosmos arose all other
energies such as space, air, fire, water and earth, finally resulting in plants and humans.
Science has a long way to go before it has an alternative explanation.
After reading the Upanishad, Einstein remarked: Spirituality starts where science ends.
Unlike most other scientists, Einstein understood that there was never a time that the
Universe and Life did not exist.

Renunciation
Renounce what you do not have; there is no need to renounce what you already have.
It is the desire for what one does not have: the dreams, the fantasies and the deep desires,
that lead us into trouble. These then are the first list of baggage that needs to be
discarded.
Buddha said: Desire is the root cause of all sorrow. Stop desiring and you shall break the
vicious cycle of samsara, which is perpetuated only through desire.
Desiring what we do not have generates envy, jealousy, greed, anger, hate and many other
negative feelings against others who we perceive have what we do not have. Our actions
born out of these negative feelings generate sorrow to others and ultimately sorrow in us.
There is no end to desire. There is none amongst us who can truthfully say that once we
achieve what we desire today, we shall remain satisfied. Tomorrow is another day and
brings forth more desires than what we had yesterday. Desires breed desires; desires are
never satiated upon fulfillment.
True liberation and enlightenment can never take place in the presence of continuing
desire. Renounce desire for what you don’t have, and you shall reach enlightenment.
Most people ask me how to renounce worldly life and become a Sadhu. I tell them that
there is no need to renounce anything at all. Keep what you have and focus on doing what
is right.
For most people material life is the way to live. Renouncing material life in search of an
unknown spiritual goal is foolishness. What is needed is to reach the balance between
material life and spiritual life that leads to enlightenment. This is possible and certain.
We should live in the present. Living in the here and now, in space and time, within the
boundaries of our own being guarantees enlightenment.
Two Zen monks came to a river in spate. As they were about to cross, there came a young
maiden who requested their help to cross the turbulent river. One of the monks with no
hesitation lifted her in his arms and carried her across the river. The monks then went
their way to a monastery nearby. After many hours the second monk exclaimed, “I am
disappointed with you. You should not have touched that woman.” Answered the first: ‘I
put that woman down many hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
When you live in the present, you stop carrying the baggage of your past into your future,
which guarantees misery. Stop worrying about becoming a Sadhu; a householder with no
baggage on his spirit is far more likely to attain Truth than a Sadhu who has not still
renounced what he does not have.
There is a beautiful story in Mahabharata. An aspiring sadhu lived across the street from a
prostitute. The woman was for ever chanting the name of Krishna. She had no other
means of support and had to entertain men for her living. The sadhu would look at what
was happening across the street and seethe in anger. They both died on the same day.
Chitragupta consigned the woman to heaven and the sadhu to hell. The sadhu raised the
roof and appealed to Yama. Said Yama, you pretended to meditate and all you did was to
salaciously watch the woman. She on the other hand had her mind and heart fixed on the
lord, even if her body had to do what ever it had to. You both received what your
intentions deserved.
Saffron robes do not mean enlightenment, pure thoughts do.

Quantum Bliss
Bliss is continuously happening within us without gap of time and space. As long as we
associate our bliss with a particular time or a space, we will miss the bliss. We then think
that the gap between sufferings is bliss. In life, we seem to experience happiness only in
gaps between sufferings.
If you associate pleasure with a particular space, say a fantasy home, or with an object
such as a car or with a particular person, you feel happy when you are with these things.
You crave to be around that space, object or person. Possession starts, and possession
always takes revenge by trying to own the object or person. When you try to possess, you
reduce people to matter, energy to matter. Possession always gives rise to hatred and
jealousy because of your dependency on the person or object.
Associating bliss with time also leads to suffering. When you try to bring back the time
that you felt happiness to experience it again, you find somehow that happiness is no
longer the same. The joy is lacking. After a few attempts you feel depressed and sick. You
don’t feel the energy of happiness.
When you understand that happiness does not depend on time and space, you enter the
zone of Quantum Bliss. When you associate happiness with time and space, you stay
within boundaries of suffering.
For example, you have a great desire to eat a sweet. When you eat the sweet, you feel joy.
You associate that feeling of joy with the sweet and you wish to eat more of the sweet. If
you keep eating more and more of it, at one point in time after you feel revulsion not joy;
you cannot eat any more. If your joy was really associated with the sweet, then the joy
should only multiply, is it not? But it doesn’t happen that way. What is it then that gave
you that joy?
What happens is, when you feel that you are enjoying an object, the moment that object is
near you, the number of thoughts in your mind reduces, and a feeling of peace and joy
expresses itself. But you associate this feeling with the object, the sweet! The joy is
actually because of the reduced frequency of your thoughts. When the frequency of
thoughts reduces, you experience bliss, which is independent of any outer world object.
When you experience this for longer periods of time, you have taken the jump into
Quantum Bliss.
Be Blissful!

Quantum Spirituality
An American travels in England in a train, with a British Gentleman and a Lady who has
a dog with her. The dog keeps pestering the American, and the Lady pacifies the dog, no
apologies to the foreigner. Finally the American gets fed up, picks up the dog and throws
it out of the window. Says the other man: You Americans, you are all crazy! You drive on
the wrong side of the road, you use the wrong hand for the fork, now you have thrown the
wrong bitch out of the window!
In life, we continuously keep throwing the wrong bitch out of the window. When we
choose one thing we eliminate something, which is a wrong decision, and we throw the
wrong bitch out of the window.
There is no controversy in Existence. There are no contradictions. We just cannot make

the connection. Humans on the other hand always have a conflict. People ask me can we
come and stay in the ashram; whatever I say they will come up with an argument against
it. If I say stay they will tell me why how they cannot. If I say please don’t, they feel hurt.
We always live in a dilemma.
In Science before the concept of quantum was accepted there was a conflict between
matter and energy. One group said: both energy and matter exist, but in different space
and energy. Another: there is only time gap; yet another: there is only space gap. Post
quantum this conflict disappeared. Matter and energy exist together. There is now a
concept of singularity where the mind can not penetrate, which is beyond matter and
energy.
Once you reach the spiritual zone these controversies disappear. Only when you play with
words intellectually you create conflicts and enter into a dangerous zone.
As long as you feel you are living two different lives you are only playing with words.
Think of normal material life as a horizontal line; think of leading a spiritual life, one of
the present moment, think of it as a vertical line. When you think of choosing between a
material and spiritual life, you are choosing between the horizontal and vertical. Only
when you understand that you can travel both horizontally and vertically, and even
explode in all directions do you understand that there are no contradictions. Till then you
will have the conflict.
Mind enslaves you to make you believe that you can only travel in one way, horizontally
or vertically. That is why you do not grow in many spiritual sadhanas which force you to
choose between the two, material and spiritual. We only wish to try to transform; we
really do not wish to transform; yet would like to proclaim our wish to transform. This is
holiday religion. We go to a discourse, a temple on a holiday; we practice part time
spirituality. It is skin deep. This fills us with hypocrisy and guilt. Even a meditation
becomes a ritual if it is restricted to one part of your life at one time in a given space. In
true spirituality your life becomes meditation.
People come to me with guilt. I give them some ideas. They insist on learning meditation.
Just to console them I give them some meditation technique. After a month if I ask them,
they have one more added guilt feeling, of not doing meditation. Meditation is not a
quantity that is to be added to your life, it is a quality that needs to be built into your life.
Singularity is beyond matter and energy. Similarly Quantum spirituality is beyond

material and spiritual lives. You need to be both in the horizontal and vertical lines
simultaneously. What I wish to give you is a technique; not an empty idea. If you go
beyond mind you explode in all directions, vertically, horizontally and in all directions.
There is no starting point to worldly life; there is no end point to spiritual life.
Enlightenment is not an end; it is a new beginning. An ultimate experience is not the last
experience. Some one asked, how can I retain the bliss of the meditation program? The
moment you wish to retain, you choose to have bliss, it escapes; like water flowing in a
river stays in your open palms but escapes when you close your palms. When you are in
bliss just enjoy bliss. You can never possess nithya ananda.
Perfectionists like to choose. Life is not perfect, only death is. One who does not make
mistakes, or believes he or she makes no mistakes does not respect others. Do not try to
be perfect, do not choose. People ask what they have to renounce to be spiritual. I say
please do not renounce. Do not renounce what you have; renounce what you do not have;
the fantasies that you do not have. When you are with your wife do not allow your
fantasies to come in between. When you have a home, do not allow a fantasy home to
come in between.
Maya; ya ma ithi maya; what is not there, what is not real, what disturbs you, that is
maya, illusion. When you feel someone is more handsome than you, you create a space, a
gap between you and your body. You lose your uniqueness. God is not an engineer, he is
an artist, he is a painter, a sculptor; no one being is like another because we are created by
God. Renounce maya, what you do not have. What ever you live deeply, you are detached
about.
Living in the present moment is the missing link that helps you to traverse the horizontal
and vertical lines at the same time and space. Every moment is a possibility that you can
explode in. In quantum spirituality there is no attachment or detachment. Without
awareness you detach and attach.
We should live within our boundaries; focus on what and where we are. When we are in
one place and one time, we always think about another time and another place. Our body
is never where our mind is. We invite maya into our lives.
Everything is divine, nothing is excluded. If you wish to be enlightened drop the idea of
enlightenment. Idea of spirituality is like the stick that lights the funeral pyre, brought in
to burn the material life; once that is accomplished you need to burn that stick as well,
and move beyond into quantum spirituality.
Monday, March 31, 2008

