(Total time duration: 30 minutes. One should not do this meditation without the presence of an ordained teacher of Life Bliss Foundation.)

The Nirbhaya Dhyana is a meditation technique taken from Vedanta. It is a darkness meditation. Darkness meditation stops the mind from thinking of anything known. When the mind stops thinking of the known things, thoughts automatically dissolve. This is the concept behind this meditation.

Sit comfortably on the floor. Those who cannot sit on the floor may sit on a chair. The head, neck and spine should all be in a straight line.

Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Imagine that you are walking into a dense forest. You are walking into the densest part of the forest. You enter a deep, dark cave. You cannot see anything with your eyes. You sit down in the dark cave. You cannot see your own body. Except for your own feeling of being there, you have no other identification.

How ever much you try, you are not able to see anything. In the deep darkness, you can only sense by touch that you are there. (1 minute)

You are born from the darkness that was in your mother's womb and you dissolve into the same loving, compassionate darkness. (1 minute)

Breathe in deeply the utter darkness that surrounds you everywhere. Breathe in deeply the darkness that has made your identity disappear.

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body merging with the darkness. (5 minutes)

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body becoming the darkness. (5 minutes)

With every cell of your body, breathe in and breathe out the darkness deeply. (15 minutes)

Begin to feel yourself. Start to feel your whole body with all your senses. Move your body very slowly in the sitting position. Get up and move out of the cave. Start walking out of the dense forest.

Return to the meditation hall…(3 minutes)

Just carry this silence with you.

Thank you.

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Guaranteed Solutions

Chapter 7 Y

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You are unique

omparison is the seed, jealousy is the fruit!

We always compare ourselves with others, and more often than not we feel what others have or what they have achieved is more than what we have, and we start feeling jealous. When we are not able to bear others' excellence, we get jealous. Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit!

Comparison and jealousy are both actually non-existent! We create them ourselves and talk endlessly on how to overcome them. Comparison is like a shadow without an object. There is no basis for the concept of comparison. It is purely a figment of our imagination.

A small story:

One man was part of a music group that gave live shows all over the world.

In one particular how, he decided to wear a black wig while singing a few songs and a red wig while singing the other songs.

He alternated the wigs and finished the first half of the program.

During the intermission, the show director came up to him in the dressing room and told him, 'Sir, we request you to wear only the red wig for the remaining part of the show.' The man was surprised and asked him why.

The director replied, 'The people like the red haired singer's voice a lot better than the black haired singer's!'

We are so busy comparing all the time that we never see things as they are! Our mind is so caught up in comparison that it misses what actually is. If we drop the comparing attitude, we will be able to see things as they are.

What is comparison?

What are the major areas where we normally compare?

Beauty Swamiji….

Wealth….

Name and fame… Power, prestige… Knowledge… Health…

Alright, these are the areas where we normally compare ourselves with others. We can group these under four major categories: money, knowledge, beauty which includes health, and status. All our problems, all our complexes can be covered under these four categories, am I right?

Now…let us say that you queue up all the people in the world in ascending order of money. You are also part of that queue. Where would you think you would be?

Guaranteed Solutions

Somewhere in the middle Swamiji…

Exactly! You would be somewhere in the middle. You would not even be able to count the number of people on either side of you in the queue.

And the people might have to keep shifting their places also because the amount of money that they have keeps changing every minute! Now, you have to decide if you are going to look at the length of queue in front of you and feel jealous or look at the length of queue behind you and feel grateful! It is in your hands.

You very well know that nothing can be told about where you are in the queue, but the thought disturbs you all the time! We are haunted by a phenomenon that does not really exist! The comparison has a purely negative existence!

Let me explain to you what I mean by negative existence. Take this bell here that is beside me. If I want to remove this bell, I can simply take it and leave it outside the room and it will not be here any more, am I right? This bell has a positive existence and so it is possible for me to do this. Now, let us say there is darkness in this room. Is it possible for you to take the darkness and keep it out? No.

But if I bring light into this room, the darkness will disappear on its own, right? This is because darkness does not have a positive existence; it has a negative existence. Because it has a negative existence, we cannot remove it directly like the bell.

In the same way, comparison does not have a positive existence. It exists only in our minds. It happens only when we exercise a certain thought in our mind. Because comparison does not exist in

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reality, you cannot overcome it by simply asking it to go away. You can overcome it by bringing in an understanding about it, just like bringing in light to dispel the darkness.

In Sanskrit, the word illusion is translated as maya.

We say, ya ma iti maya, which means that which does not exist is maya!

That which does not exist, but which continuously disturbs! That is the property of illusion!

Comparison is pure illusion.

Stop borrowing desires!

When I tell people about the queue of people, they tell me, 'Swamiji, it is better not to look at any side of the queue.' I ask them, 'Why? Why should you fear to look?' The fact that you are afraid to look itself shows that you are running away from your own mind. If you can look, but not be affected by what you see – then you have found the right way!

When you are able to look at everything, what you have and what others have and feel fulfillment all the time, then you are fine with it.

I am deliberately not using the word 'contentment'. People often say, 'Learn to be contented.' You can never learn to be contented. Contentment will flower when you understand the negative existence of comparison and jealousy. It will flower when you feel a deep gratitude for whatever is being showered on you every minute. It cannot be imposed from outside.

When you are on your own at home, you will think that it is enough if you have a home and car for yourself. You will feel relaxed with this thought. You will feel moments of gratitude and fulfillment. After some time, when you step out of your house in your car, and stop by at a traffic light, what happens? A Mercedes Benz pulls up beside your car…and your mind flips over its thinking. It starts thinking that your car is just no good. It starts thinking that it is high time that you bought a new car, if not a Mercedes Benz.

Just a few minutes earlier you were happy with your own things, but now what happened? You are starting to work out a new desire, a 'borrowed desire'. Be very clear that this is not your own desire. It is the desire of the owner of the Benz car. This is how you start working out others' desires in your mind as a result of comparison and jealousy.

