There is a very beautiful verse in the Isavasya Upanishad :

Om poornamadah poornamidam

Poornaat poornamudachyate

Poornasya poornamaadaaya

Poornamevaavashishyate

From the Whole came the Whole. If you remove the Whole from the Whole, only the Whole remains. By very nature we seek the Wholeness. By very nature we seek fulfillment in anything we do.

Whether it is eating, drinking, jumping, reading, talking, sleeping, or meditating, in any activity that we engage, our being yearns to completely experience the activity and be fully involved in it. Are we fully conscious of every action we engage in? Are we aware every moment of our lives?

A small story:

A man was travelling by cab to the airport. The cab driver was driving very fast even around corners and sharp turns. The passenger was getting terrified with his driving.

Finally, the cab driver seeing the terrified passenger, said, 'Why don't you do what I do when I take turns? Just shut your eyes!'

When you are not completely aware and involved in the action you are engaged in, your being remains unfulfilled in that experience. The unfulfilled experience

Karma is the collection of unfulfilled experiences that stay in us and constantly pull us to fulfill them.

remains inside you and keeps pulling you to do the action again with intensity to fulfill it. This

is karma.

Karma is the collection of unfulfilled experiences that stay in us and constantly pull us to fulfill them.

Anything that we do and experience intensely and deeply will always leave our system. It will liberate us. Any experience that we did not go through completely, through which we did not have complete fulfillment, that did not get our full energy, attention and awareness, remains inside us as karma.

Even though we carry some karma, basically we are complete fulfillment, Wholeness. So any karma that has not been fulfilled cannot rest inside us for too long. It will try its best to fulfill itself. It will drive us again and again to go through the same activity so that it can be fulfilled. Any desire, any experience, which has not become complete in our system, will remain as karma and push us again and again to make us go through the same experience until it is fulfilled.

We think, speak and do things without clarity, without fulfillment and with deep ignorance. All these thoughts, words and actions collectively contribute towards our karmic baggage because none of them gives rise to fulfillment in us. When they do not give rise to fulfillment our karma pushes us to somehow fulfill them.

Our own thoughts, words and deeds become our karma and drive us to reach fulfillment in some way.

Understand clearly that now you are reading this book because of all your past decisions. You decided to pay attention to the book on display. You decided to buy it. You decided to sit down and read this book now. The totality of all these decisions contributes to your sitting here.

The totality of all these past decisions is your present moment. Now, applying the same logic, the totality of your present decisions will be your future.

This is the essence of karma theory: the totality of all your past is the present, and the totality of your present is your future.

The totality of all your past is the present. The totality of your present will be your future. The problem is that we make most of our decisions unconsciously. We take thousands of decisions unconsciously. That is the reason why we are not able to connect the cause with the effect.

Flood more awareness, more intelligence into your thinking system. Flood more awareness, more consciousness into your decision-making system.

In any given moment, the future is predestined but conditionally. It will be a certain future according to all the totality of events till that time, this is the predestined future. But it is conditional. There is an important factor that can and will change it, it is your consciousness, your will.

A small story:

Once two brothers met a sage who was known to be able to look into the future. The brothers paid their respect to the sage and asked him if he could tell them about their future. The hermit advised them, 'It may not be good for you to know your future. Besides, your future can change later even if I tell you now.'

The brothers insisted on knowing their future. The sage looked at the elder brother and said, 'You will become a king in a year.' Looking at the younger brother, he said, 'You are destined to die in the hands of a murderer in a year's time.' The brothers started walking back home. The elder brother was overjoyed while the younger one was depressed. Now the elder brother started creat-

The totality of all your past is the present, and the totality of your present is your future.

ing his fantasy world dreaming of becoming a king. The younger brother, who was destined to have less than a year to live, started spending his time in spiritual activities. He used his time to serve everyone and soon came out of his depression.

Eleven months passed. One day, the elder brother invited the younger one to his house. He wanted to look out for land for a grand palace he was planning to build since very soon he would become a king. They were walking on a huge open piece of land when the younger brother stumbled on a half-buried pot. The brothers dug the pot and removed it. It was a huge pot of gold coins.

The elder brother was thrilled and started shouting, 'This treasure is just for me! It is for me to set up my palace and kingdom!' Just then, a bandit jumped out from a bush, gave a blow on the elder brother's head and tried to snatch the pot from him. The younger brother jumped at the bandit to protect his brother. But the bandit attacked him with a dagger he had in his hand.

During the Destiny depends on how you choose to respond to every situation life presents to you.

struggle the bandit dropped the pot and ran away.

The elder brother was very thankful to his younger brother for saving his life and offered him half the gold coins. The younger brother politely refused saying he was not going to live much longer in any case. The elder brother with his new treasure started living a lavish life, eating, drinking and being merry.

One year passed. There was no sign of any crown in sight. The younger brother was also enjoying good health. They decided to visit the sage again. They met him and asked, 'How did your predictions go wrong?'The sage was also surprised and went into meditation. He then explained, 'I told you your destiny can be changed.'

He looked at the elder brother and said, 'Your destiny changed because of your irresponsible actions over the past months. The crown that you were to get was reduced to a pot of gold.'

He looked at the younger brother and said, 'Your spiritual life, trust and surrender to the Divine changed your destiny also. Death in the murderer's hands was reduced to only being wounded by him.'

Understand, destiny is not something written in stone. It very much depends on how you choose to respond to every situation life presents to you. Your awareness will give you the intelligence and the courage to change the flow of events in your life.

If you don't know your past completely, you will repeat the same things in the future. If your Thoughts Per Second (TPS) can come down and you know your past as it happened, you won't repeat the same past in the future. You will then become a karma mukta* , liberated from karma. As of now you are a karma bandha* , bonded to karma because you have not lived your past completely.

For example, your childhood always seems golden. It is the golden past. You may feel your life in college was great, but when you were actually in college, you didn't really feel that way. Why? Because your suffering has become much more now and in

*Karma mukta - Free of one's actions, because they are performed without attachment.

*Karma bandha - Bound by one's actions, since they are performed with vested interests.

comparison, the past seems very nice! Now you attribute joy to your past and if given a chance you want to repeat it. When you lived through it, did you actually experience it? No!

If you can relax in the present moment, at zero TPS, for at least 11 kshanas* , you will penetrate the time shaft. If you can stay in zero TPS for 21 kshanas* , you will penetrate the time shaft and can alter the future. This is in your hands.

All meditation techniques are ways to bring down your TPS so that you can penetrate the time shaft.

Kshana

It is important to understand the concept of kshana* . There is no equivalent for this word in the English language. So, let me explain to you what kshana means. Kshana is a measure of time. It is not a second or a minute as many people believe.

The gap between two thoughts is one kshana. We are used to thinking of time in an absolute sense. But a kshana is absolutely relative! The thoughts of every person and the rate at which they come in a person are dependent on that person. Kshana varies from person to person.

If a person is restless and gets too many thoughts in a span of one second, his kshana is If you can stay in zero TPS for 21 kshanas, you will penetrate the time shaft and can alter the future.

shorter because the gap between two thoughts is less.

If a person is calm and collected like a meditator is, he gets fewer thoughts in a given span of time. His kshana is longer because the gap between two thoughts is more.

Your life is nothing but the totality of the conscious choices that you continuously make. Whether you want to or not, directly or indirectly, you are choosing everything. Someone else does not choose. It is you who chooses.

A small story:

An employee approached his boss, 'Sir, my wife said I should ask you for a raise.'

The boss replied, 'Oh, I will ask my wife tonight whether or not I should give you a raise!'

*Kshanas - Interval between two thoughts.

As long as you don't understand life is your choice, your living is just paralysis.

Understand, continuously it is your choice, your decision. You

may think somebody else decides. But it is only you who is deciding.

A small example can make you understand the basic truth. If somebody criticizes you, you choose to get offended. If somebody praises you, you choose to get flattered. Because of your habit, you may choose it unconsciously. It is not someone else who chooses, it is you who choose. Because it has become your habit to think that someone else influences your decisions, you have forgotten that you are choosing.

Every time someone criticizes you, you choose to get upset. Every time someone praises you, you choose to get flattered. It is nobody else's choice but your own. You can decide either way. When someone criticizes you, you can choose not to get offended and you can choose to remain calm and relaxed. It is just your choice to feel offended or not.

All your continuous choices every minute put together decide your life. If you don't decide and if you allow incidents to decide your life you go into a mode of 'paralysis'. Our lives as of now are nothing but paralysis. It is only when you decide to live your life without any outside events, situations or decisions being forced on you, you actually decide to live.

As long as you don't understand life is your choice, your living is just paralysis.

We make thousands of decisions in a day. Whether it is thinking or talking or cooking, we do for the sake of doing.