Words From The Master - 31 March 2008
So, You want to be a Leader
When you live with the attitude that you are responsible for everything, your whole life
will change. When you take up responsibility for everything that happens around you,
you will start expanding.
Expansion is the only growth; contraction is death. The more responsibility you take up,
the more you will expand and grow. You will become a leader. Most of us wait for the
status to descend on us and then take up the responsibility. Be very clear - Only if we take
up the responsibility, the status will come! People who wait for the status will not take up
responsibility even after they get it. They will simply find another reason or excuse, that's
all. An ordinary sweeper in an organization who takes up responsibility and performs his
tasks can inspire an entire organization into becoming more responsible. The person who
passes the buck and relaxes will never progress significantly in life.
Responsibility is Consciousness. The moment you feel responsible for what is happening
around you, that moment the Divine Energy will rush into you! These are all basic secrets
of Life that I am giving you.
As long as you are self-centered, you will be nothing more than a blocked bamboo stick
that serves only to carry the corpse. When you shed your ego and stand up with
responsibility, you will become the hollow bamboo that serves as a flute! Like how the
air that enters the flute leaves it as music, the air that enters you will flow as Energy! A
cognitive shift will happen in you. Your mental setup will change.
When you work with no feelings of responsibility, you will work and feel like a slave.
When you work with responsibility, your capacity will expand and you will flower and
radiate Energy. Your worries and sorrows will dissolve and all unfinished work will get
finished. Umpteen excuses can be given for dodging responsibility, but they will remain
poor excuses.
With responsibility, a new kind of joy will engulf you. You will become a natural leader
and life will become a celebration! There is a beautiful story on Buddha: It is said that
when Buddha goes to beg, he would appear as a King and the kings who gave him alms
would appear as beggars! Seeming like a beggar or a king is not in the property that you
hold but in the state that is within you. When you take up responsibility for the entire
Cosmos, you will expand and look like a leader!
Feeling that you are responsible is the greatest quality you can possess. When you stand
up with a sense of responsibility, a new intelligence will awaken in you!
Sunday, March 30, 2008

Sins and Guilt
We are never punished for our sins; we are punished by them.
People believe that sins are punished after a time, since the wheels of God grind surely
but slowly. They are therefore not overly concerned about immediate repercussions. You
never know: God may forget, He may have other more important things to do, and if He
does remember I can always bribe Him to let me off. Sad to say, many sins attract
immediate punishment; though the punishment may not seem either tangible or
connected.
When we are angry or jealous we are committing a sin against our own nature and our
Being. Our inner state turns awry, our peace is ruined. Even a few minutes of a negative
emotion such as anger poisons our entire system, and we can take days to recover to
normalcy. This is our sin and its punishment.
Guilt is often the punishment we inflict upon ourselves for our sins. Even for petty sins,
we carry our guilt a long time. When we drop the guilt we drop the sin as well. A person
committing what may be socially termed unacceptable with no feeling of guilt is not a
sinner, nor suffers punishment.
People worry constantly about Heaven and Hell and ask me again and again whether they
will go to Hell because of what they did. Heaven and Hell are what we create in our
mind. Worry and guilt lead us into Hell. It is religions that tend to control through fear of
hell in a world that we are yet to reach. All you to fear is the hell in this life as a
consequence of your actions and not hell in another life or after this life.
Confessing to a sin as a ritual without any real sense of regret and feeling cleansed quite
often makes one ready to repeat it with greater fervor. Doing this only enhances the
coffers of religious institutions, does not in any way enhance your spiritual status. To
redress a sin one must cleanse one’s own self internally, truly regret the sin and be aware
not to repeat it.
Two Zen monks were on a long journey to a distant monastery. On the way they came to
a river in spate. As they rolled up their robes and readied themselves to wade through the
floods, a young woman approached them and asked for help to cross the river. The older
of the two monks lifted her in his arms without hesitation and carried her safely across
the river. The monks carried on with their journey and reached the monastery by
nightfall. As they were about to sleep, the younger monk asked the older: How could you
do such a thing? We monks are not allowed to look at a woman, let alone touch and carry
her. You are a sinner.
Responded the older and wiser one calmly: I put her down hours ago. Why are you still
carrying her in your mind? Let her go.
For those of us not as wise, guilt is good in a limited way. Guilt helps us to stay away
from the mistake a second time. We are rarely intelligent enough to learn mistakes to
commit each time, so we just keep repeating old mistakes. Once we learn the lesson from
our past mistake and determine not to repeat it, we should drop the guilt. Worrying
constantly about past mistakes that you have truly regretted only creates problems. There
is no greater sin than refusing to let go of one’s past.
Saturday, March 29, 2008

Don’t be angry, be aware
WATCH someone who gets angry very quickly. The more he gets angry, the more he
seems addicted to being angry. Getting angry does not resolve problems.
Biologists tell us that repeated behavior actually rewires the brain. Neural networks get
established with repeated behavior pattern. What this means is that anger breeds anger.
The emotions not only rewire your brain, but they also rewire your body. In their efforts
to accommodate these repeated and debilitating emotions, the cells lose the capacity to
absorb nutrients. They grow less and they rejuvenate less. These changes affect you and
more importantly affect your progeny as well, as your entire cellular and DNA structure
can be changed by your behavior.
Biology tells us that your emotions are chemicals, and these chemicals are released by the
brain. We control these chemicals. However, over time, these chemicals can change you
and control you.
Watch yourself getting angry the next time. What are you angry at? Are you angry at
someone or are you angry about something? If you say that you are angry at some thing,
at some behavior, watch yourself as someone else repeats that behavior. Do you get
equally angry? Do you allow some people to get away with such behavior, or even humor
such behavior in some people that would make you blow up at another person?
Therefore, are you angry with a person because you have made up your mind to be angry
with that person?
You will find that 90% of the time you are angry at a person and not a behavior pattern or
an issue. If you are angry with an issue you can learn to use that anger as energy and do
something with that energy. If it is behavior, you can learn to laugh at it. However, if it is
a person, you have a deeper problem. You have already made a judgment about that
person and all that you do is to collect evidence to support your judgment. Nothing that
person does can be right for you.
With awareness you can drop these judgments. Awareness makes you realize the truth
that you and another person and every other person are the same at a deep level. If you
are getting angry with someone, you are in fact getting angry with yourself. It is your
negativities that make you see others negatively. It is possible to drop these negativities
via meditation. Don’t get angry, become aware.
Friday, March 28, 2008

Make life your goal, not greed or fear
WE FEEL happy or satisfied when we are running after desires or when we run away
from our fears. So every moment, we are continuously either in greed by running after
our desires or in fear by continuously running away from something. Our happiness in
every moment is measured only by either greed or fear.
But how can you be happy or satisfied when in this moment you are running towards or
away from something? This means we are not actually experiencing the moment. We are
not actually living in the present moment. We are continuously in the web of greed and
fear. We are either living in the past or we are in the future thinking about our list of
desires. We fear if our desires will get fulfilled due to past experiences.
We are never in the present moment. We can enjoy something totally only when we are
completely in it and we can be complete only when we are totally in the present moment,
enjoying what we are doing here and now.
When you are in the current moment, when you are completely in the present moment
with full enthusiasm, you are in a state of bliss. Bliss is the state of joy which has no
reason and which is not affected by the past or future. It is not affected by either our fear
or our greed. It is always there.
Then, the current blissful moment will give birth to future moments of bliss. You enter a
virtuous circle rather than being caught up in the vicious circle of fear and greed that you
are now caught in.
This running towards or away from something is fundamentally because we think that
life has some goal to be achieved.
If you are running behind a goal in life, you will be disappointed at the end of life. Sadly,
you will feel terribly dissatisfied; you will feel a complete void when you look back at
what you have been running for.
But when we see life itself as a goal, we make the path itself as the goal. So every
moment when we are on the path of life, we are achieving the goal. The goal is achieved
every moment of your life.
The self-realised person is active and happy because he is completely in the present
moment, living in reality. The Divine Energy simply blissfully flows through him and he
does his activities with that blissful Energy. He no longer needs to derive energy for his
activities from desire.
Thursday, March 27, 2008

