Q: We have read in many books that our mind is nothing but maya or illusion and that all our questions are only an illusion. Please can you tell us something about this?

The famous question about maya is asked one more time! First thing: don't confuse yourself with complicated reading. Second thing: understand very clearly that there is nothing to be understood with the mind. The mystery of life cannot be solved with your mind. You cannot know the purpose of your life with your mind. That is why they say that your mind is an illusion.

The first step to solving the mystery of our life is 'dropping your mind'. If you allow your mind to play, you will continue to play, that's all. Life after life, you will play. Your deep inner thirst will remain unquenched. Probably your seeker ego will get fulfilled, but that is of no use. You become only more confused inside you.

Try to move your centre of operation from your mind to your heart or being. If you operate with your mind as the centre, questions and more questions will follow. With questions, you cannot know. Only with awareness you can know.

If you operate with your heart, awareness and understanding will happen in you and then automatically your questions will start dissolving; like when the sun rises, the darkness simply disappears. When awareness happens in you, understanding will happen and your questions will dissolve.

You will start understanding things even before you come to the question! In this way, the questions will dissolve. It is difficult to understand this, but once you get an experience of it, you will know exactly what I mean by awareness. Questions will disappear and understanding will continuously engulf you.

If you understand this much, you need not worry about maya or illusion. In addition to intellectual understanding from my words, meditation can help you switch to the mode of awareness easily. We can talk for hours about maya and illusion, but you will only get more confused.

Instead, it is worthwhile learning the solutions that will help us to live intelligently; that is enough. One thing I want to tell you: maya or illusion is everything that your mind projects, so that is why I say, don't bother about knowing maya. Instead start living with more awareness, more consciously. Then the question of maya itself will not be relevant.

As I said earlier, bliss is continuously happening in us. This is the actual truth. But we continuously stop the flow of bliss, and as a result we suffer. Bliss is not something that you can get from outside and keep inside yourself. No. It is your inherent nature. When you arrive in this world, you are in a state of bliss. As society conditions you, you move far away from it. Then you start searching for ways outside of yourself to get it back.

We will see how to stop the stopping of bliss. When I say bliss, I don't mean the ordinary happiness that we feel in our everyday lives. Ordinary happiness is a result of something that happens outside: some happy occasion, some material benefit, some happy news, some relationship that worked out, something to do with a person or thing in the outside world. This kind of happiness is purely dependent on the people and circumstances outside of us. And this kind of happiness is what leads us to sadness also, because people and circumstances keep changing. They are not the same. Their behaviour is different at different times. And when their behaviour changes, our happiness too changes!

The bliss that we are talking about is different. It is purely a state inside yourself, which is in no way connected to outer world incidents. It is your core, your permanent state. When you find this, you will become a blissful watcher of the outer world. You will participate in it fully but without losing your bliss.

A small story:

There was an old man in a family who could not be pleased at any cost.

He remained stubborn and grumpy, no matter how much his family tried to keep him in good spirits.

His children and grandchildren would come and visit him and try to cheer him up, but he would remain grumpy.

Suddenly one day, he became very gentle and cheerful.

His family was surprised at the sudden transformation.

His grand daughter asked him, 'Grandpa, how come you have changed so suddenly?'

The old man replied, 'All my life, I tried my best to get a contented mind, but never succeeded. So I have decided to be contented with it now.'

Everything is a projection of our mind! We can decide how we want to be. It is all in the mind. With the help of our mind, we have stopped the flow of bliss from within. That is the truth.

Understand: there is a universal consciousness that fills the entire cosmos and there is an individual consciousness that fills us. Man's whole purpose is to establish a connection between these two. When this connection happens, man is said to be enlightened or in eternal bliss or in nithyananda. Nithyananda means eternal bliss.

22 Through listening to all the great masters' words and practicing all the meditation techniques, we become more and more aware of this connection and try to experience it. Because once the connection happens, everything becomes easy in the inner and outer world!

There are two types of people: those who fight with others and win and those who fight with themselves and win. It is easy to fight with others. It is not a big deal. But it is difficult to fight with yourself. When you are courageous, you will fight with yourself and win. You will destroy what you are not and emerge as a blissful being; you will flower.

The greatest challenge for man is to realize his entire potentiality. This can be done only when he moves inwards and keeps purifying himself again and again until he becomes intelligent enough not to gather more.

Actually, the word swami means one who has realized his full potential. All our difficulties on planet earth are because we are not able to realize our potentiality. There is a saying that goes: the lion that is not allowed to be a lion will become a fox. If we are not allowed to realize our true potential energy, we will start expressing it in a wrong way – either self-destructive or destroying others.