When you eat, are you completely involved in the eating? While eating you plan for the next vacation or think about how to get a raise at work. The food is going inside the body but you are not tasting it and enjoying it fully. If you eat with awareness, automatically you will know the right type and amount of food you ought to consume.

Whether you believe it or not, directly or indirectly, you are choosing everything in your life.

No one else chooses for you in your life. It is you who makes the choice. Continuously, it is only your choice, your decision. You may think that somebody else decides your life. No! It is only you who is deciding all the time.

Somebody criticizes or insults you and you choose to get offended. If somebody praises you, you choose to get flattered. Because of your habit, you choose this response unconsciously. Does someone else choose this for you? No! It is purely your choice. Because it has become a habit, you have forgotten that you are choosing.

A small story:

A man was invited by a scientist for lunch at his home. The man was sitting at the lunch table when he noticed a horseshoe hanging on the wall. A horseshoe is believed to bring good luck. The man was surprised and asked the scientist, 'Sir, I can't believe you are a scientist and you also believe in this superstition that a horseshoe brings you luck!'

The scientist replied, 'No, no! I don't believe in such stupidity. But the person who gave it to me said that whether I believed it or not, it would bring me luck all the same!'

It is you who choose how to respond, what decisions to make. But you try to fool yourself and others into believing it is someone else who is responsible, who is making you do things their way.

Understand, you can decide to respond differently. For example, when someone criticizes you, you can choose not to get offended. You can choose to remain calm, relaxed and collected. It is your choice to feel offended.

We always think we have been given unfair results. This is because we are not able to connect the For example, when someone criticizes you, you can choose not to get offended. You can choose to remain calm.

cause and the effect of many of the things that happen in our lives. We are blissfully unaware that we are the ones who caused the effects. We made it happen by way of unconscious living and ended up collecting more karma.

Vāsanā, saṃskāra and karma

There are three interrelated concepts, termed vāsanā, saṃskāra and karma, in Sanskrit.

Vāsanā

Vāsanā is the seed of desire. For example, you are walking and you happen to see a dazzling necklace displayed outside a shop. A desire arises inside you to possess it. This is vāsanā.

Saṃskāra

Saṃskāra is the plant that grows when the seed of vāsanā sprouts. When you see that

A saṃskāra by itself, by its very nature, is negative.

necklace again and again, the desire to possess it

becomes stronger in you. When you feed the desire to possess the necklace, it is like supplying water and nutrition to the seed of vāsanā.

The corruption that happens to the inner space is what I call saṃskāra or engraved memories. They are the memories that go and sit in your inner space and pull you to go through the same experience repeatedly. They pull you to do the same kind of actions repeatedly, pull you to run through the same kind of thought patterns, even if you don't want to. Those memories are what I call saṃskāras.

Any saṃskāra that is operating in your conscious or unconscious layer is nothing but a hindrance to the fulfillment of your life. There is no such thing as good or bad saṃskāra. No saṃskāra is good. An inner space filled with saṃskāras is hell. An inner space without saṃskāras is heaven. Do not try to classify saṃskāras as good or bad.

A saṃskāra by itself, by its very nature, is negative. By its very nature saṃskāra is depressive. Anything done out of saṃskāras will reduce everything to boring emptiness. Anything that happens with a deep understanding, just out of your pure inner space, always adds value to you. Anything done out of saṃskāras adds more and more bondage to you.

From our young age we collect so many different saṃskāras in so many ways. We accumulate them and also reproduce them. Saṃskāras do reproduce themselves even without any further action from our part.

Saṃskāras get strengthened in different ways. There are some saṃskāras that get strengthened only by action, when you repeat the action. There are some saṃskāras that get strengthened just by receiving information with regard to them, when you receive input from the world about them. There are some other saṃskāras that need neither action nor information, just remembrance is enough, and they get strengthened!

We collect these different levels of saṃskāras, engraved memories, and store them in our system and expand them.

Karma

Finally when driven by the desire you execute the action and it becomes karma. The power of desire drives you into finally buying the necklace. That is the action, the karma.

Anything half done leaves a saṃskāra (engraved memory) in your being. Anything not lived fully leaves an imprint or saṃskāra in your being, which time and

again pulls you, attracts you to travel the same path and fulfill it.

The cause of addiction is also related to saṃskāras. In my own experience of having worked with millions of people personally, at least a few thousand cases of addiction have been healed by meditation. The basic truth about addiction is that you have lived your life vaguely, not fully or with the whole being. Unfulfilled desires create a saṃskāra in you pulling you back to fulfill the desire by re-experiencing the same desire again and again.

Any emotion lived intensely simply liberates you of that emotion, be it anger, fear, desire to eat or attachment to any object or person. You are liberated fully of anything when you live it fully. If a person keeps going back to a problem time and again, it only means that he or she has not lived out the problem fully.

When we live, half our mind is somewhere else. Patanjali says beautifully, 'The more the quantity, the less the quality.' The moment the quality of enjoyment of any object increases, its quantity decreases in direct proportion, of its own accord. Therefore, it is the quality that needs to be increased.

Life is not a brief candle. It is a bright shining torch. Make it burn as brightly as possible in your life.

We have seven energy layers in our body.

The first layer is the physical body layer that you carry, made out of flesh and blood.

The second layer is made up of the prana movement inside your body. Prana is actually the life energy that you take in when you breathe. Air is the medium that brings in prana for sustaining your life. There are five stages in the movement of prana in your body that constitute what is called pranic body or breath body layer.

The next layer is the mental body layer. The continuous words or thoughts that rise in you are called inner chatter. The inner chattering that is continuously going on inside of you is the mental body layer.

The fourth layer is the emotion layer. I can say that intense inner chatter that does not respond to your logical analysis is what we call 'emotions'.

The silence you experience during deep sleep is the fifth layer. It is called the causal body layer.

In deep meditation, the joy and the intense vibrant silence from the thoughtless awareness that you experience is the sixth layer.

Pranic - Related to prana or life energy.

Any emotion lived intensely simply liberates you of that emotion, be it anger, fear or attachment to any object or person.

The seventh layer is enlightenment. We store different saṃskāras in each of the

seven different layers.

Chronic fatigue and the physical layer

The saṃskāras related to chronic fatigue or tiredness are stored in the physical body. That is why when you try to do some exercise, a workout, or even simple walking, the first thing the body will bring out is tiredness. But without bothering about these first level saṃskāras that are rising, if you continue to enter into the action, suddenly you will see that the same action brings energy out of you. If you start walking, in a few minutes your mind will suggest ten times, 'I am tired. No...It is too much! We did enough! That is enough for today. Tomorrow we can do.' But if you don't bother about these saṃskāras and just go ahead, within a few minutes the same action will bring energy.

Chronic fatigue, which is a deep feeling to be in inaction, to be in rest or non-moving state, is stored in the physical body layer.

Chronic fatigue is deeply related to the intense craving for rest. Please understand that this intense craving for rest brings diseases that will make you bedridden.

Actually if you see any advertisement for resorts, especially beach resorts, it will show a beautiful beach, an easy resting chair and a picture of somebody resting and looking so relaxed. The moment you see that, immediately something starts happening in you. You feel that you too should also be lying like that, completely resting, totally in peacefulness, in deep peace. That is what I call intense craving for tamas.

Understand, if you really find that same beach, that same chair and lie down, you will not have that same peace that you visualized. Till you exhaust the tamas engrams, the lethargy engrams, that you carry in the physical layer you cannot rest. Your desire for rest will not let you rest because the desire is from engrams, from saṃskāras.

Try to find the same beach, same chair, same bench, same place and lie down. The moment you start resting, in a few minutes this saṃskāra will settle down and the next layer saṃskāra will come up. Even your decision to rest, if based on a saṃskāra, you cannot rest.

Tamas - Attribute of inaction.

I can say that when the deep desire for vacation or the deep desire for rest, the chronic fatigue, leaves your system, ninty per cent of your spiritual journey is over. This first layer saṃskāra is the worst problem.

Prānic layer and the desire saṃskāras

The next layer is the prana or breath layer. The saṃskāras related to desire are stored in the prana, the breathing. That is why, whenever your desires are changing, suddenly you will see the breathing pattern will also change. For example, if you are caught by strong desire like lust or anger, your breathing pattern will change. It will be chaotic. The more you enter into action based on those desires the stronger these engrams will become.

Mental layer and guilt saṃskāras

The third layer is the mental layer. In the prānic layer, which is the second layer, you store your thoughts about how your life should be. In the mental layer, you store your engrams about how your life shouldn't have been. This layer is built on guilt.

If your energy is flowing continuously towards the future, it is desire. If your energy is

Whenever your desires are changing, you will see the breathing pattern will also change.

flowing continuously towards the past, it is guilt.

In the case of this layer, you don't need to do the same action again to strengthen the engram. Just the information or remembrance about that action will strengthen the engram. For example, if you have seen the same place, or if you are seeing the same person, if you are facing the same situation, immediately those engrams will become strong and they will be awakened.

