Be A Source Of Love Energy

Before we move into subject of love, let us see what is meant by the word attention-need.

Whatever we do, whatever we think, we are subconsciously seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone. We may not do this in a very obvious fashion, but if you analyse deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. This endorsement, this approval, is what we call 'attention-need'.

80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and write down, in a day, how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in family and society, you will see.

You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signature from family and society.

In a big register you make a column: Good Father, and for everything that you do for your children, you expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend etc. and wait for them to sign under it*.*

Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you!

Why do we bother so much about others' opinions about us? Why can't we judge ourselves by our own strength and continue to do our work? Why are we deriving strength from others? All this is because of two things: one, we don't know anything about ourselves. We know ourselves only through others' opinions of us, only through others' certificates. Second: when others give us their approval and attention, they are actually giving us energy to move on. Attention IS energy! That is why we feel so boosted when they give us attention.

Attention in any form is alright for us. In most of the houses, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law will be constantly fighting with each other. They will be constantly complaining about each other to the poor man in the house. But for a few days, if one of them goes out of town, what happens? The other starts missing them! Although they are fighting all the time, they miss each other when they are not together! Why does this happen? When they fight with each other all the time, they are actually getting that much of attention upon themselves from the other person!

Don't think that only positive attention is energizing! Any form of attention is energizing. Both the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law subconsciously enjoy the attention that they get from the other when they fight. That is why they miss each other; they actually miss the attention! But when they start missing each other, they term it love! They say that they miss each other because of love.

Of course, it may be true; but I want you to understand that attention is nothing but energy, which keeps us in good spirits. It is a subtle form of energizing ourselves, and we are not even aware of this. When we need something, that something is not love; it is attention. You don't need love; you are love yourself. So when you say that you need love, when you say that you need to be loved, you are really in need of attention, not love.

People come and tell me that their sons and daughters don't love them enough in their old age. What they really mean is, their sons and daughters are not giving them the attention, the energy that they need in their old age.

Actually if you see, as we grow older, we should become more and more centered within ourselves, sensitive to the existential energy inside us. But what happens is, because we have been dependent on others for attention and energy all our lives, because the love that we know exists only in relationships, because we have lived with no awareness and sensitivity to what is inside us, when we get older, we start missing the love that came from outside or the attention that came from outside. The family becomes busy with other things and they don't interact with us as they used to. So we start complaining with age.

If you see, only because we don't understand that our energy source lies within us, instead of living life with more joy and energy, we live life with reduced joy and energy.

When you are dependent on external sources for energy, you become psychologically handicapped*.* When you need physical support, you are physically handicapped. When you need psychological support, you are psychologically handicapped.

With a physical handicap, you know that you are handicapped because you can see it clearly, but with psychological handicap, you don't even know that you are handicapped. When you are not aware of it, you will not know the consequences that it can give rise to. When the real consequences or dis-ease happens, you will wonder what the reasons are.

If you have seen children play, you might have seen them building castles with cards. They will place the cards at a certain angle to each other and build several layers of such patterns in a pyramid shape. It will be beautiful to look at. But if you remove even one card from the castle, from anywhere, the whole castle will collapse! The higher the castle, the more the chances of collapsing.

Just like this, we build our own self-image like a castle, out of people's opinions of us. We collect certificates or signatures from our father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend, teacher, friends and what not, and arrange all these certificates and build a castle to form our self-image. The image will look beautiful and we will feel happy.

But if even one person withdraws their certificate, what happens? The castle collapses! You start feeling miserable about yourself. You feel depressed. You feel that the whole world has come to an end.

At least in the case of the children, they build their castles with their own cards. But we build our castles with others' cards, with others' certificates! We don't have control over the castle because it is built with other people's certificates.

So what do we do? We start working hard in maintaining the castle; in guarding it well. We start behaving in such a way that people don't remove their certificates. We start doing things to get their continuous approval, because their approval has become our very survival.

A small story:

A lady once went shopping with her husband because she wanted to buy a coat for herself.

They visited many shops but she could not find what she wanted.

The husband became tired.

He asked, 'Dear, do you know the exact kind of coat you want to buy?'

The wife replied, 'Of course! I am looking for a drop-dead coat.'

The husband could not understand what she meant.

He asked, 'What is a drop-dead coat, dear?'

She replied, 'When people see it, they will drop dead!'

All the time we are looking to see how we can collect certificates from people! Every action of ours is unconsciously related to what people will say to it and how people will react to it.

For example, a bag may come reasonably within your budget and it may have a good utility value also. But unconsciously, your mind will say that people may not appreciate the look of the bag very much. You start choosing again! But you will not agree that you are searching for certificates, because it is an unconscious process in you!

We become almost like a centipede. A centipede needs 100 legs to walk. Like that, we need the synchronous approval of everyone for us to walk in life. What happens if even one leg of the centipede is not alright? It will be stranded. What happens to us when even one approval fails to be got? We fall into depression.

If we are so dependent on others, there is every possibility that we will fall into depression. People who suffer from depression are actually suffering from attention-need. Over time something happens; we don't get enough attention and we find it difficult to handle it. Just one word is enough to put us into depression. But we don't know the real reason for our depression. So what do we do? We start taking medicine to cure it.

How will it heal? The cause for the depression is inside you and you look at medicines for help. When people come to me with depression, I tell them to do the simple Mahamantra meditation to start with and tell them that slowly, we will stop the medicines.

You see, these people need to be shown that their energy source lies within them. Meditation can show them that.

Depending on the sincerity with which they do the meditation, they can simply harness the energy within them and come out of depression. Medicines will dull them even more. This needs to be understood.

I tell you: when you derive your energy from outside, it can simply play havoc on you. You just become a puppet.

Let me tell you a story. It is actually an experiment that was conducted in the University of Chicago in USA:

A young, healthy and intelligent man wakes up and gets ready to go to work. His wife looks at him and tells him, 'You are looking tired; are you alright?'

He feels irritated by her comment and tells her to stop imagining things and leaves.

As he takes his car out of the garage, his neighbor is watching him and shouts out, 'Are you feeling well? You look out of sorts!' The man is surprised this time but tells him that he is alright and drives out.

He reaches his office and as he walks in, the receptionist looks at him with concern and says, 'Sir, you look ill! Why did you come to work?'

The man replies, 'Well, I think I am fine. Let's see….' And he goes to his office.'

He starts to work and a colleague enters and says, 'Hey! You look awful. What's the matter? You have fever or something?'