We are not what we think we are!
WE ARE not labels. We are all beings living inside the labels. We are not doctor,
husband, friend, or anything. We are more than that. We are a total of all that.
We are so deeply attached to the labels. We wear labels very proudly. When people don’t
notice and appreciate our labels we feel slighted, neglected, and annoyed. Our labels say
things such as ‘I am a manager’ or that ‘I am a big businessman’ or that ‘I own many
cars.’
When we associate ourselves with these well-known labels, it makes us feel part of the
world. It makes us feel successful. We are no longer alone. We feel pride in the fact that
we are somebody well known.
We are continuously partying, shopping or watching TV. We are constantly busy. Why?
We are afraid to face ourselves. Our chief entertainment is running away from ourselves.
We believe that all this activity is the path to joy. We have always believed that we will be
joyful at some point or other. We think it is only a matter of time. By the time we are
about forty we may get everything we have always wanted.
What we don’t understand is why we wanted all this. This question haunts us because we
continue to be deeply unhappy. This is the ‘depression of success.’
This is a peculiar disease of the rich and successful. The more affluent we are, greater are
the chances of being afflicted with this kind of depression.
The depression of success is the greatest illness in developed western countries. Material
success fails to make people happy. We are restless. We need to keep experimenting in
search of happiness. So, we tend to change or acquire new possessions. We change cars
every year, we change houses every second year, and we change wives every third year.
Still, we stay deeply unhappy.
At some point in the journey we have forgotten that we are not the labels. If we are a
parcel traveling from the US to India, various stamps and identification marks will be
placed on it to route and speed it on its way. The parcel may think that these external
stamps are its true identity. The parcel is wrong. It is not what is outside, but the stuff
inside that makes the parcel what it is.
Dive within. Let go of the labels and seek the inner being. This is the way to bliss.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008

We are part of the universal hologram
WE NEED to learn to be in tune with nature. We need to be in tune with our very
existence.
We can learn to witness events around us. We can begin with where we sit; sit without
resistance; sit and be one with nature. Just say to yourself ‘I will not resist nature. I am
not going to resist the temperature. I am not going to resist existence. Let me relax.’
We immediately question if we can extend this experiment to extreme conditions. We

want to check whether we can apply this in snow and ice. This is our mind. The mind
always likes to think of extremes.
If we do it completely, totally, we can do it. Our problem is that we don’t have perfect
totality, that depth or clarity. If we can fall totally in tune with nature, we can certainly be
comfortable even in extreme conditions. Many human beings simply do that. So can we.
When we think we are different from nature, we are disturbed by nature.
There is another fear. Air is full of life. There are all kinds of bacteria and viruses living
there. At any moment, a single virus or bacteria can cause disease in us. When we’re
entirely in tune with nature, the viruses or bacteria that enter inside can cause no harm.
They simply leave us alone. We will not be disturbed.
Our troubles start the moment we start thinking that we’re an individual body that has a
separate existence. Then our entire body becomes an enemy.
What we fail to see is that we are a part and everything else is the whole. When we fall in
tune with the whole, the whole becomes our face. The moment we start thinking,
discriminating or resisting the whole, the whole seems to become an enemy. Let us be
very clear. The whole, the universe, isn’t here to kill us or destroy us.
The whole, the universe, is a hologram of which we’re a part. It is like a giant puzzle.
Every piece is important for a puzzle. Every single part of the hologram reflects the
entirety of that hologram. Each one of us reflects that totality. This is the totality of the
whole, the entirety of which is the universe.
We should think we’re a part of the whole. We should relate ourselves with nature.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Stop Postponing, Start Living
Once, there was a man who had just bought a new car after learning a bit of driving. He
sat in his new car and got it started but soon, lost control of the car and crashed into a
tree. A friend, who came to his rescue, asked him in surprise, ‘Don’t you know how to
drive?’
The man replied exasperatedly, ‘What do you mean by asking whether I know how to
drive? Of course I know how to drive; I know how to start and move it; only I don’t
know how to stop it!’
We are in a very similar state where our mind drives us instead of us being in control of
it. The mind is just the collection of all your thoughts. So, if you don’t have clarity in
your thoughts, you are in a confused state of mind.
Just try this experiment: sit down for five minutes, write down all the thoughts as they
come to your mind, honestly, without editing. Then, read what you have written and you
will realize that we are running a mental asylum inside our heads! One moment, you
would be thinking about your workplace, in the next, for no reason, about the house and
then, about your kids. There is no logic in the way our mind moves from one thought to
another.
Bring your mind to the present moment, to live life from moment to moment. Then, life
will become joy, bliss, ecstasy as you will live your life more intensely. If you are eating,
eat it with totality. Whatever you do, do it totally, with full consciousness and awareness.
Start enjoying intensely what you have in life. This will give you an immensely deep
satisfaction and reveal a whole new dimension of life. There is no need to renounce
anything that you have. Just renounce what you don’t have! That which is not there, but
which troubles you as if it is there, is what is maya.
As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, do your duty but don’t crave the result. This does
not mean that you work without expecting your salary. Let the job itself become the
enjoyment. When you enjoy the path, even if you fail to get the desired result, you will
feel deeply satisfied. If you do not enjoy the path, even if you succeed, you will still feel
dissatisfied. You can never enjoy only the goal unless you choose to enjoy the path first.
Tomorrow is also going to come to you as today. You can either enjoy in this moment or
never! It is your choice.

What you express gets expressed in others!
YOUR emotions are very powerful. They change you and influence other people’s
behavior towards you. Whenever some emotions arise in your system, it is like rain. The
emotion is poured; like rain, it happens inside your system, in your Being. It floods you.
Scientists support this view.
These emotions are generated in your brain as chemicals, neuropeptides. So, an emotion
is nothing but a chemical ultimately. There are particular cells which catch those
emotions. For example, if you think about anger, there are particular cells which catch
that anger emotion. Not only do they just catch and stay, they will start reproducing. This
cell will create at least four or five more cells that can receive this emotion.
These cells that catch the anger emotion start reproducing and each cell creates five or six
more cells. Next time, when the anger shower happens, when the anger rain happens, all
these cells will also catch the same emotion. They become the size of the original cells.
They come to this same original size. Now, these cells also start reproducing. The third
time, when the shower happens, all these cells grasp and store the emotion.
That is why, every time when you are showered with the same emotion, it becomes
stronger. You get addicted to that emotion; you are unable to control that emotion.
First time, if anger is showered on you, if you are affected for 10 minutes, then the next
time, it will surely become 20 minutes. Third time, it will naturally become half an hour.
That is how the emotion becomes stronger and stronger.
In your being, again and again, when you cooperate with these negative emotions, you
create the same type of mood, the same type of that lifestyle in you.
One more thing: not only will this emotion get recorded into you, the big problem is that
you will express the same thing on others. What you have is what gets reproduced in
others.
If you are working to strengthen your greed, you will be caught by the emotion of greed
and you will radiate that emotion of greed. You will throw that emotion of greed on
others. You will torture others also with that same emotion.
So, if you learn to generate calmness and radiate calmness, you will generate calmness
around you. Over time, calmness will be built into you and around you. You will be
walking bliss!
Please express what you wish others to express towards you!

What do you do when you do?
DO YOU know that when you sleep, you are actually not sleeping? You will not know
how to sleep well until you learn to live in the present.
Psychologists say that a person living in western countries never sleeps for more than 14
minutes at a stretch — more often it is less. After 14 minutes he comes back to the dream
state or wakeful consciousness or just floats in the dream level. Again he goes back to
sleep for a maximum of 14 minutes. Then he comes back to the dream level. Again he
goes back to sleep. They call this the rapid eye movement or REM sleep pattern.
You never sleep totally even when you sleep. There are levels of mind in which you will
never have dreams. You never need to have any dreams. You can directly enter into deep
sleep, if you know how to live in the now, the present moment.
If you know how to live in now, you will know the art of eating, the art of sleeping, and
the art of doing everything. That is the art of living.
Can you try to remember one incident from your day in complete detail? You are more
dead than alive even when you are awake. You almost live like a man in half sleep. You
do things without fully knowing what you do. You do recall brushing your teeth; but do
you remember the sensation of cold water in your mouth? Do you remember the feel of
the taste of the toothpaste in your mouth or the pressure of your toothbrush upon your
gums? And how did you feel after brushing? Or how was the water being poured on your
body in the shower? How did the whole thing happen? What is happening after you have
eaten your food?
Look at your life; look at your face; you are all almost bored. Somehow you are pulling
along. Life is just a drag. Why? Because, all you do, all that you know to do for
everything is how to postpone. Your mind never sits with your being. Your mind never
lives in the same moment that you are in. You are always in the space of tomorrow or in
the space of yesterday. It is never in the space of today, now, the present.
Live in the present. This is the secret art of living.