Take another example: You may never have felt the need for a refrigerator in your house, but if your neighbor buys a refrigerator, immediately you will feel that you cannot do without it! Immediately you will find all the reasons in the world why you need a refrigerator. All these days you were managing without a refrigerator! Nothing has changed, but what has happened? Your mind has stepped in with comparison.

Borrowed desires happen so subtly in our mind, that is why although they are continuously happening, we continue to say that we are not bothered about the others!

A small story:

One man returned to his neighborhood after almost 10 years.

He went around the neighborhood with his friend.

He was surprised to see the many changes in the place.

He commented to this friend, 'Prosperity has changed the face of this whole neighborhood!'

The friend replied, 'No, not prosperity, just plain jealousy.'

We are all the time trying to beat the other. When you are after borrowed desires, you will never stop, because when you are on the verge of realizing any one of them, another borrowed desire will come up from somewhere and you will be on track once more!

You keep running because you are centered not within yourself but on something outside. Your center is on other people. And their center is elsewhere, not inside themselves! Imagine how much you have to run, how much you have to pull and push according to the mass sway of off-centric thoughts and emotions! You become a puppet.

I tell you: Every time you want something, sit by yourself and think if you really want it or you want it because someone else had it. Do an honest analysis of each of your desires when they surface. Drop all your prestige problems and do a self-analysis. If you can't drop your prestige when you are alone, how will you drop it when you are with people?

If you are able to live out only your desires, you will die a peaceful death, full of satisfaction even if it is on the platform. If you live your whole life with borrowed desires, you will never see real fulfillment and even if you are living in a marble house, you will have a prolonged death, pulling and pushing, unable to get liberated from your unfulfilled desires.

In Jainism, there is a belief that when you are born, the entire quantity of food and energy that you will need during your lifetime is sent along with you. This is a way of saying that whatever your true requirements in this birth are, Existence equips you with the energy to fulfill them before even sending you to planet Earth.

But when you start using this energy to realize borrowed desires, you start feeling that nothing has been given to you; that nothing is enough. You feel tired, exhausted and frustrated that nothing is happening.

There is a difference between needs and wants. Your needs are already taken care of in some way. It is possible to satisfy your needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your wants because they are changing all the time.

For example: Let us say that you go to the shop to buy a fan for your house. But on the way you meet some friends on the road, who tell you that they are going to buy some other things in other shops. Immediately, you are tempted to go with them to buy them and so you change your track and go and buy along with them. Then you find that you don't have enough money to buy your fan!

In some places in India there will be monkey trainers who make a living out of training monkeys.

They will carry a stick with them and use it to prod the monkey to do whatever they want it to do.

They will wave the stick and shout, 'Dance Rama! Dance!' and the monkey will dance!

Then they will say, 'Turn cart wheels Rama! Turn cartwheels!' And the monkey will turn cartwheels.

The monkey will simply dance to the tunes of the stick.

Like this, we allow a stick called comparison to run our lives. We dance to its tunes, doing things that are not our own but that are dictated by the stick.

We are constantly in the rat race. And the thing about being in the rat race is, even if you win, you are only a rat!

But somehow, late in life, at some point in time, you understand that even success in the rat race doesn't give you a sense of fulfillment. Even success leads to a deep sense of discontentment, because, while you may have fulfilled all the material desires in the outer world, you have ignored your being all the time.

The call of discontentment is from your being. When you understand that, you turn towards spirituality. But when you don't understand that, you turn towards depression, because you don't know where you are missing it. You don't know where the thread is. You don't know what went wrong.

What more do you want?

I can tell you from my experience: Existence is always showering upon us. There is such abundance! But we are so well trained in the discipline of discontentment that we have become insensitive to what we receive. We always want more.

A small story:

One man was doing rigorous penance in the jungle for God to appear.

God appeared before him. He told the man to ask what he wanted.

The man was overjoyed and said that he was a landlord and had lost all his wealth and that he wished to become wealthy again.

God took pity on him and said that the following day, if the man ran from dawn to dusk, all the area covered by him would be his.

The man was extremely happy.

The next day he started running even before dawn.

He ran as fast as he could.

Close to noon, hunger beckoned but he didn't pay heed and kept running.

Early in the evening, thirst and fatigue gripped him but he was goaded on by the thought of the neighboring landlord who owned many acres of land. Pictures of all his wealthy contemporaries came to him and he ran on.

A little before sunset, he felt giddy and weak but managed a few more steps.

At twilight, he faltered…and fell dead.

This is how we all live our lives. We run the race without even stopping to think why we are running! We run because everyone else is running! Shankaracharya beautifully describes this as 'thatha kim, thatha kim.' meaning 'what next, what next.' We are all the time thinking 'what next'.

Another small story:

One man was found crying at the doorstep of his house.

His friend asked him what the matter was.

He said, 'My grand aunt has died leaving all her wealth to me.'

The friend was puzzled and said, 'But she was really old and besides she has left all her wealth to you. Why are you crying?'

The man replied, 'You don't know… the week before that, my uncle died and left all his wealth to me.'

The friend was puzzled and asked, 'Why are you crying then?'

The man continued, 'And the week before that, my aunt passed away and left all her wealth to me.'

The friend could not understand why all this was causing him to cry.

He asked, 'Please tell me why you are crying for all this?' The man said, 'There are no more relatives who will die and leave me wealth!'

Of course, this is an exaggerated story, but we are like this. We don't feel happy with all the things that we have.

For just 24 hours, from morning till night, just imagine that you have lost your eyesight. Try going about your work keeping your eyes closed. In just a few minutes, you will understand the difficulty. It will be such a relief to open your eyes and see the world again. You will probably then thank God for your eyesight!

Do you ever compare yourself with people who don't have eyesight and thank God that you have been given eyesight? No! Why not? Because whatever has been given to you is always taken for granted. That is the reason. You think, 'It is anyway there, let us go to the next thing.'

Doing, having, being

We all function around these three axes: doing, having and being. Doing for having, without enjoying being, is the sole cause of all our misery. Doing never catches up with having. Every time we work hard and fulfill one desire, there are more desires to make us run.