Now, this is too much for the man. He begins to feel uneasy and sick. Just then his boss calls him and he goes in. The boss takes one look at him and says, 'You look really unwell. Are you sure you can carry on today? Why

don't you go and see the doctor?'

The young man has had enough. He feels positively ill now; he says he would like to go home, and leaves.

As he drives home in his car, he feels his temperature rising. When he reaches home, his wife is surprised to see him back. She reaches out and touches his forehead and finds that he has high temperature!

A man who was healthy and happy in the morning became actually sick by afternoon! And how did he become sick? Just by people telling him that he was sick. The people were set up to tell him the same thing again and again. This experiment was conducted on several people and all the people fell sick at the end of it.

This is what happens when you are not centered in your own energy that is inside you. You will simply move from a high to a low just because of the influences from outside. When you become centered in yourself, nothing outside can shake you.

People tell me, 'Swamiji, we don't do things for praise or approval; we do them because it is our duty.'

Be very clear: the moment you claim that you are doing your duty, you are doing it because if you don't do it, your people will stop approving of you. Your people will approve of you as long as you fulfill every small thing that is expected of you. Even if there is a small slip in what you are doing, you will be able to see the change in their relationship with you. You know this and so you do your duty.

You will say, 'Swamiji, I am their father. If I don't provide for them, who will?' I am not saying that you should not provide for them. You have given birth to them; you have to provide for them until such time that they become independent and do things for themselves. But what you are doing, do out of no expectation whatsoever. Let it be an act which is an expression of the loving energy inside you, without any sort of expectation.

Right now, you might claim that you are not doing it out of any expectation, but when reciprocity from the other side dips a little, you will know; you will be able to observe the tension in you, the disappointment in you. This tension, this disappointment is the result of the expectation that was inside you when you did your duty. The degree of these may vary with each person, but it will be there at some level.

And when it is there, you are not doing it out of just an expression of the loving energy in you; you are doing it out of a lesser, limited quality called duty or so-called love.

The Bhagavad Gita beautifully says:

It means, Your job is only to do the work, not to be concerned about the result.

Whatever you do should be an overflowing of the loving energy inside you. Then, you are not bothered about the results.

When I say you are not bothered about the results, I don't mean that out of a frustrated or cynical conclusion, you are not bothered. What I mean is, you don't even know to expect results because you are continuously moving and expressing your blissful inner energy. So we can't even say that you don't expect results. You are just flowing joyfully, that's all! This flowing energy is real love.

When you start expecting from other people, there will be no end to it. And let me tell you: the most difficult thing is to satisfy all the people around you. Do you think you can satisfy all the people all the time? Never. It is the most impossible thing to do on planet earth.

A small story:

A husband and wife were celebrating their fifty years of marriage.

The wife presented the husband with two shirts.

He was very touched and declared that they would go out for dinner instead of cooking at home.

It was a very tender moment for them.

He freshened up and to make his wife happy, wore one of the gift shirts and appeared from his room.

As he came down, she looked up and smiled, but soon her expression changed and she asked, 'So the other shirt is no good?'

It is never possible to make another totally happy!

First of all, try to satisfy yourself; find fulfillment in yourself. That is enough. And let this fulfillment have nothing to do with the people around you. Let it be just a bubbling energy inside you, irrespective of the conditions and people outside. That is enough.

It is good to do something for others; it is good to give attention, give respect – but out of a deep energizing love, not out of fear; not because we are afraid that they will take away their certificates. It is not worth investing so much in others' opinions that they become the center of your life. Don't make others the source of your energy.

As I told you earlier: because you don't know anything about yourself, you turn to society for an answer. And society happily puts its labels on you: You are a good father. You are goodlooking. You are a failure and what not.

In the same way as a parcel without a proper address is pushed from place to place, we move around collecting all these labels. But we don't know that we are not the labels, but the stuff inside the parcel.

When you are dependent on others for your happiness, you are giving them control of your life. Be your own source of energy and inspiration! Come to a clear understanding that real joy is not possible when you place your center on someone else. If you understand this, half the problem is solved.

A small story:

Brahma Sutra is a great book available to humanity. It is the unabridged edition of world philosophy, from which all other philosophies originated; it is the book of books.

It was written by Veda Vyasa, the greatest Hindu scholar ever.

An enlightened master gave this book to one of his disciples, Vachaspati Mishra, and asked him to write a commentary on this book.

The master also gave his daughter Bamati, in marriage to him and died shortly.

Vachaspati Mishra started out on his task earnestly.

He was continuously engaged in writing. It became an intense and transforming meditation for him.

He wrote for months; soon months became years and years became decades.

He saw nothing else, thought about nothing else and heard nothing else during that time.

Finally, he finished the great work. Only the title of the book remained to be given.

He looked up from his work.

He saw an old lady, lighting the lamp next to him.

He was surprised. He asked her, 'Who are you?'

The lady replied, 'Never mind about me. Continue with your work.'

He said, 'I have finished. Tell me who you are.'

The lady said, 'I am your wife.'

Vachaspati Mishra was shocked.

He was simply shocked at what had happened.

For decades he had been writing the book without a single thought about his wife! He could not believe himself.

'Why didn't you remind me all these years!' he cried.

'What for?' She asked. 'You were immersed in the book. I felt no need to disturb you,' she replied quietly.

Vachaspati Mishra continued, 'You have sacrificed your entire life for the sake of humanity! What can I do to make up for it?' Bamati replied, 'It has been a joy to serve you. I feel privileged that I was able to serve you while you wrote this great book. Nothing more is needed.' Vachaspati Mishra shed tears of joy.

He paid his wife the greatest tribute. He named his life's work after her: Bamati.

Even today, the most outstanding commentary on humanity's most precious book, carries her name: Bamati.

Bamati has become immortal, because of her selfless devotion and love. She was enough unto herself. It is not that she did not want to disturb her husband; she did not need to! There is a big difference between the two. Most of the time we want attention but keep quiet thinking that we should not disturb the other.

But here we are talking of a person who did not need attention – that is the difference. She did not feel that her youth was being wasted; she was not making any compromise. She was being her natural self, that's all. And that was enough for her. It was not difficult for her not disturbing her husband. She was so centered in her own energy that it didn't matter to her at all.

Bamati lives even after she died. We are all dying every minute when we live. That is the difference.

Today, in our houses, can you read the newspaper for half an hour in peace? Can your wife watch her serial on television for half an hour? Just when you are reading the newspaper, your wife will think of telling you all the important things that happened at home the previous day. And she will complain that you are not giving her enough attention. She will say that you are with the newspaper all the time.