When love turns to violence
WHAT is lust? The truth is that we don’t know. Humans know only how to reproduce.
We do not know what lust is.
When animals mate they experience pure lust. They enjoy themselves. But humans are
different. Our lust is born from imagination. It’s built on fantasies from movies and
books. It is borrowed from others ideas. It is not natural for us.
Our struggles with lust begin from early childhood. From a young age onwards we begin
to form ideas about how our ‘would be’ partner ‘should be’. This idea about ideal partner
contaminates every relationship we have.
We begin to compare and contrast a real partner sitting next to us with the person who
lives in our imagination. When we do this, the real partner becomes a poor substitute for
the person in our mind. The partner, who lives in our cerebral layer, leaves us with a
feeling of being cheated in the present.
Men feel they are being deprived. Women feel exploited, used, disrespected. Men operate
from their Muladhara, root chakra, contaminated with lust and greed. Women receive the
energy through their Swadishthana, spleen chakra with fear and insecurity.
Our lust and sex are contaminated with the dirt of our imagination. We can only mentally
relate to another. Even when our partners are sitting next to us, we take the permission of
the mental picture to live.
The Hindu scripture Shiva Sutra has a profound way of illustrating this. A verse says: If
you are a couple in bed, there are four of you in bed together. Each of you is accompanied
by the other’s fantasy of yourself; the man sees the woman and his fantasy about her; the
woman sees her mate and her fantasy about him.
Fantasy, imagination, mental picture, these are the words we use to describe lust. The lust
isn’t pure. It is tainted by our imagination; it is built on our fantasies and thrives on the
hope of finding that person to match the one in mind.
Likewise, our love is tainted by this imagination. We love someone as long as that person
does what we say and obeys us. A mother says: I loved my daughter deeply until she
married someone, who was not my choice.
We don’t know love. Our love is a desire to possess. What we think as love is actually
violence. Only when you let go the need to control and possess can you really love.

There are no Miracles in Life
At one time or another we all experience the phenomenon of precognition. We feel that
some one is about to call us, and sure enough that person calls.
You are watching TV and suddenly you feel that the character you’re watching is about to
say something, and sure enough she obliges. You are about to sit down for dinner, the
door bell chimes, and you know who is at the door; sure enough, it’s the old school mate
you haven’t seen in years.
I find that in my discourses often over 40% of the audience responds positively when I
ask if they had experienced a similar phenomenon at some point in their lives. When this
happens, most of the time we brush it off saying that it’s a coincidence. When to some
this happens repetitively we attach the tag of a ‘gifted’ person, similar to those who see
auras and sense the vibrational energy of people and places.
When the magnitude of the experience is far greater we no longer term it a coincidence.
Someone predicts disasters rightly time and again, and forecasts deaths. Others heal
people who had been given up as lost cases by doctors. Some produce substances out of
thin air. We then call them miracles.
What we see as coincidences or miracles, depending on the degree of unexpectedness of

the incident, are those where we do not see the causal linkage between these incidents
and what we understand to be scientific laws. Anything that is not supported by what is
termed as ‘science’ is either barbaric or a miracle.
There are no miracles in life. It is just that we do not yet understand the laws that govern
occurrence of such incidents which seem to defy ‘scientific’ laws. Once we understand
that this universe supports laws that go beyond the ‘scientific’ laws that have been so far
discovered by humans, we start understanding the cause and effect linkages behind many
of these inexplicable happenings and start appreciating the mysteries of our Universe.
Astrophysicists talk now about the parallel universe. They have discovered that each time
a star system dies as a black hole another star system is born in a big bang somewhere
else in the universe. Every action produces a reaction.
Chaos Theory now says that action and reaction do not need to be proportionate. There is
no linearity in nature. A butterfly fluttering its wings in China causes a tornado in
Mexico! This is science, not imagination.
Matter and energy were totally different entities till Einstein established their linkage.
Even after Einstein, it was either matter or energy, never both in the same time and space.
It is only recently that the principle of ‘singularity’ that allows matter and energy to exist
simultaneously in a common time and space framework has been understood.
‘Singularity’ is the common universal platform the Universal Consciousness that we call
Brahman.
Making contact with Brahman is not impossible, once you know how. With thoughts
crowding our mind, all that we normally do is to flit from one zone to another, from
regrets to speculations, with no time to ground ourselves in the present. However, once
we allow ourselves to settle in the here and now, in the present, thoughts gradually
disappear. When thoughts disappear there is an expansion of our ability to expand in time
and space, which allows us to traverse past, present and future simultaneously.
Once we are in the present, miracles become common place, and we do know that they
are no longer miracles but a natural flow of the universe.

Surrender
A bank manager used to take all the cash to his home everyday and bring it back with
him the next day morning. He did this for a month and could not do it any more. He
found himself trembling while driving back home and was not able to sleep at home with
the money in his custody. He finally wrote a letter to his boss asking to be relieved of the
job. His boss told him that even if the money was lost, he would not be blamed and that
he could continue with his job. The manager slept peacefully from that day onwards.
Although he is doing the same job, the fear is not there any more. Why? Because
responsibility has shifted to a higher authority, that’s all. This is what Surrender is. Do
your duty, leaving the responsibility to Existence.
You need not surrender to God or to any Guru. There is a Life Force conducting this
world. It is this Life Force that is causing the breath that goes into you to come out, and
the food that you eat to digest. Simply surrender to this Life Force. The work that you do
in your lifetime for your survival is lesser than the work required to convert a handful of
food into blood inside your body. A research was once conducted to simulate the
conversion of ‘one piece of bread into blood’. They found that the industry for it
extended to 3 kilometers! This is the kind of mechanism inside you! Do you think that the
Life Force that sustains this mechanism cannot sustain our lives? It very well can. Only
we don’t have faith.
A seed has to surrender to the soil to blossom as a tree. It has to have faith in the soil and
allow itself to rupture in order to blossom as a tree. In the same way, we have to place our
faith in Existence and surrender so that a new life, a life of Eternal Bliss can blossom.
How do you do it? Every time you feel heavy in the heart or mind, just tell yourself that
the Life Force that runs the world will take care of you also and move on, that’s enough.
When you do this, you will see that all your depression and worries disappear and
creativity blossoms in you. A deep peace pervades your Being. You begin to live in the
moment.
Surrender is your shortcut to God! It is the ultimate technique to merge with Existence.
Be Blissful!

To Love is to be non violent
Patanjali in his Yoga sutras has laid out eight fold path for enlightenment. The first step is
Yama: loosely translated as discipline. This means tuning yourself to the ultimate; it is not
a set of dos and dont's. It is a set of instructions to tune yourself to your Self. Within this
Yama the first step is Ahimsa.
Ahimsa means non-violence with understanding; Ahimsa is not a moral condition but a
technique.
If you are established in non-violence, even wild animals, when they face you, will turn
peaceful. You will radiate love and compassion. Patanjali says: If a man is established in
non violence, in his presence, enemies and animals will drop their animosity and radiate
love.
Sankara, the great enlightened master, walked all over India on foot, village to village,
begged door to door for food, and lived with the common man, to update himself with
what was happening around him. This was required of him as a teacher, as a master. As
he went he learnt from various masters, universities, and temples which are spiritual
universities. He wanted to create his own University to spread his message of advaita
(non-dualism), where the energy of love will speak. In a forest on a full moon night as it
drizzled he saw a frog about to hatch its baby and a cobra spreading its hood to protect
the frog from the rain; frogs and cobras are born as natural enemies; when Sankara saw
this he decided here’s where I should have my University where animals lose their
enmity, and pure oneness and love starts happening. Once you experience this love you
will never be violent; non-violence, ahimsa, will happen to you.
When we are established in love nothing touches us. We do not need to defend ourselves
against anything. Defending is what creates the thought of offending. All countries say
that they have armies only to defend themselves. Who then is offending? The more you
try to defend you enter into offense. Violence starts. Violence starts with defense. This is
what Jesus meant when he said to turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. What he
said is not impractical. This can be practiced. What have we achieved by protecting
ourselves, except suffering? On the other hand, if you radiate love, you will be a God on
planet Earth. Can you defend yourself against death? By defending yourself you may add
some years to your life; by trusting, by loving you will add life to your years. What
would you like to do, add years to your life or add life to your years?

