27. Dual identities

We all have two identities, the identity that we project to the outer world, and the identity that we believe to be us in the inner world.

The identity that you believe to be you inside your mind is called mamakar* in Sanskrit. It will always be much smaller than what you really are. You will carry or remember all your failures, past mistakes and guilt, constantly trying to work on them.

Mamakar - Inner ego that constantly says you are smaller than what you think you are.

The identity that you project to the outer world is called ahankar* . Ahankar* is your visiting card. You print on it everything that you want others to know about yourself. This is based on the identity you show to the outer world. It will always be more than what you have, more than what you are. It will always be much more than what you are because you think you have to sell yourself. It becomes a basic need to do this, especially in the societies where you have to market yourself.

Ahankar will be based on a superiority complex. Mamakar* will be based on an inferiority complex. Ahankar will be based on fear. Mamakarwill be based on greed.

A small story:

A man arrived home after giving a series of leadership talks to groups of employees at a company. His wife asked, 'How did the talks go?'

The man replied, 'Okay, I guess. But I am not sure how many people understood what I said.' The wife asked, 'Why do you feel that way?'

The man said, 'Because I don't understand it myself!'

The identity that you show to the outer world will always be based on fear. This is why it will always be more than what is true about you. You will constantly try to keep it alive. The identity that you carry in the inner world is based on greed. This is why you always try to develop the identity that you carry inside you. You constantly work on the identity that you believe is you and continuously try to chisel it.

Your life is nothing but the fight between these two worlds. The conflict between ahankar and mamakar, the conflict between the personality that you show to the outer world and the personality that you reveal in your inner world is called 'tension'. The uneasy feeling between these two identities creates dis-easeness.

Both the identities, ahankar and mamakar, are pure myths, both are lies! You are something beyond these two identities.

If you spend your whole energy expanding ahankar, the identity that you project to the outer world, your life becomes materialistic. People who work on mamakar are constantly working on their personality, trying to create some identity to feel satisfied about. If you spend your whole life chiseling and developing mamakar, the identity that you think is you, your whole life becomes moralistic and suppressing.

Ahankar - The false identification of the pure inner self with the outer world. A form of ego that makes you project a false identity of you to the outer world.

Mamakar - Inner ego that constantly says that you are smaller than what you think you are.

The basic truth is that you are much more than these two identities. When you unclutch from these two identities, you will suddenly realize that you are beyond the two identities. When that happens, these two identities can never bind you again.

Inferior Ego

Low self-esteem means showing yourself or imagining yourself to be less than what you are. High self-esteem is imagining yourself to be much more than what you are. Again, this is also based on the opinions of others. You judge yourself based on your lifestyle rather than your life. You weigh yourself by the cars and real estate you have purchased, not by the quality of consciousness you have achieved.

The big problem is that you don't know how to remove your personality and go to the next personality. You don't know how to use personalities like coats. You are caught in one personality.

Using the wrong personality in the wrong place is what I call ego. Understand, if you are arrogant and violent where you need to be polite and humble, it is being egoistic. If you are polite and humble where you need to be courageous, you are Using the wrong personality in the wrong place is what I call ego.

egoistic. Und-erstand, we always think, 'If I am very humble how can I be egoistic?' Be very clear, ego standing on its head is also ego. It is called 'inferior ego'.

An incident from the life of Ramana Maharishi* :

One of Ramana Maharishi's disciples translated one of his books into another language. In the translation, inside the book, his name was also published as the translator.

When the disciple saw the book, he was shocked to see this. He went to the concerned authorities and scolded them for this mistake. He then went and told Ramana Maharishi, 'Bhagavan, they should not have put my name. I don't feel my name should be publicized. I am not that kind of person.'

Bhagavan said, 'The ego that asks for the name to be there and the ego that asks that the name not be there are one and the same. Relax.'

Be very clear, the inferior ego that is trying to show humbleness is also ego.

Ramana Maharishi – Enlightened master from India who encouraged Self-Realization through self-inquiry, 'Who am I?'

With a superiority complex, with a violent aggressive ego, at least society will teach you. This ego is very visible. With the humble ego, you will escape from society. That is more dangerous. It is a cunning ego that can nicely save itself.

