146. The presence of the master

See, when a meditation technique is done with a master, it becomes an alchemy process. If you do it alone in your home it is called meditation. When you do it along with the master, in the presence of the master, guided by the master, it becomes alchemy. It is like boiling you. The process becomes so alive and intense.

A small story:

There was a young lady who did not know cooking. But she wanted to make something for a potluck dinner that she was going to. She got hold of a cookery book and tried making a dessert.

She was holding the book in one hand. The instructions said, 'Put the vessel on the stove.' She did. Then it said, 'Put half a cup of flour.' She did so. Then, 'Add water half a liter, add a little sugar and stir it for twenty minutes.' She followed every instruction exactly but nothing happened even after twenty minutes.

The master's presence itself is fire. It will ensure the product happens, the alchemy happens.

Why? Because the book did not tell her to light the fire! In the same way when you are doing meditation on your own,

sometimes you may forget to light the fire. The master's presence itself is fire. It will ensure the product happens, the alchemy happens.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, why should you insist on the presence of the master?' Of course, you can listen to my words on an audio CD or a DVD. But when you sit here, the honesty that radiates in my eyes, the truth that expresses in my body language will catch you. You will catch it. You will feel the click, the connection, 'Yes, he is talking the truth.'

Even if you want to suspect, suddenly you will see your logic has no power over you anymore. These words are simply entering you beyond your logic. This will happen only when you sit in the presence of the master. We call that as Upanishad - just being around, sitting, and opening up to the master.

Open yourself with trust and just drop yourself into trust. You will see the master standing there to hold you. Just drop yourself from your head and fall into the abyss of the heart. The master will be there to hold you and make you enlightened, that's all.

Upanishad

Upanishad means 'sitting'. When a disciple sits in the presence of the master the same experience that happened in the master is reproduced in the disciple.

The disciple who experiences the master and within whom the master has been reproduced, writes down his recollections on how this process happened. The disciple or the master or someone else writes an account of how the experience was reproduced in the disciple - what happened when the process began, how it ended and what happened when it ended. This report is referred to as an Upanishad.

How upanishad happens – beyond the law of cause and effect

We have heard of the law of cause and effect. If you drop a ball, it falls down. If you heat water, it becomes steam at 100 degrees C. If you put salt in water, it will dissolve. This is the law of causality. Any action will result in a particular effect. Science has its foundation on this law of causality.

But this is not the only law in Existence. An important law in operation every moment is the law of intuition or as the philosopher Carl Jung* calls it, the law of synchronicity. Here, it is not that something happens and another happens as a result of it. Something happens and a corresponding thing happens.

We are so used to seeing things as cause and effect. You can see the relation between the cause and the immediately following effect. But life is filled with instances where the effect happens so much later that you are not able to relate to the original cause. It is just like when you throw a stone in the water, you can see the immediate ripples are because of the stone. But if you came a few minutes later, you see the secondary ripples, but you cannot be sure what caused them.

You may have experienced instances like this in your life. You think of asking your friend to make your favorite dessert and you land up at her place and she has made exactly that! She just felt she should make it on that day. This is the power of synchronicity.

This happens between the master and disciple even more than in close relationships of friends, lovers or Master-disciple relationship is the ultimate love affair.

spouses. Because the master-disciple relationship is the deepest relation possible in Existence, it is the ultimate love affair.

It is the most mysterious because it is beyond the narrow range of logic. In fact, life begins only when you have touched something that is beyond logic, which cannot be framed by the mind but which pulls the strings of your heart. It brushes aside the arguments of the mind, always looking to criticize.

The true disciple is not a disciple because of something the master said, rather it is because of what the master is. That is why just sitting with the master, the disciple starts falling in tune with the beautiful rhythm of the master. This is Upanishad. This is true disciplehood, being open to the master so that he can shower his love on you and you can receive it in all its glory and divinity and grow.

