19. Guilt – a manifestation of ego

Guilt is actually the shadow of the ego.

When somebody says something and you become angry, it is the ego, your idea about yourself, that causes the anger. But right after, you start feeling guilty about losing your temper. Now, too, it is the same ego that causes the guilt. It gives you the feeling that you could have done differently to change the situation, but you did not do it. This is the dilemma. The ego creates the problem and the same ego goes on harboring guilt. If you understand this game of the ego, you can simply drop the guilt. Without allowing ego, if you allow only awareness, you will neither get unduly angry nor will you suffer for it. Because of the awareness, you will not be blinded with anger. You will get angry only to the extent required and automatically there will not be any guilt either!

The first way – feeling guilty

If you have made a mistake there are two ways to treat it. One is to feel guilty. If you feel guilty, you will commit the same mistake again. Guilt is the way to commit the same mistake again because you forget the mistake and start focusing on the guilt. If you focus on the mistake, you will know how and where you went wrong and so you will not repeat it. If you focus on the guilt, you will not even analyze how and where you went wrong, so you are still very much capable of making the same mistake again!

Getting out of addictions

People ask me, 'Swamiji, I want to stop smoking. Please show me how to.' I tell them, 'First drop your guilt.'

They look surprised and say, 'Swamiji, if I drop my guilt, I will start smoking even more!'

No. Only when you drop your guilt, only when you are free from the past, you will have enough energy to change your future. As long as you carry the guilt, you will project only your past into the future.

Understand, when you carry guilt, you have already decided you can't change the future, and if you do have the confidence that you can change the future, you will not carry guilt. The deeper the guilt, the higher the chances of committing the same mistake in the future.

There is a
beautiful
character
named Vali*
           in
the Indian epic
Ramayana * .
The story goes

All your negativity has only one power, and that power is nothing but your faith in that negativity.

that anyone who faced Vali* in a battle would lose half his power to him! If you stood in front of him to oppose him, half your power would be transferred to him.

In the same way, if you stand in front of your past to fight with it, half your power will go to it. Your guilt will suck up half your energy.

Please understand that all your negativity has only one power, and that power is nothing but your faith in that negativity. You empower your own negativity. When you decide to fight smoking, you give half of your power to it. Then when you start fighting it, it is almost like fighting with your shadow. You will never win.

As long as you try to fight with your past, you unconsciously empower it and project the same past into the future also. Be aware that the more guilt there is, the more the same mistakes. You will see that through guilt you will not be able to overcome any mistake.

Vali - Monkey king in the Hindu epic Ramayana who is killed by prince Rama.

Ramayana - Hindu itihasa or epic about prince Rama. The original version was written by poet Valmiki.

The second way – looking in

To feel guilty is to be in sin. In fact, that is the only sin. The hell that we talk about is not in another time and space. It is within us when we feel guilty, without doing anything to change our mindset.

All your guilt, all your pain, everything is a pure imaginary shaft you create inside your head. The mistake you did ten years ago, the mistake you did seven years ago and the mistake you did three years ago, are independent and unconnected incidents. But when you connect them and start thinking about it, naturally you start creating guilt. You start feeling like a continuous sinner. This is one approach.

There is another approach. When you commit a mistake, see objectively why you committed it, how you committed it. Watch as an observer how and why it is getting repeated. Look scientifically into the mechanism of guilt. Just this awareness will open a new door and you will never commit the same mistake again - because once you look into it, and find the cause, it will disappear. To know a thing totally is to be free of it.

Morality

Integrity

Please understand that morality should happen out of integrity, not out of guilt.

What do I mean by integrity? Integrity is being in the present moment and being only one solid personality and not many conflicting personalities. It is seeing reality without the play of the mind. Once the mind steps in, duality also steps in. Just by being intensely aware of the present moment, you can achieve integrity where there is only one and not two or three or many personalities fighting in you. Only when the mind flits between the past and future, you become split personalities and integrity doesn't set in. If the mind is on the present, automatically you become unified and integrity sets in.

A small story:

One day, a priest knelt before god and started crying loudly, 'I am a sinner. Please have mercy on me, O god.' A man who was praying silently got inspired by this and also knelt down next to the priest and started praying. Now, another man also went down on his knees and started crying. Seeing this, the priest nudged the first man saying, 'Look who thinks he is a sinner!'