Types of Ego

Active Ego Vs Passive Ego

The active ego is easy to recognize. People with an active ego will behave in a highhanded fashion; they will claim selfimportance openly. They will be arrogant. This ego is actually easy for a master to deal with. He just needs to bang on it a few times and it will break!

A small story:

A psychiatrist asks his patient if he is suffering from fantasies of selfimportance. The man replies, 'Absolutely not. In fact, I think much less of myself than I really am!'

A person with an active ego will not be willing to let go of it at any cost.

Passive ego is very subtle and cunning. People who have a passive ego will pose as being very humble, lacking courage to face people, and shying away from taking credit. The worst part of this is that they think they are like this because they are not egoistic. Actually, they are so carefully guarding their ego from getting hurt by unconsciously thinking they are humble!

People with active ego are like dried, hard twigs. They can be broken easily. People with passive ego are like fresh, green twigs. Each time their ego is hit, they bend but don't break! Their ego is so well safeguarded that it becomes difficult to deal with. Actually, they work very hard to safeguard it but in a sweet and passive way.

You care so much about others' reactions and opinions towards you. You cannot bear to suffer hurt to the ego that you have nurtured so carefully all these years. This ego is your very anchor point. If it is jolted, you will feel anchorless. So, with the excuse of being humble and obedient, you keep quiet. You miss one more opportunity of exposing your ego in the master's presence. You miss one more opportunity to take a big step towards flowering.

Social Ego

There is one more play of ego that we all nurture so well. It is called 'social ego'. You feel that your life is highly private to yourself and that no one should be let into it. You are afraid that your whole image might come crashing down and there will be nothing to prop you up in society. This is social ego. It is more of an identity for you to experience than for others! If you can show yourself to the world just as you are, you will be more relaxed because then there will be no pressure to cover up anything.

A small story:

Once a candidate running for a political office finished a speech and sat down. A man sitting next to him asked, 'Sir, would you like to have a drink? We have hard drinks as well.'

Because of our social ego, we are always self-conscious. We think people are looking at and talking about us all the time. When you are self-conscious, you are egoistic. You think that you are a big entity and that everyone's eyes are on you all the time. That is why you get self-conscious.

When you become self-conscious, you are living and yet not living. Self-consciousness is a barrier to your beauty and grace. Your beauty does not come forth freely. Look at animals and nature. They flow so beautifully and freely, because they are not self-conscious. They are simply happy being one with Existence. The moment you start thinking that people are watching you, ego has stepped in, and you lose your natural self.

Children are not as self-conscious as adults. If you watch them play, you will see they have so much beauty and innocence. Even when pictures are taken, you will notice that pictures taken without you being aware that you are being photographed look much better than pictures taken when you pose for the camera!

The moment you are asked to pose, you become self-conscious. Your ego is afraid of what people might say and think about you. The self-conscious ego is all the time calculating and weighing others' opinions.

A small story:

One Sufi* mystic went to a king and begged for a square meal. The king shouted at him, saying that nobody there knew him.

The mystic laughed and said, 'Yes. I agree. Nobody here knows me. But I know myself. In your case, everybody knows you. But you don't know yourself.'

When you stop calculating and start being innocent and open, you will be filled with wonder and freshness all the time. Life will never become dull and restrained for you.

Sufi - Followers of Sufism, a mystical dimension of Islam.

'I' and 'Mine'

'I' is the ego, the root of fear. 'Mine' – 'this is my house', 'that is my car', 'these are my friends' - is the root of greed.

'I' means continuously doing. 'Mine' means continuously having. Continuously you try to expand your boundary. Continuously you try to change the things outside. You want to expand your boundary of 'mine'. For example, you have a basic car now but you want to have a more luxurious car. You may want more than one car. You have a house to live in, but you want a bigger house. This kind of personality is based on having. Such people feel happy, secure and relaxed only when they continuously possess more and more things.

The deep feeling of insecurity and fear drives us to more greed, to continuously try to possess more things. Continuously possessing things is nothing but a feeling of deep insecurity. You can see the idea of continuously possessing more and more things is just because of fear and insecurity.

We usually feel more secure if we have more friends, more relatives, and more things around us. With more security, we feel we will not be taken away from this world.

