65. *Persist and it will happen*

Spirituality is a science that gives a deep understanding of our body, mind and spirit. When you enter it with awareness, the outer world will slowly dissolve. When people see you from outside, they will think that you are renouncing. Only you will understand that you are not renouncing anything; the outer world things are simply dissolving on their own. The illusion disappears and you become de-hypnotized.

At one of our programs, I asked how many of the participants thought that I had hypnotized them. Out of a group of eighty, three of them lifted their hands. One of the ladies who was sitting next to the girl who had her hand raised laughed at her. I asked her why she was laughing. The girl was honest enough to lift her hand.

I am sure out of that group, many of them would have been tempted to lift their hands but didn't, fearing what I might say! Anyhow, three of them lifted their hands. I told them that I had not hypnotized them, but had actually de-hypnotized them.

They had started feeling the clearing of maya or illusion. But what happens is, you are so used to being in a state of illusion, that if it starts clearing, you think something has gone wrong! The problem is, when too much truth is told to people, a certain fear sets in. The comfort they were enjoying under the cover of ignorance suffers.

See, in whatever quantities your ignorance dissolves, in that much quantity you become possessed by God or Existence. Any effort that you put in your everyday life should be directed towards emptying yourself so that you may be filled with Existence. Any other effort is just incidental and trivial in life. Remember this.

Every breath of yours should be towards increasing your awareness and consciousness. Only then have you really made a conscious decision to experience Existence or God. If this firm resolve is not happening in you, then you are still pretending to seek, that's all. You are simply cheating yourself. Don't for a moment think that you are cheating others. You are cheating yourself.

To turn your steps from outwards to inwards is the first step. That moment of taking the U-turn is the most significant moment. You will know when you have taken the U-turn. Until then, your mind will have been giving excuses and more excuses, citing people and situations and outer world circumstances as reasons for not being able to integrate yourself. Once you take the U-turn, all these thoughts will fade into insignificance. They will slowly lose their prominence. They will be there no doubt, but you will be steadily progressing, taking them in your stride. They will help you become a more effective watcher as they play their parts meticulously.

Taking the first step or the U-turn is what is the most difficult thing. When you take the U-turn, half the job is done. You then become more malleable to the ways of Existence.

When you take the U-turn, everything becomes meditation. Whether it is walking or talking or singing or dancing or simply putting your clothes on or taking them off, everything becomes a meditation and is done with increasing awareness.

You will simply watch yourself doing these things and slowly understand that the whole world is an illusion. When you take your first step inwards, you have in effect taken a leap because the first step is the real leap. Until then, you only philosophize, convince yourself and others that you are seeking and get more confused with less determination day by day.

When you take the first step, you are ready to win yourself. To win others is very easy. Just take a few weapons or use your tongue and simply destroy them, that's all. But to win yourself takes real courage. This vishuddhi chakra is all about winning yourself.

When you look inwards, you are ready to win yourself. Of course, when you are on the path inwards, there might not be anything tangible to the people around you in what you are doing. Only you will know that everything is happening inside and not outside. Only you will be aware of the revolution that is happening inside you. Only you will be able to tell the growing intelligence inside you.

People around you will not be able to understand the experiences you are enjoying. I tell you: never try to convince anyone that you are evolving inside. You may share your experiences with your spiritual friends who will be able to match your wavelength of thinking, but if you try to share these experiences with other people who are blissfully oblivious to the inner journey, you will only land up in deep misery.

Just allow the experiences to happen in you; neither hold on to them nor run behind them. Allow them to work like steam on you so that you may fully ripen. If you hold on to them, you will stagnate at some point and miss the whole thing.

Remember that all these experiences are tell-tale signs that you are well on your journey inwards. They are like signboards that you see on the road. Do you cling onto the signboards and say that the destination has been reached? No. Don't cling onto them. Move on to your destination.

A total commitment and determination is needed and this will come automatically to you when you are ready; when you are ready to drop your mind, that is society, and live with your heart; when you are ready to stop pointing fingers at others and point to yourself, come what may; when you understand experientially that your mind is societal and your heart is natural.

Also, when people ask you for proof of your experiences, just understand that there is no need to prove to them. Your experience is so intimate and personal to you that you will not be able to effectively share it with the other person. In fact if you share it, you will be bringing down the whole experience. Also, the other person may not be willing to believe what you are saying. They may tell you that you are deluding yourself. They may want you to explain the whole thing logically.

Logic cannot explain these experiences. God is beyond logic. If logic can explain God, then logic has to be superior to God and that can never be the case! So just relax and allow the experiences to happen to you. When anyone questions you, have the maturity to smile and move on. A smile can convey more effectively what you can't in so many words.

Great enlightened masters have experienced such tremendous joy in communion with Existence. People ask me to narrate my experiences but I tell you, it is all so personal and intimate that I cannot explain it to you in words. I can guide you; I can show you the way - the path for you to experience. The moment I start explaining, it will become mundane.

But I can give you the highest assurance that you will experience it, if you have the fire within you. The promise given by a master is enough energy for you to achieve it.