And exactly when your wife is watching her favourite television serial, you will feel hungry and want her to serve food for you. You will curse the television for showing the serials at the wrong times!

A small story:

A man was sitting with his wife in a restaurant. They ordered for food and were waiting for it to come. The wife complained, 'Dear, ever since we entered the restaurant, you've been reading that paper.' The husband apologized, 'I'm sorry dear,' and signaled to the waiter. 'Can we have another newspaper please?'

You see, all of us are seeking attention all the time. And when we don't get it, we are upset. This is the root cause for all anger, disappointment and frustration in our lives.

We need to stop asking and start giving. We need to radiate energy instead of asking for energy. But we don't even know how to shift the focus from us to the other. We are so used to seeing ourselves as the center of attention. We need to start seeing the world outside as the center of attention. How to do this?

For the next few days, I want you all to do this small exercise: Choose a partner from amongst yourselves, of the same gender. Look after that partner completely. Your first concern should always be for the other person's comfort. You should always look to see if he or she is happy and comfortable. Find out if they need anything. Instead of grabbing a plate for yourself first, give that person the plate and then you take one. If there is no warm water coming in your room, find out if there is warm water for them in their room.

And, I don't want you to pair up with your friends or relatives! I don't want you to choose people with whom you can exchange addresses with later on; with whom you can be friends later! Simply choose a stranger – the person standing closest to you. Just choose at random.

Almost all our lives, we worry only about ourselves. At the most, we worry about our close family, and that too because we feel that it is our duty-bound love. When you start doing this exercise, you will get a chance to see what selfless love is! It is selfless because you don't expect anything from the other person.

Real love is something so deep, so energizing, that you will not know it unless you experience it. Love is an expression of energy, not something that is transacted. Tell me one thing: can you love people when you meet them for the first time?

Exactly! This is what you think. Let me tell you, with a little bit of intellectual understanding and meditation, you will realize that you can love anyone without a reason, causelessly! You can love the trees on the road, you can caress them and feel the energy flow from you. You can love people whom you pass by on the road without even knowing them. Love is actually your very being, not a distilled quality that you possess.

Nothing is as misconstrued as love is today. Today, love is more of a transaction. If someone says something nice to you, you love him; tomorrow if the same person falls short of it, you don't love him that much or you probably hate him.

Even your lifelong friend, with whom you chat everyday on the computer, will seem suddenly not-so-close if he says something that goes against your approval. Where is your love at this time? It has suffered temporarily!

It is just games that you play; a game in which love and hate surface alternately and interchangeably. And this love-hate relationship is not love at all. Be very clear. It is simply your reaction to a person or a situation, that's all. This is what we call love. This is not real love. It is subjective love, that's all.

Real love knows no object. It is simply there whether there is an object or not. Real love is the subject itself. It does not know any object. You are the subject and you have become love, that's all. Any object that comes in touch with it, feels it. Just like a river flows naturally and people enjoy it at the different places that they encounter it, real love exudes from a person and the people around him will be able to feel it.

There is absolutely no room for conditioning in real love. The energy in you should overflow and express itself as love. It is then that you can break through the highly knotted boundaries of relationships and express yourself beautifully, as a loving being!

In order to discover the quality of your being, that is love, two things can be done. The first thing: repeatedly listen to words like these so that they create a conviction in you about real love; so that a space is created in you for the process of transformation. Second thing: meditate so that the transformation can actually happen.

In practical life, when you go deeper and deeper into relationships, you will understand that all that you feel is not real love, but just some form of give and take. It is all just adjustment, some compromise, some duty-bound feelings, some fear, some guilt. It is all there in the name of love.

Meditation will take you beyond these mis-understandings of love. Meditation will work at the being level. That is why it is a shortcut! When you have to go through life and know it by yourself, it will take you a lifetime. But with meditation, a space opens inside you to experience these things clearly for yourself, whatever your age may be.

Just understand this one thing: when you are able to love without a reason, you will expand like anything. Your world will suddenly seem larger than life. It will be so ecstatic. You will become an energy source to yourself and to others. You will be so overflowing that the energy in you has to touch others. There is no other way. Others will be naturally drawn to you.

Even motherly love comes with expectations. Many times, people have confronted me with arguments when I say this. Let me tell you, a mother loves her son alright. But at the end of the day, there is an unwritten expectation written on that love. If the son causes a little friction, the first words that would come out would be telling the things that she had done for him since childhood. A small dent in the relationship is enough to bring the whole thing out.

Real love is the expression of the Existential energy in you and this love can never think of any such arguments. It only knows to flow causelessly. It doesn't know to maintain any track record.

The moment you cite incidents from the past, it means that expectations were always there hidden behind your love and when it is this way, it can never be real love.

It is the same way when it comes to the son also. The son loves the mother, expecting her to look after him, expecting her to get up at five and pack his lunch for him, expecting her to maintain his clothes for him, without missing a single day. He adores the mother because he enjoys the care, the luxury.

A small story:

A boy was learning fractions in his school.

One day the teacher asked him, 'If there was a cake and we divided it into 5 portions and gave them to each of your family members, what fraction of the cake would you get?'

The boy replied, '2/5 Ma'am.'

The teacher asked, 'How? Haven't you studied your fractions well?'

The boy replied, 'Ma'am, my mother will give her piece to me if I like the cake.'

Mothers want to sacrifice for their children, alright, but the attitude with which they sacrifice is what we are talking about. They should do it out of simply an overflowing in them, not out of any hidden expectations. Events will never get recorded in them if they do it out of an overflowing. And even if they get recorded, they will not surface with a vengeance when things like this happen.

Common love always thrives on expectation. No one can deny this, although everyone may try to. The expectation in love is so well woven into it that it is difficult to perceive it. That is the problem.

Actually, as long as things go smoothly, it is difficult to believe what I am saying. But we hear of so many cases where sons and daughters are written off from the family for simple reasons! Simply because they married outside the community, or because there was some feud in the family. Where did all the love disappear suddenly?

Until such incidents happened, the son or daughter would have been loved very much. What happened suddenly? How can it suddenly disappear if it was real love? Real love can never be stopped because it is not bound by any cause-effect cycle.

Even in subtle family issues, if you look carefully, you will understand how bound your love is. Just try to re-arrange a few things in your life, and watch how your own family will react to it.