Doubt and faith

Whenever you have a doubt, surrender the doubt and faith both at the feet of the master. You see, the master is the one who gives you the faith and he is the same person

Carl Jung - Renowned Swiss psychiatrist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud.

Penance is being ready to work on the technique at any cost since enlightenment is the first priority.

who gives you the doubt. When you are stuck with doubt, tell the master ment-

ally, 'Master, it is you who gave my faith in you, it is also you who gave me doubts about you. I am surrendering both at your feet. I don't want to play this game. I have suffered enough with this game. Please take care.'

When you surrender both doubt and faith at the feet of the master, you will see something called trust happens in you, which is neither doubt nor faith. It is the courage to experiment with the truth.

Deep trust

A Zen master was bringing up a small boy from a young age to be his successor. This little boy had a very deep, loving connection with the master but he was a very naughty boy. He would try to behave in the same way as the master. He would try to imitate and make fun of the master, standing behind him. The master had a habit of always holding his thumb up whenever he wanted to emphasize a particular point. This boy also would stand behind the master and do the same thing!

One day the master got annoyed and just took the knife he was carrying and cut off the boy's thumb. Understand: the story says very beautifully that the trust and feeling of connection was so deep, the boy did not even think once for a moment that something wrong was done to him. The disciple felt very clearly that if the master does something, it must be good for him. The story says that this deep trust even during the intense pain enlightened him at that moment.

Understand two important things here. First thing, that much of connection and trust over the master existed in the boy. Second thing, the disciple was willing to go through any suffering, pain and any kind of tapas or penance. Penance is being ready to work on the technique at any cost since enlightenment is the first priority. Of course, this technique is for the people for whom enlightenment has become their first priority.

Suspect your identity, not the master

The stronger you hold on to an ideology or to a person, the deeper will be your depression. If you hold on to a person, say your boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife, your son or brother or father, you will be bound by the sway of the relationship, and you will invariably fall into depression and start blaming that person. This is how depression happens. In the same way, if you hang on to your ego or identity or ideology, again you will face depression.

When you face the depression due to the ideology or identity or ego, you start blaming the whole world because there is no second person to blame! You lose confidence in the whole world. You lose trust on the whole world. You don't even know the reason for your depression, and you start blaming the whole world. Living with a strong ideology or strong identity is like being in the worst possible hell.

When you fall into this kind of depression, you will not have the intelligence to associate the depression with the identity that you created. You will not have the intelligence to realize that your identity is the cause for your depression. You will start suspecting everybody and blaming everybody. Even a simple incident will be enough for you to blame another person as the reason for your depression. That is the big problem with this ego-based identity.

You always think that if you don't have a strong identity, others will cheat you. But understand that if others cheat you, they will cheat you at the most for a few hours. Whereas if you build a strong identity for yourself because of this, the very identity will cheat you for your whole life. It will be with you when you are in the waking state, dream state, and deep sleep state; and you will be blissfully unaware of it. So it is better to be cheated by others than to be cheated by your own identity.

Always remember one thing:

Do not suspect the master, suspect yourself. Suspect the identity that you are carrying. That's the right thing to do.

The wheel of love and hate

In the beginning, you come to the master with love. When the master starts his operation on the tumor of your ego, suddenly the wheel turns and the love becomes hate, anger and resistance to the master. When the awareness happens, you realize the cunning play of the mind posing in different ways. Then you go beyond both love and hate. The relation deepens and there is no expectation of love or fear of hate. So if you are faced with anger, just have the patience. That point of transcendence will happen.

Understand, the fight is not between you and your mind. The fight is between your mind and the master. Whose side you are on is your choice.

If you look a little deeper, you will see that the fight is because your mind knows that it is fighting a losing battle. So it tries all kinds of tricks to survive. This is the one battle where you win if you lose!

Being defeated by the master means defeating the false you by the true you. It is the ultimate victory over your self. You regain the kingdom of god, which your mind had stolen.