Evolving A Blissful Community

"You are not a human being having spiritual experiences, you are a spiritual being having a human experience"

• THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM

An ashram is a space of learning created originally during the Vedic times. Masters and disciples lived together and experienced higher truths as a way of life. It was a space filled with transforming energy. Inner world research happened continuously. What we read as Vedic scriptures today is the outcome of the research that happened thousands of years back in such ashrams.

It is important to revive the ancient tradition because living the great truths is the only solution for the future. Elevating the consciousness is the only solution for the future. To restfully enjoy the outer world, work first needs to be done in the inner world. The word ashram means resting. To rest in the inner world, one needs to work on the inner consciousness.

People ask me why I have ashrams. They ask, 'What is the point in living in ashrams, as if in a commune? What difference is it from living in a joint family?'

We need to think of humans as conscious beings, not as a social utility. If you are a doctor, only your profession is a doctor; your being is not a doctor. The Master always tries to help you reclaim your inner space, your being. You are more than a doctor; you are your inner space. In comparison to this inner space, the outer space where we have spent all our time is very small, almost insignificant.

You may ask, 'Why can't I reach this state from my own home? Why is the ashram necessary?'

Your home is based on the concept of society. It makes you forget the truth. On the other hand, the very backbone of the ashram is the strength of the inner space; its ambience, its structure, everything in it carries this strength. Your friends in the ashram and the Master will not let you forget this.

If you are an outsider, for ten days after meeting the Master, or after hearing his discourse, or after attending his meditation program, you will be in a high mood. You will make resolves to move deeper within. But after ten days, society takes over us; the bondage returns. That is the problem. Ashram is a place where a group of people decide to wake up - to the call of their being. And they continuously remind each other about it.

People who interact with us make a difference. Body language is the food for the mind. It is important that the very body language of the people we move with keeps us in the right current. In the ashram, everyone moves with a common goal. At whichever level people may be, they are looking at only the same goal. So there is something in their very body language. The whole thing is aligned towards the goal. They unknowingly help in some way or other. And the Master is there at the ultimate level. So every moment you are unconsciously reminded about the path and the goal.

The ashram is a loving and caring place to grow spiritually. In the outer world, people will disturb, obstruct and stop us from our spiritual path by bringing in their intellect and limited perceptions. In the ashram, people encourage us in reaching out to the great truths.

If we are constantly reminded of higher Truths, we will live them and radiate them. The ashram is about having bliss, radiating bliss. They are the epicenters of strong blissful vibrations; vibrations that cause the inner space to quake and shift; whatever we had built before is shattered, leveled and rebuilt. When one sits at the feet of the Master, all doubts are removed; energy is created to fulfill desires to reach higher spiritual levels.

It is easy to love the Master; it is much harder to love our fellow beings. In the ashram, people learn to love each other without conditions and causes. Bliss is shared independent of the Master. The ashram is an ideological joint family. It is not bondage of blood relationship. It is a deep emotional and ideological connection. It is not a theory, it is a reality to be expressed and experienced.

The ashram life gives the maturity to be a part of it. One has to be in a relatively ego less state to coexist with others in a mode of true equality. It is an environment where each one compensates for another's weakness and shares one's own strength with the other. There is no compulsion for anyone to do what he or she is told. Some may do all the work. Some may do nothing. Tolerance for another being, understanding of another being and acceptance of another being lead to compassion for one another. This leads to the understanding of what Krishna said: Vasudeva Kutumbaha - The family of Lord Krishna – implying that the whole world is his family. The ashram is a huge family where each member is connected ideologically to the other.

Vivekananda the enlightened Master from Bharat said, 'The dharma chakra - the wheel of righteousness - is in motion. All you have to do is to stand by it and be part of its motion.' The ashram environment allows you to be a part of the moving wheel of righteousness perpetually.

A Master is one who has unclutched everything. All we need to do is be in his presence. Then unclutching happens automatically. To be around a Master, the space called ashram is created. Just being there is enough. What has to happen will start happening.

To be free from the feeling that you are the body and mind is the ultimate freedom. To know that you are pure consciousness is the ultimate freedom. And this is exactly what starts happening when you enter the ashram.

In the outer world, you think you have freedom when you are allowed to stay up late at a friend's house, when you are allowed to go to a movie or a party, when you are allowed to go on a holiday and what not. These are actually not your freedom. These are your bondages. If you don't fulfill them, you become depressed. Then how can they be your freedom?

Freedom cannot be something that binds you to it. Freedom can only be something that binds you to nothing and therefore keeps you happy. Only then you are really free. And the only thing that can bind you to nothing yet keep you in bliss is your consciousness. If you can move beyond your body and mind and settle in your consciousness, you have the ultimate freedom. Then no one or nothing can take away your freedom.