With your children, as long as you provide for them in the name of love, they also enjoy you, in the name of love. As long as you don't rub each other the wrong way, it is alright. If either of you behaves in an unexpected fashion, the mood of the love changes; the flavour changes.

Love which is always under threat is not real love. It is just arranged love. And anything arranged cannot be total. And when something is not total, it is always under threat. Love needs to be a total celebration, not a duty.

One more thing: we all confuse love with respect. When you love totally, nothing that you do can appear disrespectful. You see, when you closely observe respect, you will find that when certain people do certain things, it appears absolutely normal, while the same thing, when some other person does it, appears disrespectful. The energy behind the person doing the act is what causes the act to seem respectful or disrespectful.

When the energy behind you is total, when you are just a loving energy, you can get away with anything. When you are not sure of yourself, you will get caught with the problems of respect. I am not asking you to be disrespectful. I am only saying that when your being resonates with love, your body language will be such that your actions can never seem disrespectful.

But if you get caught with respect instead of love, you are missing the whole thing. Then instead of being loving, you will start pretending, and when you pretend, you are not total.

When you are centered in respect, you will pretend because respect is societal and it keeps changing in its definition. But if you are centered in love, then respect becomes a pleasant byproduct. So center yourself in love and respect will automatically happen.

Remember: Respect is dead. Love is alive. Respect creates a distance; love knows no distance.

People are trained to be so fearful and respectful of God. They are never taught to love God. They are not allowed to touch the idols in the temples. They are expected to stand at a distance and bow down. They are taught to be wary of God. Understand, the first thing that children should be taught is to love God.

If you cannot embrace God, there is nothing left to embrace, because God is everything! When you teach your child that you cannot embrace God, you are actually teaching him that God is different from the rest. By putting God on a pedestal, you are actually alienating the child from the whole of Existence.

Just have some social intelligence and play the game of respect in an intelligent way when required, that's all. Mind you, this kind of respect will happen with deep awareness and intelligence. It will not cause you to be less loving.

A small story:

A mother went with her child to a public function.

• Somehow, she lost track of the child and they got separated in the crowd.
• The mother got very panicky and started searching all over for the child.
• Suddenly she heard behind her a voice, 'Maria! Maria!' She turned around and saw her daughter.
• She ran to her, hugged her and asked, 'But why were you calling me Maria instead of mom?'
• The child replied, 'That would have been of no use. There are so many moms around here!'

Children are still centered in themselves and they are more alive and alert than us. Their innocence, their love, their body language speaks for them, not their words. Because of this, whatever they say or do always seems innocent, never disrespectful. Once the mind steps in with societal conditionings, this innocence disappears. Then we have to make it up with words and pretensions.

When love becomes a duty, it becomes a burden. And when it becomes a burden, it is not more a celebration; you will be under pressure always to keep it up.

Parents teach children reasons to love. From a young age, love is taught with a reason. Do we ever teach them to love the earth? Do we teach them to love nature? No. But we teach them to love our relatives. We teach them to love us. We teach them to love everyone who will be of some use to them in some way.

If you teach them to embrace nature, you are sowing the seeds of real love in them. I have seen many parents who will teach their kids to throw garbage in public places and destroy the beauty of nature. The same parents who teach the children to love the family will teach them to abuse nature. If you have real love in you, you will not abuse nature. You will embrace nature and people alike.

You have to sow the right seed. Only then the desired plant will grow. When you create the right conditions for love to flower inside the child, the child will blossom. Meditation helps in sowing the seed, in creating the right space inside. Nothing can be imposed from outside. The moment it is imposed, it will be met with resistance and carried out as a compulsion, what you call duty.

The love that we all talk about is actually psychological slavery. You enslave the person in the name of love, and he feels compelled to behave in a particular fashion. With physical slavery, you at least know that you are being enslaved. With psychological slavery, it is so cunning, that you will not even know that you are being enslaved.

Why do you think there is so much guilt in all of us? It is because the love that we know always puts us in guilt. When love is total, when it is pure energy from your being, it can never bring guilt. You feel guilty only because you always feel that you have not loved enough, that you have failed somewhere. And why have you not loved enough? Because you have been taught only love that has reasons, never total love.

If you see, when you have loved totally, you will never feel guilty or sad when a person dies. You may feel sad at the physical separation, but you will never feel that you have missed anything when they were living. When I say total love, I don't mean that you should have fulfilled all others' expectations of attention and wants. I mean, you should have been centered in yourself well and exuded that kind of energizing love towards them, seeing and respecting them as part of Existence.

If you had been this way, you would have experienced them in a total way and you will not feel any guilt when they pass away. Family always instills guilt in you so that it can have control over you. Guilt is nothing but a hangover of many kinds of emotions because you did not explore the emotion in totality. Never allow guilt to possess you.

I am not saying that you can do what you please and not feel guilty about it. I am saying, live totally, from your center, with deep awareness and understanding. Then there will be no room for guilt.

True love always gives without asking. It does not know any 'take'. It knows only 'give'. And you cannot create it either. It is like this: you can create a plastic rose but will it have the fragrance of the real rose? No! In the same way, true love can never be created.

For the real rose to happen, you need to create the right condition, the right soil, the right amount of water, and then it will happen on its own. Likewise, for true love to happen, you can create awareness, clarity and a deep understanding within yourself, and it will blossom from inside you.

In a college gathering one girl asked me, 'Swamiji, was it failure in love that caused you to become a sannyasi?'

I told her that it was success in love that caused me to become a sannyasi! Failure in love will create only a Devdas, not a sannyasi! Only when you can love the whole world can you become a sannyasi. Only when you can love the whole world, it is real love.

Real love happens with no relationship. Only ordinary love happens only when there is a relationship. In ordinary love, you love your father because he provides for you. You love your mother because she takes care of you. You love your boyfriend because he gives you sensual pleasure.

Real love is not like that. It doesn't say *Oh! This is my father. I must love him…*No! It knows to keep loving everyone and everything, that's all. Ordinary love creates bondage while real love liberates. With ordinary love, there will be failure and success. With real love, there is no success or failure, it just IS, that's all. The success is in finding it!

People think that when nothing works out for you, when all love is lost, you become a sannyasi. No. People think sannyasis are renunciates who are driven by frustration. I tell you: I feel so sad when I think of the people who say these things. They are in such deep ignorance. They continuously pass judgment from such a state of ignorance. Understand: sannyas is the ultimate marriage… to the Divine!