All our humility, our morality, are more or less a pretence to others and to ourselves. We pretend because we are not solidly integrated within us. We ourselves don't know which personality within us is authentic and so we get caught in such games. If we are integrated, we will be authentic in every action, and automatically we will be moral.

Be aware, be spontaneously right

Please understand, you will never make mistakes if you are deeply aware at the time of making them. When you are aware, you will be one solid personality and moral as well. When you stray from awareness, you will be many personalities and immoral also. Morality has to do with awareness, not with any other social rules. Awareness is the only way to be naturally moral.

Awareness causes you to spontaneously take the right action in the right situation. Morality can cause you to do the wrong action in the right situation because it doesn't have the right base. Its base is not your own, it is built up by society. So you don't feel connected to it. When you don't feel connected, you cannot act with confidence. Once you integrate yourself, you will be centered upon Once you integrate yourself, you will be centered upon awareness.

awareness. If you remain fragmented, there will be no awareness and you will depend on morality for guidance.

Go beyond right and wrong...

What is the root cause of guilt? It is our idea about right and wrong, our understanding about what is right and what is wrong. What is the scale to measure right or wrong?

In Hinduism* , vegetarianism is considered right. In Christianity* , non-vegetarianism is thought to be right. In Hinduism* , you can marry only once. In Islam you can marry several times. In Hinduism* , you can't drink alcohol and liquor. In Christianity* , Jesus himself consumed wine. You are caught in rules like, 'If you eat this, you are guilty', 'If you drink that, you are guilty.'

There are so many rules and so many regulations in different places, different situations and different societies. Where is the scale for all the so-called morality? It

Hinduism - Religion of most Indians. Developed from the vedic principles of sanatana dharma, the eternal law, that gave rise to other religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism etc.

Christianity - Religion based on teachings of Jesus Christ.

Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness.

of time, it becomes morality.

If you read the ancient scriptures, the epics of India like the Mahabharata* , the princess Draupadi* was married to five men! Kunti* , the mother of the Pandavas* , the heroes of the epic, had five sons from five different men.

At different times, different rules were formed by different leaders. In a particular society, certain things that were considered moral were considered in another society to be immoral. In America, there are such differing moral standards that I saw. In one state, casinos are allowed, whereas in the neighboring state, casinos are illegal.

Where is the scale of right or wrong? For one person, a particular food is nectar, whereas for another person, the same food is poison! As long as you are caught in right and wrong, you will never function with restfulness. You will only be guilty. You have to go beyond right and wrong into your own consciousness. There lies the key.

Conscience Vs Consciousness

When you start internalizing the laws of society, you create a deep wound in your being. You destroy your innate intelligence. According to me, children can be given a set of rules initially so they don't move from the path of consciousness. But soon they have to be given the understanding of life and the need to operate from consciousness instead of conscience.

If you live with consciousness, you will automatically live a moral life. To start understanding the need to live with consciousness, just look into your morality. Morality is only skin deep, whereas consciousness comes from the very being. Your consciousness tries to break through your conscience. Your consciousness continuously fights with your conscience. Conscience is societal. Consciousness is natural. Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, what is this? You are pulling down the whole social structure. Then how can we all live morally?' I tell them, 'Be very clear, it is only for kids that

Mahabharata - The Hindu itihasa or epic whose central characters are the five Pandava princes, their hundred Kaurava cousins and enlightened master Krishna.

Draupadi - Princess in the Hindu epic Mahabharata who was married to all five warrior brothers of the Pandava family.

Kunti - In the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the mother of the five Pandava brothers who stood for righteousness. Pandavas - The five princes in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Their father was Pandu.

you need a forced morality. For them you need to say, 'Keep quiet, I will give you candy.' Of course, nowadays kids reply, 'I am happy. I don't need your candy. Who cares for your candy!' For a child you can say that you will give candy and restrict him. You can impose morality on him based on fear or greed. But for you, it is time to grow up. You are not kids anymore. Just stand up with consciousness. When I say consciousness, I mean the intelligent energy of your being.

Rules

The natural instinct to break rules

When anything is a forced rule, you always try to get around it. For example, you always speed when you don't see the policeman.

A small story:

A policeman pulls over a car on the highway for speeding. When he asks for the driver's license, the driver replies, 'But officer, I was only trying to keep a safe distance between my car and the car behind me!'