Emotional Layer and Pain Saṃskāras

The fourth layer is to do with emotions. In this layer, you store all the visualizations related to pain.

Understand, this fourth layer of pain is a very powerful layer. You don't need any action or information to strengthen the engrams. Neither do you need action nor do you need information related to pain.

Prānic - Related to prana or life energy.

Removing the engrams is making friends with your body, creating a deep friendship with your body.

So you don't have to have the same pain again and again. You don't even need to

receive information related to that pain. Just the engrams are enough. They can multiply. They can simply expand and multiply.

Causal layer and deep sleep

The fifth layer is what you experience in deep sleep. Even though there are engrams in this layer, you cannot do anything about them, because in the deep sleep, your mind cannot do anything. It is an unconscious layer.

If in the first four layers you can reduce the depth of the engrams, saṃskāras, the fifth layer and the sixth layer will be cleansed naturally. The fifth layer will be cleansed if you clean the first four layers. If the fifth layer is cleansed, you will start experiencing the sixth layer more and more. The sixth layer is the meditation layer.

If you are getting into the deep sleep layer more easily, it means the first four layers are clean. If the first four layers are not clean, then you will suffer more in the fifth layer. That is why, when you have more stress and load, a lot of suffering related to sleep starts happening in life.

Not only that, if the engrams in the first four layers are too many, in the fifth layer, the relationship between you and your body gets disconnected. Reducing the engrams in the first four layers is making friends with your body.

We don't realize how we abuse the body. Understand, if you are overweight, it is directly connected to some of these engrams. When you feel lonely and empty inside, you start filling it. You start filling it with food or by drinking. Usually women choose food. Men decide to drink. Of course, in the modern developed society, you can't generalize! When you are feeling empty and lonely, you have to fill yourself with something.

Every single thing happening in your life is directly connected to some engrams. Removing these engrams, I can say, is making friends with your body, creating a deep friendship with your body. This is the best way to heal yourself.

There are three types of karma āgamya, prārabdha and sañchita.

Sañchita karma is like a bank, a reserve bank. Understand, this may not be the first time you have taken a body and come to planet earth. You may have taken millions of bodies before! In those millions of bodies, whatever thoughts you had, whatever you spoke, whatever you did, all those unfulfilled experiences have become your engrams or engraved memories. Put together, they are like a bank called sañchita karma. When I say 'bank', it is not a collection or saving, it is debt! You will have to pay back all the loans!

The next type of karma is prārabdha karma. Prārabdha means, from the sañchita bank of karma you take some karma out of which you create your present body. You then decide to enjoy and exhaust all those karmas that you brought with you through that body. So prārabdha is just a small bit of the accumulated sañchita karma account that you have brought into this life. You have planned to enjoy or exhaust these through this body of yours.

The third type of karma is the worst. It is the āgamya karma, the karma that you start collecting after coming down to planet earth, because of fresh thoughts, words and deeds.

Anybody who lands on planet earth has to exhaust his prārabdha karma before he dies. For example, let us say you have 1000 karmas in your sañchita bank. Out of these 1000 karmas, suppose you take only 10 karmas with you as your prārabdha karma when you take up your body saying, 'Let me finish these 10

** Prārabdha is a part of the sañchita karma you have brought into this life.**

karmas this time.' However, after coming down, instead of exhausting your own prārabdha karmas, you start watching others and collecting karma based on their desires. These are desires that you have borrowed from others around you. Because of these borrowed desires, you create certain thoughts, words and actions.

For example, if you see someone more beautiful than you, your thoughts multiply due to comparison and jealousy. You create karma based on thoughts. Sometimes you talk ill of others, without knowing any of the related facts. When you do this, you accumulate karma based on words.

Let me explain the three types of karma from a different angle.

You see, if you take all the possibilities that you are aware of and that are available to you in the cosmos, we call that as āgamya. There are all kinds of possibilities.

Fulfilling your prārabdha will take away one very negative aspect of your life - the continuous irritation.

You can become a fish, you can become a snake, you can become a man, or you

can become a god. All these are possibilities. We call that as āgamya.

There are also other possibilities that are available to you. These are not only within the field of your awareness like the things that you know such as fish, monkey, dog, donkey and man, but also many other possibilities that are unknown to you. Those we call sanchita, the whole range of known and unknown possibilities.

The whole is sanchita and the possibilities that lie in front of you are agamya. You then decide to play only with certain boundaries of these possibilities when you come into this body. That is what we call prarabdha. See when you came down, you decided to play inside certain boundaries. That boundary is what we can call prarabdha.

After coming here you see many possibilities before you that you try to accumulate, which you try to acquire. Those possibilities can be called as agamya.

This prarabdha that you brought with you has the intelligence to run your life.

One big difficulty is that you see too many agamya, too many possibilities in front of you. Because of that, your trust over your prarabdha or your own preselected possibilities reduces. You think your prarabdha may not be that powerful to run your life because of the agamya, the possibilities, which are in front of your eyes.

Trusting prarabdha is powerful. Fulfilling your prarabdha will take away one very negative aspect of your life - the continuous irritation. The constant irritation that you carry from morning till night is the gift of agamya.

From morning till night, from the moment you come out of your bed till the moment you fall asleep, you feel a constant irritation. We just need somebody to make some mistake and we jump on them! We are just waiting. Anybody who comes in our presence will have our 'blessing'! That constant irritation is because we are centered on agamya.

If our energy, our inner space is centered on prarabdha, we will not be carrying the constant irritation that we carry now. It is not that we will not be working or relating with the possibilities. It is not that we will stop working, no! We will continue to work but our base will be our prarabdha.

You see, the mood of constantly rejecting everything, constantly being irritated, happens because of our agamya, because of the possibilities we see around us. We are running behind the choices, the possibilities, the agamya. But we forget that the prarabdha is very intelligent, very powerful.

In the whole world, there are only two kinds of people, people whose inner space is centered on agamya and people whose inner space is centered on prarabdha, that's all. People whose inner space is centered on prarabdha live their life in restful awareness.

The mind that is based on agamya will be inspired only by fear or greed. You can see this when you wake up. You will come out of your dream state only if you have a desire or if you are caught by some fear. For example, you may get inspired to wake up because you wish to send your child to school so that she gets a good education and has a bright future. Or you may get up out of fear of getting late for office because you are afraid of losing your job.

Moving the physical body out of fear or greed is what I call living your life based on agamya.

All your actions are invariably driven by greed or fear and therefore end up being superficial actions, adding to your karma.

In this way, you end up collecting more karmas. By the time you go back, what will happen? Your 'karma bank balance' would have increased by the number of your agamya karma!

Say you came down with 10 karmas, you did not exhaust these 10 karmas with which you came, but you collected 200 more!

What will happen the next time you take the body? Your sanchita is now 1000 added to the 200 new agamya karmas you collected now. You now have 200 karmas more than in your last birth. Again you take 10 out of that collection and come down with another body. But you only collect more and go back. This becomes a vicious circle. This is what we call janma marana chakra, life-and-death cycle, continuously taking a body and dying, again and again.

Instead, while you are living, if somebody gives you the knowledge that you are not just the body or the mind and it is karma that is influencing you, then the influence of that karma over you will begin to come down. You will then start exhausting the prarabdha karma that you came down with.

Let us say you brought 10 prarabdha karmas with you when you took this body and came down. Suppose in these 10 prarabdha karmas, you have three samskaras or three engrams that have the power to put you into depression. If you continue to obey those engrams and fall into depression,

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

they will not remain just three, but will probably become ten. The additional seven karmas are the agamya karmas. If instead of exhausting your prarabdha you decide to remain with them, you collect agamya.

If on the other hand, whenever these three engrams put you in depression you have learned some technique to come out of the depression, then these three will start losing their power over you. So, over time, of the ten karmas, three will leave you. Whenever you reduce the influence of prarabdha on yourself, not only will the prarabdha get burnt, but the chances of accumulating new karma, the agamya karma, will also come down.

You stop collecting agamya when the prarabdha loses its influence over you. When the influence of these ten prarabdha engrams over you stops, the agamya

collection will also stop because it is these ten engrams that are responsible for the collection of further engrams or karma.

Now let us come to the sanchita karma. Understand, you can't do anything directly with your sanchita karma bank. For sanchita to burn out, only Guru Krupa, grace of the master, will work. Only the master's grace can do anything to burn out your sanchita.

You have been told that you will go to hell if you accumulate sins and to heaven if you gain merits. I tell you, society simply uses these concepts to control you through fear of hell and greed of heaven.

A small story:

In a calamity a whole village was wiped out. All the men and women lined up at the gates of heaven. God said, 'I want the men to form two lines. The men who dominated their women on earth shall be in one line. The men who were dominated by their women shall be in the second line.'