Never think, 'Let me work now, I can enjoy later.' Don't think you can come back later and enjoy! I tell you, it will never happen. Every tomorrow comes in the form of today. Doing should lead to being every moment, only then you are on the right track.

Don't postpone living. Celebrate! Enjoy life – it is now or never. We all run throughout our lives thinking that we can enjoy later, but we land up finally running into the graveyard. When you get onto the running track, you lose your real capacity to enjoy. You forget how to enjoy.

As they say, 'There is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment!' Always, as long as you are chasing something, it seems that it is worth the whole world, but after you get it, somehow it loses its importance! If you become aware of yourself and understand what exactly you want, and try to do that alone, you will never find yourself in this kind of a self-contradictory and fragmented situation.

Ramana Maharshi beautifully says:

Adaivadar mun kadugey aanaalum malayaay kaatti Adainda pin malayey aanaalum kadugai kaattum maya manam

It means, 'Mind is that illusion which shows a tiny mustard seed to be a huge mountain until it is attained, and a mountain to be as insignificant as a mustard seed once it has been attained!'

People ask me, 'Swamiji, unless we compare, how will we know where we stand?'

In the whole world, someone is sure to be better than you at whatever you do. There is a 99.99% chance that you are not the world's best engineer, the fastest runner or the most talented painter. Does that mean that you enjoy these things any less? Only when you think that you might be enjoying less than someone else, you start enjoying less! The moment the thought that 'someone else might be enjoying more than you' comes in, your whole flavor changes. You become uneasy and jealous.

It is like this: Poverty itself doesn't trouble us. The thought that we are poor troubles us! We might be leading a peaceful life as we are, but when the thought that we are poor enters us, we suffer. And how does this thought come? By seeing others and comparing. We feel this way because this thought directly hits our ego and we shrink - like a mango.

A small story:

There were two shops opposite each other across the street, selling the same kind of things.

There was always a stiff competition between them.

The shopkeeper of one of the shops came out one day and put up a signboard outside his shop: Established in the year 1929.

The shopkeeper of the shop across the street was watching this from inside his shop.

The next day, he came out and put up a signboard in front of his shop: All fresh stock. No old goods.

You are unique

When you don't understand the potential you have been blessed with, when you have not discovered that you are enough unto yourself, you automatically don't feel confident about the stuff inside you, and you start following others.

Buddha says, 'Nothing exists except in relationship.' Suppose you were the only person on a new planet, would you call yourself tall or short? Ugly or beautiful? Rich or poor? Tell me! You can't call yourself anything, am I right? You will simply be you! That's all! Understand that this is the truth even when you are on this planet.

Each individual is unique. Can you compare a lion and a horse? Do we ever compare ourselves to flowers or birds or mountains? We simply enjoy their beauty. In the same way, why can't you see and enjoy other human beings also?

Although human beings appear to be the same, each one is unique and traveling on a different path. As long as you travel on your path with full concentration, you will experience fulfillment every minute. You won't even know what it means to look at another person's track.

A small story:

One man was driving along a dark village road where there were no streetlights.

He decided to follow the car in front of him to play it safe. They went on for some distance and suddenly the lead car stopped.

The man went and crashed into it.

'Why didn't you signal that you were going to stop?' he screamed out.

The driver put his head out and asked, 'Inside my own garage?'

If you concentrate on your own track, you will be continuously progressing and expanding your own capacity. You need to compare yourself with only yourself, never with others. You need to win yourself only by yourself, not by others. Every minute of comparison with others is a waste of time in your own progress. Another small story:

A man was running in a 1000-metre race. After running 200 metres, he looked back and saw that the rest of the runners were after him. Happily he ran on. After 500 metres, he looked back again and was happy that he was still leading and ran on.

Every few meters, he did the same thing and finally won the race.

If the man had not looked back and instead concentrated only on running faster, he would have won the race in a much shorter span of time. He would have probably set a new record! In the same way, in our lives also, if our concentration is always fully on our own progress instead of on others, we can actualize our entire potential.

We are all the time talking about conserving petrol, water and electricity. What about conserving our own energy? What about using our own energy in a proper way? If we used all our energy for our own expansion, just imagine how much we could achieve.

See, the thing about comparison is, you always measure yourself with the weakest link in yourself or your performance. That is the trouble. Never measure yourself with the weakest link. You don't have to be egoistic and claim yourself to be something great. But you can have some self-respect and realise that you are unique unto yourself. Then you won't measure yourself in this way.

When you have self-respect, you will appreciate that each one is unique and understand that there is no scope for comparison. This is also the first step towards feeling grateful for just being!

A small story:

A king once went to a master to attain some magical powers, so that he could become more powerful than his neighboring kings.

He sat in front of the master and started telling him the purpose of his visit.

The master listened patiently to the king.

He then told him to go into his garden, where a rose bush and a cactus plant were growing side by side. He told him, 'They are your teachers. They can teach you what you need to learn.'

The king went into the garden, saw the two plants and could not understand what he was meant to learn from them.

He came back to the master and asked, 'What do you mean, master? I am not able to understand how they will teach me.'

The master took him to the plants and explained, 'This cactus plant has been next to the rose plant for many years. Never once has it even aspired to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant has never ever aspired to become a cactus plant. They just attend to their own duties of growing and blossoming every day. If man had been the cactus, he would have compared himself with the rose and felt jealous at the attention that the rose plant was getting from people. Or if he were the rose, he would have looked at the cactus enviously thinking how peaceful the latter was without the torture of getting plucked by people all day!'

The master said*, '*This is the most powerful magical power you can attain!'

The two plants prospered because they used all their energy for their own growth. Not even an iota of energy was wasted on analyzing the other's growth.

It is time for self inquiry

In this world, people respect you only if you have achieved something tangible in the outer world. Educational degrees, beauty titles, company designations, published papers, bank balances, are all scales that society uses to grade you.

See, first of all, you don't need to be graded by anyone. Place trust in your own intelligence and grade yourself.