When you follow rules blindly without understanding their spirit, this is what happens – you just wait for an excuse to break them.

Honestly answer yourself: if there were no rules, no regulating authority to keep a check on what you did, would you be the same person as you are now? Would you be doing things in the same way as you do now? If your answer is no, be very clear that the rule is coming from your conscience, not from your consciousness. You have not internalized the spirit of the rule or you do not agree with the rule. That is the reason you are not doing things in a way natural to you.

The thrill of 'no'

You can see, when you tell children not to do something, they will be most tempted to do it. As long as you don't mention anything about doing it or not doing it, they may not even be bothered about it. But the moment you tell them not to do something, they will be looking to do it.

A small story:

One man says, 'I found three ways to get things done.' His friend asks, 'What are the three ways?'

The man replies, 'First, do it yourself. Second, hire someone to do it. Third, tell your kids not to do it. That's all, it will be done!'

Actually there is a taste, a thrill in doing what you are not supposed to do. Most of the time, you develop an instant urge for something if you are asked not to do it. You feel a kind of joy or satisfaction by doing it. That is the basic tendency in every human being.

A small story:

Once a shopkeeper was trying hard to increase his sales. He tried various options like discounts, catchy advertisements, better customer service. Nothing worked. Then one day, he hung a black curtain on his shop window and made a small hole on it. Under the hole he put up a board, 'Peeping strictly forbidden.'

From that day, he saw crowds gathering at his shop, each one curious to peep through the hole to see what was there! His shop sales automatically increased because people now actually saw the variety of grocery items his shop carried.

When you are told not to do something, the basic human tendency is to do exactly that.

As a teenager, when you say 'no' to your parents, you feel you have proved you are independent. When you say 'no', you feel you have proved you are somebody special, somebody different. As long as you say 'yes', you feel you are only a child. When you start saying 'no', you feel you have become an adult.

You feel that you are a man only when you say 'no' to your father. Till then you feel you are a child. Just to prove that you are a man you start saying 'no' to your father. This is basic psychology. When you say 'no' you think you are somebody, until then you think you are nobody. So please be very clear, to whatever you say, your grown up son is going to say 'no', because he wants to be somebody.

Only life can teach

People come and ask me, 'How do I make my son do what I advice him to? I know it is good for him but he won't listen to me.'

You have to understand two things. First thing, if they feel that something is giving them happiness, just let them be. Only life can teach them, you cannot teach them. You cannot teach anybody, only life can teach. You can put a few words into them so that it echoes when life teaches them the same thing, that's all.

Second thing, unless they need help, your help cannot help them. When they need your help they will come. See, your idea of happiness and unhappiness has come out of your experience. Just think, did you listen to your father when you were young? No. You did not.

No son listens to his father. After they become fathers, they forget that they did not listen to their fathers and start blaming their sons. Because they have to train their sons, they remember only the incidents in which they listened to their fathers! They forget the incidents where they said 'no' to their fathers. Be very clear, your children are doing the same thing that you did.

Only life can teach them. You can neither teach nor help your kids unless they want the help. If you force something on them, if you force rules and regulations on them, they may learn one thing, and that is how to cheat you, that's all. So just remain aware of the stage your child is in, that is enough. You can step in at any time he wants your support.

Dead rules Vs Live intelligence

In the course of time, many regulations that had meaning earlier become blind rules, without any meaning.

In India, during the times before electricity was invented, tailors would sew by hand with a needle with the help of dim lanterns. So clothes would not be sewn after sunset since sewing in the dim light of the candle or lantern would cause strain on the eye. So the work was always confined to daylight hours.

But even now in India, the elderly people in the house will say, 'It is not a good thing to sew after dusk!' The very reason for not sewing at night doesn't even exist anymore! Electricity and bright lights are there. But it has become a ritual for them, with no connection to its original purpose.

A small story:

Once a paratrooper was being interviewed on television. The interviewer said, 'Your life must be really adventurous.'

The paratrooper replied, 'Yes, it does have its scary moments.'

The interviewer asked, 'What is the most anxious experience in your life?'

The paratrooper replied, 'When I was coming down on the lawn of a house and the sign read, 'Keep off the grass!'

When you don't have the right intelligence or understanding, things become dead rules in your life.

When you have understanding, any correct rule can become a friendly technique to live life happily. Rules and rituals are actually techniques for your own enlightenment. When I say enlightenment, I mean a blissful life full of clarity. Of course, when pursued deeply, it will lead to the ultimate state of enlightenment.