The line of the men who were dominated by their women was miles long. In the line of men who dominated their women, there was only one man. God was curious and asked the lone man in the line, 'How did you manage not to be dominated by your wife?'

The man replied, 'I don't know. My wife told me to stand here!'

When you are caught in fear, naturally you are ready to do what society tells you. You are no longer master of yourself. You are under the control of society.

Understand, there is no hell or heaven existing physically somewhere. Hell and heaven are psychological states of your mind.

Hell and heaven are psychological states of your mind.

When you think good thoughts, when you do good deeds, you feel good and you are in heaven. When you think evil, when you act evil, you feel evil and you are in hell. That is all. That is all there is to karma. This is the cosmic cause-and-effect principle.

You are what your intent is. You become what your intent is. If you create thoughts, words or actions that do not emanate from deep awareness but from a superficial layer, then you create karma that further propels you to fulfill those superficial thoughts, words or actions.

When you realize that the whole universe is energy, you will understand it is a living existence.

The universe of which our solar system is a very small part has constant creation and constant rejuvenation. The big bang creation of new solar systems and the black hole deaths of shrinking stars that grew too big to survive, continue constantly. Scientists now believe that each time there

When you realize that the whole universe is energy, you will understand it is a living existence.

is a big bang in one part of the universe there is a corresponding black hole

elsewhere. One without the other is not possible. All energy is interlinked. This is cosmic karma.

There is a theory called the chaos theory that states that the flutter of a butterfly in China can create a tornado in Mexico. This is called the 'butterfly effect'. The flapping wings of the butterfly can cause a small change in the pressure that can result in a chain of events leading to a large change in pressure causing a tornado in another part of the world. Not even one atom moves without another atom moving elsewhere.

If you look little deeply, we invite not only the physical diseases that we suffer from, but the accidents as well. The problem is that our thinking is so unconscious we are not able to connect the cause and the effect.

Karma means action. But action can be of two types. It can either be a reaction or it can be a response.

When somebody insults you and you become angry, he has made you behave the way he wanted. Now if he apologizes, your mood suddenly changes. So he is the master. You are behaving like a slave. You are a victim having no control over the situation. When somebody insults you, you are immediately reacting out of your past experiences. This reaction is karma. It is a binding force. It creates chains for you.

But a response is totally different from reaction. When someone insults you, you don't need to give in to the emotion of anger rising inside you. You can listen to what he is saying objectively without judging whether it is good or bad, right or wrong. First you listen to him without immediately reacting. Then you respond with awareness. You don't react from the past. You are now responding from the present.

If the other person is right, you will thank him for pointing out something to you and making you aware of yourself. If he is wrong, you can simply witness the emotion and not react. If the statement is not true, why should you react?

A beautiful story from the life of George Gurdjieff* :

George Gurdjieff was a young boy of nine years when his father died. He was*

from a poor family but his father was a very honest and integrated person. When his father was on his deathbed, he called Gurdjieff and gave him his last teaching.*

If somebody insults you, listen silently and in detail to what he is saying. Then tell the person, 'I am grateful that you have taken so much interest in me. After twenty-four hours I will come and reply to you.' Gurdjieff promised his father that he would always follow this advice.

In his own old age, Gurdjieff said to his disciples, 'My father's simple technique helped me immensely. Because, after twenty-four hours who remains angry? After twenty-four hours, either you find that the person was right or he was not.

If he was right, it means you have an opportunity to learn and improve yourself. Your awareness about yourself has increased. If the person is wrong, there is no need to be agitated because the statement has no solid base.

Let your response be like a pure reflection in a mirror with no judgment. Let it not come from the karmic baggage of the past. Instead let it come from the freshness of the present. Anything that comes from your past experiences is going to create a karmic chain. Anything from the present liberates.

You are not a byproduct of your actions. You are far bigger than your actions.

You create your own karma. Karma does not create you. You are not a byproduct of your actions. You are far bigger than your actions.

A beautiful story:

There was a beautiful garden with many trees and varieties of flowers and fruits. Three friends were walking near this garden that had a big wall around it. One of them climbed the wall and peeped inside.

He cried out, 'Oh, such a beautiful garden!' He jumped into the garden and started enjoying the fruits. The second man climbed the wall and saw the garden. He too felt it was beautiful, but he had a little bit of courtesy. He turned and said to the third man who was below, 'Dear friend, there is a beautiful garden below. Come, I am going in.' Saying this, he jumped over and started

Pure action with no end objective is karma.

enjoying the fruits.

The third man climbed the wall and saw the garden. He saw his two friends and understood the level of joy and bliss that they were enjoying. Then he said to himself, 'Let me go down and tell all the people about this beautiful paradise. I will bring them all to enjoy this garden.'

An incarnation is someone who comes down to tell his fellowmen about the blissful place that he experienced.

The man who descends from the Divine on planet earth to express the bliss of that divinity and to make you realize what he has experienced is an incarnation. Incarnations as such have no karma. They have nothing to achieve, nothing to gain. If they don't have anything to enjoy why should they be in the body?

They come down only for the love of humanity. Incarnations take a human body just to liberate more beings from the cycle of life and death, from the grip of karma.

A beautiful story from the devotional vedic scripture Bhagavatam* :

Krishna reached the banks of river Yamuna with the gopis* , his milkmaid friends. They wanted to cross the river but there was no way to cross.*

Krishna declared, 'If I am a true brahmachari , then let the Yamuna* part and let us go across.'*

The Yamuna parted.*

Outwardly, it may seem that Krishna was with the girls like other ordinary men. But Krishna was beyond the body-mind. His actions did not carry the intention of an ordinary man. It is the intention of any act that matters, not the act itself.

Intention is the baggage, the karma, not the action. If action creates intention, it becomes the baggage. Pure action with no end objective is karma.

Master's presence affects the intention

See, whatever you are doing in the presence of the master, you are doing for the master. You know it is in no way going to build your name or fame. So, the action happens without intention. There is no intention. The intention is the master's. The action is yours. Intention is in the being of the person who has no intentions!

You see, the total sanchita karma can be yours or mine. Mine is divine play. Yours is suffering. When it started, your total sanchita karma also started as a divine play. But, after gathering more and more gathered agamya karma, it became dirty.

Because I have no karma, when you flow with me you will also act without intention. Action without intention is living enlightenment.

Action without intention is free from karma

If a person has committed ten murders, the quantity of murders will not be recorded. But the intensity of the murderer will be recorded. It is the quality, the mindset, and the attitude, that carries the karmic burden.

Action does not get recorded. Only intention gets recorded.

That is why Krishna says again and again in the Bhagavad Gita that intention is much more important than action. That is the message of the whole Gita. He says, 'When you are without intention, I will take care.'

The Mahabharata tells us the beautiful story of a courtesan and a monk.

There was a monk who lived across a courtesan's house. He used to keep a count of the men coming to her house and used to imagine all kinds of things about her lifestyle. The woman spent all her free time praying to Krishna to redeem her from her miserable life.

One day, they both died at the same time. Both reached the court of Yama. Yama looked at the record of their lives and gave the decision: the monk should go to hell and the woman should go to heaven. The monk was shocked and started protesting, 'I lived such a pious life while she lived such an immoral life! How can I be sent to hell and she to heaven!'

Yama replied, 'In my court of judgment, your actions are of no value, only your intent matters. You wore a monk's robes and lived a good life outwardly but your inner space was filled with lust. So in the outer world, your body is now being buried with honor but you have to suffer hell. The woman's heart was forever with Krishna even while her body was sold to men. So her body doesn't have anybody to even do the last rites but she is going to heaven.'

An enlightened being is one with Existence. His actions can never be without awareness and compassion.

You may ask, can people do what they want? Do they have license to be immoral and to commit murders?

An enlightened being, an incarnation, is one with Existence. An enlightened being can only operate in tune with Existence. He can never be out of tune. The actions of an enlightened master can never be without awareness and compassion.

Since we do not have the consciousness or awareness, we cannot justify our actions by saying they are similar to those of an enlightened being. Be very clear, the action may look similar outwardly but the intention, the inner space, the attitude, is completely different.

A beautiful story from the life of Adi Shankara:

Once while Shankara was wandering with his disciples, he suddenly felt thirsty. They were in the middle of nowhere. They traveled further and finally came across one shop. Shankara went up to the man in the shop and asked for some water to drink. The man said, 'I am sorry but I have nothing to offer you except liquor. That is all I have.'

Shankara replied, 'Alright, please give me some.' He drank a glass of liquor and thanked the man. The disciples were shocked to see their master drink liquor! The thirsty disciples decided to follow the master and they all drank liquor to their heart's content.

When they resumed their journey, Shankara continued to walk normally but the disciples under the effect of liquor were not even able to keep the next step properly. They went up further and after some distance, they came across an iron forge.