Ego Vs Master

People ask me, 'Why do we have to follow masters?' I tell them, 'You don't have to follow masters. But if you don't follow masters, you will be following your ego, that's all. There are only two options: either you listen to the master or you listen to the ego.'

Master is the being who has already achieved eternal bliss, nithya ananda* . If you follow him you will also reach that state. As for your ego, you know what it has achieved so far and what it is heading towards! If you are happy, comfortable, contented and blissful in the path in which your ego is already leading you, then you can follow your ego. Nothing is wrong with that. If you are a little uncomfortable, if you want to change, then follow the master's path.

There are only two things, master and the mind. If you follow the master, you cannot follow the mind. If you follow the mind, you cannot follow the master.

There is a beautiful word, 'na maha'. It means, 'not mine', 'I am not' - I surrender the 'I' and 'mine' at the feet of the master or god.

Nithya ananda - Eternal bliss.

Story of Dakshinamurthy Swamigal

A small story:

There was once an enlightened master by the name of Dakshinamurthy Swamigal. He used to sit under a banyan tree. His presence was so intense that a person could touch it, feel it, and almost see it. His silent presence was so powerful that neither he needed to talk nor the other person felt the need to speak.

One of the court poets of the kingdom sang a thousand verses on Dakshinamurthy Swamigal, whom he referred to as a saint. This poet said Dakshinamurthy Swamigal was 'the greatest warrior'. By tradition, you would be given the title of greatest warrior only if you killed one thousand elephants in a war.

This poet sang all one thousand versus praising the power and heroic qualities of Dakshinamurthy. When the king heard this, his ego was hurt because it was known throughout the region that only he had killed a thousand elephants in war. Until that time, only the king had the title of the greatest warrior.

The king called the poet and angrily said, 'Justify your action of singing the thousand verses in praise of the naked beggar sitting under the banyan tree. Otherwise, your head will be cut off!' The poet said, 'I don't have any reason or justification. You can kill me. But there is something about his presence. I want to make one small request: if you have some time, go and sit in his presence just once. That's all I am asking, nothing else.'

The king was curious to know more about Dakshinamurthy Swamigal. Along with his entire army, he set off to meet him! Kings always travel with their paraphernalia because they lose their identity without it! In contrast, Dakshinamurthy Swamigal was a Paramahamsa* , an enlightened master. The king found him sitting under a big banyan tree, without paraphernalia, not even clothes. He was just blissful in himself.

Imagine the scene: this simple beggar sat in a corner without any clothes. He was merged in bliss and peace, completely lost in Existence. He sat in intense silence and peace. The silence penetrated anyone in his presence.

The king jumped down from his chariot and went towards Dakshinamurthy Swamigal. On seeing the king and his army and hearing all their commotion,

Paramahamsa - Supreme Swan, title bestowed on enlightened beings.

Dakshinamurthy did not even move. He opened his eyes and looked straight into the king's eyes. It was the first time someone had dared to look straight into the king's eyes. The king had always looked at others and they had always put their heads down. For the first time somebody looked straight into the eyes of the king. He was completely shaken.

After a few seconds, the king put his head down. He clearly felt something happening inside his being. Dakshinamurthy Swamigal, the master, signaled the king to sit down. All the ministers and the army dropped their weapons and also sat in silence. In ten minutes the entire army was sitting down.

One hour passed. Then two hours passed, three hours, and the evening came and went. One full day passed by. The master, the king and the whole army sat in silence. Not a single word was exchanged. Three days passed by.

Then the master opened his eyes and said, 'Now you can go.' The king fell flat at the master's feet, paid his respects to the great master, and left in silence. He reached his palace, summoned the poet who had written the verses in praise of Dakshinamurthy Swamigal and said, 'Why did you write only a thousand verses in praise of the master? You should sing ten thousand verses!'

The poet then made a beautiful statement, 'Killing ten thousand elephants is easy. You just need the weapons to kill them. But killing one's mind is a real achievement!'

This master had killed his mind. Not only had Dakshinamurthy Swamigal killed his own mind, he could kill the mind of anybody who sat in his presence. Killing ten thousand elephants doesn't take courage. Killing your mind requires courage.