The ashram is a live energy being – an extension of the Master himself. It functions with the intelligence of the Master. And so it does only one thing – enlighten you. Every incident happens with the aim of enlightening you. Everything that happens is auspicious. Those who are sensitive, catch it sooner than later. With sensitivity, every understanding happens as an initiation – an entry into deeper awareness.

In an ashram, nobody is higher or lower. There are engineers, doctors, diploma holders, those who have studied till grade eight. Everyone eats together, stays together, works together and laughs together. The very culture prunes the ego. The whole thing is designed that way.

I always tell people: the Master is the river of eternal bliss - nithyananda. You are like the pebble that is in the river. There are so many pebbles like you. Each pebble is different. Each is a different colour, size, nature. The river flows towards the sea, the pebbles flow with it, rubbing against each other, getting polished, pruned. This is the compassionate work of the Master on us – pruning our ego. As he prunes, we start shining - like diamond; we are no more dull like a pebble. And that is the Master's goal – to make us diamonds and merge us with the sea of bliss!

On our part, just one thing is required - jumping in with trust. The rest is a joyful process. It is painful sometimes – when you rub hard against another pebble, or when you resist something in the river. What to do if you have a hard edge? It will be a little painful. Sometimes our ego is frozen at some points. Melting it will be painful. But as you move, the understanding also happens - that the hurt was only to melt some hard edge.

Everything happens in the auspices of the river. As this understanding happens, you flow more joyfully, forgetting yourself and merging with the river. You start realizing that the river is not there to hurt you but to polish you. Then you feel deep gratitude every minute. The hard ridges disappear, you become smooth and shining, only enjoying everything that happens inside the river. You start moving with immense trust in everything that is happening around you.

When people ask me why ashrams, I tell them: an enlightened Master has too much to share. There are too many dimensions, too many surprises, too much depth, too much momentum, too much energy. Unless you are in his space, you cannot enjoy his happening on the planet. If you were a tree on the banks of the river, you will enjoy the river no doubt, but can you compare with the pebble that is playing in the river all the time? No! I want you to have me completely. I want you to sing with me, dance with me, and gurgle with me - like the pebbles in the river! That is why ashrams are created – to be in the same space as the flowing energy.

The ashram is like a spiritual laboratory. It is a microcosm of the whole world with many samples of people. All the situations of the world exist here. All the challenges exist here. Above all, the ecstasy that you cannot even imagine exists here. A richness you cannot imagine in the outer world exists here. An enlightened being is the richest happening on planet Earth. His space carries his total energy.

An ashram is a wonderful group method to bring in awareness to your ego points and heal them. As healing happens, hatred for the other becomes love and gratitude. Tremendous awareness happens in interpersonal relationships. Who you would have shunned and made into an enemy in the outside world, you will welcome with gratitude. You will understand that even the revengeful ones are that way only out of ignorance; that they can be forgiven. When the ignorance dissolves,

they flower out of revenge. Just this understanding will expand your very consciousness. You will connect to others and to the whole of Existence with much more compassion, love and patience. You will see that the anger in you transforms into love, and impatience transforms into compassion!

In the ashram, things happen in a multidimensional way. There are so many options and changes happening. Normally, any change is met with resistance. An ashram is designed to teach that Existence itself is an eternally changing dream! You simply drop any resistance to change. You become like the surfer that rides the wave – moving beautifully with the unexpected movements of waves! You become a spontaneous change yourself.

Understand: all universities have to become ashrams, because ashrams are where the teachings happen in a revolutionary way. In ashrams, the non-transmittable, non-portable energy of understanding is shared. In universities, only the portable knowledge is shared. To add that non-portable to your system, you need humbleness, you need to become a disciple.

Today, the ashram is the only place where Life Engineering is taught. Life Engineering is all about knowing the very purpose of human birth, the laws of the universe in which you are living; what causes grief, what causes bliss, how to harness the energy of Existence, how to live life with excitement and intensity, and so on. What is the point in learning all this when you are 60! You need to start life with this not end it with this.

An ashram is designed to keep you close to these truths all the time. When you are close to the truth you vibrate with its energy. That energy is what you see on the faces of the people here. The dynamism is the dynamism of that energy.

Here, you won't find long faced people. Every person is like dynamite! And you will see: work goes on round the clock. But no one looks at the clock. Every moment is nourishing. No energy is spent on wandering of the mind. And when the mind doesn't wander, the only other way to express the energy is through creativity! Either the mind wanders or creativity expresses. Both can't happen at the same time. Outside the ashram, the mind is encouraged to wander. But inside, the energy doesn't allow it. So you can see tremendous creativity happening here.