Cosmic Consciousness Is Order In Chaos
The Universe, the macrocosm, is in apparent chaos and the individual body, the
microcosm, is in apparent order. Energy in each atom is chaotic. In that chaos there is
order. Chaos with order is Cosmic Intelligence. The stars and planets move in order, with
no apparent regulatory authority. Nature is not just matter and power; it is also
Intelligence.
Believing that the Universe is just matter is what causes conflict. If we believe that the
universe is Intelligent Energy, that it reponds to us, then peace prevails. There are those
who are spiritual who believe in innate intelligence and those who live to control others,
believing themselves to be more intelligent than nature.
Cosmic energy responds to us. In Messages from Water, Masaru Emoto describes his
experiments with ordinary water. He bottled water in different containers and labelled
them: love, hate, greed, compassion and terror. To each bottle of water he spoke everyday
for 10 minutes in line with its label; he projected his thoughts with awareness on them. To
water labelled love he spoke on love with love; to the one labelled terror he spoke on
terror with terror.
At the end of a month he froze the water in these bottles separately and studied the frozen
crystals of each under a microscope. The crystals of water labelled love shone brilliantly
like diamonds; those labelled terror seemed misshapen, and fearsome. Water responded to
Emoto's thoughts and words. Water constitutes more than 80% of our body system. You
can imagine the power of words, our own and those of others upon our body system. The
rest of the universal energy responds simiarly to us.
The universe responds to the state of your being. State of being brings you status; not the
other way around. Status without a positive state of mind only brings you grief and
suffering.
For most of us God is a dustbin. Whatever we do well we take credit for it. Anything that
goes wrong we blame God for it. God is great if He answers our prayers. Please
remember God is even greater when He does not make your prayers come true; because
only He knows how dangerous your prayers are to you.
As part of this universe we are also part of its potential, chaos and order. When we try to
be in control of ourselves and others, when we try to be perfect, we violate this cosmic
order. Perfectionaism is a disease; it can lead to insanity. Orderly people inflate their ego
and suffer.
We try to maintain order because we believe we have boundaries. Let go your

boundaries, your need for order will disappear; joy will appear. When you realise the
cosmic consciousness within yourself, you will discover the order that is inherent in you,
without doing yourself harm. You will accept yourself as you are and others as they are.
When you experience the order in cosmic chaos, you experience bliss; when you realise
the chaos within you as order, you exude compassion; that compassion then leads you to
enlightenment. Be in nithya ananda (eternal bliss).

When a Shoe is not a Shoe!
Nirvana means extinction, extinction of vasanas and karmas. Only when vasanas and
karmas die will you start living. As long as they are alive in you they live through you,
and never let you enjoy life.
Vasana is the hangover of desires or desires not fully lived; samskaras are desires that are
lived but those which leave a thread for continued enjoyment of those desires. Karma is
fulfillment. Nirvana also means moksha, liberation. When all vasanas, samskaras and
karmas are finished you reach liberation through their extinction. You see a new kind of
space in you, new kind of understanding in you, new kind of living in you.
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 can not do without it. You can get
addicted to food, TV, newspaper, gossiping. When you are addicted, food eats you,
cigarettes smoke you, and liquor drinks you. When you do not have the freedom you are
used.
You are in a mall and see a shoe. The thought, the vasana takes hold of you to acquire it.
You move on. After a week or later you see the shoe again. This time the feeling is
stronger. Samskara has logic. It tells you that if you get the shoe you can jog and you will
be healthy and so on. Vasana is any seed that falls on ground. Samskara connects the
vasana to you with logic and makes it grow. If you are spiritually inclined the samskara
will tell you that with healthy jogging you can meditate better. Vasana is blown through
samskara into an imprint. Then you buy the shoe. This is karma, the full blown tree that
arises from the seed of vasana. After two weeks the shoe is stored in the cupboard never
to be used again. The cycle then repeats.
In the outside world what you thought you would achieve you do not achieve; you do not
enjoy. In the inner world you create room for more vasanas, samskaras and karmas. You
have created the habit. While losing the capacity to enjoy you have created the habit to
desire more. More you have, less your sensitivity to enjoy. When you have too many
things you cannot enjoy these acquisitions. One who has ten clocks will never keep time.
Your energies are spent in vasanas, samskaras, and karmas instead of in enjoyment. You
have no energy left to enjoy. You take things for granted. You lose the sensitivity to enjoy.

What’s the big hurry?
A young woman confidently smiles at us from the billboard. Her daily routine is written
beside her smiling visage. Every hour of her day is filled from the time she wakes up at
six till she goes to bed at eleven. At eleven she takes a pill to take care of her headache
before she goes to bed so that she can get up fresh the next morning. It’s an ad for a
headache pill and that’s why she is smiling.
It’s weird and yet it has become normal. Whatever moves faster is better. Communication
is @ speed of light. The world is a global village. Electronic mails have to be responded
to within the hour. We all are always in a tearing hurry. Doing what?
Where are we all running to? Rather, what are we all running from in such a great hurry?
We are driven by greed and fear. Greed tells us that there is no time to lose. Fear tells us
that we are going to lose. So we hurry not knowing what we are going to lose, not
knowing what its value is.
We cram more hours into a day, more years into a life time. We multitask and multilive.
We try to enjoy cerebrally without a trace of joy.
A young man came to see me. He said, Swamiji, I have everything sorted out. I am
building a house with a 25 year loan. By that time my daughter (a two year old holding
his hand) will be ready for marriage. My son (an infant that his wife is carrying) will be
in a good job. The house would be very valuable and we can get a lot of money by selling
it. We will invest most of it and settle down with you at the Ashram.
He had finished off 25 years of his life in 10 minutes. He feels that his calling is spiritual.
Is mortgaging the present for the future spiritual?
This constant running is a reflection of our inner restlessness. We then feel we have
missed the bus or the train or the plane. We certainly feel we have missed out on life. Has
the running been worth it?
There is good reason to plan for tomorrow, it’s important. However, let’s not forget to live
today! We need to learn to do whatever we do with total focus, with enjoyment, and live
that moment fully.
Lao Tzu calls this mindfulness Wei-wu-Wei, action with no action. It is to enter into each
activity totally, playfully, spontaneously, in such a way that work is play and effort is fun.
It is the way a child tackles her work enjoying each moment, not worried about how soon
it is to be finished, blowing bubbles if she is washing dishes. An adult mind can never do
this. There is rarely enjoyment in what we do, just the attitude of getting it over with,
even if it is doing something pleasurable. We are driven.
We keep running because we are afraid to stop; afraid to stop and reflect on what we are
doing and why. To be silent can be terrifying as it makes one vulnerable to oneself.
People are afraid to meditate because of this fear to be silent. In Zen, meditation is about
just sitting still and doing nothing, but consciously. Stopping the body and mind is
healing the body and mind.
Next time you are hurrying through something ask your nearest one to shout out STOP!
This will startle you into awareness and who knows, perhaps into enlightenment!
Series: Words From The Master When worship becomes a chore!
IF OUR heart is not fully engaged in an undertaking, it immediately becomes a chore.

Even worship becomes a chore when our heart isn’t in it. When we feel involved, all hard
work becomes a joyful worship.
When our heart isn’t engaged in a task, we are distracted. Even as we pluck flowers, or
prepare offerings for our favorite deity, our thoughts stray on something else, or someone
else. We might be thinking about our office work or other events in our life. We fear that
we will invite the wrath of God by not praying.
Many in India chant the 1,000 names of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi everyday. They
are proud of the practice. They think they are doing a great job. They are proud that they
don’t eat a morsel until they finish their prayers.
But, the truth of our chanting is different. From the moment we begin to chant or soon
after we begin to chant, we are anxious to see the verse number. We are desperate to
know how much more we have to chant. We want to keep ourselves happy by seeing how
close we are to the end. Sometimes, we want to follow the verses to chase boredom away.
We feel tired. Our mind has no rest, even when we worship. Chanting becomes another
chore for us.
This is true even when we perform daily rituals. We perform the rituals regularly,
automatically, thinking of something else all the time. We fear that our greedy desires will
remain unfulfilled without these rituals. We simply can’t focus on chanting, prayer or the
spirit of worship. We have no awareness of what we are doing. We do it like automated
robots.
When enlightened masters pray or chant they do it for an entirely different reason. They
don’t make anything, even the seemingly insignificant task like plucking flowers, a ritual.
They neither chant nor pray out of fear or greed. Worship isn’t another ritual for them.
The only reason they do anything is because they want to. They do it because they have a
deep urge to do it.
They do it from the depth of their heart. They express their love through worship. Their
love, during worship, exudes out of them, from the very depths of their heart. An
enlightened master is in love and in tune with nature. An enlightened master is in tune
with God.
For such people, work and worship merge into one.

You too can get enlightened!
WE ALL live at three levels. At the first level, we live in our head. We live using our
intellect and logic. The second level is our heart. When we live with our heart, we use our
emotions. In the third level we live at the core of our very being. We live in our identity.
When our intellect is heightened, when it ripens, it shines forth as common sense or
intelligence. Although called common sense, it is a rare treasure, an uncommon thing on
this planet Earth.
Emotions can ripen. Deep emotions ripen into faith. When our being ripens it leads to
enlightenment.
What is enlightenment? People have several strange notions about this word and concept.
Let me explain it in simple words.
Enlightenment is simply the experience of our inner energy. Enlightenment is related to

the understanding and experience of our inner energy. It is not based on our physical
activities, as we presume.
This concept although simple is not easy for people to understand or follow. Many people
misunderstand this concept. Be clear: enlightenment is our individual experience. It is our
experience of the inner energy.
There is no one who is barred for any reason, an alcoholic, man or woman, this caste or
that caste, a criminal, each one is equally eligible for enlightenment as any one else is. A
man has no edge over a woman. In fact, a woman lives in a higher energy plane than a
man.
A person who claims to have led a pure and chaste life may not get enlightened at all. He
has no edge over another who may be considered a sinner by religion and society. They
both have the same chance of achieving enlightenment. Anyone can attain this status.
If you ask me, I will say that neither our activities nor actions are related to
enlightenment. Enlightenment is within the reach of one and all. Everyone is eligible for
enlightenment.
Many people may take this as a licence to do whatever they want to do. They can create
even bigger problems in the world. Masters realise the potential problems this assertion
can cause to the uninitiated public. That is why they don't speak about it, freely and
generally in public.
Let us all work towards our enlightenment. Everyone can reach it, everyone is eligible
and everyone is entitled to it. Nothing we do can stop us from reaching that state.

