144. The bridge of trust between the master and you

You have forgotten the whole purpose of your life.

As of now we pursue the master, meditation, consciousness and such things only because we have time, not because we seek the real experience behind them. When you leave the body, this whole world and its sensory experiences will fade out like black and white photographs. Only the moments with the master, the conscious journey through such spiritual experiences will be colorful and alive.

Everything related to the body and mind will be colorful and alive now. The spiritual, consciousness related things will not seem interesting or alive. At the time of death, when all these fantasies disappear, everything related to the gross body and mind will become dead, black and white, and everything related to the subtle consciousness like the master and meditation will become colorful and alive.

Because I can see that moment happening in you at the time of your leaving your body, I feel responsibility to do something about it. That is the reason why whenever somebody is about to miss me, I always feel, 'Oh god! Again one more soul is missing the experience!' I try my best to make them understand why it is important to be with a master.

You see, all of you can see only the 70-80 years that you live in the body. That is the reason why the master is only a choice for you. You feel if it happens, it happens, otherwise, forget about it. This is your attitude now. But I can see a much larger span.

It is like this: If you are standing on the road, then you can see one mile of the road on both the left and right sides of you. You can see the bus coming within this distance. But I am standing on the thirtieth floor, so I can see ten miles on both the left and right sides of the road. I can see a limousine coming much ahead of it appearing on the scene for you! When I stand on the thirtieth floor and say, 'Watch out, a limousine is coming your way,' you say, 'No, no, Swamiji! Only a bus is coming! Why are you telling me that a limousine is coming?'

You don't realize you are standing on the ground floor. You can see only one mile on either side of you. In life also, you can see only 30 years of past and 30 years of future. Because I am standing on the thirtieth floor, I can see a few lives into your past and a few lives into your future. That is why I say that the master happening in your life is a rare and great opportunity. That is why I take so much care that you should not miss. Moreover, I have seen how a few people who have missed repent so much for the rest of their lives and after they leave the body also.

Sometimes what happens, when you miss a few times, during the next birth, some people bring a strong depression or disease along with them so that they will not miss the master again in that birth! The disease will keep them attached to the master. Appar* , a great saint from South India, had brought severe stomach pain with him. In his biography he says, 'I brought this purposely so that this time I will not miss remembering Shiva!' Why should you come with so much of pain to remember the master? There is no need. You can remember with bliss itself in this very life.

You see, the child will not know what will happen if he jumps on to the street and plays. But the mother knows. The mother is responsible. That is why she is careful with the child and keeps him safe. But the child doesn't realize this and says, 'I will go out and do what I want.' Then what to do? The mother tries her best to help the child, that's all.

Appar - Thirunavukkarasar or Appar as he was popularly known was a 7th century CE Tamil poet saint and author of Thevaram, devotional songs in praise of Shiva. Appar was one of the most prominent of the 63 Nayanmars, Tamil Shaivaite saints.

Actually, when you miss the master, the master misses nothing. Whatever he had to achieve, he has achieved in his life. There is nothing more that he needs or wants.

The master never loses anything. But for the disciple, it is too big a loss. Missing the master for any reason, for any mistake, is too big a loss. That is why I don't want it to happen to anyone. It is like you grab and eat a banana from a street vendor without paying and because of that you are given a death sentence! It is too big a punishment for a very small mistake. That is the reason why whenever somebody is about to miss me, I always try my best to take all possible steps to avert it.

Do not miss the master. Hold on to him and maintain the deep trust or connection or bridge. Life will be totally different.

Anything can be sacrificed for the masterdisciple relationship. But for nothing should the master-disciple relationship be sacrificed.

End of the psychodrama of life

All your relationships are mere characters and life is just a drama. Please understand clearly, everything that happens as a relationship is just a psychodrama.

You should understand the truth. You take birth in a family with somebody as your mother, father, brother and sister and play with them as family members. You might have Life is just a drama. Everything that happens as a relationship is a psychodrama.

seen the kids playing with the dolls. The child will have a few dolls. He will dress one as father, another as mother and similarly dress two other dolls as brother and sister. Then he will enact a day of their life. He will make sounds as if the father is going to work, pretend that the mother is cooking something in the kitchen, show the brother going to school and the sister refusing to go to school and crying instead. The child will play all these roles himself and enjoy the whole game.

Now just look into your life. You are also trying to possess more and more, whether in terms of relationships or material things. You try to expand the movable and immovable possessions and suddenly the drama ends with your death.

Again you take birth in some other family with a different father, mother, brother and sister and play the same game once more. Our entire life is nothing different from the game which the kids play with the dolls. This is the psychodrama of life. For one who experienced the complete masterdisciple relationship, the psychodrama will not happen again in his life.