So the creative energy, the potential energy, should be allowed to express itself in a free-flowing way. Society should allow us, that is one thing, and we should also know the technique to express it. Swami means a man who has realized his potential power, who is expressing himself as he is; who is completely in tune with his being; who is blissful!

You have tremendous potential in you. Time and again psychologists and mystics have said that man is not living up to his full potential. Where are we missing it? Where are we stuck? Why are we not able to realize our full potentiality?

We need the courage to let go and explore, that's all. We will then know the answers to all these questions. When you start exploring sincerely, you will experience a shift in consciousness and this shift will open a space in you where you flower.

When you flower, you become a king. You will live like a lord on this planet. People may have all the possible comforts, money, knowledge and what not. But they will remain beggars if they have not found their inner space. To find your being is to become rich. Inner richness is real richness.

We have become so engaged with what goes on outside that we remain completely ignorant of our inner space. We are so caught up in the outer world adventure that we miss the wonderful adventures of the inner world. We miss what the great rishis and masters experienced in their lives. This experience is what I want to share with all of you.

Q: How would you define spirituality in a nutshell?

Spirituality is nothing but the flowering of four things in you: physical health, mental health, smooth inter-personal relationships and the ability to respond spontaneously (what I call responsibility).

Physical health is being free from disease. When you visit a doctor, he should give you a report saying that you are clinically alright.

The second – mental health, is being free from all subconscious and deeply engraved negative thought patterns and being free from worries, pain, jealousy, discontentment, ego, lust etc.

The third – interpersonal relationships, is having a smooth relationship with everyone around you. It is not enough if you are just cordial with everyone. You should be able to go through any amount of interaction with any kind of person, without feeling pressure or pain! The moment you feel pressure or pain, it means that there is some block inside you, some block in your mental health.

The fourth – The ability to respond spontaneously, what I call responsibility. When you are able to take on responsibility, when you are able to say 'yes' to anything spontaneously, you will expand that very moment and energy will flow through you to accomplish it! Of course, it is up to you to use that energy to accomplish that task. When you keep doing this, you keep expanding.

So if these four things flower in you, then you are spiritual. And when this happens, it does not matter which profession you are in or whether you are married or unmarried or whether you are young or old.

Q: What would you say about eating vegetarian food and eating non-vegetarian food?

First, don't go around telling others not to eat non-vegetarian food. In departments unknown, it is better not to involve yourself and get into trouble! Certain issues cannot be resolved by logical reasoning. If we tell people not to eat non-vegetarian food, they will ask you that like animals, plants also have life and why are we eating plants? What will you tell them? There is no end to this subject.

This much I can tell you: The human body right from the teeth is designed for chewing and digesting only vegetarian food. I am a pure vegetarian. I eat vegetarian food because it is conducive to my body. There have been many masters who ate non-vegetarian food. Of course, when enlightened masters do certain things, we cannot pass judgment on them because their actions cannot be interpreted by our common dictionary. We will be misconstruing and missing the whole thing.

Just one thing: don't categorize people based on their eating habits and don't force people to give up eating non-vegetarian food.

A small story:

At the time the television was introduced in India, a new television was bought in a certain house of mendicants.

All except one person used to watch the programs on the television.

The who never watched the television used to go to the president of the house and complain about how the others were watching television for so many hours.

After he complained a few times, the president told him, 'You too should watch television from tomorrow.'

The man was shocked and asked why.

The president replied, 'You are not happy not watching and so you are grumbling about them. You have the desire to watch but you don't watch it because you want to feel solid inside yourself. But this suppression is causing you to complain!'

You see: if you are not completely happy abstaining from eating non-vegetarian food, you will land up compelling others to become vegetarians. Only when you are into something totally, you will never force another person to do it. When you are doing it with a doubt or half-heartedly, you will pull other people also into it. This is the scale to see if you are in something totally or not. When you are total, you are enough unto yourself with no regrets. So you will not trouble anyone else. You will allow them to have their freedom.

In fact, I would go on to say that those who eat non-vegetarian food for one hour a day and forget about it, are better off than those who eat vegetarian food and think about non-vegetarian food 24 hours a day!

A small story:

A Zen master was walking with his disciple towards his city.

On the way, there was a river and a beautiful woman was standing near it.

When she saw them, she requested the master to help her cross the river.

The master promptly carried her to the other side of the river, left her there and returned.

The disciple was totally disturbed by what he saw. He was burning inside.

As they walked along towards the city, he couldn't resist asking, 'Master, how can you as a master touch and carry a young girl?'

The master replied, 'I left her there long back, why are you still carrying her?'

Masters always answer the questioner who is asking the question, never the question itself. In this story, the master could have as well explained to the disciple that to an enlightened person is beyond gender. But he did not do that. He made the disciple understand that the block was in the disciple's mind, not the master's act!