People start doing things they don't even know! When energy surges, creativity has to happen; movement has to be there. There is no other way. These young boys and girls simply pick up instruments and start playing them. I always tell them: learning formally is not the only way. You can learn just through the energy of creativity. After all, you are part of Existence. And Existence is the greatest Creator.

In today's education, your very energy is restricted to explore in a small area. The system itself is created by logicians, who know to analyse, divide – into smaller and smaller parts. But ashrams are created by those who have seen the whole thing, the whole project! It is like this: Science tries to move with its small lantern in a small area, in a dense forest. But the enlightened Masters see the whole forest in just one flash of lightning. They see the whole thing! So their very approach to learning is different. Energy is created and the energy simply churns the whole thing causing understanding to happen at many levels continuously. In such an atmosphere, learning cannot happen methodically, it happens chaotically but with an inherent order – the order of Existence.

Here you will find scientists who are meditators, teachers who are students, engineers who are poets, dancers who are researchers! There is no beginning, no end, just joyful expansion, that's all.

Work is not work in the ashram. It is a joyful surrender to the whole of Existence. It is just expanding and feeling connected to the energy of Existence. Work does not happen out of fear or greed. It happens out of the energy of inspiration. Inspiration is the only thing that can sustain till the end; never fear or greed. Fear and greed will tire you; inspiration energises you; fear and greed will expect results, inspiration doesn't care about the results; fear and greed limit your actions, inspiration expands your actions; fear and greed bring worry, inspiration brings energy.

When you work out of inspiration, you don't create any karmic baggage for yourself. What do I mean by karmic baggage?

In the outer world, when you work, you work out of fear and greed. You are driven by one of these. Fear of 'insecurity' or greed for 'more'. Any work you do is driven by one of these. When you work this way, you are terribly attached to the results. When you are attached to the results, there is no complete fulfillment even when the work is done. When there is no complete fulfillment, the action leaves a hangover - what you call karma. You are pulled to fulfill it - either in this birth or in the next. This is the theory of karma; this is the theory of the cycle of life and death. It is about how you come back again and again for fulfillment – life after life.

On the other hand, when there is only inspiration, understand that inspiration itself is the energy of fulfillment! When you work from inspiration, the work itself is done out of the energy of fulfillment. The act of doing itself gives the fulfillment. The results then become incidental. And there is no question of non-fulfillment. You do tremendous work and yet add no karmic baggage because of it.

Another important thing: if you see in your life, either you work or you worry. If you are working you don't worry, if you start worrying, you don't work. What is actually worry? It is a continuous chatter of unrelated things repeating in your mind all the time. Your energy gets sapped because of it. Once you come in, you will see, the inner chatter gets dissolved into the work that you do. One of my disciples was telling me the other day, 'Master, I realized that the first thing that left me after coming here was worry. I was not even aware that it left me. I awakened to it only recently!'As you work, the energy heals the inner chatter.

When the right understanding happens, initiation itself happens. The energy here straightaway causes the right understanding to happen. The understanding happens as an experience. Every understanding is an initiation, a click. Soon you realize that anything that happens, happens only to enlighten you more. Everything is auspicious; even mistakes. You become more forgiving. You become softer. Your compassion grows for everything around you. You see the whole of Existence moving in a plane beyond your own small ego. Then you decide to drop your ego wherever you encounter it, so you don't miss the glorious happening of Existence at any cost. You become anxious not to miss. Automatically, the ego shrinks to insignificance. What was a solid and frozen burden in you, melts with the energy and merges joyfully with it. That is the ultimate awakening. That is the purpose of the ashram.

It is very rare that the very source of the Existential energy appears in tangible form on planet Earth. When it appears, one should go near, internalize and imbibe it, and get the benefit that one would normally get after thousands of births and struggle.

Being near a Master and delving into his mind – as he talks - is what is called satsang. Ashram is a place where satsang happens every day.

For a rose to flower, it needs the right temperature, water and soil. For causeless inspiration and awakening to happen in us, we need certain conditions. Creating those conditions is the work of the Master. Where the Master is, these conditions are always present. An ashram is a space that carries these conditions in the very atmosphere. Just by being inside the ashram you unconsciously imbibe the energy of Existence; you absorb the intelligence of Existence.

The ashram is created with the purpose of quantum learning where you jump from A to Z without going through the in between steps!

You don't even have to continuously watch the Master. In the ashram, all the events, all the people, are oriented to make the learning happen. The whole thing is a great happening.