1. Remember the seer

There are two steps.

Remember who the seer is. When you open the eyes, understand that you are seeing through the eyes. You are not seeing. Then suddenly you will see that your whole energy is centered in the ajna chakra* or brow center between the two eyes. You will see things more clearly, in more detail like

Ajna chakra - The sixth energy center located between the eyebrows. Means 'command' or 'will' in Sanskrit. This chakra is blocked by one's own ego.

how you see things as fresh after it rains. Then you will have neither attachment nor detachment, you will not have any suffering.

For example, sometimes in your sleep, you know you are dreaming but you don't come out of the dream. In that state, you can see that your dreams are clearer and you can even alter the dream. In the same way when you realize that what you think as reality now is only a dream, you will have the energy and intelligence to alter it! When the frequency of your consciousness rises, you will get the intelligence to realize that it is only a dream and so there is no need to change it.

2. Visualization

This technique can be practiced any time. Feel the cosmos as a translucent, ever-living presence. Try to feel the life in everything that is around you. Try to see it. Try to feel it. First, try to feel the life inside your body. Then try to feel the life inside the chair on which you are sitting. See how you are feeling alive inside your skin. In the same way, visualize and feel you are alive inside the chair, inside the cushion. Then visualize you are alive inside the people who are sitting next to you.

Let me give you an example. Let's say that you put a bamboo stick in a river. Now you can see a part of the river on the left of the bamboo and another part to the right of the bamboo. But does it mean the river has now been divided into two parts? No! If the bamboo is taken away, there is no right side or left side anymore. There is no boundary. It is just one river, that's all.

Life is just like the river. The bamboo is your ego. Because of your ego, you say 'I' and 'you'. You have two sides - you and the world. You see duality because of that bamboo. If you just take the bamboo of your ego away, there is neither 'I' nor 'you'. It is pure ever-living presence.

3. Third eye meditation

Total Duration: 25 minutes

This is an extremely powerful technique, most effective when practiced in the master's presence or in front of a picture of the master's eyes.

**Step 1:**Duration: 5 minutes

With your eyes closed, just see through your eyes, whatever images you are seeing behind the closed eyes.

Step 2: Duration: 5 minutes

Now open your eyes and through your third eye, look intensely at the master's third eye in the picture. Look through your eyes.

Step 3: Duration: 5 minutes

With your eyes closed, just see through your eyes, whatever images you are seeing behind the closed eyes.

Step 4: Duration: 5 minutes

Now open your eyes and through your third eye, look intensely at the master's third eye in the picture. Look through your eyes.

Step 5: Duration: 5 minutes

With your eyes closed, just see through your eyes, whatever images you are seeing behind the closed eyes.

During this meditation, you may see visions of your favorite deities, or you may find that the master's form is replaced by a beam of light. Sometimes you may see total emptiness where his picture was. Don't be alarmed or lose your awareness at these moments. It is not hypnosis! In fact, it is a dehypnotizing process. Your superconscious is being awakened. If you see only light or emptiness, it is a sign that you have done the meditation with deep sincerity. That is the truth of our nature that we are all nothing but energy.

Seeing through the eye, you can achieve the 'I'. Currently, you are making up your own reality. If you see through the eyes, you will wake up from it and see reality as it is!

Gratitude – what and why

When we recognize that we are part of the total scheme of Existence, and that we are lovingly taken care of by Existence every minute, we are overcome with gratitude. We become truly thankful for what we receive every moment, even if it is as basic as the use of our very limbs and senses.

Gratitude is your response to recognizing the abundance of Existence. It is a wonderful flowering energy within you.

If there is one energy that takes care of everything in your life, it is the energy of gratitude! If you ever feel that there is something missing in your life, it is because you feel less gratitude.

There are many religions in the world today. Each of them emphasizes one particular approach such as prayer, austerity, surrender, etc. But there is one thing that cuts across all these and connects you directly to the Divine energy. That is gratitude! Gratitude is the greatest religion. When I tell this to people they wonder, 'How can gratitude be a religion? Why should it be a religion? It can be a social habit but not a religion.'