Shankara went upto the man who was pouring molten iron into the cast. He asked him for a glass of water. The man apologized saying he didn't have any water to offer. Shankara said, 'Alright. Please give me the molten iron then.'

The man and Shankara's disciples were all shocked. The man gave Shankara the hot molten iron which he just poured into his mouth as if it was water!

He then turned around to his disciples and said, 'You may also drink now.' The disciples stood with their heads lowered. Shankara then explained, 'Do not follow what I do. Follow what I say. Otherwise, you just choose to follow what your mind tells you.'

Understand, the very plane on which enlightened beings exist is different from the normal human plane of existence. So they do not need to and cannot do things according to usual logic. Their intention is what is important, which cannot be explained in terms of ordinary logic.

An enlightened being has no personal interest because he has no individual identity. His identity is dissolved in the identity of the whole universe.

Intention and action

When you act in tune with the cosmos, It blesses you.

If the depth of the intention is more and the action is less, the person is lazy. He is lazy or in tamas.

If the depth of intention and of the action is the same, the person is in restless action or rajas.

If there is no intention but only the action, he is in purposeless action or sattva.

That is why Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, 'Fight, O Arjuna.' It is not the act of 'killing' that will be recorded but the intention that will be recorded. The intention of Arjuna is the intention of Krishna, who is a being with no intentions as He is one with the Cosmos!

When you act in tune with the Cosmos, the whole Cosmos blesses you. You attract all kinds of positive coincidences around you. That is why when people contribute even a little to the cause of such a person they are showered in abundance from all corners.

The power of daily intention

We have seven layers or seven bodies of energy, which are physical, pranic, mental, etheric, causal, pleasure and nirvanic. Please understand, in the causal layer our gathered or agamya karma is completely available for us. See, in the causal body, you may have the skills to play cricket, golf and tennis. But if you get up from deep sleep with a strong will or intention to play cricket, then you will also bring from the causal body the intelligence to play cricket. You will be naturally led into the situations, the atmosphere and the intelligence for it. If you go to sleep at night with a strong intention to play golf and you wake up in the morning with the strong intention to play golf, then you will bring with you that intelligence to play golf.

The causal layer is an exchange place. It is like monetary exchange. In the causal layer you can exchange anything. When you go to the causal layer the karma of this birth itself can be changed if you have that strong intention every day. This is true freedom.

Strong intention has the capacity to change the gathered agamya karma and the prarabdha karma of this birth. It cannot change the total sanchita karma. Sanchita karma can only be changed by the grace of the master , one who is without karmas.

Reaching out to the master, doing what the master says and acting without intention, are what the whole game of life is all about.

Action without intention is mission. If you are acting with intention, you are like a machine.

If you are acting without intention, you are the mission. Machine or mission, the choice is yours. Till you act with my intention without adding your intention, I will keep training you. Just do what I say without asking inspiration from your intention, from your greed and fear. Pure action without intention will lead to fulfillment.

Another important thing, please understand this concept.

Assume that in your total sanchita karma baggage, 100 desires are related to your muladhara chakra, the energy center related to greed and lust; 100 desires are say related to swadhishthana chakra, the energy center related to fear, 100 desires are related to your manipuraka chakra, the energy center related to worry, etc. Assume you have 700 such desires, 100 related to each of the seven chakras.

From this set of 100 desires of each chakra, you take say 10 of each and come into this world. This small selection of the total sanchita karma is your prarabdha karma of this birth.

Another important thing to note is that if you don't add gathered agamya karma to this birth's prarabdha karma, this birth karma can dissolve just by breathing. It will dissolve in your thought pattern itself.

For example, on seeing someone if lust awakens in you, in that intention and emotion itself the karma of this birth, the prarabdha will dissolve. Instead when you commit the action to fulfill the lust, the act generates gathered karma, the agamya. If you don't do the action, you will not collect gathered agamya karma. By breathing out the desire this birth's prarabdha karma will dissolve. Breathing awareness into the desire has the capacity to burn your unfulfilled desires and can dissolve this birth's karma.

In our second level THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program, participants are taken through a meditation in the pranic layer to dissolve desires, which are the samskaras stored in that energy layer. They list all their desires, then chase their desires during the meditation and by breathing in awareness into their desires they dissolve the samskarasof this birth.

Pointing the same sword inside

Karma is not a law of reward and punishment. It is a reflection of your mental state.

Karma is not a law of reward and punishment. It is not a way god uses to punish people for committing sins. It is a reflection of your own mental state giving you the experience of 'heaven' and 'hell'.

A small story:

A traffic policeman caught a man speeding. He was about to issue him a speeding ticket.

Suddenly a woman started screaming from the back seat, 'See, I told you that you will get caught! Who asked you to drive so fast? And when I tell you to be careful, slow down and watch out, you tell me to shut up. Now see you got caught!' The cop asked the driver, 'Who is she?' The driver sighed, 'My wife'.

The cop tore up the ticket and said, 'Drive on. You have been punished enough!'

When you are angry, it is not that you will incur sin and pay for it in your next life. You are suffering with your anger now. That itself is the hell you suffer! You are suffering inside in the same way that you are torturing the person you are angry with.

The fire you spit outside will burn with the same intensity inside you also. No matter whether it burns the other person or not, the fire of anger will surely burn you. The sword used to cut someone outside will cut you inside with the same intensity. Remember, it is a double edged sword.

A beautiful story from Buddha's life:

A man once came and spat on Buddha's face. Buddha wiped his face and asked the man, 'Do you want to say something more, or is this all?'

Ananda, his close disciple, was very angry. He was fuming that some man came and just spat on his master and that too for no reason at all. He said to Buddha, 'Master, if you give me permission I will handle the man.'

Buddha replied, 'Have you forgotten that you are a monk, a sannyasi? That poor man is already suffering with his anger. See his angry face, his body shaking with that anger. Before spitting on me, do you think he would have been celebrating and dancing? He is mad with his own anger. In that state of madness, he came and spat on me.

What is a bigger punishment for him than being in such a state? And what harm has he done to me? I just had to wipe the spit off my face. Now you don't get agitated, otherwise you are building the same anger inside you. Why are you punishing yourself? That is foolishness. Feel compassion for the poor man instead.'

The man was listening and was surprised and confused to see Buddha behave in this way. He was expecting Buddha to become angry. That is what he wanted. Instead the compassion and understanding Buddha showed was just too shocking for him!

Buddha said to him, 'Go home. You look tired, you have punished yourself enough. Forget about what you did to me. You did not harm me. This body will return to the earth and people will do all kinds of things like spitting. Go home and relax.'

The man was completely shaken by Buddha's response. He went back home. He came back that evening, fell at Buddha's feet and cried, 'Please forgive me!'

Buddha calmly said, 'I was not angry in the first place. How can I forgive you? But I am happy to see you relieved from the anger and in a state of harmony. Just remember, never do such acts again. This is how you create hell for yourself.'

Dharma and Karma

An important thing you should know: accept honor only from the person who has experienced you. He can never dishonor you. Even if he dishonors only he will suffer. You will not suffer. Live on the path of dharma, righteous conduct, having a clear understanding about you and allowing only the people who experience you to honor you. You will see that even if those people dishonor you, you will not be touched in any way because dharma is so powerful. It fills your inner space and protects you.

Dharma means to be clear, honest to your center, to your understanding.

Dharma means to be clear, honest to your understanding.

Dharma is what we call righteous or conscious behavior. It is not the moral behavior demanded by society. If you follow the law of society you are protected in the outer world. If you follow the law of dharma you are protected in the inner world. When you are in dharma you will always be right and you will never fall in depression.

We bother so much about following the law to have the protection from the outer world. Understand, follow the dharma. You will never fall into the difficulties and depressions that come from the inner world.

The inner world problems are much stronger, more difficult and more dangerous than the outer world problems. When inner world problems happen, immediately you are shaken and you will invite outer world problems.

In all your relationships be righteous, be clear. You will see that even when somebody who experienced you through your teachings dishonors you, you will not feel affected. That person will fall into depression. Just like a law of the land that is laid down logically and enforced properly by society, the spiritual law of dharma is enforced by Existence. Dharma is enforced properly and it is still alive.

Please understand, enlightened beings are happening again and again in the planet earth just to remind you of this one truth that dharma is still alive. The cosmic law is still alive.

There is a beautiful scriptural statement: dharmo rakshati rakshitaha. When you protect dharma, dharma will protect you. When you uphold the cosmic law and live by it, the cosmic law strengthens you. The law of dharma is so powerful.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, I have seen good people suffering and bad people enjoying. How do you justify this?'

Understand the truth that first of all good people never suffer. They may appear to be suffering. If there is suffering somewhere the dharma was lost. It is a perverted understanding that good people suffer and bad ones enjoy.

A funny one-liner:

What is luck? The factor that is responsible for the success of those you don't like.

Perverted understanding is not dharma.