A true sannyasi is one who is so loving and compassionate that it is said that where he walks, the grass doesn't die! This is not a story. It is true. A true sannyasi is one who exudes compassion and love towards Existence. A true sannyasi is one who knows that prayer is love and love is prayer.

When you have found real love, your prayer will be just an expression of it. What are the Meera Bhajans? They are the loving outpourings of Meera, an enlightened being from Bharat. She just resonated with Krishna who is Existence Itself, and she poured from her being. That is why the Meera bhajans are famous even today. The energy behind them can never fade because it is the Existential energy. Ordinary love cannot be felt over so many years by so many people. Only pure love can radiate that kind of lasting energy.

And for Meera, her bhajans were her prayer. When you have found real love, there is no other way. Prayer becomes love.

The ordinary love that we know is nothing but expecting someone to satisfy your psychological image; someone who can give you psychological support.

You need someone to take care of your needs. You need someone who will boost you up when you are down. You need someone who will sympathize with you and confirm your worries for you. This is what you call love. But true love is beyond names and forms, body and mind. Only a person who can love the whole world beyond all these can become a sannyasi. Only he can become a Vivekananda!

When Vivekananda says, Arise! Awake! Does it mean that we are sleeping? Of course! We are sleeping even without knowing that we are sleeping. And we pass judgments while we are asleep. We criticize when we are asleep. We condemn when we are asleep. We think we are awake and we criticize. We think we know everything about everything including love.

A small story:

A man had a wealthy old aunt whom he visited regularly.

He coveted her wealth and went out of the way to please her.

She had two cats, which she loved.

The man knew this and would look after the cats religiously hoping to win her over.

His secret wish was that she would make him a part of her will when she wrote it out.

He would come everyday, feed the cats with milk, play with them, spend a lot of time and go back.

The old lady was very pleased at the way he looked after the cats.

Soon, she passed away. In her will, she had left him the two cats.

You can imagine the disappointment in the man! He must have felt cheated!

With ordinary love, there is every possibility that you will feel cheated. People love for wealth, for the favors that they get done, for the words of advice that they get, for other people's forgetful ways, which they can exploit… and what not. Love always comes with a reason.

But people will never accept this for a fact. They don't accept it because they are deluded by their own ordinary love. They think that that is the way love happens. And they think that while they are so loving, I am simply bringing down their love.

Honestly, if you sit and think by yourself, you will understand that what I am saying is true. Do an honest enquiry on yourself and see. Just sit down and try to visualize how you would react if your father or mother or sister behaved in a slightly different way towards you. You will then understand what I am saying.

We are all the time in need of something from someone and so we are continuously paving the way to get it from them in a smooth way. This smooth way is what we call love. Don't think that this applies to getting only material wealth. Even when you expect a person's behaviour to be in a particular fashion, you behave accordingly with them. As long as both of you are behaving in this fashion, you love each other. If someone misses it somewhere, your love takes a momentary dip!

Take me for example. You all claim that you love me very much. Each one of you has got a particular idea of how I should behave

towards you. I simply behave towards each of you in the fashion. That is what I am doing now actually. What happens? If even once I don't smile at you or I say something to you that does not fit me into your frame, you start thinking that I don't love you any more.

You start thinking that maybe I am not so loving after all. You start imagining about why I said a particular thing to you, or why I did not smile at you.

I might have been talking to someone else, or I might have simply not smiled at you, just to allow your ego to settle a bit, that's all! But you miss the whole game and start interpreting my actions with your own dictionary of love. What will happen? You will land up in deep misery.

This is how you simply complicate love. At least when it comes to me, there is no complication added to it from my side! Imagine what will happen when two of you start relating with each other in this fashion? There will be total chaos! You will simply be moving from low love to high love to low love, that's all!

People tell me, 'Swamiji, we love our children…'

When it comes to putting up with their naughty behaviour, how many times have you sworn at them? One girl was telling me at the ashram, 'Swamiji, my mother loves my children only if they behave themselves well. She wants me to bring the children to show them off as her grandchildren to her friends and then scolds me for the chaos that they create!'

When you see children, you are pulled by their innocence. That is one thing. The second thing is, it gives you a feeling of pride, an ego boost, when you see that they are your creation. And of course, you provide for them and make them happy. But what I am saying is, this love also comes with limitations and preferences. It is highly subjective to the ways of the children.

A small story:

A man was laying a concrete road.

He had just finished laying the road when a group of children from the neighborhood came running onto it leaving footmarks.

The man got very angry and swore at them.

His friend asked him, 'Hey, what is the matter? I thought you liked children.'

The man replied, 'Yes I do, but not on concrete.'

Ordinary love always comes with some condition somewhere! With some fine print somewhere. This is what I am trying to say. We love people subject to name, place, moods and situations.

A small story from the life of Vivekananda:

One night, Vivekananda woke up at 2 am and awakened his disciples. His disciples were anxious and wanted to know what was happening. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a natural calamity that was happening which was causing him the pain. The papers the next morning announced a terrible earthquake in Fiji islands that had consumed many lives.

He was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world, thousands of miles away! Do you think normal humans can be this sensitive? Even if our neighbor is sick, it will not have any effect on us!

A small story:

A man called up his family doctor and said, 'Doctor, I think you should visit us and do a check-up on my wife.'

The doctor asked, 'Why? Is she unwell?'

The man replied, 'I think so, doctor. Yesterday, she got up at her usual time, had a bath, cooked food, sent the children to school, cleaned the house because the maid did not turn up, washed our clothes, brought the children back home, attended to their homework and went to bed. Around midnight, she was complaining that she was tired. Maybe she needs to be checked up.'

We have become so insensitive today! We are not able to connect to the other person who is living with us 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. Enlightened beings on the other hand are deeply sensitive to the universe surrounding them.

What happened in Vivekananda is what you call empathy. Mind you, it is not sympathy; it is empathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells you about their suffering, you just confirm their suffering for them; that is sympathy! If someone tells you that their husband is ill, you tell them, 'Oh! How awful, you must be very unhappy. Don't worry, everything will be alright*.*' In the name of sympathy, we confirm their suffering for them and they in turn tell us that we are so caring and loving.

Actually, they love us because we have agreed that they are enduring suffering; it is a subtle ego boost for them. They feel good that we are acknowledging that they are managing such big worries. This is what society calls sympathy.

What masters feel is not sympathy; it is empathy. Empathy is when you feel another's suffering in your own being. Then, a person does not have to tell you his suffering, but you simply know because the Existential energy in you feels it.