But understand that there is a lot to be achieved in the inner world too. The outer world achievements are all incidental. They will get you instant name and fame and money. The real achievement is in the inner world.

Center yourself well with acute awareness and simply take part in the outer world activities like a lotus untouched in a pond. Let the work in the periphery go on undisturbed, but center yourself in your being. You will then be able to perform much better in the outer world, because your inner intelligence will be growing and guiding.

Then automatically, you will stop swaying in accordance with the outer world achievements and feel stability and joy in the center of your own being. Finding your center is the only way out of this whole cycle of comparison and jealousy.

How many successful businessmen today are facing what is known as depression of success? They have achieved everything they wanted. They have realized their own dreams, borrowed dreams, everything. But they don't feel fulfilled. There is still a void in them.

They start wondering why they ran so much. This is because they ran without awareness, without stopping to give an appointment to themselves, without any self-inquiry. As a result, when they stop running or when suddenly they can't run anymore, they fall back into themselves and find that they are out of synch or dis-eased with their own being, and this is what becomes 'depression' or 'disease'.

When you fall into depression of success, you can resort to three ways. One is, resorting to drugs – addiction that will lead to further depression. The second way out is suicide – which is escapism. The third way out is meditation – looking inward for the solution. The intelligent ones take the third way out.

Self-inquiry is the way to bail you out of this depression. The problem is inside, while you search for a solution outside. You have neglected your being for such a long time and the depression that you feel is actually the call of your being. That is why again and again, masters have given ever so many techniques to center yourself in your inner core and merely function in your periphery.

When this same thing is told to you when you are at the peak of your career, you will not be willing to pay attention, because you have enough energy. Once your energy starts waning, you will feel that something is wrong somewhere. That something is what masters try to tell you again and again.

Albert Einstein, the great physicist was on his deathbed. There were some close people sitting around him.

One of them asked him what he would like to be reborn as if ever he was reborn.

Everyone expected him to say that he would like to be reborn as an even greater scientist or something to that effect.

Einstein replied, 'If ever I would be reborn, I would like to be reborn as a plumber.'

He felt that he had achieved all that was to be achieved, but what for he achieved, he had not achieved. He gave the world great truths but felt that his whole life had become a lie.

You see, in this whole process of comparing and running, you actually become a machine. Much of your daily activities becomes unconscious. You are able to drive a car without even being aware that you are driving it. You become a machine just like the car.

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Right from brushing your teeth early in the morning to going to bed, you work like a programmed robot, with absolutely no awareness of your Self. You become efficient in all that you do no doubt, but you have lost the humanness in you! You have gone so far away from the purpose of taking birth on planet Earth. You become disconnected from your being!

When you are in continuous awareness, you will not only be able to do things efficiently but you will also do things with totality, with a sense of fulfillment, because you – the microcosm - will be in tune with Existence - the macrocosm - and you will fly with roots on planet Earth. When you fly without roots, you are forever in the danger of hurting yourself any moment. So understand, working with awareness not only increases your efficiency but also ensures that you don't stray from the purpose of your being.

Jealousy about another's body

Alright, now…let us talk some more on jealousy! Jealousy as you all know, arises out of comparison. When we are unable to bear the excellence of others in any aspect, we start feeling jealous. There are ever so many reasons why we get jealous.

For example, the moment you see that another person is more beautiful than you, you are unable to bear it. You start feeling terrible inside yourself.

First of all understand that God is an artist, not an engineer. If he was an engineer, he would have made every woman or every man with the same mould. He would have probably made every woman with the mould of a Miss World and every man in the mould of a Mr.Universe!

But God is not an engineer. He is an artist. He has made everyone in a unique way.

With what scale are you measuring beauty? There is no scale. It is all your own ideas and concepts. Even if a cinema star is beautiful, can you enjoy a single cup of tea through his or her form?

When you start longing for other people's bodies, you create a wedge inside yourself. You create a split personality inside yourself. Slowly, you start hating yourself.

Do you know, the eyes that don't linger on another's body have a certain beauty and innocence in them? Have faith in what God has done to you. It is only when you don't have that faith, you try to update yourself by indulging in all sorts of methods. When you accept yourself completely, a certain grace comes to you. This grace is far more superior to mere physical beauty.

Physical beauty is one thing while grace is another. Physical beauty can be achieved by any means. These days, you have ever so many methods of achieving physical beauty. There are beauty packs, plastic surgeries and various other methods. But grace is something that comes when there is tremendous confidence and calmness in you, when there is no craving in you, when you are completely at ease with your body.

When I went to America for the first time, the officers at the airport asked me how people would listen to me if I spoke wearing this saffron robe! I told them, 'Give me one week and I will make this a fashion in America!' A leader is one who has totally accepted himself. When you accept yourself, you become a unique flower, and tremendous freedom and confidence will happen in you.

It is very important that you learn to live with your own body. The moment you think that another's body or another's dimensions are more attractive, you create a gap between yourself and your body. I have seen people who have photographs of male or female models in the walls of their rooms and do physical exercises to attain the body structure of the model. When you think that another's body is more beautiful, you create a distance between you and you.

None of us deeply love our body. We carry it only like a load. We are never inside our body because we hate it. We are everywhere else except in our bodies. We therefore have a continuous uneasiness in us and are ready to burst at any time.

For example, if your driver does something minor, you explode effortlessly. At work, you are continuously in an irritable mood. Don't think the reasons for these lie with the people around you. People tell me, 'Swamiji, all my workers are so inefficient and that is why I get irritated.' Please understand that this is not the reason for your irritability. You are not at ease with your body and that is what causes the uneasiness and irritation in your system. It is a very subtle reason and that is why it is difficult to perceive it.

Q: Your face appears to be changing every time to me. Is it my imagination or is it true?

An enlightened being is like liquid – slowing without any ego. That is the reason why they appear to be changing all the time! You will understand how an egoless state expresses, when we discuss about ego.

Q: How do we get over possessiveness and jealousy?