You are one with God
OUR minds aren't individually separated entities of the universe. They're all one. They're
the same. Our minds are interlinked and directly affect each other. This is collective
consciousness.
If we catch a cold from someone, we may suffer physically for a few days and we may
eventually get over it. But when we catch thoughts from people, we suffer mentally
forever. Not just once, but forever. Similarly, our thoughts affect people around us. Our
thoughts affect not only those touched by it, but every living thing on our planet. This
connection doesn't end at the mental level. A deeper connection exists at the deeper levels
of consciousness. We can perceive these as energy layers of our body. There are seven
energy layers: physical, pranic, mental, subtle, causal, cosmic, and nirvanic.
We all seem different entities, with many differences, at the physical level. We, God and
master are physically removed from each other at this level. There is a great deal of
distance at the physical level. When we love someone intimately at physical level, his or
her love and suffering affects us. We don't want to suffer but we cannot escape from it.
We suffer again and again, whether it's a physical pain or mental suffering or spiritual
bondage. It comes and goes out of your being.
We suffer because we aren't aware that we're a part of the collective consciousness. Until
we become aware and realise that we are a part of collective consciousness, we think that
we've an individual identity, a separate ego. In the deeper levels, we don't have an
individual entity; we are a part of collective consciousness.
Let us dive a little deeper, move from the physical level and enter into the next level, the
pranic level. The distance is somewhat reduced. Travel farther down, dive deeper to the
subtle level the distance between us and master get further reduced. This in turn reduces
the distance between us, God and master. The distance between God, master, and us
constantly shrinks as we enter into deeper energy layers.
Our journey ends at the nirvanic level where there is no distance between God, master,
and us. We are all one. We reach the centre of the universal energy.
Yes, it is very difficult for the intellect to believe or accept it. Your mind will resist it.
But, this is the truth. You are God and you become aware of it as you ascend the energy
layers.

When we're aware, our energy flows!
TWO years after her marriage, one woman went to a lawyer and told him: "I want a
divorce; please work on it." Lawyer: "Divorce? You must have some reason for it."
The woman replied: "Oh! Reason! What sort of reason?"
Lawyer: "For instance, he doesn't give you enough money." The woman said: "Money? I
give him money."
Lawyer: "Perhaps he abuses you continuously and tortures you."
Woman: "Beating me! No, I am the one who beats him."
Lawyer: "What about the fidelity? What about being truthful? Is he truthful to you in
love?"
Lady: "In love? Yes. Now we have got him. This is the right reason. He is not the father
of our third child!"
When we try to give reasons, when we try our best to dig up reasons, we end up in with
this type of logic and fault-finding.
When we do not live the reality of life, we live with the lies. Our mind will travel one
way; we will be going in another way. If we don't live truthfully, we create a new energy
field around us called pain body.
In real life we are so busy trying to live in the past or live in the future. We are not
available in the present to our bodies. We are not in our system. When you are not
present, the energy flow inside our system can't happen totally and properly.
Blood flow has nothing to do with energy flow. Energy flow is far deeper. It is like this: if
we are present, the energy flow will be present. If our presence is not there, then the
energy flow will not be there. If the energy flow is perfect, our intelligence will be
perfect. We will be spontaneous. We will have the ability to respond spontaneously. The
energy flow creates a tremendous awareness on spontaneity.
Whenever we live outside our body continuously, some portion of our body does not get
enough attention. So it just begs us saying I am not attended. Please attend to me. That
begging is created in the form of pain. When you give your attention you will see that the
pain simply disappears. We suffer from all kinds of pain, physical, emotional, and
psychological due to inattentiveness.
Learn to create and respond to your awareness. Discover how to build your attention, and
create your presence on the place where you have pain. Awareness can transform
everything.

What Do Dreams Mean?
Once a Zen master woke up from bed and started weeping. Zen masters are
unpredictable. Their ways of teaching are mysterious, untraditional. One disciple asked
the master: Why are you weeping?
Master said: Last night I dreamt that I was a butterfly and flying in the garden.
Disciple asked: It was just a dream, why are you crying?
Master said: I do not know whether I dreamt that I became a butterfly or whether the
butterfly is dreaming now that it is a master with so many disciples.
Both thoughts were transient, not permanent. But do we understand? We always think
that whatever we are is permanent. We try to possess it, identify with it.
We have 4 states: waking, dreaming, deep sleep and one more. There are two states of
thoughts and two states of consciousness, overlapping. In waking state we are with
thoughts and I consciousness. In deep sleep we have neither thoughts nor I
consciousness. In the dream state, we have only thoughts but no I consciousness. Once
we think of I, we come out of the dream. There is a fourth state where there are no
thoughts but we know who we are. This state is called turiya, and is unknown to Western
psychology.
Every student of spirituality needs to understand these states. These are different layers of
our Being. In the waking state you use the physical body. In dream state you see your
subtle body. The third body is karana sarira that is used in deep sleep. It is conscious,
sub conscious and unconscious states in these three states. Whatever is unfulfilled in
conscious state, anything you suppress is brought back in your dream or sub conscious
state. If you fast while waking, you dream of feasting at night. If you are afraid of snakes,
and suppress thoughts of them in the conscious state, you will dream of snakes. If your
boss mistreats you and you can not deal with him consciously you will seek revenge in
your dreams. Your suppressed anger, hidden fears, violence or sexual desires will come
out in dreams.
In the unconscious deep sleep or karana sarira state your mind is processing all
information you have collected. If you see hundred things you look at only two things,
you observe and take in only two things consciously. The rest goes into your unconscious
and subconscious states and come back to you in your dreams.

Don’t tell your body to shut up
A person practicing yoga tells me that books tell him that he must experience pain before
he progresses; he must have injuries before he can be adept.
We are taught from childhood that we are heroes if we ignore our body; if we push it
beyond its limits. We are taught to tell our bodies to shut up if they complain. Ignore pain
if you want it to go away we are told.
If you wish for pain to go away, focus on the pain. Next time you suffer from pain instead
of wishing it away focus on it. When you pay attention to the pain, the body part that has
the pain, it leaves you.
Descartes said: I think, therefore I am. Vedanta says: When you stop thinking, You ARE.
Descartes could not reconcile the mind body connection. There is no mind and no body;
it is mindbody; it is one.
Scientists now know that intelligence resides at the cellular level; not in our brains. Every
single cell of our body is gifted with intelligence to carry out its own functions and to
coordinate with the functions of related cells. DNA, carrier of our genetic code, is
embedded with our memories and emotions, imprinting not merely physical but mental,
emotional and psychic characteristics as well. As our DNA is, so is our perception of the
world!
This is the miracle of body intelligence.
Our mind and body interact very closely and influence each other in amazing ways. Over
85% of our physical ailments are influenced by the mind and are psychosomatic. The
mind has the power to both cause and cure diseases.
In a path breaking experiment in Japan on allergies it was found that patients reacted even
when plants to which they had no allergies were placed on their skin and they were told
that these were the allergy causing substances. Even more amazingly, when the allergy
causing plant leaves were placed on their skin and they were given the name of a non
allergy causing plant, they had no allergic reaction.
Make peace with your body. Body and mind are not separate entities. They are fully
integrated. Become aware of you’re your body and you can then sense what the body
needs, even before you become consciously aware of the need. Your body tells you what
it needs and you then have the intelligence to listen to it.
Drop the idea of controlling your body. Do not tie yourself up in knots causing yourself
pain when your body cries out to you to stop torturing it. Trust in your body wisdom.
Only through meditation you will learn to understand your body, with clarity and
compassion. You would then be able to find a way to go beyond it.