Masters are one with you, because they are one with Existence, and you are a part of Existence; only you see them as separate. And because they are one with you, they feel your pain in their heart. They don't know any other way. And they have the capacity to witness the pain that comes with it also.

Ordinary love gives birth to children while real love gives birth to your own real self. You give yourself a new birth, a transformation. Like how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, man becomes a realized soul. You awaken to the energizing love that is lying dormant in you.

A master transforms you with his love. I always tell my disciples, 'When I am compassionate, I cheat you and when I fire (scold), I

teach you.' Either way, you grow! Sometimes I demonstrate my compassion in a very loving way so that you are more malleable to my transforming fingers! Sometimes I show my compassion by simply firing you so that you are jolted into deeper awareness. In both cases, pure love for you is the only reason.'

A master is an ocean of infinite love and knows only to give. If you approach him with a bowl, you will take back a bowl of him with you. If you approach him with a pitcher, you will take back a pitcher of him. It all depends on how thirsty you are, that's all. The thirstier you are, the bigger the vessel you will approach with.

But he is there always, watching you walking up to him with vessels of various sizes and laughing to himself at your own uncertainty, at the play of your mind which you project on him!

Be very clear: I am not asking you to love God or any Master. It is very difficult for you to love something you haven't seen. But you can love all that you can see, can you not? You can love the animals, the plants, people and what not. Simply love them for no reason except the joy of loving.

Feel a deep connection with them and love them. Once you start doing this, you will develop a certain faith in Existence because Existence is the common thread that runs through all these things. Faith is something that cannot be imposed upon you. If it is imposed, you will harbour a deep vengeance towards the object of faith.

When faith happens, slowly, your love will become love towards the whole of Existence. Then, the ultimate religion will take root in you – the religion of gratitude and love.

Gratitude and love are closely related. When you experience gratitude at the core of your being, there will be only love in you, nothing else. The first step towards feeling real love is feeling gratitude. As long as there is discontentment in your system, there cannot be real love. Gratitude and love go hand in hand.

Some people tell me, 'Swamiji, I love the whole world. I don't do harm even to a small ant…'

Why do you want to delude yourself by saying all these things? Can you even love your neighbor whole-heartedly? I tell you: it is easy for people to say things like they 'love the whole world', because they don't have to do anything tangible to prove it! They can continue to say that they love the world and not do anything about it! They don't have to do anything special to show it. The world is after all an intangible entity; it is not a clear representation.

But when you say that you love your neighbor, the problem starts! You have to see his face everyday. You have to do something tangible to prove your love for him! Then it becomes a problem!

And how can you feel great in not doing any harm to an ant? Is the ant capable of violating your property or person? Is it capable of testing your love for it? It is not even visible to the eye and you talk about it to me. These are all ways to escape from the truth.

Just try to understand one thing: your inherent nature is love and love is permanent. All other emotions simply come and go, that's

all. You are caught in thinking that all the other emotions are real and that they are destroying love. Love can never be destroyed. If love could be destroyed, it would have become extinct long ago.

Also, when you really love, the opposite emotions cannot enter into you. They will simply be excluded. When there is bright light in a room, can darkness be brought in? No! Only when you dim the lights, darkness can enter. In the same way, only when real love has not happened in you, the other emotions can enter. When you are brimming with love, there is no way another emotion can enter.

You might have experienced that when you do something intensely, you forget yourself. It can be anything - as simple as coloring or painting or reading….or anything. When you go deeply into it, you forget yourself. When you have an intense headache, just try doing some activity very keenly. Your headache will go away!

Because you are continuously aware of your head, your headache continues. The moment you go deeply into something else and lose awareness of your head, your headache will simply disappear. Only when you remember your head, you can have a headache. When you go deeply into any emotion, only that emotion remains and you cease to exist. This is what we mean by 'totality'.

This moment of 'you' disappearing, you may experience for just a few seconds. But if you work on being intense and total in everything, this experience of 'you' disappearing will happen more often to you and for longer periods also. Soon, you will master the art of doing work intensely, and being absent!

In the same way, when you are brimming with love, you don't feel yourself, you feel only love; you become love. Only when you become love, have you found real love. When you become love, you automatically exude compassion towards everyone and everything around you. You take up a lot more responsibility around you. This responsibility is not out of ego of serving people, but out of the overflowing love energy in you.

Love and responsibility always go hand in hand. When you truly love, you will take up total responsibility as well. People think that sannyasis are those who run away from responsibility. Understand: When you forego responsibility towards your own family, you are taking up responsibility for a much bigger family, for humanity at large, for a family which is millions of times bigger than your own. People don't understand this and they simply criticize.

Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. The more responsibility you take up, the more you expand and the divine energy will automatically flow in you! I always tell my healers to take up as much responsibility for the suffering and pain around them as they can and to continually heal people.

When you feel that you are responsible for the pain around you, you will automatically stand up to help reduce it in some way or the other. People often think that it is enough if they do things for their own family. This is a way of contraction, not expansion. You need to expand for growth to happen. Existence will automatically flow through you when you take up responsibility.

People tell me, 'Swamiji, it is enough if I am able to feed my family properly*.*' Be very clear: this is just an excuse to draw a tight boundary around yourself; a way to contract yourself.

You might have heard of the famous lines of Bodhi Dharma:

It means:

I surrender to Buddha; I surrender to Dhamma - the teachings of Buddha; I surrender to the Sanga or institution created by Buddha.

It is very easy to surrender to Buddha or any master. You don't have to do much for it. Masters are so alluring because of their divinity. It doesn't take much from your side to do this. People tell me that the moment they see me, they feel a certain belief and faith in me. I tell you, it is not a big deal. The Existential energy that is flowing through this form simply pulls you, that's all!

The next statement: I surrender to the teachings of Buddha, is a little more difficult to follow than the first, because the moment you say this, you have to show that you are following it! For example, I say to you, 'Be blissful'. That is my teaching. What do you then say? 'No, no Swamiji, it is not practical…' Be very clear: I say only practical things. You start thinking that I am enlightened and that I don't know anything about your so-called practical life.

I say only those things that you can become in day-to-day life. I am sharing my experience with you when I say, 'Be blissful.' I am not just preaching the words. Understand that first. When I say, 'Be blissful', I am drawing you to experience the bliss that I am in. And it is perfectly practical because I am alive here in front of you, experiencing it!

The third line says: 'I surrender to the institution created by Buddha.' Here starts the real problem. This requires a tremendous responsibility to be taken upon oneself.