A small story:

A railway official reported a murder on a train, 'The murderer entered the compartment, stabbed the victim multiple times. Then he left the train through the opposite door jumping onto the railway track – thereby violating the railway regulations.'

When you don't have the right understanding, you miss the whole thing and end up acting in a foolish way. When you are given the right understanding, you understand that any rule was created just for you and others around you to live a happy and blissful life.

When the spirit of the rule is understood, there won't be any problem falling in line with it. By falling in tune, there will only be juice in your action, there will only be a blissful commitment to it. But if the spirit is missed, everything is missed. Life will seem dull and lifeless.

Take meditation for example. Meditation itself is done to go inwards irrespective of the outer world noise and situations. I have seen that some people, before starting their meditation routine, will first try to create a noiseless situation outside. They will go around telling everyone to keep quiet. They will practically freeze people in their normal routine just because they are going to meditate.

Only when the spirit is missed, things become dead rituals. You miss and mess!

All rules and regulations were created for a harmonious life with the understanding, 'You will not kill me and I will not kill you, both of us will live happily.' That was the basic understanding behind them. However, in the course of time, they became laws.

All rules and regulations were created to live a harmonious and happy life, but the moment you internalize the rules without the understanding, you create guilt. As long as you follow the rules with an understanding, you will be happy. When you start following the words instead of the spirit, you will start creating guilt.

When you want to escape from the law, what do you do? You just catch on to the words of the law and drop the spirit behind them. Then you legally work around the words and escape from the law. When you catch the words, you become a bureaucrat and you miss the spirit. Only when you catch the spirit, you can be an intelligent being without guilt.

Nobody can live life based on any law

One of the ultimate laws that is very difficult to understand is that nobody can live his life based upon any law. When I say nobody, I mean NOBODY. When I say any law, I mean ANY LAW. Life is much superior to laws. Life is live intelligence. Any law, rule or regulation is based on a certain understanding of life. But life is beyond all our understanding and logic.

People ask me, 'Why is this life created at all?' I tell them, this 'why' can never be answered because it is based on your logic. But life is based on god's logic. Your logic and god's logic can never meet with each other. His logic is so big, so vast and so infinite.

Life is created by Him. Rules are created by you. Life is created by Him. Laws are created by you. Naturally, your laws can never match or fit with god's logic or godcreated life.

Life is natural. Laws are societal. Life is physical. Laws are mental. All your ideas, all your do's and don'ts, all your morality, all your 'right or wrong' are given to you by society. Rules are needed to co-exist peacefully with a common understanding of the way certain things are. But beyond that, one's own intelligence needs to be awakened so that life may be lived to its optimum.

The way out of rules - escape or revenge

By your very nature you are searching for freedom. When some morality is taught to you as a rule, either you try to get around it or if you can't, you take revenge on the people who imposed the rule on you. Imposed morality always causes you to be or feel revengeful. You may not be obviously revengeful, but it will be there in you as a subtle thread.

For example, people repeatedly tell me, 'My son is not taking care of me.' Be very clear that your son may be your foremost enemy because you have given him so many rules, so many regulations throughout his life. Naturally, while one part of his mind will have respect for you, the other part will always harbor revenge towards you.

Don't think this is something new that I am telling you or this has to do with your son alone. No! This is a basic fact in society. It is not spoken about because it is too much truth for people to bear! Which son or which father will agree if I told them this fact? This is a very deep-rooted truth that most people are blissfully oblivious of. It is my duty to draw your attention to such truths of life.

You are a Nithya Mukta – eternally free

Your entire struggle in life is nothing but the struggle for freedom. Even your search for money is the search for freedom. If you have more money, you have more choices or more freedom to choose a bigger

house, a By your very nature you are a nithya mukta - eternally free person.

bigger car, more comforts etc. Your search

for more choice is your search for freedom. Whatever you may be searching for, whether it is relationships, wealth or titles, it is only the search for more freedom.

The first thing a rule does is to put you in fear of violating it at any time. Even if you don't break the rule, you are left with a feeling of fear and guilt about it. When you are with this fear and guilt, you feel your freedom is curtailed. You start living in a dull and dead way because by your very nature you aspire for freedom.