When you are aware, you need no script!
LET us say your friend left a message for you. He wants you to call him back
immediately. Won't the suspense kill you? Slow down. Watch your mind. Before you pick
up the phone to return the call, how many thoughts come into your mind? How many
fears does it rise? How many expectations does your mind build up?
If you watch your mind with awareness, you will notice a rush of thoughts, events, and
imaginations in your mind. Do you want to know why this happens?
The truth is, no matter what the situation is, you create your own script. Your mind
projects only what you want to hear or see. You want to be projected only how your mind
wants to be projected. You dare not present yourself as you really are.
The rush of thoughts, the reactions are all creating a script written by your mind. The
mind continuously creates scripts, and when you are there in the play, you don't
remember the script. Sometimes your mind changes the script instantly.
Even before going to the friend's house, you have a complete mental rehearsal about what
should happen. Your mind prepares you for what you should speak and if she asks
something, how you should reply. You decide how to evade questions, or answer them
cleverly or smartly. This is your friend your mind is planning about.
If you are scared about speaking to your friend, then imagine how much your mind will
spin when you have to talk to your boss, manager, or colleagues.
The truth is that you are afraid to face your friend. You fear to express truth because it
keeps you out in the open. You are afraid that every time you express truth, you are
expressing yourself. By speaking the truth you are exposing your true nature, your core,
your being, and your true self.
When you speak lies, you have a big problem in your hands. Because everything has to
be carefully woven into the web of lies and a single truth can disrupt all your lies. You
need to remember the whole thing that you have said so far or plan to utter.
So if you live with the truth there will be no need for any more activity of the mind.
There will be no need for any more hide and seek games. You will be relaxed. You can be
total. You don't need a script anymore.
________________________
This article was first published in the Economic Times, an Indian Newspaper.

Towards Meditative
Living
Q. Isn’t meditation also a doing?
A. In the beginning, yes. Even to sit silently is to do something. Even to watch your
breath is to do something. In fact, in the beginning, meditation may seem more like a
doing than anything else – because you are doing something that is not natural to you.
Even when you are doing something perfectly natural – like just sitting, it can seem like
an effort when it is formally imposed upon you.
Do you know, there is a Zen meditation technique called just sitting? But even there,
participants struggle to achieve!
Yes, at the start, it is definitely going to be an effort. But in a deeper sense, meditation is
not a doing – because when you do it the right way, when you really succeed in
meditating, all effort disappears.
When you become totally relaxed, when you stop trying to achieve results, when you
simply enjoy the meditation, you will gradually stop even being aware that you are
meditating.
Then it will no longer be a doing!
______________________
This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to
the science and art of meditation

Towards Meditative Living
How to enjoy meditation
Make time
Every day, make sure you keep aside at least half an hour for meditation. Even if you
plan on practising anytime-anywhere meditations, always include a half-hour of sit-down
meditation.
In the beginning, you need to cultivate discipline in your meditation. Also, you need to
practise consciously, in an environment set aside for the practice of meditation.
During this time, ensure that you are undisturbed. Don’t accept any engagements. Let
your family and friends know that during this time, it is important for you to be alone. It
is preferable to keep the timings the same every day. The body and mind get accustomed
to routines very fast. If you practise at the same time every day, you will find that you can
slip into the meditative state more easily at that
particular time.
Make space
Choose a clean, uncluttered, silent space for meditation. If you can, set aside a room in
your home as the Meditation Room. If you already have a prayer-room in your home, that
would be the ideal place. A space that has already been used for worship or meditation
will have a high energy level, which will help you meditate better. It is better to meditate
in the same place everyday. If the space is indoors, ensure
that there is sufficient sunlight and plenty of ventilation. If you are meditating outdoors,
say in the garden, make sure that it is a private space where you won’t be disturbed by
‘garden noises’.
Be comfortable
Unless you are physically comfortable, there is no way you can meditate! Meditation
requires you to forget the body, and if the body is putting you in pain, how are you going
to forget it and move beyond?
Many techniques require you to squat on the floor. If you are not used to this, use a chair
– but keep trying. Use a cushion as a seat if you want. For lie-down techniques, don’t lie
on the bare floor. Use a carpet or a straw mat.
Ensure that some time has passed since your last meal - at least two hours.
Initially, you may feel sleepy during meditation. This is the tamas (lethargy) that is
weighing down your system. Don’t try to fight the sleep – ultimately, you will be able to
neither sleep nor meditate! And don’t feel guilty about feeling sleepy. If you are sleepy,
just go to sleep. When you finish sleeping,
you can get up and meditate, that’s all!
(to be continued.)
______________________

FLASH NEWS: 05 Mar 2008
On the web, Mohan's World, Dubai. Nithya Spiritual Healers'
interview is available at Mohan's World (#00068) [Direct Link to .mp3 file].
00068 The Greatest Gift

We share this world with millions of people. While selfishness and greed alienates us
from others, compassion unites us. For the hungry, food is the God.One of the greatest
gifts that we can give to our fellow beings is the gift of Food.Everyone may not have the
right infrastructure to consistently carry out this noble deed.This discussion is about the
platform that Paramahamsa Nithyananda has created for our expression of deepest love
and compassion.
Series: Flash News
Thorns on your path

(continuation from earlier post)
How do you handle the mind?
Just like I said abut the ego – don’t fight with the mind. You cannot achieve anything by
struggling against your mind. In fact, you cannot even struggle – because even struggling
is a function of the mind! So it will be one part of your mind struggling against the other
part. Instead, simply become a witness to the functioning of your mind.
This is not going to be easy. Especially on this path, the mind is a very dangerous
companion! Initially, it will create all sorts of fears and doubts in your mind. When you
start trying to witness your thoughts, it will convince you that you are actually
witnessing. But if the mind tells you that, it means the mind is at work. If you are actually
witnessing, there will be no opinions, no judgment, not even the idea, These are thoughts.
I am witnessing them.
But be very clear: the mind is not your enemy. There is nothing wrong with thinking. It is
just a process like any other. Don’t put yourself into a fighting position. Just be an
observer of the mind, an observer of your thoughts. Enjoy the play of your mind!
As you start watching your thoughts, you will see that they start flowing more and more
slowly. As your awareness becomes deeper, you become aware of gaps in the flow. A gap
that you experience like a flash – you glimpse it, then it vanishes. A gap in which you
experience a beautiful silence. By and by, the gaps start happening more frequently.
Don’t become attached even to this experience! Don’t wait for the gaps. When the gaps
become wider, you will be able to see with intense clarity – not just the outer world, but
into the inner world as well.
This is the experience of no-mind.
Don’t think that this is too much for you!
When you practise with sincerity, with totality, it will happen.
(to be continued.)
______________________

Thorns on your path

The biggest spokesperson of the ego is the mind.
Just like the body, the mind too should be an instrument in your hands.
The mind is a wonderful instrument, tremendously powerful. It is a marvel of creativity.

It is a masterpiece of design. And the mind is a social necessity - without the mind, we
would not survive in this world.
But we forget that the mind is only an instrument – we ourselves become an instrument
of the mind! We are totally controlled by our mind.
The great trick that the mind plays on us to separate us from reality is the use of
language.
Words are what separate us from reality. The moment we perceive something, we try to
verbalize it. When you see a flower, you tell yourself, This is a flower. We absorb all of
life though words, through abstract concepts. But words are not the experience!
The word flower is not the flower, the word love is not love, the word enlightenment is
not enlightenment. Words form a barrier between you and reality.
Meditation has no need for words. Meditation is the direct experience of reality.
But the mind carries on this constant chatter of words. The mind doesn’t let you relax for
a single moment. The mind is constantly creating ideas, concepts, opinions for you. It
uses words to distort reality.
(to be continued.)
______________________

Doubt
Doubt is the most deadly weapon that the ego has! The ego will continuously create
doubts and questions in your mind. In the beginning it will make you worry,
Can I really meditate?

Can I sit for so many hours with my bad back?
Is this path really for me?
What if I get drawn too deeply in?
What will happen to my family?
Will my friends call me crazy?
Am I really crazy?
If you are working with a master, it will bring up doubts against the master!
Is the master really authentic?

Does he know which technique is right for me?
What is his purpose in teaching me meditation?
Is this some kind of hypnosis?
So if you find these kinds of questions coming up, don’t bother. Simply drop the
questions and continue with the meditation. Don’t feel guilty about having these
questions! These questions arise naturally in everyone’s mind. And don’t try to struggle
with these questions. Don’t make the mistake of struggling with the ego! Because the ego
is just something imaginary, it has no positive existence. Ego is nothing but the lack of
awareness. Just like darkness is a state of no-light, ego is a state of noawareness. If you
are in a dark room, can you fight the darkness and push it out, to make the room bright?
Does it make sense to struggle against the darkness? In fact, your solution has nothing to
do with the darkness. You have to simply ignore the darkness, and bring in a lamp. The
darkness will disappear on its own! In the same way, don’t waste your energy fighting
with the ego. Focus on bringing awareness into your meditation. By and by, the questions
will drop on their own.
(to be continued.)
______________________