Yes, how do we get over it? The fact that you have asked this question shows that you are ready for better understanding.

Human beings can never be possessed. When you try to possess a person, you actually reduce him or her to an object. You make the person a dead thing. Only dead things can be possessed. If you understand this, you will be free from possessiveness and the jealousy that arises out of it.

Can you try to possess a river? If you try to grasp the water in your hand, you will be doing a foolish thing, will you not? In the same way, don't try to possess people; just enjoy them for what they are and you will be free from the grips of jealousy.

When you try to possess a person, it becomes difficult for that person also. You will start projecting all your ideas on him. He will have to act so as to gel with your projected ideas. He will feel caged. He cannot be his natural self with you. Then it cannot be called a relationship anymore!

Also if you really love a person, liberate him! Don't try to possess him. Just love him with no strings attached.

I am reminded of a story:

In a remote village in South India, where people did not know that civilization existed, there was an old couple. One day, for the first time ever, there was a fair in the

village.

The man went to the fair and saw all the items on show.

He picked up a mirror and was awestruck by what he saw! He had never seen a mirror in all his life before.

He took it home with him.

Now and then he would take out the mirror, glance at it and put it back before his wife could see it.

The wife however noticed it and when he was out one day, she picked it up and looked into it.

She exclaimed, 'Another woman! Just as I had thought!'

There is no end to our imagination because of our possessiveness and jealousy!

Of course, you might say, 'Swamiji, how can I keep quiet if my husband or wife is eyeing someone else.' If your husband or wife is really eyeing another person, just look into the matter consciously, with awareness, and sort out the matter with your husband. This is different from possessiveness.

How to overcome jealousy?

By telling yourself not to feel jealous, you can never come out of jealousy. Only if you bring awareness into the whole thing and understand deeply, it will help.

To overcome jealousy, just see how the jealousy came into your system. Just analyze the sequence of thoughts and emotions that led to jealousy.

Soon you will understand that jealousy is there like a shadow without an object, tormenting you. Getting liberation from jealousy is a great liberation in one's life.

Second thing, don't condemn the object of your jealousy. Just by condemning the object of jealousy, you will not be liberated from jealousy itself.

By condemning the object of jealousy, you might be liberated from that particular object of jealousy, but you will get fixed onto another object of jealousy, that's all! It is like saying 'sour grapes' and moving on to another vineyard! So, trying to overcome the object of jealousy is not the solution. You need to work on the subject that is you.

If you feel that you are holding an emotion that you wish to get rid of, something that you feel is not conducive to your growth, don't resist that emotion. When you resist it, you will only be empowering it more. When you say, 'I should not get jealous,' you will be giving the same power to the word 'jealous' as you give to the words 'I should not'.

Instead, say to yourself, 'Let me be always compassionate towards everyone.' Don't use the word 'jealous' at all. Say something totally positive in the same context, that's all.

328 Also, instead of avoiding or running away from jealousy, live it through with total awareness. When you try to avoid it, it will confront you at some other time with more intensity than before. Just remember that jealousy is not your true nature. Society taught you to be jealous.

Jealousy is not the real you. When this clicks in you, you will laugh at it instead of being involved in it. When you are able to laugh at it, it means you have started witnessing it instead of being a part of it. The moment you become a witness, it becomes easy to go beyond anything.

Also, if you see that the whole of Existence is nothing but a divine play, you will be able to see the jealous feeling also as a divine play.

If you understand that you are unique and there is no one in this world like you, the comparing nature in you will become meaningless and you will automatically stop feeling jealous. Always remember: Existence loves everyone and everything equally.

Make the most of the masters' messages

Q: Masters time and again try to inspire in us traits like love free from jealousy, better understanding and non-judgmental attitudes. Why is the understanding not happening in us?

You see, there are two things in this: When we catch the masters' messages and make a sincere effort in transforming ourselves, we have caught the right thread and we enter into bliss! But when we start giving importance to the master's personality instead, there starts the problem.

If you follow the master's teachings, you will become a spiritual fruit. If you cling on to his personality, you will remain a religious nut. Religious nuts are the ones who create confusion and conflict in society.

Whether it is Krishna's message in the Bhagavad Gita or Mohammed's message in the Holy Koran or Christ's message in the Holy Bible, the message remains the same, just the expressions vary. Whichever master you have the fortune of following, follow. But when you follow Krishna, if Krishna becomes more significant to you than the Bhagavad Gita, you are creating trouble for yourself and for others.

When Krishna and Christ meet, they will surely embrace each other. But when Krishna's cows and Christ's sheep meet, there is bound to be a fight!

Each one tries to spread peace claiming that his master's philosophy is the best. What happens? Instead of spreading peace, we become pieces ourselves!

Masters keep happening on planet Earth out of sheer compassion towards humanity. But man somehow manages to survive them!

The other way to transform quickly is, instead of pointing fingers at others or instead of waiting for a good time to start practicing, if each of us starts practicing from the very moment of hearing the messasge, things will automatically start happening around us.

For example, I tell you to start loving plants, animals, trees and humans alike. Instead of waiting for an auspicious time to start practicing it and eventually forgetting all about it, you can start start practicing it right now.

The simplest way to start might be to avoid abusing nature while you are walking on the road or inside your own home. When walking, some of us have the habit of breaking twigs off trees and plucking flowers. You could consciously stop doing these things and look at these things with more awareness and love.

These are the ways not to miss the masters' teachings.

But what do you do? You listen to the masters' talks or read some of their books, and say, 'What a great orator he is,' and forget all about it. Or, you advise some of your friends to listen to the speeches, and you simply go back to your old ways of doing things. What can be done then?

Please understand: I don't want you to just preach my teachings; I want you to practice them also.

Listen to this small story:

A man went to Africa for a holiday.

He was walking in his backyard one day when he was confronted by a lion that leapt on him.

He quickly ducked and the lion landed in the bush nearby.

The next day, the man went walking again and the lion appeared and attacked him once more, but again he ducked and it landed further away in the bush nearby.