If you feel you cannot give up non-vegetarian food without craving for it, eat until it drops on its own. Please understand, this does not mean that I am advocating non-vegetarian food. For my own life, body and mind, vegetarian food is conducive and so I eat it. If you wish to adopt my way of life, become vegetarian, that's all!

But don't give it up and crave for it, and torture other people also to give it up. We all take up small issues like vegetarianism and contemplate on it for hours together; that is the problem.

There are three categories under which you can fall:

First would be, not to eat non-vegetarian food and not to think about it. The second category would be, to eat it and forget about it. The third category would be, not to eat it yourself, but feel deprived and hence torture people around not to eat it as well! Please don't fall in the third category!

Q: When I want to do good, for example, when traveling on a bus, I see an old man and I want to offer my seat to him, but I decide against it when I think that I have to stand for the rest of the journey. Whereas, when I want to smoke a cigarette, I get a total concurrence from inside me to go ahead, saying that one cigarette will not ruin my life. Why am I not able to control myself and do what is really correct?

You see, when you take in something with your mind, something that has been told to you from outside, you don't see its benefits clearly and deeply, although you understand it at the intellectual level. But when you experience something deeply yourself, it becomes your own understanding and so you stand by it without any problem.

The cigarette has merged with your being. You have experienced it yourself. It is not through someone else's preaching; it is your own experience. So your heart accepts it.

But the happiness that you get by offering your seat to someone on the bus is something that you have not experienced deeply. You have been told by people that it is good to offer your seat to an elderly person in the bus, that's all. At the most, you will feel a certain satisfaction at having followed social etiquette, that's all. In the case of the cigarette, you have become the experience itself!

What you have not experienced for yourself will not attract or pull you to it. If you had really experienced the joy of helping others, you would have offered the seat to the old man.

For true experience to happen, meditation is the way. When we meditate, our heart, which is as hard as a stone, will flower and become as soft and sensitive as cotton, and we will feel the compassion towards others.

At present, we either read in some magazine or we are told by elders that it is good to give our seat to older people in the bus, that's all. Instead, what should happen is, that feeling of helping should flower within us and we should offer help.

Sensitivity will become a way of life only if meditation has happened in you, or else it will remain just skin deep. Meditation is like a drill that pushes the teachings received through the head to the heart. Then, justice, honesty and similar virtues will become a way of life. Otherwise, all these virtues will remain as intellectual knowledge without turning into experiential knowledge.

Thank you.

Interaction

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Guaranteed Solutions

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Introduction

lright, let us now get into the subject.

First, let us see how the human mind works. The mind is

the only thing that stands between you and You. If you can drop your mind, You become enlightened!

Reprogram your hardware and software

Before we get into how the mind works, let me explain something about the mind and how the presence of a master can change the entire mental setup of a person:

There are two things in you: hardware and software. Your mind is the software, your brain is the hardware. In the mind itself, that is in the software itself, there are two parts – the conscious zone and the unconscious zone. The conscious zone is the actual software; the unconscious zone is the virus! The conscious zone can be cleansed by teachings. The unconscious zone can be cleansed by meditation. Now the hardware, that is the brain itself needs to be then tuned to hold the changes in the software, that is the new experience that is created through the changed software. This can happen by the blessings of the master, by initiation from him.

When you clean the conscious and unconscious and create an effect, the hardware may not be able to hold and sustain that effect. If the master's initiation happens, the hardware also changes to hold that effect. In the absence of a living master, constant meditation and teaching can change the hardware. Our current hardware is like grooves created out of samskaras (stored past memories) in the brain. Once the new software happens, the hardware will slowly change. But if you wish to immediately change the hardware, the master's presence is the right thing. Straightaway it will change the hardware.

Sometimes, without even changing the software, the hardware can be changed and the person will directly start radiating the correct software! This can happen when a disciple is completely open to the master; if he is in love with the master for no reason. Sometimes a disciple falls in love with the master for no reason. He may not be attracted to his teachings or to his meditation techniques; he simply falls in love, that's all. In that case, straightaway, you can change the hardware. Those kinds of disciples will simply radiate the quality of the teachings and meditation without even going through all of them.

As of now, both hardware and software in you are outgoing, towards the outer world. If you get the right understanding. suddenly the software becomes ingoing; going in, towards spirituality, towards a cleansing process. The conscious portion is cleansed by the teachings and the unconscious portion by meditation. But even if the software turns inside, the hardware will not be able to handle it. Then naturally, the hardware will try its best to retain its current grooves. If the software is very strong and stays in the same tune, the hardware will slowly change. But immediately, if after the teaching and meditation is given, the initiation is also given, the hardware will also change and start holding the new software. It will get prepared to hold on to the new experience. This concept has to be understood clearly so that you may bring in enough awareness to allow the transformation to happen in you.