Gratitude should become the very breath of a person, not even

Gratitude is your response to recognizing the abundance of Existence.

merely religion. Gratitude is a transforming energy. It transforms the happenings in you and around you. It is an energy that harmonizes you with the energy of the universe and brings back tremendous prosperity to you. With gratitude you will see that Existence simply responds to you, as if it is a live being. It is the channel to commune with Existence!

When gratitude happens, it works beautifully through the law of attraction and attracts great prosperity to you. How is this possible?

A small story:

Akbar* , a great king from ancient India, and Birbal* , his advisor, were walking together on the street one day.

They passed by a sandalwood dealer and Akbar* told Birbal* , 'I don't know why but I feel like hanging this man.'

One month passed and the two of them walked past the same sandalwood dealer again.

Akbar - Moghul emperor.

Birbal - Advisor to Moghul emperor Akbar.

This time Akbar* said, 'It's strange but I feel like giving this man some endowment today! How is it possible?'

Birbal* replied, 'O King! A month back, the sandalwood dealer's business was suffering and when he saw you walking past he thought to himself, 'If the king dies, the courtiers would come to buy a lot of sandalwood from me for his funeral pyre.'

'He sent out these negative vibrations which prompted you to feel hatred towards him. That is why last time you felt like hanging him without any real reason. I immediately purchased a lot of sandalwood from him to make tables and chairs for our kingdom. It made him very happy. Today, he feels very grateful to you for it. You are now struck by these positive vibrations from him and therefore you feel like giving him some endowment!'

According to the Law of Attraction, like energy attracts like energy. How does this apply to gratitude? Understand this: when you feel gratitude towards everything, it means you feel fulfilled, you feel blissful. So when you radiate gratitude, your energy of fulfillment attracts fulfillment back to you in the form of material gains, good relationships, good health and so on. This is how it works.

The important thing about this is that material gains, good relationships and such things are only incidental byproducts of gratitude. The main thing is that gratitude makes you resonate with Existence and transforms you into a beautiful human being.

Psychologists have studied the effects of the feeling of gratitude on people. In their first study, two researchers, Dr. Michael McCollough of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Dr. Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis, California, concluded that gratitude played a major role in a person's well-being.

Their study divided a few hundred people into three groups and required them to maintain daily diaries. The first group maintained a diary of all of the events that happened during their day. The second group recorded only their unpleasant experiences. The third group made a daily list of things for which they were grateful.

The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism and energy. Additionally, the third group, which

Akbar - Moghul emperor.

Birbal - Advisor to Moghul emperor Akbar.

recorded gratefulness, experienced less depression and stress, had a greater inclination to help others, exercised more regularly and made more progress toward their personal goals. According to the findings, people who listed daily items of gratefulness were also more likely to feel loved. McCollough and Emmons also noted that the attitude of gratitude encouraged a positive cycle where one act of gratitude encouraged another.

The findings also indicated that gratitude could work independently of faith. Though gratitude is a big part of most religions, they suggested that the benefits extended to the general population regardless of whether they had faith or not in any particular religion. They further suggested that anyone could increase their sense of well-being and create positive social effects just from counting their blessings.

Be grateful for just being

In today's world, any action needs a reason. If I tell a small child to come near me, the child will look for some reason. If I hold up a chocolate, she will come near! Utility has taken root very deeply within us. When there is utility there is action, or else justifying the action becomes difficult.

When I tell people to live with a sense of

gratitude, they immediately start looking for reasons. Real gratitude can never have Real gratitude can never have a reason. It happens as a causeless flowering within you.

a reason. It

happens as a causeless flowering within you. Does the flower bloom for a reason? No! It blooms because it is its very nature. Gratitude is our real nature. It has been covered by layers of conditioning from society.

Society doesn't know the language of gratitude. It knows only the language of utility. It straightaway instills greed and fear in you so that you will give it the needed results. Society doesn't know there is a path of gratitude that will give much better results than the paths of fear and greed. That is the problem.

By its very nature our being is gratitude. If we relax into it, we can connect to it. There are endless reasons to feel gratitude. This life itself is a gift that we have received. Did any of us work for it and receive it? No. To be born with human consciousness is the first blessing we have received. Our gratitude should start right from there. Just for beingwe should feel grateful.

