69. *Gratitude happens from the heart*

The problem is, we are always trying to reach God through our heads. You can never reach God through your head. If you simply drop your head, you will automatically function through your heart and discover that you need not even reach out to Him; He is already there in you!

With your head, you will always seek outside and you can never find God outside. Also, you will be looking for reasons to feel grateful. When you move from your head to your heart, a whole new space will open out for you, and you will realize that you always knew, and that it was your mind which was causing all the havoc and not letting you realize it.

When you operate from your heart, you are always in gratitude. Do we ever say 'mind-felt gratitude'? No! We always say 'heartfelt gratitude', do we not?

Next, you will ask, 'How do we move from our head to our heart Swamiji!' Just be aware of your head, that is enough! Only because you are unaware of your head, you allow it to function in an undisturbed fashion, in a mechanical fashion. Once you become aware of your head, you will be able to drop it.

Gratitude is not any virtue. It has to be your very attitude. When you feel only gratitude, you can tune yourself beautifully to Existence, and then Existence will reveal to you its magical splendour. All you need to do then is sit back and enjoy!

Let me explain what I mean by tuning. We all know how the radio works. The same radio, without any change in its physical form, can be connected to many radio stations airing different programs, can it not? While you are listening to a particular station, if there are any disturbances or cross-talk, what do you do? You fine-tune it. Now, just apply this same concept to tuning to Existence.

There are thousands of programs happening around us. Whatever we tune ourselves to, that we will experience. Now, tuning to any one program is purely our own choice. You have the freedom to choose the program you wish to listen to, right? In the same way, if you choose to tune yourself to discontentment and similar negative things, you will be caught in the never-ending whirlpool of worry, discontentment, dilemma and what not. Whereas, if you choose to tune yourself with the central chord that is running this whole show, you will catch the right thread in all the chaos that is around you and will be free from all these emotions. You will become a beautiful flower that blossoms with a fragrance.

The more you fine-tune yourself with Existence, the more ecstatic life will be.

Discontentment will pull you down, make you heavy and miserable. On the other hand, gratitude will make you light and blissful.

Feel causelessly grateful

A small story:

• In a Christian household, a girl was sitting at the dinner table with her mother.
• Food was served at the table and she started eating her food without saying grace.

The mother was shocked and asked her how she could do such a thing.

The girl promptly replied, 'There is nothing on this plate that I have not said thanks for at least once before.'

We know to feel grateful only with a strong reason.

One more small story:

A young girl asked her mother, 'Mom, how many more days remaining before Christmas?' The mother asked, 'Why do you want to know?' The girl replied, 'I was just wondering whether it was time for me to start being a good girl.'

This is how we train children to think and behave. We teach them how to do transactions. We teach them that everything is nothing but a transaction. We don't teach them to be spontaneous and flowing. We don't teach them to live without a purpose. We make everything goal-oriented for them.

Because of all these things that have been done to children, you have to work hard in undoing them first. Be very clear that all that I am doing with you is only undoing. I am continuously undoing. Imagine the amount of doing that has been done to you! Over generations, people have been passing on their ideas to you. I have to first undo all that and then create a space in you for you to flower.

When I tell people to feel a continued sense of gratitude in them, they come back later and tell me, 'Swamiji, these days I say thank you to the cab drivers and to the servants at home.' Be very clear: when gratitude becomes your being, you will not even report these kinds of things.

When you are grieving the loss of a dear one, do you verbalize your grief? Will you be able to verbalize your grief? No! It becomes such a deep-rooted emotion that it becomes the state of your being. You can only feel it; you can never report it.

In the same way, gratitude when it becomes your very being, will simply become your state; you will not be reporting it. You can never report it also. Of course, saying 'thank you' is alright for social reasons because unless you express it, it doesn't reach the ears of the other person.

But what I am trying to tell you here is, we need to move from gratitude of the mind to gratitude of the being. The gratitude that we are talking about, you will never be able to express, because it runs so deep.

Real gratitude runs very deep

People often say to me, 'Swamiji, we are so grateful to you for so many things that have happened in our lives after association with you.'

For reasons of social etiquette, you may thank a person for something, but gratitude is not something that you direct towards a person. When you feel gratitude towards a person for something you have received, it is simply gratitude of the mind. This is the kindergarten stage of gratitude.

Real gratitude is a deep overwhelming feeling inside yourself, not as a result of any gain but just at the thought of existing, at the thought of the compassionate life force that is Existence, that's all. This gratitude does not need any relationship; it is not dependent on anyone or anything; it is not under the sway of any emotions like lust, anger, hatred or love. It simply IS, that's all.

You express your gratitude with words because you are egoistic and you don't want people to think you lack courtesy. But the moment you express it, you belittle or falsify it.

Actually, your very body language can convey the state of gratitude in you. Your eyes can convey it; your smile can convey it; your warmth can convey it much better than words. Tears of gratitude express it better than anything else. When you are overwhelmed, when you are brimming, tears overflow.

I am not asking you to cry! I am only telling you that when you overflow, your body will show it, you cannot hide it, and that is the real indication of the state of your gratitude.

And remember, these tears don't belong to any caste or creed or religion. They cannot be classified as Hindu tears or Muslim tears; these tears don't belong to any religion. They belong to the being and the being is beyond all this. Gratitude is one thing that can dissolve all man-made barriers and conditioning; that is why it is the ultimate prayer.

Anything deep can never be expressed wholly. Poets may write poems to express it, painters may paint to express it, writers may write to express it, but there will remain a portion that can never be expressed through any of this. Existence can never be expressed by ordinary things. That is why it is so mystical and luring. That is why it is so exciting beyond what words can describe! That is why you can only feel it and not express it. That is why you come here again and again!

When you come here, you don't have to express any gratitude, because even without you expressing, I will know. When real gratitude is overwhelming in you, I will know it even before you do! I know the beat of your heart! I know it from the look in your eyes! In fact, when you express to me, you might be deceiving yourself because most of the time, you think and talk in contradicting ways. You might be thinking something inside, but you express something else outside.

Existence knows when a person is flowering from within. Just feel the deep gratitude towards Existence, that is enough. You don't have to express it, just become it, that's all.

In India, there is a tradition of touching the master's feet. When you are overflowing with gratitude to the master, there is no way to express it. You then simply touch his feet, feel the oneness and express the gratitude in you.

Many people come from many places to visit me. Some of them come and stand in front of me and don't say anything. Just tears of joy flow from their eyes. They don't feel compelled to say anything, because they cannot say anything more than what their tears are conveying. They are just emoting from their being.

When you are in the presence of the master, just be there with a deep sense of gratitude and love, with a feeling of gratitude at just being present near him. You will find that all your questions will dissolve and you are filled with a certain joy in no time. When you fill up easily, it means that you have caught the right thread.

Always be with the master with deep awareness; then you will not miss it. When you are in gratitude with the master, the master's energy will pour into your being and his experience will simply flood you.

And when you feel only gratitude towards the master, the need to be physically near him will also slowly dissolve. Gratitude helps you cut across space and time. It dissolves boundaries and makes you expand. When you expand, you feel one with everything. After some time, even gratitude will seem like a disturbance; just silence will prevail!

Even in relationships, if you feel that any relationship is coming to an end with no love lost, you can simply feel gratitude towards the other and depart, that's all. Just feel gratitude inside you for having been associated with the other person for that period of time, for all that you learned and enjoyed because of your association with him or her for that period of time, and depart. Then, even that becomes beautiful.