By your very nature you are a nithya mukta eternally free person. You never want to be curtailed. You never want to be a slave of any rule. In order to be that way, you just need to bring in more awareness and follow the rules with the right understanding.

Guilt and responsibility

Many times you justify your guilt by labeling it as responsibility. No! How does one differentiate between guilt and responsibility? If you get into a low feeling when you think about it, it is guilt. If you feel intensity and integrity, it is responsibility. This is the clear scale. If you are pulled to low energy at the thought of what you did, then it is guilt. But if you feel good about it, then it is responsibility. Falling into guilt is a clear way of escaping responsibility.

Once a man came to me complaining, 'I am suffering. I have fourteen children.' I asked him why he chose to have so many children. He replied, 'Why? God gave me!' The problem is, we do all that we want to do without taking responsibility for it. After doing it, we feel god made us do it! If we take up responsibility for every action, we will never land up in guilt or trouble.

All guilt related to extramarital affairs comes under this category of sheer lack of responsibility in behaviour. Be very clear that extramarital affairs clearly show disrespect to another being, your spouse. You have no right to disrespect another being.

What is the meaning of the relationship of marriage? Let me explain. Man as such is centered on muladhara chakra or the lust energy center in the body, and woman is centered on the swadhishthana chakra or the fear energy center in the body. That is why man gives in to lust easily and woman gives in to fear easily.

If you see during the traditional vedic marriage ceremony, in front of the sacred

fire considered to be a representation of god, the man promises to the woman, 'I shall give you security and release you from insecurity (fear).' The woman promises to the man, 'I shall give you love and free you from lust.' Both of them decide to liberate the other from their weaknesses.

But what happens once the ceremony is over? Instead of freeing the other person of the weakness, each starts playing on the weakness of the other person. Knowing the other person's weakness should make one compassionate towards that person. Instead, the man exploits the woman's fear and the woman exploits the man's lust in many ways.

Not only that, when one indulges in extramarital affairs, one increases the insecurity for the spouse. When you disrespect the feelings of another person, you reduce the person to a mere commodity. If you see your husband or wife as a commodity, you will continue to play your game with them. If you see them as a being, you will realize how much they have contributed to your life.

When man faces insecurity, the woman should become a mother. When the woman becomes centered on fear, the man should become her father.

Responsibility for your choices

When something is told to you, if you take full responsibility of deciding whether it is right or wrong, you can avoid all guilt feelings. If you don't take responsibility for your decision, you will feel discontented whether you do the action or not. If you do as you are told, you will feel that you are being dominated, that you are not being assertive, that you are being exploited. If you don't do as you are told, you start feeling guilty that maybe it was the right thing to do.

There is no need for this unnecessary dilemma. Just be simple. Respond intelligently. Take responsibility for doing whatever you are going to do. Then there is no question of guilt. If you are not going to do it, explain clearly to the person why you are not going to do it. When you explain, the other person may agree with you and may even be thankful to you for it. Or he may have stronger and better reasons than you to justify what he is saying, then you will be thankful to him for raising your intelligence.

In this way, you could use every opportunity, every moment in life to raise your intelligence, to raise your consciousness.

The useful Guilt

There is a certain guilt that is useful for you, a guilt which if pursued intelligently can cause you to move forward in life. When you see that you have the potential to do something, when you feel that you have so much potential which you are not using at all, then if you are intelligent, guilt will happen in you. This guilt can spur you to start doing things that will actualize your entire potential.

Sometimes we see the state of things around us and we know in one corner of our mind that we can very well help turn the situation around. But either due to laziness or due to the fear of confrontation, or due to the fear of taking responsibility, we just keep quiet and watch. This type of situation can cause deep guilt in us. This guilt is significant. If we take steps to correct the situation by doing what we really feel we should do, then the guilt will disappear and we will also move forward.

This type of guilt has the ability to drive you to do what needs to be done. Because of its very nature, you cannot harbor this guilt for long. You have to get over it. The way to get over it is by doing what needs to be done. Once it is done, the guilt also disappears. How long you wish to harbor this guilt without taking steps, for that long you suffer from it. This is the simple logic of this guilt.

Another manifestation of this guilt happens when you can feel your ego surfacing in certain situations and you are unable to help it. When you can smell your ego but you are unable to control it, this guilt arises in you. This guilt is also good since it is a sign of the deep awareness of your own ego. It facilitates you to sincerely work towards eliminating that ego.