Allow the boiling – and become enlightened

Someone asked me, 'Are my samskaras, that is my engraved memories pertaining to my previous lives, an obstacle to becoming your disciple?'

Samskaras themselves are not an obstacle. But when the master works on them to operate or to remove them, you should understand he is working on you because you requested him again and again directly or indirectly.

When I work on your samskaras, you may think I have my vested interests of fear or greed. Be very clear, when you think this of me, you are only projecting the fear and greed that you have on to me and think that I have them. Enlightened masters as such don't have any fear or greed. I work on your engrams because you requested me thousands of times in thousands of births!

Your samskara itself is not a problem. When I work on it, if you don't resist, then it is ok. Your resistance when I work on it is the problem.

Your samskaras are not a problem, you trying to hold on to them is the problem. If you are ready to let go when I work on them, then it won't be a problem. If you just understand that only your tumor is being removed and you cooperate with me to work on it, it is beautiful. But sometimes, you think I am directly cutting you out of some vengeance! You start complaining, you start resisting me and you start blaming me like the lion cub.

When the lion was having meat in the lion and cub story, the cub starts complaining, 'What! I thought you are such a holy person, you are such a great person. You were giving me so much of confidence. You were helping me so much. But I never thought you will eat meat. I thought you too were a vegetarian like me!' Your socalled immature morality or your so-called immature understanding projects your own ideology on the master and tries to resist when he works on your samskaras.

Samskaras themselves are no problem because you come to the master only because of your samskaras. If you don't have samskaras, then why should you come to the master! You are already enlightened!

I accept you as you are, but when you are with your samskaras, you are not as you are. You are suffering with your hell. I am breaking your hell. When I break the prison in which you are living, you think I am breaking you. You start resisting and creating problems.

Sometimes, when you come near me, you feel tremendous energy and bliss coming up. Sometimes, you feel tremendous anger and the depression rising also. But soon the depression will disappear. When you come near me, you are coming near an intense energy space that dissolves your negativities. That is why you feel such mixed and intense emotions.

You see, the master's body is practically like an atomic energy station. When you come near, whatever emotions are in you start boiling. It is like if you put a potato inside hot water, the potato will start jumping around! The potato is not dancing by itself. It is dancing because of the fire energy below.

I always tell people, having samskaras is not a problem. The potato is not a problem. The jumping potato should not jump out of the vessel and run away. That is the only thing to take care! If it is inside the vessel, it will become a siddha potato! Siddha in Sanskrit has two meanings. One is 'boiling', another is 'enlightened'. So be very clear, if the potato does not jump out of the vessel, if it remains inside the vessel, it will become not only a boiling potato, but an enlightened potato!

Surrender – the ultimate technique

In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is confused completely about what is the path he should follow. The ultimate teaching imparted by Krishna to Arjuna in the last chapter is the best technique to realize the Ultimate. After giving various techniques like meditation, devotion and knowledge, Worry and tension come when you think you are the doer.

finally Krishna reveals the straight, sure and ultimate technique, which is that of surrender.

Be very clear, when you surrender to an enlightened master, you are actually surrendering to one who has no ego, no identity and hence no vested interest of his own. He is one with and overflowing with Existence. By holding his hand, you ask him to take you also to the ocean of bliss he is in.

Worry and tension come when you think you are the doer. Then you get tired soon. But if you shift the sense of ownership to a higher energy and continue to do your work blissfully, you will feel tremendously relaxed!

A small story:

There was once a bank manager who used to take all the cash to his home everyday and bring it back with him the next morning. He did this for a month and could not do it anymore.

He found himself trembling all the way while driving back home and was not able to sleep at home with all the money in his custody. He finally asked his boss to be relieved of the job since he could not bear the stress any longer.

His boss told him that even if the money was lost, he would not be blamed and that he could continue with his job. The manager slept peacefully from that day onwards.

What was the difference in him? He was doing the same job, but why was there no more fear and tension? Because the responsibility had been shifted to a higher authority, that's all. He continued to do what he was doing.

When you surrender to the higher energy, you can never feel drained and exhausted because you are directly connected to the one who is an embodiment of the infinite energy. This is the gift of surrender.

Intensity of surrender

If you allow the calf to be with the cow for only ten minutes, the calf will drink only the milk and come back. But the fly that sits on the cow twenty four hours will suck only the blood. You can be with the master all the time and still not feel the connection or the seeking. Also, you can be away from the master and yet feel the connection all the time. It is not about being near his physical presence. That does not play a major role in the seeking. It is the depth of the seeking that plays the major rule.

Ramakrishna very beautifully says, 'Surrender to anything. Surrender is important, not what or who you surrender to. If you surrender to a stone, even that can become god and guide you.

When the intense seeking is not there, even if god comes to you, you will ask him for an identity card. When the seeking becomes strong, even a small stone can teach you.