The next day, the man stood inside his house and looked outside to see if the lion could be seen anywhere.

He spotted the lion behind a bush.

See, when you apply the knowledge that you gain, you can grow in life. When you simply want to collect knowledge, it is of no use. If you are going to only collect knowledge, only your memory will grow, not your being.

Masters talk the ultimate truth that no one else can express.

It is like this: There is a vast and dense forest and you are trying to explore it with a small lamp, that is your mind.

With the light of the small lamp, you see a few feet ahead and put down what you see as the truth.

This is what scientists do. They see a few feet ahead and come out with one theory today.

After some time, they go a few feet further ahead with that light and see a few feet further and see something more.

They then discard the truth they declared today and bring in a new truth.

Be very clear that what was truth today but untruth tomorrow could not have been truth even today.

Anyhow, this is how they are trying to explore a dense forest with their mind.

But imagine now that there is a flash of lightning and the whole forest becomes visible in that one flash!

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Then you know the whole forest and you can go about explaining things as and when needed.

This is what enlightenment is all about! It is seeing the whole forest in a single flash of lightning. So enlightened masters know the ultimate truth.

In most of the teashops in remote villages in India, you can see a familiar scene. There will be some standard visitors for the shop everyday who discuss all the great philosophies of the world. The heads of all the great Gods, masters and politicians will be properly chewed and digested by these people.

All the atrocities being committed in town will be discussed without exception. The whole world will be brought under scrutiny for lack of order and discipline. Finally, the man who spoke all this will finish his tea and leave saying that he will pay for his tea the following day!

The man who could not even pay for his tea will sit on the teashop bench and read the newspaper from the first page to the last and pass judgment on everything that he has read. Even the editor would not have read the paper so thoroughly!

So, start practicing. Sage Patanjali from ancient India says, 'If you can bend 5 inches today, try to bend a half-inch more tomorrow.' Like this, you should work steadily towards experiencing the truth that I am giving you. Otherwise, you will be no more than the people in the teashops. They cause depressions in the benches there while you cause holes in the mats here, that's all!

The problem is, most often, when we hear words of wisdom spoken, we always feel that it is exactly applicable to our friend or relative who is also listening to the lecture! We secretly hope that they got the message. But we miss the message ourselves! Remember: Even if there are a thousand people in the hall, I am talking to you.

Every word of mine is pregnant with the energy that is meant for you. So please don't listen with such ideas in your mind. Especially when husbands and wives come to listen to the lectures, when I say a few things pertaining to their practical lives, the husband will think, she should hear this and the wife will think to herself that the husband should hear it! At the end, both will miss it.

Man's inherent nature is to accumulate money and material things. At some point in time, he realizes that there are things that money can't get him. His pace in gathering wealth automatically decreases. He then starts gathering words or intellectual knowledge. This process somehow never stops. He becomes greedy for more and more words.

One who has stopped gathering wealth and words will find true knowledge. Often, we ask questions not because we really want to know the answer but simply because we are greedy for more words or because we want to show that we know something.

If you look deep inside, only one question will arise and that is the only original question for yourself. If that question is answered, you will become enlightened!

One man asked me, 'Swamiji, What is God?'

I slowly changed the subject and enquired about his family and his business.

We spoke for nearly two hours. In those two hours, never once did he get back to his initial question.

At the end of it I told him, 'Ayyah, you asked me a question as soon as you came in. I did not answer it because it was not a question from deep inside you.'

If the question arises from deep inside us, we will never forget it or rest until we are satisfied with the answer. Some people ask questions, give the answer themselves and then ask me for an answer!

Q: If we should stop comparing, does it mean we should renounce everything and become a spiritualist?

Most people think that the moment I say you should stop comparing, stop running etc., I am asking them to escape from the worldly matters and become a spiritualist.

Spirituality, or for that matter sannyas, is not about renouncing at all. It is about having deep awareness, which will automatically shrink your mad desires to basic needs and give you the energy to fulfill them.

Whatever needs to be done in the outer world needs to be done, no doubt. You have to earn a living; you have to keep the body alive etc. All I am saying is, bring awareness into all this so that all unnecessary occupations in the outer world automatically disappear and you live with a clear understanding of the purpose of your very birth and life.

All forms of illusion, all borrowed desires, all instilled fears, all forms of jealousy and comparison, passion and lust will then undergo a complete transformation and become blissful energy to you.

A small story:

A master was walking with his disciple when they came to a river.

The disciple was surprised and asked, 'Master, are we going to cross this river now?'

The master calmly replied, 'Yes, we are. You have to be careful not to get your feet wet!'

The disciple could not understand what the master was saying! The master was trying to tell him that spirituality is all about crossing the ocean of life without getting your feet wet. It is all about being like a lotus in a pond – untouched by the water although deep inside it.

True spirituality

Spirituality is actually Life Engineering. In colleges, they teach you different types of engineering. Life engineering is what needs to be taught to each of us. Spirituality teaches you to live like a Paramahamsa or a realised one, in the material world, neck deep in water, yet untouched by it.

It teaches you to live an intense and fulfilling life without violating any person or property. It teaches you to disconnect from your intellect and see with wide-eyed innocence the wonders of Existence. It teaches you how to move synchronously with Existence and experience the power of coincidence, where things happen automatically in response to your inner joy.

It teaches you to be in an ever prayerful and grateful mood. It helps you enjoy every moment from your inner core, instead of being swayed by your emotions. It shows you how to celebrate life every moment.

It kindles your inner intelligence and accelerates your performance in the outer world. It awakens your awareness and takes you to deeper consciousness. It takes you from lust to love, from worrying to wondering, from false to truth, from pain to bliss, from jealousy to celebration.

People think that they need to allot a separate time for spirituality; not at all. You will know from what I have just said that this is not required. The people who claim that you need to allot separate time are not spiritual people; they are religious people.

Religion needs time because of rites and rituals. Spirituality has nothing to do with quantity or time. It has to do with the quality of your life. If you have the sincerity to seek the truth, it is enough. You can then devote all your time to doing everything as an earnest meditation and you will attain your goal. You will automatically shine at work, at home, and in interpersonal relationships, without energy blockages.