I am telling you all these things now in reply to your question about meditation and spirituality. You may think that we are moving away from the main subject. No! This chakra, this vishuddhi chakra is all about expanding yourself; about discovering your own unique self, with total awareness and understanding of the fact that there is no scope for comparison and jealousy in life. Just take in whatever I have told you and allow the energy behind it to transform you. I tell you, miracles can happen inside you! It will change the whole quality of your being.

The three layers of energy

Alright...Now, from all that we have discussed, you have understood that comparison and jealousy are non-entities and don't have any actual relevance to you at all. Now, let me try to explain some more on the vishuddhi chakra and the energy house that is in it.

We have three layers of energy in us. The first layer of energy is from our mind and it is this that we use for our day-to-day activities from morning till night. Once this energy expends, we start feeling tired and irritated if we are given more work to do.

The second layer energy is the emergency layer. It is the energy that arises from our emotions. At the time of emergency, this energy opens out. Let us say you are really tired and walking back from work to your home. You feel you have enough energy only to enter your house and crash on your bed. At that time, suddenly if a dog starts chasing you, what do you do? You start running much faster than you have ever run before. Even if you are dead tired, even if you were earlier unable to move even a limb, suddenly you run with a different kind of energy! This is the emergency energy that arises out of emotion.

The third layer of energy is the being level energy. This is an infinite source of energy within you, which you don't use at all. This energy layer can be opened and experienced by deep meditation. Whether you accept it or not, you are in connection with all these three layers of energies. This vishuddhi chakra holds in it the key to these higher energy levels.

Let me narrate to you an incident that actually happened during my days of wandering:

In a beautiful place called Almora in the Himalayas, there is a small ashram with a few huts for those who wish to meditate.

The place is known to be frequented by tigers at night!

I was there for a short while during my days of wandering.

I used to meditate for long hours there.

They had a system wherein, when the head of the ashram senses the tigers coming, he would ring a bell and all the sannyasis would get into their respective huts and close the doors, until such time they were asked to come out.

On one occasion, at night time, while we were meditating, the bell rang and all of us got into our respective huts.

The next day, the head of the ashram came around to see if we were all alright.

He found that one of the huts was closed and the sannyasi inside was shouting through the window to open the door.

We all ran to the hut and tried opening the door but couldn't open it.

Finally, a few of us got in through the window and entered the hut.

To our surprise, we found that he had placed a big grinding stone against the door so that the tiger would not be able to push its way through.

We jointly moved the stone away to open the door.

It suddenly struck us how the man might have moved the stone single-handedly against the door in the first place! We asked him how he had moved it.

He replied, 'Moved it? I simply lifted it and placed it!'

When he heard the call of the tiger, he simply lifted the stone to place it against the door, that's all!

This is exactly what I mean by the emergency layer energy. Under normal circumstances, the same man would not have been able to lift that stone. Do you understand? Even after the incident, once the emergency was over, he himself was not able to lift it away from the door in the story!

Out of fear or greed, the second level energy opens. For example, if there is an important meeting, do you feel tired? No! You will be alive and fresh. The desire or greed to attend the meeting will keep you in an energized condition.

The vishuddhi chakra is the door through which all these three layers of energy can be opened out, but you are not aware of it because you have not used these layers effectively in a long time.

It is like this: In all harbors, there is a place called a boat jetty where the boats are kept. It is commonly said that if the boat is kept in the jetty for long without sailing, it forgets that it can sail in the water!

In the same way, because you have not used the third layer of energy for a long time, you forget that you belong to it or it belongs to you. Meditation can open out this third level energy for you.

If you keep this chakra in a cleansed condition, you can scale great heights in the outer world and great depths in the inner world. When you have low self-esteem or jealousy, this chakra is locked. Low self-esteem is a passive manifestation of jealousy, that's all. Jealousy is active while low self-esteem is passive. Both are a result of comparison. With low self-esteem, you feel you are no good and resign yourself to it. In jealousy, you are unable to bear it and start reacting; that is the difference.

Understand that any self-esteem that you have that indicates to you that you are less than God is low self-esteem, because you ARE God. That is why I say there is no scope to compare yourself with anyone else.

You need to experience the second and third layers of energy hidden in this chakra, in order to understand the infinite potential that is lying hidden in you. This chakra is really the seat of energy for us. When we concentrate on it, we will be able to feel the energy radiating from it.

In the Himalayas, when I used to wander in my earlier days, so many miles I would cover by foot. I used to start walking at a slow pace, concentrating on my vishuddhi chakra. Slowly, I would pick up speed concentrating on the chakra. After a certain point, my body would start moving with a swinging pace and I would be just a watcher of it! I would cover many miles in this fashion.

All the food that you take or exercise that you do helps only the first layer of energy. Food is not the only source of energy. It is a common misconception that only food gives you energy. Food is one source of energy, that's all.

Yogis in Tibet do not eat at all. They simply drink water out of the shell of a bilva fruit. I lived like that for six months in the Himalayas. I got the energy from the sun, from the water while taking my bath, from the air while breathing. These are all yogic methods. Tapasya is the penance you do for enlightenment throughout your life. That alone vibrates in your being.

Guaranteed Solutions

When you start competing with others, you forget your own self. You forget to strengthen your own being, which is your actual untapped source of energy. If you have physical strength and intellectual strength without the strength of the soul, it is of no use. It is only when you discover the strength of your soul, that you have touched your life source and energy.