One more important thing, you don't even have to be honest to the higher understandings that have not become part of your experience. No. Be honest and true to your own understanding. That is more than enough.

If you are in the level of dharma, just completely be in that dharma. That is svadharma, being in tune with, honest with the dharma that is your core.

You will then see that there will not be any unnecessary movement within you. You will not fall into the low mood. When you protect dharma, it protects you. I tell you, when you protect the dharma, it gives so much of strength and so much of courage.

The theory of karma simply says that whatsoever is happening to you is your doing. Nothing happens to you from outside of you. You create whatever happens to you. Most of the time you are not aware and you are not conscious. So you are not able to see yourself doing it.

If you are sad, watch and meditate on your misery. Observe how you created the sadness. See how the root of your misery lies within you. The mind constantly tells you everybody else is responsible for your misery, spouse, friend, boss, or the man down the street. It always goes on throwing responsibility on somebody else.

A small story:

There was an ad in the newspaper for a professional that ended with, 'We want a responsible man for the job.' A man applied for the job. In his interview, he introduced himself saying, 'I think I am just the person for your job.' The employer asked curiously, 'Why?'

The man replied, 'Wherever I worked, whenever anything went wrong, they told me I was responsible.'

Be very clear, nobody except you is responsible for what you feel, what you do.

Nobody can make you suffer without your silent permission. Once you understand that whatever happens is from deep inside you, you will suddenly see things changing. Take full responsibility for yourself and see how you become integrated in whatever you do.

When you stop blaming others, when you understand that you are responsible for everything, you will become more and more aware of every action, every thought of yours.

That awareness is enough. You will act intelligently. If you want to be sad, you will be sad. Nothing wrong with that, just be total in that sadness. If you feel there is no need to be sad and you want to be happy, be happy. That's all.

Watch how you create your misery. How did you build it inside? Watch how you are continuously creating your moods. Don't fool yourself by throwing on others the responsibility of what you create. Then you will never change. You will remain miserable because you are helpless. If you think others are creating everything, what can you do? What is your role? Then nothing is in your hands. You can only wait for others to change. But the change can never happen because others are not creating your feelings and emotions in the first place.

How do we choose the next birth?

Once the life force leaves the body, within three kshanas, it chooses the next body.

At the time of death the three most enjoyed experiences in that lifetime stand out as one's last thoughts. The choice of the next body arises from the mindset based on these three experiences.

These three thoughts will be based on one from each of the total karma (sanchita), this birth karma (prarabdha) and gathered karma (agamya). Based on this, the prarabdha karma will take shape for this birth.

Practicing spiritual life solutions in one's lifetime will reduce the gathered sanchita karma of that life because these understandings will help one to live with awareness.

Meditation helps to reduce the prarabdha karma. It acts not only upon the conscious and physical levels but also has the capacity to penetrate and clean the unconscious on a physical, mental and being level.

However, the largest balance in the bank of karma, the total sanchita karma, can only be dissolved through the master's grace.

The more these three karmas are reduced, the less the constraints of choice for the next body. Since each of the three karmas will dictate a corresponding intense experience to be lived, the next body will need to provide a space for these experiences to be lived.

It is like this. If I say, 'Let me meet a person who can speak English,' I have more choice than if I say, 'Let me meet a person who can speak English, Spanish and German.' Similarly, if you have all the three types of karma, of this birth, gathered and total, there are more constraints on your next birth.

For example, the desire influenced by your total sanchita karma may be, 'I want to be beautiful.' The desire influenced by your karma of this birth, prarabdha, may be, 'I want to be rich.' The desire influenced by your gathered or agamya karma, may be, 'I want to settle down in USA.'

It is more difficult to get a body for the life energy's next birth that will lead to the satisfaction of all the three desires within the short gap of three kshanas. So, it ends up choosing a body that satisfies the strongest desire amongst the three desires. The combined desires, the mindset, with which the life energy leaves the previous body is the vasana, the seeds of desire we earlier talked about.

These three desires, these three thoughts will be seen in one glimpse in three kshanas, as one vasana . The vasana is like a television channel and the body that attracts the vasana is like the television set tuned to this channel. The depth of the vasana and the body that matches the vasana attracts the life energy. Just like a television

set tuned to the satellite channel's frequency receives the corresponding electromagnetic waves, in the same way, the vasana is attracted by the body.

The life energy, the spirit, departing from the previous body enters the new body that it selected as that body leaves the womb of the mother. It enters the body in the birth canal. The darkness of the causal layer that it left from the previous body corresponds to the darkness of the mother's birth canal. Since the body has been prepared by the energies of the parents, the life energy chooses the combined energies of the parents based on the desires, the vasanas, the mental attitude, with which it leaves the previous body. So the parents do not choose the child. It is the child that chooses its parents.

Having chosen a particular body, the spirit or life force has to satisfy the other two desires it had but could not choose an appropriate body for. However, during its transition through the darkness, the deep pain experienced by the spirit erases all memories of the vasana it carries before it enters the new body. The new entity no longer remembers the desires with which it left the previous body. Instead of fulfilling the desires with which it left the previous body, since it has forgotten them, the life energy in the new body seeks new desires and collects more karma.

It is the child that chooses its parents.

if one of them is gone, the choice constraints are fewer and the life force can be more focused in the choices. Cleaning the gathered agamya karma and this birth's prarabdha karma can be done by the individual by understanding about life and by meditating. The master's grace will reduce the total sanchita karma.

Now, of the three types of karma,

Once the total sanchita karma is cleansed, there is no reason to take another body. Then, if the next birth still happens, it is for no reason but out of overflowing joy and bliss. The birth is thus chosen consciously because there is no pull of karma. The life lived is a leela or reasonless play of an avatar or incarnation.

How did the cycle of birth and death start?

For all of us, our total sanchita karma initially was a divine play. For an enlightened master, it is still a divine play as he has no karma at all. Playing because you can play is the divine play.

We took birth out of choice. We forgot our prarabdha karma, started gathering agamya karma and expanded the total sanchita karma. Then, to exhaust the increased load we had to take another birth where we collected more desires and karma. This is how the cycle of life and death continues.

Please understand, your gathered agamya karma is your bondage. The total karma and this birth karma can be a divine play. The result of this play is the karma of that birth. After birth, if we play without gathered karma, it will continue to be a divine play. The bondage comes with gathered karma.

Will a human be born as an animal, bird or insect or can he be born as human being in the next birth?

This is a very good question. Let me boldly declare this truth and clear all the myths that have been surrounding this one question on the wheel of karma!

When a human being takes birth as human once, he will continue taking the life of a human unless he has acted against his consciousness like torturing others or committed violent acts in physical, mental or verbal forms against Existence which is in the form of the master, nature and human consciousness. The intensity of these acts is what gets recorded in the cosmic karmic record. Understand, it is not the act itself but the intensity of the act that matters.

When a person spends his whole life in lower consciousness, he can be reborn as an animal. For example, if he spends his whole life in only eating or sleeping, he can be reborn as an animal.

If the person has not experienced even once in his lifetime, the unique human qualities like falling in love, seeking enlightenment, he will be reborn as an animal, because he had a human body but the channels of human experience have not been awakened.

Do we have to wait for the next birth if we feel strongly

about something but it is not our prarabdha**?**

No. You can change your prarabdha through a simple, strong will or sankalpa* . The strength of the sankalpa* can cause a rebirth in you in this birth itself. The next birth can happen now itself. For example, people, especially householder disciples who feel they are caught up in their responsibilities ask me, 'Swamiji, please bless me that I should be with you at least in my next birth.' There are so many examples where they have been able to come and live in the ashram* just a few months later. It is just the strength of the will.

You are like a wave in the ocean of Existence. The wave rises up from the ocean but it is still connected to the ocean. It may think it has an individual existence but that is just a myth. Whether it is rising, above the ocean or falling down, it is still a part of the ocean.

On its own, because of joy, when the wave takes the body, there will be no gathered or agamya karma. When agamya karma is acquired, it will corrupt the total sanchita karma that was pure. This sanchita karma has to be exhausted in the next birth. Corrupted total sanchita karma generates the cycle of life and birth. This is how the wheel of karma starts.

The new body that the life energy occupies does not remember the prarabdha karma that the life energy brought to it when it took the body. So, you do not remember the desires with which you left your previous body.

Reminding yourself of those desires again and fulfilling them in this birth is what doing tapas or penance and becoming enlightened is all about.

So what happens when you forget at birth that you have come through divine play? When the total karma weight becomes excessive, you realize, 'There is some problem somewhere.' Immediately you wake up and get enlightened again. The rewinding and coming back is enlightenment.

Sometimes, if you get a really bad dream, only a thought like 'I am dreaming' will come at first. Then, you actually wake up. That thought of 'I am dreaming' coming is turning towards enlightenment. Waking up is getting enlightened.