You will adapt yourself to any kind of surroundings easily. You will feel at home at any place and with any type of people. Home will not be just the place you live in but the whole of Existence. You will break free from mental and physical conditioning and rise to merge and become one with Existence.

The problem is, people are contented with just following rituals. There is a certain security they enjoy in it. The science behind the rituals is no more known to people but the rituals are ego-fulfilling to them. Rituals are complex and we always find it a challenge to do complex things.

People come to me with their problems and ask me for a solution. I tell them that I will take care and suggest to them to sit for a while under the banyan tree while they are in the ashram. The banyan tree in the ashram is an energy field. But they are not happy with that answer. They ask me what rituals they should do to make things better.

If I tell them that they should go 108 times around the banyan tree, they will be very happy doing it! You see, when you go 108 times around the banyan tree, it becomes ego-fulfilling for you. You then feel that you have worked hard and that you deserve to get the benefit out of it.

Even in religion and rituals, I have seen people compete with each other! If your neighbour has done a particular offering in a particular temple, next you go and do the same offering in that temple. What is the focus on? The deity or the neighbour?

People feel proud in saying that they have visited so many holy shrines all over the world. Immediately, the people who listen to these stories make an effort in surpassing these achievements.

After visiting all these holy shrines, your chakras are still locked! Have you ever thought about that? All these things are done only to progress in the inner world, to be free from comparison, jealousy and similar things, but here also you miss the point. You do things for the sake of the outer world.

I have seen people reading recitations in front of the deity*.* They will read a few lines and then call out to the maid to find out if she has finished the job she was asked to do. Or, they will read a few lines and see how many more pages there are to finish! This is how they relate with God and they feel satisfied at having read the recitation.

And on top of it, they will repeat such recitations for 21 days because they have taken a vow to do so. Then they will proudly go and tell their neighbor or relative that they fulfilled such an arduous vow!

Everything that we do is mostly just to tell people that we did it and sow a seed of comparison in them. If you decide to follow rituals, do it with utmost sincerity, with a feeling of deep connection with Existence. When you do it this way, you won't even talk about it outside.

Rituals, meditation and courage

Q: While we are on the topic of rituals, can you please tell us something about the path of rituals and the path of meditation?

When you decide to follow the ritualistic path, commitment and sincerity must become your master keys. So do it with utmost sincerity. Then that too becomes spirituality. Today, there are hundreds of ways to do ritualistic worship. You don't have to get confused as to which to follow. Just decide to follow any one way and do it with commitment. It is the commitment that gets you the benefit, not the ritual itself.

Also, don't look for instant results. Today, everyone wants instant results like instant tea and coffee. Most of us feel that others' prayers are getting answered quicker than ours and so we should shift from our type of worship to theirs'. So much of comparison even in worship! Do what you are doing with commitment and faith, and leave the rest open. Things will happen automatically.

The ultimate goal of any religion or ritual is to tune in with Existence. Rituals are not a transaction to bribe the Gods.

I am reminded of a story:

Three men started a business together.

They decided to include God as a partner in it.

They agreed that whatever profit they got, they would give away one percent of it to God.

They started the business and made unexpectedly high profits.

Then came the problem: How to give away so much to God?

Each of them gave a suggestion.

The first man said, 'Alright, let's draw a circle and throw up all the money. Whatever falls inside the circle is God's and whatever falls outside is ours.'

The second man said, 'No. I have a better idea. We will draw a really big circle and throw all the money up. Whatever falls inside is ours and whatever falls outside is God's.'

The third man said, 'Look, anyway God is above us. Let us throw all the money up. Whatever he wants, let him take. Whatever comes down is ours!'

As long as we want something, we bribe God for it. As soon as we get it, we drop him until the next want arises! This is how we are taught to function.

Anyhow, coming back to the topic of rituals, there is something definite about them. It is structured and you know when exactly it is going to start, when it is going to finish, where you are going to do it, why you are doing it, etc. With rituals, you go into them, and come out as the same person. There is so much security in the whole process. That is why it has spread so much. Anything that is definite spreads.

But what happens in meditation? First of all, meditation seems too simple to produce any benefits when compared to rituals. People always ask me why I do rituals at the ashram. I tell them, 'If I tell people to simply come to the ashram and sit under the banyan tree and meditate, which is actually enough, they will not listen.'

If I did not have the temple, if they did not see the deities there, probably only I would be sitting under the banyan tree and meditating!

To make people take the first step towards their inner journey, I have to show them some of the things that exist in their minds. I have to talk in their language.

They will be very happy to see the Dakshinamurthy deity under the banyan tree, although they will be blissfully unaware of the energy field that is actually there around the banyan tree even in the absence of the Dakshinamurthy deity. This banyan tree is live energy. Its silence is a vibrating silence. It is enough if you just sit under it in meditation. You don't have to do anything complicated. Every leaf and twig here talks.

See, when you continue to worship idols, you have to become more and more aware of the tremendous presence of Existence that you are trying to connect with through the idol. Then you will automatically start seeing God everywhere. You will understand that it is not just the idol but the whole of creation that is pregnant with the presence of God. Then you can start relating with the whole of Existence.

In the case of meditation, if you go into it with sincerity, the outcome is not definite. A personality change may happen. You may emerge as a different person and this is seen as a great risk! It is like taking a gamble. Transformation starts happening. It is this transformation that you are actually seeking, but when it happens you are afraid.

You feel comfortable in the security of rituals. Rituals become a part of your every-day routine.

When you meditate, your awareness increases and when this happens, the fence that you have imagined around yourself, which actually society has put around you, slowly dissolves and you feel rebellious, not against society but against your own unconscious and ignorant state. This rebellion causes you to probe more into the cause of it and it opens out further avenues for you.

This is how you move deeper and deeper into a space that you have never entered before; a space which society does not even know; a space that has all along been inside you but locked; a space for which you have been unknowingly searching for a key to unlock. When you have found this space, you have arrived!