Understand that masters live in their mission more than in their body. Only 33% of their energy is in their body. The remaining 66% is in their mission and teachings. That is the kind of responsibility they taken up. I always tell people that I get my energy from my movement, not from the food that I eat.

Masters never take up birth to fulfill any karma or unfulfilled desires in themselves, because they don't have any karma to be fulfilled. They take birth out of sheer compassion, sheer love to kindle divinity in people.

Masters live more in their words and movement than in their body. That is why I always tell you to drop my form and become sensitive to the energy in my mission instead.

But what do you do? You try to keep holding my elbow all the time! Instead of doing my work, which is your own flowering, you tag behind me wanting to be around me all the time. You never understand when I say this to you.

Understand that when you do the work of a divine mission, you are doing two things. One is meditation for your own spiritual growth and the second is service to society which is the greatest responsibility. The second is only a by-product. The transformation that happens in you while you are doing the work is the actual mission of transforming you!

So just take on responsibility with joy! You will feel selfless love growing in you. The whole world will become your family. When you are confronted with seemingly high responsibilities, simply nod your head to them. Mere nodding without resistance is enough. The rest will be taken care of by Existence.

Have you heard of the mysore pak, the famous Hindu sweet? It will look and feel heavy, but the moment you put it in your mouth, it will melt and dissolve and give you a renewed source of energy. Likewise, when you simply nod your head to any heavy responsibility, you will immediately get the energy to execute it. The very act of taking up responsibility will bring the necessary energy into you. This is the loving energy of Existence that you need to discover in you.

To take up responsibility, you need to love the whole of Existence without discrimination. When you love without discrimination, you can take up responsibility without discrimination. Responsibility is nothing but the ability to respond spontaneously. When you can respond without a thought, without a plan, ready to take on anything, you have arrived!

To be totally loving is a big challenge for the ego. To be totally loving is to merge oneself with the Whole. This is great trouble for the ego. You are right now fragmented; you are not integrated. When you are fragmented, you simply play with your different fragments and escape, that's all. To become loving means to become integrated. But you are scared because when you become integrated, you grow as a whole. Your parts have to die and become a whole.

You are so used to being fragmented that you feel threatened when you have to integrate yourself. Your ego refuses to allow it to happen. When you become loving, you are melting your ego. Earlier your ego was hard; it was solid and you felt good. What will happen when your ego melts? You will feel like you are losing your whole identity, your grip.

If you just decide to let go at least once, you will feel such a tremendous freedom, such liberation inside yourself. You need courage to let go and become loving. As a first step, at least become aware of this deep inside; the rest will automatically happen. Awareness is the key to open any lock.

When you start loving beyond names and forms, you are not losing anything, you are only losing what you are not; the illusion which you need to lose. What you have gained is reality. So just have faith and don't fear when you find yourself merging with the whole.

Just let go and watch the inner transformation happen in you. You will then realize how foolishly you were holding on to the ways of your ego; you will realize how much you missed because you were behind the mask of ego.

And understand that real love never calculates. Real love is from the heart and the heart never calculates. Only the mind calculates. It is time to move from the mind to the heart. You have listened enough to your mind. Decide now and listen to your heart. When you live with your heart, you will never regret anything in life because there will be completeness in anything that you do.

You can never experience true love with your mind. You can experience it only with your heart. Love needs to be experienced at the very center of your being. The center of your being is totally silent; it does not know any words or thoughts. No thought can ever penetrate it.

That is why time and again masters tell you to go deep inside yourself to discover your real nature. Your center is your true nature. This is actually you. But you seek to find yourself in all other places – in relationships, in material things and what not. You continuously miss seeing the truth. It is now time to look in.

We continuously talk about love, simply because we are missing it; simply because we have not had a taste of it. When a person is thirsty, he talks and dreams of water all the time. The moment he has quenched his thirst, he will stop talking about it. We need to let go and experience true love, the love that merges you with the whole. Then we will stop talking about it.

Love is actually surrender. But it becomes a fight for most of us. When I say surrender, I don't mean surrendering out of acceptance. I mean surrendering out of a deep understanding. When you surrender out of acceptance, you are compromising. Love can never be a compromise. The moment you compromise, it is not love. Only when you understand and dissolve, it is love.

When you are with a master, you have a lifetime opportunity to discover love; you have the opportunity to die and resurrect with true love. The alchemy process that happens in the presence of a master will give you no option but to die and be born again with true love. All you need to do is be willing to dissolve in his presence. When you have the courage to do this, you are ready to take a leap into higher consciousness that is called love.

Love is not an object, it is the subject. It is you. You become love, that's all. Then you will start loving without a reason. You will love the trees, the flowers, the earth and what not. You will simply radiate love and merge with Existence.

You see, when you grow in love, you learn to include everything and everyone. When you see a master, you will understand how encompassing he is. He never excludes anything or anyone. He sees no imperfections in anyone. He is just pure love, that's all. And pure love sees no imperfections.

Existence is pure love. Society is always against pure love. Deep inside, society is actually against Existence or God. All its worship is mere hypocrisy. It hides in the name of worship. The best way not to follow anything deeply is to start worshipping it! Society escapes in the name of worship. When you worship, you don't have to do anything else! And people will not trouble you because you are worshipping! But what happens to your inner space? It remains where it was.

Society never approves of letting go and loving every plant and animal with love. It would tell you that you are mad. It will approve only of love that is governed by give and take; love that comes with a reason.

But I tell you: don't give up. Keep on loving with all your heart. See Existence in everything. Feel the plants with tenderness in your heart. See the animals as if they were your own. See every person, stone or tree as a part of God. That is real worship. It is easy to worship God in the temple. The real worship is seeing everything as God. Start with your neighbor first.

People never go to the root of anything; that is the problem. The root of God is love. The root of God lies in seeing Him in everything. People are afraid to go to the root and so they delude themselves in superficial layers. They don't have the courage to explore beyond a certain point in anything in life. That is why they don't allow you also to explore. They tell you what they have found is the truth. They tell you that it is enough if you follow what they are saying.

Have the courage to go deep inside and love. You will start feeling the common thread of Existence in all that you see. You will understand that all that you see are illusory happenings held together by the real thread that is Existence. Automatically, you will start loving everything in the same way without any trouble because you will see only Existence in everything. This is the real shift in consciousness.