A young girl sat at the dinner table to eat. She started eating when her mother suddenly stopped her. She asked her,

The main reason

why you miss
experiencing	'Did you say
gratitude is that	grace before eating?'
you take
everything for	The	girl
	replied, 'But
granted.	there	is
	nothing	on

this plate that I have not already thanked god for at least once.'

Understand, if ever you feel life is dull, that it is not as juicy as it should be, it is because gratitude has not happened in you. Gratitude is the energy that makes your life intense and exciting every moment. When you carry causeless gratitude in you, life will be sweet all the time irrespective of external circumstances. When you miss gratitude, very often you will be gripped with the feeling that life is sour, but you won't know the real reason for that feeling. That is the problem. These are the basic secrets of life.

Every morning as soon as you wake up, before getting out of bed, just try to feel deep gratitude for just being, for just living as a human being in this wonderful Existence. Bring up the understanding that you are able to enjoy all that you enjoy only because you are a human being. Try to feel grateful for it. Melt for a few moments with that gratitude.

Similarly, every night before you go to sleep, sit on your bed and honestly bring in deep gratitude for just being. Feel it in your whole body and mind. Even if you have had a bad day, it is okay. Put everything aside and feel grateful for just being. All days are not bad days. There are people who have days that are worse than the worst of our bad days. So put all judgments aside and feel gratitude. Go to sleep with this feeling. This is a very powerful meditation to nurture causeless gratitude in you.

Everything is a gift

The main reason why you miss experiencing gratitude is that you take everything for granted. You feel anything that people do for you is your birthright. Understand, people could be doing something else instead of doing things for you. So it is really a gift from them to you. You have to thank them for it.

Receive every small thing in life as a gift. When you take your plate to eat, see the plate as a gift. When you serve food on the plate, see the food as a gift. When you sit down on the chair to eat, see the chair as a gift. When you wash your hands after eating, see your fingers as a gift. We never see these things as gifts. Everything is taken for granted. There are people who don't have a plate on which to eat. There are people who don't have fingers with which to eat! Have we ever thought about that? Never! We only look at those who have a diamond ring on their finger. We never look at those who don't have fingers. That is the problem. That is why we don't feel anything in our life is a gift.

When we start feeling grateful for small things, our whole sensitivity will increase. We will become more refined. Our whole attitude towards life will move to a different plane. Remember, the person who isn't thankful for small things will never be thankful for big things either. Even big things will be taken for granted. Currently, we feel we have a right to everything that we receive. Because of this attitude, we miss seeing the benevolence of Existence or god. We remain insensitive to the gifts showered upon us by Existence.

A small story:

A man was narrating to his friend how he got lost in a desert one day.

He told the friend, 'In sheer despair, I knelt down and prayed that I should be guided out of the desert.'

The friend was awed by the story and asked, 'So did god answer your prayer?'

The man replied, 'Oh, no! Before that an explorer appeared from nowhere and showed me the way.'

This is how insensitive we are in life! We keep taking everything for granted. If we sensitized ourselves with When we start feeling grateful for small things, our whole sensitivity will increase. We will become more refined.

gratitude, we would never take anything for granted, whether it is our fingers, or our wealth, or the timely benevolence of Existence. When sensitivity happens, every moment passes in deep awe of the happenings in Existence.

Revere the other with Gratitude

The first thing we need to understand is that no person has taken birth only to serve us. Every other person is also on the path of life just as we are. As a kind gesture, out of love, they do things for us. Even your own wife or husband is doing a very kind act of serving you, of providing for you or taking care of you. Of course, marriage calls for give and take but the husband or wife can never be taken for granted. They can never be thought of as our birthright.

Especially between partners, a lot of things are taken for granted. Somehow, this idea has taken root very deeply in our society. Because of this, many marriages fall apart today. I tell you, even during a physical relationship there can be such deep gratitude for the other person's body. It will make the whole thing a divine experience instead of mere physical pleasure. When you can derive so much pleasure because of the other, why not feel gratitude towards the other for it? If the other is deeply respected from the beginning, many marriages can be saved.

A small story:

One man prayed to god, 'Oh Lord, please have mercy on me. I work so hard while my wife stays at home. She enjoys staying at home while I slog the whole day. Please grant me a boon whereby I become my wife and she becomes me. I want to teach her a lesson on how tough a man's life is.