It is like this:

A cow is tied to a rope and given a few meters of radius to move around.

It moves around and becomes aware and mature through its intelligence.

Then, the rope is loosened a little, giving it a few more meters of radius.

It goes further around and becomes more intelligent and then it is given still more length of rope to wander.

Depending on the cow's growing intelligence and consciousness, it can even be let free at some point in time!

Guaranteed Solutions - For Lust Fear Worry..._English_part_8.md

The same thing happens in man. The more his consciousness grows, the greater freedom he enjoys and the cycle continues.

How does the master help

It is a question of how willing you are to allow the transformation of your energies.

But when this happens, society will tell you that you are moving away. You only have to have courage and faith in Existence and yourself and move on.

Here is where, more than any books or lectures, a master can serve as a yoga danda to you, a stick of support to help you stand up for yourself. Every time you feel beaten by society in your path of spirituality, when you feel you are against the majority, the master will pull you up in his own way and tell you to move on.

This does not mean that you are dependent on the master. It is like this: You are trying to find your way to a particular place. If left by yourself, you will ask for directions at several places. Sometimes you may be guided wrongly and so you may have to retrace your steps. After spending considerable amount of time, you will reach your destination. It may take you a long time to do so, but you will reach it. But what if you have a map or a guide? You will reach your destination without loss of time! Does it mean that you are dependent on the map or guide? No. It was just a quicker way of doing things, that's all. In the same way, a master is a guide who knows the way, who has already been to the place you are searching for and is available to guide you there.

With courage and conviction, it happens

When you have dedication alone, you will no doubt work hard towards reaching your goal, but when you have dedication with courage, you will take a leap towards your goal. This courage will come if you stop looking at others and look only into yourself, if you stop comparing yourself with others and watch yourself with awareness and make the necessary changes in you.

You need to stand up with courage of conviction on your own path. Courage of conviction will happen in you only when you are strongly centered in yourself without comparing yourself with others.

Society is waiting to pull you into the familiar patterns that it knows, into the miseries that it is familiar with and can handle; into the well-trodden and worn-out path. It is very easy and does not require courage to fall into this path. But to tread the lessertrodden path of spirituality requires courage. When I say courage, I don't mean ordinary courage, I mean total courage.

To wear gypsy beads does not require courage, but to wear rudraksh beads requires courage! I give rudraksh beads to those who wish to wear them. The rudraksh beads are nothing but energy storehouses. They store the cosmic energy for you. They are like a battery house and recharge you when you get into a low. But society sees these beads as clear signs of sannyas! They see them as something worn by renunciates, without even understanding the meaning of renunciation.

They condemn people who stay in family life and wear rudraksh. But when they see the rudraksh beads on deities or sannyasis, they are happy and pray to them. So many of the younger ones come and tell me how their family reacts to them wearing the beads.

It is ironical. When people pray, they pray to the cosmic energy, but when the same energy is available to them in simpler forms, they are not ready to take it! They pray to it but run away from it!

If you deeply analyze this, it will seem so contradictory. They see themselves as so distinctly different from God; that is the problem. They are not ready to accept that they are God. Now I tell you: Whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you believe it or not, you ARE God. This is the underlying basis of the vishuddhi chakra also – discovering your own unique self and infinite energy.

When your courage grows, society automatically fades into insignificance. When your courage is low, society automatically assumes power over you. It is all in your mind. How much power you give to society, that much power it will have over you. Never blame society for anything.

The choice has always been yours. Due to sheer lack of courage, you choose to go with what society says; you choose to pull and push by comparing and trying to beat one another, and then you blame society for it. It is not the right thing to do. Remember, the choice is always yours.

Just function with awareness, and infinity will simply open out. When it does, you will feel afraid because you are not used to seeing such open space. You are used to seeing boundaries all the time. Now you are not able to see the fence anywhere. You start getting apprehensive.

You immediately think that you have entered the wrong space. Reality seems too much to digest. You start feeling insecure. You feel like going back to the warmth of your past beliefs and illusions. You feel you have made a mistake by not listening to society when it told you that you were going on the wrong path. You start doubting and then doubting the doubt as well. You feel like a lonely child left in the middle of a desert.

It is in times like these that you need to remember that Existence is always with you and that your courage needs only to mature and go hand in hand with faith upon Existence and then everything will be alright. Faith is the prodding stick for courage.

Unless a revolution happens inside you, you can never rupture and grow into a tree. Most of us remain a seed and die, because of lack of courage. We always try to dissect the seed to find the fruits and flowers. Will it ever help? No! The seed has to rupture to grow into fruits and flowers. Similarly, when a radical change happens, when a revolution is created in man, he will rupture and grow. All meditations are nothing but techniques to make the seed rupture.

When you start rupturing, all your priorities start changing. What was important before becomes less important now. Only the things that nurture your being will seem important. Your whole attitude will change. Your whole presence will change.

Your presence will automatically lure people to you although they might not approve of it! The radiance felt in your inner core will attract them with deep curiosity. While society will criticize you for your changed attitude, it will start finding your presence distinctly different.

When the transformation is happening, just utterly ignore anything from the past. The past will again and again try to pull you into familiar patterns and deep bondage. When you listen to it, you are allowing yourself to be in bondage. Just decide to hold on to the ecstasy and conviction of the transformation happening in you. This is your greatest test, the test of your perseverance to transform completely. Hold on until the transformation is complete and mature.

There is a cosmic energy that fills this universe and there is an energy that fills you. Spirituality is all about establishing a live connection between the Cosmic energy and the energy in you. When your individual consciousness merges with the Universal Consciousness, you become enlightened.

Just a desire to get enlightened will not do. It needs to be a conscious decision. See, ordinary desires are nothing but greed that don't really propel you towards your specific goal. A conscious decision is what will make you work towards achieving.

People don't understand these things properly and simply talk at a superficial level. When you don't understand, you misunderstand. But you think you have understood and there starts the problem.