You can talk for years about Existence or God, and still not have any experience of it. Of course, your ego will be nice and solid because you will feel that you know so much about God! But if you look in, there will be no solid experience. And because you have no solid experience, you will keep getting caught in words, because if you stop talking, there is nothing left; there is no experience.

So start feeling love towards everything simply for what it is. Understand: because all of you are here, I am talking to you. If you were not here, I would be continuing to talk to this banyan tree, to these plants, to these animals! Every leaf here talks. That is the language of love!

For years people have been telling you that you are an advanced species of animals. Be very clear, even animals are not merely animals. Each and every atom on this earth is divine, a part of Existence. If you understand this clearly, you will be able to start feeling for everything around you.

Your mind does not need love, but your being needs it. Love is an adventure where you go into dissolution. When you are not, love is. We don't have the courage to 'not be' and so we hold on; we pull back from unconditional love.

Those who are ready to take the adventure into dissolution, into experiencing the whole, are the brave ones. The ordinary love that you know is like fighting within four walls. Real love is like fighting in the cold on the open streets. The courageous ones will fight on the streets and win. When you fight within four walls, you feel good, but you are missing reality. When you are ready to fight on the streets, you are in reality and alive!

You need not have any fear of fighting in the open. If you fight knowing that you are fighting under the compassionate eyes of Existence, you need not fear because even if you fall you fall into the very lap of Existence! But you have to have the courage to stand up and fight. That is the step that you take on your side. The rest, Existence will take care.

This will happen if you are just a little more than curious to know the truth. Mere curiosity is not enough. If you are just curious, you will come, flirt and get away. If you are more than curious, if there is a burning desire in you that surfaces at least once in a while, you can start knowing and experiencing the truth. If you are merely curious, there will be no devotion or dedication. If there is a fire, there will be devotion and dedication. Dedication is what brings you here, again and again.

Try as you might to run away from here, you can't! You might stay away for a few days, but the burning desire inside will draw you again and again. To discover true love, you have to have this intensity within you.

Love as much as you can, without asking for anything in return. Loving for a reason is not love; it is just a business deal. When you can love without a reason, when you can love anything and anyone that comes your way, you will release tremendous energy and beauty. You will appear beautiful irrespective of whether you are physically beautiful or not.

Don't think that unconditional love will not get you back anything. It will get you back things in more than one way. But you should evolve to an extent where you see these things coming to you and continue loving, for the sake of loving. Your intelligence will make you see the things that you get in return, and the same intelligence will keep you blissfully untouched by them also!

There will be a revolutionary change in your heart and you will be a new person. Others will see a beautiful change in you. They will develop a new respect for you. They will see that you are flowering in a way incomprehensible to them.

To be able to love unconditionally, you need to feel free. What do I mean by free? Not being bound by caste, creed, sect, religion, family, relatives and any such thing. Because when you are bound by all this, your love will remain bound, and bound love is not real love. How can you love with boundaries? It is against the very definition of love!

I am not saying that you should forget your family, religion etc. Just don't see love in the context of all this, that's all. Free your inner space from these bondages. When you feel that you belong to the whole of Existence, you can love without any boundaries.

I always tell people: If you are able to feel the love that you feel towards me to each other, then you have had a glimpse of real love because, as I told you, it is very easy to love me! But if you can feel the same love that you feel towards me towards the others also, then you have caught the thread of real love; then you have started feeling Existence in everything. Then slowly, you will

move on to embracing everything and everyone as part of Existence.

We will now do a simple and very effective meditation technique called the mahamantra meditation, for experiencing the energy source within us. This meditation is also good for energizing the anahata chakra that is located in the heart region.

Emotion: Love

Location: Heart region

In Sanskrit, anahata means 'that which cannot be created'. Pure love can never be created. It flowers on its own.

This chakra is locked when you seek attention and love from others, and it flowers when you express selfless love without expecting anything in return!

Meditation Technique to be a source of love energy: Mahamantra Meditation – a Tibetan Buddhist technique.

The Mahamantra meditation is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist technique to help you feel the energy source within you. It will create a good energy flow in you. It will fill you to the brim with energy so that you stop seeking attention from others and start giving energy and love to others as a result of overflowing energy in you. This technique will awaken the anahata chakra located in the heart center.

This will also make your mind firm and stable. Your mind is mostly oscillating with thoughts. This meditation makes your mind still by making it enter into the zone of no-mind. It is like a jumping board into infinity.

While doing this meditation you may wear your mala (rosary) around your neck. It will serve to store the energy that you create during the meditation.

This meditation should be done on an empty stomach, preferably early in the morning, or two hours after any meal. It can be done either alone or with a group. When done with a group, it effectively energizes the place where it is done.

Let me explain the technique to you:

Sit cross-legged in a comfortable position on the floor. Keep your head, neck and spine in a straight line. Those of you who are not

able to sit on the floor may sit on a chair. Feel relaxed and close your eyes. Even after we close our eyes, we see forms and images from behind the eyelids. To handle this, imagine that your eyeballs have become stone-like. Just harden them with mental pressure; then the images will die. The movement of our eyes is very closely related to the movement of thoughts in our mind. That is why you are asked to arrest the movement of your eyeballs. Don't be too worried about keeping them arrested. Just proceed with the meditation.

Keep your lips together and produce the sound 'mmmm…' from inside. If you were to put your face inside an empty aluminum vessel and make a humming sound, the sound generated would be like this. Note that this is not 'Hum…' or 'Om…', it is simply keeping your lips together and producing the sound 'mmmm…'. This humming should be as lengthy as possible before taking the next breath. It should also be as deep as possible, from the navel center, and as loud as possible.

Don't make an effort to take in a deep breath after every 'mmmm'; the body itself will take breaths when needed. Don't become tense. Put in your whole being and energy into creating this vibration. Just become the humming. Let your whole body be filled with the vibration of the humming. After some time, you will feel that the humming continues without your effort and that you have become a listener to it!

At the end of twenty minutes, stop the humming. If you are playing the CD, you will hear 'Stop!' and you stop as you are, abruptly. Don't wait to finish a breath, just stop abruptly.

After stopping the humming, keep your eyes closed and remain silent and inactive for 10 minutes with a smiling face and blissful mood. If any thought comes to you, let it come. Simply watch your mind as if you are watching the television. Do not resist your thoughts or pass any judgment on them. Remain silent and blissful. During this time, the energy created by the forty-two minutes of humming will enter all the corners of your being and cleanse them deeply.

At the end of 10 minutes, slowly, very slowly, open your eyes. Try to talk very little for the next half and hour at the least.

Thank you.