That thought of 'I am dreaming. This whole world is a dream.' and then renouncing the false world and catching the reality is enlightenment. In this world, the same experiences repeat making you tired and bored. It gives rise to the suspicion, 'I am seeing a dream.' Then, you start doubting the world, doubting the promise the world gives.

It is like the newspaper ads about some beachside resort that will show the beach, the table, the food, all looking like heaven, giving a promise of luxury. You doubt that promise, because you realize that if hundred people see this and go, not many will actually feel the ecstasy promised. Similarly in life also, you doubt the promises your mind has been making all along but never fulfilling any.

Re-living to relieve

Till now, what we discussed was a preventive measure for incurring karma. As a curative for karma, I will give you a simple technique. Right from this moment, try and remember all the incidents in your life. Start going backwards from this moment to your childhood days. Remember what you can.

Do not bother about what you cannot. Understand, what you cannot remember is only a hangover. It has not touched you deeply. That is why it is not retained in your memory. Try this technique for a year. Re-living is a wonderful way of relieving.

Our second level Life Bliss meditation program – THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program (NSP) is focused on just this method of exhausting one's karma. It is like a complete spiritual bath in the presence of an enlightened master.

There is a way to again and again remind ourselves not to collect karma and to live without the influence of the earlier incurred karma. The first step is to have a clear understanding that karma is powerless in the presence of an elevated consciousness.

There is an important difference between normal human beings and enlightened masters. A normal person does not have the ability to make his body alive out of his will. His body is either alive or it is dead, that's all. It is not under his control.

But for an enlightened person, it is under his control. He can either make his body alive, or relax. Because of this ability, he can also make another body alive! When an enlightened being chooses to make a stone or metal alive, that stone or metal becomes a representation of his very self.

All the deities in our major traditional temples are energized by enlightened masters. Masters like Arunagiri Yogeeshwara* from Tiruvannamalai * , Patanjali from Chidambaram* , Karurar* from Thanjavur * , Konganavar * from Tirupati* and Meenakshi* from Madurai* have energized the deities in these temples.

Deities are therefore considered to be the very bodies of the enlightened masters. Disciples continue serving the deities even after the masters leave their physical body. The body of the deity is considered to be the body of the master himself. That is the reason why the deities receive the same respect offered to an enlightened master.

For example, all the disciples initiated by Arunagiri Yogeeshwara* will worship the Arunachala temple for generations together. You will see that whatever is offered to the master will be offered to the deity also.

Masters, even after they decide to leave the body, are continuously available to the disciples through the deities that they energized. For example, even during my lifetime, my physical presence is not possible everywhere at the same time. So these deities are programmed to do my work where I am physically not present! They are my representatives!

The deities possess independent intelligence. Energizing the deities is a big process. It is like giving birth to a child. These energized deities will directly respond to your prayers. They will directly relate with you if you are open in relating with them.

If you see our puja* and our ashram* routine, you will see that in the morning, they play the wakeup song to wake up the presiding deity. Then they give a small cup of oil for His hair and a small cup of tooth powder for Him to brush His teeth! Then, they give Him a bath and offer fresh, ironed clothes, just like how they offer to the master. They offer food and perform the evening arati* . In the night, they put the deity to bed again in a ceremonious way.

Understand, all this does not add anything to the deity or to the master. It adds only to us! This is what is living with god. This is what is practicing the presence of god. Practicing the presence of the master is puja* . Puja* is done every day because it is a technique to remember the presence of god every day.

Rituals

Rituals are very powerful tools. They are powerful techniques. Many people ask me, 'You are enlightened. Why should you then perform rituals?' I tell them, 'Because I am enlightened, I am teaching people exactly why and how to perform rituals!' Enlightened beings do not need any rituals for themselves.

A small story:

A man went to a hotel and started eating idlis .*

He ate eight idlis , and after the ninth idli* his hunger was satisfied. The waiter came and gave him the bill for nine idlis. The man said, 'What is this? I will pay only for one idli, the ninth idli, which satisfied my hunger! The first eight idlis did not do the job. Only the ninth one did the job of satisfying my hunger. So, I will pay only for that idli!'*

If the man had not eaten the eight idlis, would the ninth idli have satisfied his hunger? This is exactly what we do in life also. People who reject rituals are actually rejecting the first eight idlis! People who think that rituals are a waste and that they

Puja - Hindu ritual worship.

Ashram - A monastery for Hindu or Buddhist monks.

Arati - Fire ritual performed at the end of most vedic worship done with lighted lamps or camphor, accompanied often by devotional songs.

Idlis - South Hindu delicacy, a rice lentil steamed dish.

can go straightaway to meditation and spiritual experiences are doing nothing but rejecting the first eight idlis.

Understand, the ninth idli worked because of the first eight idlis. If the man had not eaten the first eight idlis, the ninth idli would not have appeased his hunger. In the same way, your meditation will work because of your having gone through ritual worship sincerely! If you reject all these preliminary things and think that you can directly eat the ninth idli, will your hunger ever get satisfied?

As long as you think you have a body, you will be able to relate to the cosmic energy only through another body. Only when you lose your body consciousness can you see the Divine also as formless. Until that happens, you need some form, some reminding rituals, some deities to worship. It is good to have a ritual along with meditation so that the discipline of sitting and doing some sadhana, penance, is cultivated.

Otherwise, you will not do any penance or meditation regularly. The first day, you will think, 'Today my mother-in-law is here,' or 'I have too much work' and you will skip it. After two days, when your mother-in-law has gone or the work is done, you will think, 'Let me enjoy my vacation after saying goodbye to my mother-in-law! I don't want to do meditation today.' Or, if you are happy, you will think, 'Today I am happy, then why meditate!' Or if you are depressed, you will think, 'Today I am depressed. How can I focus on meditation!' Your mind tries to find some logic to skip meditation. But, if it is made into a ritual, you will not find any logic to skip it. You will simply do it.

Ritualistic puja - a reinforcement of clicks

Initiation

With just the help of the initiations, you can reduce the prarabdha karma's influence over you and move towards your inherent state of joy. You can reclaim your pure and unwavering inner space. You can also stop collecting agamya karma.

Initiation is the knowledge or the clicks that bring you out of these depressive thoughts, which bring you out of the influence of your prarabdha.

Puja

Puja is a ritualistic offering. Puja is nothing but an everyday remembering of all the clicks that have happened in you till date, so that the necessary click will automatically come up whenever you have a problem.

When a master teaches, it is not even a teaching, it is a powerful experience. When you do not use the initiations received through him, when you do not again and again use those shaastra-shastras* knowledge-weapons given to you by him, not only do they lose their power, you may not even be able to remember them again. This is the important thing to understand here.

For example, let us say you have a cot. If you do not use the cot for two years, the cot will not become unusable or it will not disappear. After two years, you can still use it again. But if you do not use the knowledge given to you, the initiations given to you, for two years they will not be sitting in your bedroom waiting for you to use them! No! They will simply disappear, that's all.

So how do you remind yourself every day of all the clicks that have happened in you? Every day, sitting and reminding yourself of all the clicks that happened in you is what is puja or ritual. Pujas are designed with this intent.

Automatically, everyday, whether you want it or not, when you sit for the ritual, you will remember the initiation experiences. The clicks that happened with the master will arise from within you. The ritual brings you back to pure consciousness every day. The engrams start losing their power.

When the engrams with which you were born start losing their power over you, further collection of engrams stops. When the collection stops and the existing karmas also lose their power over you, then, the person who brings you back to the superconscious zone again and again, the master, appears when you leave the body and burns your sanchita as well.

For example, if your child sits and tries very hard to build a small house, what will you do? You will say, 'Alright, do not bother. I will build it and give it to you.' In the same way, when a disciple sincerely works to remove his prarabdha and agamya, the master's grace simply happens and removes the sanchitaalso!

Understand one important issue. The master's grace that we are talking about here is not just dependent on me. If anybody sincerely does penance or meditation, then in spite of me, the grace will land on him! It is not even dependent on me. It is an automatic mechanism!

Be very clear, it is dependent just on your own receptivity, not on me. I am like an ocean, constantly available to whoever comes with whatever size vessel they wish to carry. If you come with a coconut shell, you will carry back that much of me. If

Shaastra-shastras - Scriptures as tools used for blissful living.

you come with a little bigger vessel, you will carry back that much quantity of me. If you come with a bigger container, you will carry back what that container can hold. If you are intelligent, you will simply jump into the ocean of bliss!

So initiation or puja means, reminding yourself everyday of all the initiations and all the great experiences that happened with the master and bringing yourself back to the same high consciousness repeatedly. When you are ready every day with the same high spirit, it means that you are ready for the next 24 hours of the drama of life that is going to unfold! For the next 24 hours, you have the energy required. This is the reason behind doing puja.