Words From The Master - 02 Mar 2008
Thorns on your path

There is only one real obstacle on the path of meditation: the Ego. Whatever other issues
come up, whatever problems you face, be clear: they are just the different voices of the
ego.
What is the ego?
The ego is nothing but your sense of self, the collection of ideas and concepts that you
have about yourself. Be very clear: the ego is nothing but a collection of ideas! It is an
imaginary thing. The ego doesn’t even have any real existence. Yet it is this ego which is
controlling your life! It is the ego which creates a sense of separateness in you. At birth, it
separates you from your mother. Until the moment of birth there is no ego, no boundary.
The baby is simply part of the mother. At the very moment of birth, when the umbilical
cord is cut, the baby senses its own boundary for the first time. In the very first year after
birth, the ego builds your picture of yourself and the world. The ego is responsible for
your sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Throughout your life, the ego puts you into the position of
‘me versus them’. It separates you from your parents, from friends and strangers, from
nature, from all of Existence. Whenever you utter the word ‘I’, you are breaking away
from
Existence. You cannot really break away, because you are an intrinsic part of all
Existence – but in your mind you break away. You create for yourself a world in which
you are separate from all. This world exists only in your mind – it is just a mental concept
- but we allow this concept to rule all our actions.
You have always heard people say, The ego is the root cause of all our misery. Why?
Because the ego thrives on hostility, on conflict. Any environment which creates a sense
of isolation is the survival ground for the ego. The ego may be a product of your own
imagination, but it is a cunning animal! To stay alive, the ego creates a distorted version
of reality in which all things are in a state of disharmony.
Look at your own life. Whenever you experience pain, anger, jealousy - it is always
the result of feeling separate from someone else, of feeling alone, of feeling cheated. In
times of misery, you always experience yourself as being all alone. In times of joy, you
feel naturally connected with everyone and everything
around you. When you are joyful, happy, laughing – these are the times when your ego is
at its weakest.
(to be continued.)
______________________

Words From The Master: 01 Mar 2008
Transformations you will see

The flowering of intuition
Intuition, not in the sense we normally use it.
Although some of you will develop greater physical sensitivity, receive visions and so on,
these are not important. These are just by-products of the growth process. Real intuition
is the clarity to understand and fulfil yourself.
We all go through life wearing a variety of masks. For every role, for every occasion, we
have a mask. Mother, Father, Husband, Wife, Doctor, Housewife, Boss, Socialite… the list
is endless! We live and think according to the roles that society has imposed upon us.
These roles ultimately become our Personality.
With meditation, we move inwards. We start living out of our own Being. We become
integrated. We move towards Individuality.
Your personality can change, but your individuality is unchangeable. Every individual is
unique. With meditation, you touch your own individuality. You naturally start moving in
the direction which expresses you, which fulfils you in the ultimate sense. This is
intuition at work.
(to be continued.)
______________________
Friday, February 29, 2008

Words From The Master: 29 Feb 2008

Intelligence awakening
Life is changing all the time. Intelligence is nothing but the ability to respond to life
moment to moment, to be awake to the challenges that life throws at us. Intelligence is to
be aware of the situation, to alter your answers according to the demands of the moment.
When you don’t have confidence in yourself, you have to depend on the rules and
regulations put down by society, by law, by religion. The intelligent person lives without
a script. He doesn’t need one. He depends on himself, on his inner guidance. Intelligence
is taking your responsibility upon yourself.
We are all born intelligent – but society is cleverer than we are! Right from our
childhood, when we are unprepared, society sets up its rules. It manages to build walls
around our intelligence. It prevents our energy from flowing naturally. The ultimate
intelligence is nothing but the ability to break free of these chains.
Meditation is the surest way to awaken intelligence – because the chains which are
binding it are all in your mind. With meditation, you go beyond the mind, into the Being.
In the Being, no rules exist. You become free to explore your full potential. That’s why,
with meditation, you will suddenly find yourself at ease with your surroundings. You will
find yourself easily able to cope with new situations. You rediscover spontaneity.
(to be continued.)
______________________
Thursday, February 28, 2008

Joy unlimited
With meditation, life becomes a joy that you cannot find a reason for.
When joy happens for a reason, it is sure to bring pain sooner or later.
If you are happy because you have just had a good meal, you are going to become
miserable when you get hungry again – that’s all! If you are happy because you have
fallen in love, you are going to be sad when the first fight happens. And don’t think it
won’t happen to you! It happens to everybody. This is the rule of life.
All happiness leads to pain when it ceases. That is why, in ancient India, they had only
one word to denote both happiness and pain: the word Pain!
But the joy you experience with meditation is undisturbed, undisturbable. You may be
healthy, you may be ill – the joy will remain the same. It may be cold, warm, raining,
snowing – the joy remains. Neither your own condition nor external circumstances can
make a difference. When you experience lasting joy that no external circumstance can
alter, it means that you are moving deeply inwards.
(to be continued.)
______________________
Upcoming Event: Shiva Sutras, Pubic darshan & Healing, Bidadi, India -
Mar 1-31, 2008
Event: Healing, Spiritual Counseling, Energy Darshan, Nithya Dhyaan Initiation,

Shiva Sutras Discourses
Venue: Nithyananda Dhyanapeetam, Nithyanandapuri, Kallugopahalli Mysore Road,
Bidadi, Bangalore District - 562 109 Karnataka, INDIA
Contact: +91 80 65591844 / 27202084
Prerequisites: None. Open for everyone. FREE Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner will be served
for all!
Dates: March 1st to March 31st 2008.

Time:
• 8am - 10am: Experience the Master's Presence -- Healing, Spiritual

Counseling, Energy Darshan, Nithya Dhyaan Initiation (given freely to one
and all)
• 5pm - 8pm: FREE Shiva Sutras Discourses! (all are welcome)
Click here for more details.
Series: Upcoming Event
FLASH NEWS: 28 Feb 2008
On the web, Mohan's World, Dubai. Nithya Spiritual Healers'

interview is available at Mohan's World (#00067) [Direct Link to .mp3 file].
00067 Nithyananda Healers

Healing someone is not easy, especially since the healer is always under the threat of
taking the diseases over. But, when the power of healing is handed down by an
enlightened master, the healer remains unaffected and the healing is more permenant.
Three energy healers empowered by Paramahamsa Nithananda himself, discuss what it
takes to be a healer and the extraordinary responsibilities attached to it.
To know more about Nithya Spiritual Healing, refer Dhyanapeetam.org website.
Series: Flash News
Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Love for no reason
With meditation, one strange thing you will start experiencing is Love!
People are prepared for all kinds of miracles, they are ready to receive visions, to have
the darshan of all their favorite deities and whatnot. But they are least prepared for the
miracle of love!
You will be amazed to find how much love arises and floods your being when you enter
into meditation. Through meditation, you will experience some awakening, some level of
your being that you haven’t touched before. You will want to share your joy with
everyone you meet! This joy will overflow from you as love.
And just like freedom, this love is different from any love you have ever experienced
before.
All our lives, we have been giving and taking our selfish little loves. All our life, we have
loved and been loved for a reason. Either consciously or unconsciously, you love for a
reason. Even in your most intimate relationships, even between husband and wife,
between parents and children, there are hidden reasons for loving. All our love is tainted,
destroyed by jealousy and possessiveness.
With meditation, for the first time you will understand what it means to love for no
reason. For the first time, you will not be giving in order to receive. You give love simply
because you have so much to give! You shower love upon the world in the same way that
a raincloud showers upon the earth, or a flower spreads its fragrance all around.
You love because you can’t help it!

Swami Nithyananda Answers April 08

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Swami Nithyananda Answers April 08

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Life is almost always experienced as hardship and misery.

People don't know

-- PARAMAHAMSA SRI NITHYANANDA

Every moment in life can be an advantage or an inconvenience; it depends on

Thursday, May 1, 2008

You are a spiritual being!

Series: Words From The Master

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Samsara & Nirvana

What we do everyday appears to be monotonous or troublesome only because we have

If bliss can’t be attained while living, what use is it when we leave?

Samsara should always be experienced as an expression of nirvana or bliss, never as

Close your eyes throughout this exercise

Series: Words From The Master

Religion & spirituality

Series: Words From The Master

Monday, April 28, 2008

Pain can lead to enlightenment

Pain calls for our attention; because attention is energy.

Meditation is the key to that awareness and acceptance.

Series: Words From The Master

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Mind your mind

Once desire enters the consciousness it energises you.

Energy is the source of desire.

Meditation makes you aware of reality. It is liberating.

Series: Words From The Master

It is said in Tao: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Series: Words From The Master

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happiness is living in the now

You will be a Master of the Universe.

Series: Words From The Master

Monday, April 21, 2008

The many perils of comparison

Usually this is the story of most of our lives.

Can you take it to another room? Of course not.

Everything is in your hands.

Series: Words From The Master

Sunday, April 20, 2008

You don’t have to pay the bill

When you get addicted to “them” “they enjoy you”.

You become liberated.

Series: Words From The Master

Whoever comes to a teacher, whether he is a spiritual teacher, scientific teacher or

Communication is verbal and intellectual; collaboration is emotional involvement; in

Series: Words From The Master

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The real miracle

For example, a bell is placed on a table. If I hold it in my hand in front of you, it is

Series: Words From The Master

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Series: Words From The Master

Monday, April 14, 2008

Learn how to meditate powerfully over the phone!

Contact: Sri Nithyananda Dheera

Event Duration: 1 hour

Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 432-1699

Registration details available at http://lifebliss.org/LBM_phone.asp

Series: Upcoming Event

Words From The Master - 14 April 2008

Series: Words From The Master

Sunday, April 13, 2008