The same life force inside me is present outside also. It can enter you also and teach you. Because I have become empty, the life force entering me is coming out as music. So if the same depth of seeking starts happening inside you, the air that enters your nose can become a strong inspiration or teaching inside your heart. Without that intensity in you, even if I tell you something now you will not even remember what I told, after two days.

A subtle point you need to check in yourself is this. Observe whether you listen to the master when your mind disagrees with him. If yes, you have surrendered. Else you are following the master only when he tells you something agreeable to your mind! It is just a coincidence that he is telling you sometimes what your mind agrees with, nothing more than that.

There is no need to be interested or have a positive attitude when it comes to the work of the master. Only the surrender, the acceptance to do what the master says, is necessary because it is from the deeper level of being and not the superficial level of the mind.

The master is actually just a means, an excuse to surrender because you are not able to relate with the whole of Existence directly. You are afraid to look at the vast expanse of the sky. So you want to look at the sky through a window. The master is like your window to the sky of Existence.

Three levels of surrender

I will now explain to you the three categories of surrender: surrender of the intellect, surrender of emotions and surrender of your very senses.

The first is surrender of intellect means trusting the master's intellect more than your own intellect. This is just intellectual surrender. At this stage, you follow the lifestyle that the master shows you.

The second is trusting the master's emotions much more than your own emotions. This means trusting that the relationship with the master is the ultimate relationship, more than any other relationship. If god appears before you and asks you to choose one person on planet earth as the only other person who can be alive except you, who will you choose? If you choose the master, then emotional surrender has happened to you.

The master is like a window to the sky of Existence.

Of course, the

master can never be destroyed, but that is different! Never think that just because you choose him he is alive! He will be alive whether you choose him or not.

If you feel that your emotion towards the master is stronger than any other emotion, then emotional surrender has happened in you. Be very clear, 99% of the people remain in the first level. Only 20% to 40% of these people move deeper to the second level. The rest remain standing where they are.

There is the third kind of surrender, surrender of the senses.

In Krishna's life there is a beautiful incident.

After the Mahabharata war, when Krishna and Arjuna are relaxing, Krishna says, 'Hey! Arjuna, look there, there is a green crow!'

Arjuna says, 'Beautiful! A green crow!' Krishna says, 'Fool! It is black, not green.' Arjuna says, 'Yes Krishna! It is black, not green.'

Krishna asks, 'What has happened to you? When I say green, you say green. When I say black, you say black. What is going on with you?'

Arjuna says, 'Krishna, let me be honest. I don't know what color that crow is. But when you said green I saw it as green. When you said black I saw it as black. I know nothing else!'

Arjuna's very senses trusted Krishna. He trusted the master's senses much more than his own!

Placebo effect or more?

In medical terms, we have a term called 'placebo effect'. A patient takes a dummy medicine but he is told it is actually the real medicine, and he is cured of the ailment! But recent research indicates that the placebo effect is actually far more revealing.

I read about an interesting research at the University of Turin in Italy. They tried an experiment where they connected electrodes to the person and gave him controlled electric shocks. First they established a pain scale for the person by finding the minimum current he could feel and the maximum current he could bear.

Now, before they gave the shock, a red or a green light would appear on the screen in front of the person. Green light meant the shock would be a mild one. Red light meant the shock would be stronger. The person was supposed to then rate the pain from the shock on a scale of 1 to 10, from mild to strong.

Now the person tried this for 15 minutes. At the end he felt that in the beginning the shocks were strong while in the end the shocks were mild.

But the shocking thing was actually it was exactly the opposite. The last series of shocks were all strong. Then how did the shocks get perceived as mild? Just before the mild shock was administered, the light shown to the person was green indicating that the shock about to come was a mild one.

So the person's mind was prepared, conditioned to believe the shock coming up was going to be a mild one. When the shock was actually administered, even though physically it was a strong one, because his mind was anticipating a mild shock his body actually felt a mild shock!

So researchers are now saying that the placebo effect is much deeper and has lot more significance than what was thought before.

They have found that even drugs do not always have the direct effects. Their results can be influenced by expectations. Doctors have found that if the person is not told that he is being given an injection of a painkiller, he has to be given a larger dose to get the painkilling effect. Whereas if he knows that he is getting a painkiller, much lower doses give the same effect!

The mind is so powerful, it can directly create a physical change in you. Just like the senses can surrender to the mind, in the same way the senses can surrender to the divine consciousness too. This is exactly what happened in the case of Krishna and Arjuna when Arjuna saw a green crow when Krishna told him to see the 'green' crow.

Your senses say you are a human being. But I say you are a spiritual being. As long as you trust your senses, you will be a human being. When you trust the master you will experience that you are a spiritual being. That shift is what I call the 'cognitive shift'.