Meditation and consciousness – antidotes for karma

When you have had even one glimpse of pure consciousness, no karma can influence you. Your frequency becomes much more than the frequency of karma. Karma can work on you only as long as you have thoughts. In conscious awareness you go beyond thoughts. So, naturally you will start ruling over karma. Any meditation when done intensely can give you a glimpse of consciousness, the Truth.

That is why they say, meditation is like exposing your film directly to the sun. If the camera shutter opens for one second, whatever is in front of the camera will be recorded on the film. If the shutter is left completely open, what will happen? If the sun's rays directly fall on the film, what will happen? Whatever is recorded will be erased.

When you took birth, for a moment the camera shutter opened and life entered your body. Whatever was there in the scene outside at that moment was recorded. By the word 'scene', I mean the planetary positions at that moment. That is why the time of birth is very important. Based on that, your consciousness functions. However, during meditation, I consciously keep the shutter open for quite some time! So naturally, whatever is recorded will be erased!

So the first time the shutter was opened was when you took birth. The second time the shutter is opened is when you are initiated. This time the shutter is kept completely and naturally open so that the sun's rays enter and wipe out all your karma. That is why when you are initiated by a master, you are called dvija or twice born. The man who operates your camera, who holds the shutter open for that period of time, is called the guru.He is the master.

Nithyam – dhyanam – anandam

What is needed so as not to collect gathered agamya karma, is life solutions, what I call nithyam (eternal) because you practice them daily. To dissolve the karma of this birth, you need meditation or dhyanam. That is why you see that most of our meditations are based on breathing. Altering the breathing, making it fast, slow, silent etc, is what our meditation techniques are all about. The only thing that can dissolve the total karma is the master's grace or anandam (bliss).

So understand, karma is simply the effects of thoughts, words and deeds that stem from deep ignorance and cause you to again and again tread familiar patterns of misery. The way to break this cycle is to tune into the clicks received from the master and live in an elevated zone of consciousness.

Q: Will we contract another person's karma when they give advice, or touch them? How vulnerable are we to other people's karma**?**

Understand, you cannot get karma from somebody else. You have enough of your own! So do not bother about catching karmafrom another person.

Either by touching or by giving advice or by close physical contact or physical proximity, karma can never be passed on. You may acquire the mental setup of that person in close proximity, if you are continuously around him, but never his or her karma. Of course, you have to be mentally strong so that you don't get his or her mental setup! But if you are solid within yourself through the clicks that have happened in you, even this won't affect you in any way.

Understand one more thing, I do not interfere with your karma. Like how when the sun rises the darkness disappears on its own, in the same way in the presence of the master the karma gets burnt. Karma, like darkness, has got only negative existence. It does not have a positive existence. What I mean is that you cannot take it and throw it out like how you can take say a microphone and throw it out. Just like how lightless-ness is only called darkness, karma is just lack of inner light in us. It is just ignorance. It is energylessness.

Any karma can be burnt through remembering the clicks and living life according to the understanding through the clicks. Karma is nothing but the faith of your fear in it.

Karma does not exist even to the depth of your fear. Fear will go to the depth of your causal body, the energy layer that you fall into in deep sleep. If you sleep with a knife above your head, you will automatically touch the causal body because of the intense fear. Karma does not have even that much depth. It is just your own doing and can be undone with understanding and awareness, and a conscious decision not to incur more karma through thought, word or deed.

It is very important to live a life only exhausting karma and not accumulating more. It is this idea that is promoted in the vedic marriages. In the vedic marriages, the couple takes a vow to put their spiritual life ahead of their married life and live together. It is simply deciding to cooperate and exhaust each other's karma without causing any further karmafor each other.

Normally in marriage, the man will operate from lust and the woman from fear. The man exploits the fear aspect of the woman and the woman exploits the desire aspect of man. This vow states that they will work only towards exhausting each other's karma and not towards exploiting each other or multiplying their karma.

Q: Can our karma be exhausted by doing charitable service?

You need to see the motivation for the social service. Honestly look at yourself in the face. What do you want by doing the service?

Do you feel motivated by the fear of having to go to hell if you don't do good deeds? Is it the desire for a good name and publicity? Or is it just to do something to keep yourself busy? Is it the greed of a good afterlife after death? Is it a better next birth?

If you are driven by fear or greed, you can never intensely enjoy doing the service. One part of you will be doing the act of service. Another part of you will be caught in thinking about the benefits of the service. So you are not integrated in that action. You are not completely fulfilled through it.

This action also binds. Outwardly, socially, it looks good and free from bondage. But inside your inner space, you can see it is not. The whole of mankind is swinging around result-oriented action. This is extended to service as well. At least in service, do not think of dollars or fame. Do not plan to impress. Do not plan to make your presence felt.

Do the work for the work itself! Do not plan anything. Just do any service anywhere. This kind of service will infuse tremendous power into your being. For at least half an hour a day do something selfless, without any thought of results or benefits for yourself. You can then experience the true joy of service.

Karma can be exhausted only through deep understanding, awareness and at least one glimpse of consciousness.

Q: You teach us meditation. What is the point of meditation when the rest of the world is suffering? Instead of meditating, we can do some service.

A small story:

There was once a king who was known to be compassionate. He used to go around his kingdom unannounced to see how his subjects were.

One day, he saw a small boy catching a pigeon. The boy held the pigeon tightly in his hands as it tried to flutter desperately. The king asked the boy, 'Don't you see the bird is afraid and struggling? Why don't you free it?'

The boy did not know he was speaking to the king. He said, 'Sir, I have caught this pigeon after a long wait. How can I give it up?' The king thought briefly and then asked the boy if he would sell the pigeon. The boy readily agreed. The king handed the boy a gold coin in exchange for the bird.

By then a crowd had gathered around the king. They watched as the king took the pigeon and waved his hands upward releasing the bird. The king was very happy to free the bird and at the same time to see the crowd praising him.

The king asked if anybody else had any captive birds. A few people came forward. The king asked them to get their birds and he gave them all a gold coin each in exchange. Then he proudly released the birds.

After a few days, the king's advisor, a wise sage, paid a visit to the palace. He asked the king to come with him in disguise to visit the kingdom. The king in disguise went with the sage to a forest. To his utter surprise, he saw several villagers busy setting up traps to catch the birds. Many birds were even losing their lives because of the crude traps. The people were now deliberately catching birds to get a gold coin in exchange for the bird from the king!

The sage asked the king, 'Why do the birds have to pay such a heavy price for you to show your so-called compassion?'

Only acts of service coming from pure consciousness can be truly effective.

If we can genuinely feel the suffering of the rest of humanity and if we work out of compassion to remove their suffering, then it is very good. But we must first have the understanding of this extended consciousness to feel this compassion. Not only that, the greatest service that you can do to humanity is to become a divine human being yourself! Meditation is the first step for that!

Q: What happens when someone has a premature death like in suicide or accident?

In the case of premature death, the soul has to wait for the time it was destined to live, before it can take a new body. In the case of suicide, the suffering is much more intense than what would have been if the spirit had continued living. It is like when you have a plate of food in front of you but you don't have hands or a body to enjoy it!

In the case of accidents, the spirit has to be without body. But there is no suffering as in the case of suicide. The spirit lives in the same consciousness it would have lived had it been alive. It just waits to get the next body.

Q: Why do we do the rituals and annual rites related to departed souls?

The rituals related to departed souls are to help the people who are living to accept the departure of the person.

However, when an enlightened master does this, it helps but it is not the ritual, it is his sankalpa (vow) that works. When an enlightened master makes a sankalpa, if you are in the body, it may take time to settle because the plane in which he is in, the plane in which the sankalpa is in, is different from the plane in which you are. But for the being who is not in the body, the sankalpa has immediate effect because the being is in the same subtle energy level as the master's.

If the being is existing in another body, the sankalpa takes time to settle. But the person unclutches from the past samskaras, and all the past samskaras are cleared. So suddenly for no reason the person feels cleared and light.

Q: Are past life regressions useful and safe?

Past life regression should not be done except by an enlightened being. It has such a strong influence it can affect this birth. For example, if you had been a blind person in a past life, when regression happens, you can become blind in this birth!

An unenlightened being doing the regression will also suffer the karmas of the person he is doing the regression for.

To clear past life regression, one should know how to handle it, clear the past samskaras and close it.

Q: When the master clears the karmas, do we have to go through pain?

When the master removes the karma, you call that feeling pain. Actually, the master would be removing in a second the suffering of many births, what would have otherwise taken many births to dissolve. So it is practically no suffering in comparison.

Sharada Devi says, the master clearing the samskaras is like you facing a thorn prick instead of suffering a fracture!

Our concern for karma is rooted in our fear of death. It is a primal fear, that of the unknown. Our actions in this life are for the most part driven by the desire to be in a better place after death or the fear not to be in a worse place after death. This fear of leaving the body and mind has existed through the ages.