God granted his wish.

The next morning, the man who was now the woman, woke up early in the morning, packed lunch for the children, made breakfast, got the children ready and drove them to school. She then came back and put the clothes in the washing machine, went to the bank and cashed the checks, paid the electricity and phone bills. Next she went to the market and bought some groceries, put the clothes out to dry, picked up the children from school, sorted out all their problems, helped them with their homework, watched television and ironed clothes at the same time. Then she prepared dinner, fed the children, put them to sleep, had dinner and went to bed.

The next morning the man prayed to god again, 'Oh Lord, I don't think I can handle this tomorrow. I beg you to please switch me back to a man.

God replied, 'Of course I will switch you back to yourself but you will have to wait nine months because you are now carrying a child!'

Each individual plays an equal part in life. No one should be taken for granted. There has to be some gratitude for every person on planet earth.

I always tell people that even if things don't work out between you and your wife and you have to part, part with gratitude. Every relationship brings some good into our life. Every relationship is auspicious in its own way. Only, we were not able to see it that way.

The problem is that somewhere we feel people are waiting to hurt us. It is not so. It is only our own insecurity which we project on others. We have a self-defense mechanism which causelessly plays in every relationship. It is driven with the thought that others are waiting to hurt us. This very mechanism will disappear when gratitude flowers.

A couple went with their three children to the beach one day. The children were making castles and enjoying themselves.

They saw an old lady in rags coming slowly towards them. She was bending down and picking up some things and putting them into her bag. As she came near the children, the parents shouted out to the children to stay away from her.

The old lady smiled at them, but they did not smile back.

A few days later they learnt the old lady made it her life to pick up small pieces of glass from the beach sand so that children would not cut their feet.

We are all looking to label relationships as good, bad, ugly, etc. This applies to any relationship, whether it is mother and child, boss and employee, or even between friends.

So many people feel ungrateful to their parents and society for conditioning them in certain ways. In one of the gratitude meditations that we offer, we ask people to first give their gratitude to their parents and all of the people who gave them their mental setup, their attitude. Please understand that with the intelligence that you have now, you are able to see that you did not receive the right kind of mental setup earlier. You are now trying to transform to a new mental setup. That is perfectly alright. But it is not right to curse the

Whenever you feel truly grateful to the people in your relationships, you will never try to possess them.

people who gave you the earlier mental setup.

Those who gave us this body and mind did not have any intention to deprive us or disturb us in any way. Whatever they knew as their best, they just gave to us, that's all. We are going beyond it now because we have become more intelligent. Just feel grateful to them, that is enough.

One more thing is that whenever you feel truly grateful to the people in your relationships, you will never try to possess them. You will look at them as beautiful individuals and leave it at that. Possessiveness happens only when you think of the other person as an object and not as an individual. With gratitude, you will allow the person to have his or her own space.

Decide consciously that you will respond with pure love and gratitude for the next couple of days, whatever the situation may be. Just for two days, decide not to react the way you have been reacting all these years. Decide that you will respond only with pure, unassuming love. You will see that all of your relationships take a turn for the better. Automatically you will start seeing each and every person as a unique creation of Existence, as a reflection of the Divine. You will feel deeply connected to everyone and everything around you.

Not only that, you will find tremendous compassion towards everything around you. If you were a person who gets angry easily, you will find the anger disappearing. All the energy that was invested in other negative emotions will get released with this growing gratitude. You will be a compassionate and loving person.

Thank your body

A small story:

A middle-aged woman suffered a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.

While on the operating table, she had a near-death experience. During the experience, she happened to see god. She asked him if this was the end of her life.

God replied that she had another thirty or forty years to live.

Once she recovered, she decided to stay in the hospital to undergo multiple surgeries such as a face lift, jaw reconstruction, a nose job and removal of excess fat. She also colored her hair. She thought that since she was going to live for thirty more years, she would start with a fresh look.

She finished the surgeries and was about to walk out of the hospital when she was run over by the hospital ambulance and killed.

She arrived before god and asked him, 'God, I thought you told me I had another thirty years to live.'

God replied, 'Sorry, but I didn't recognize you!'

Each human being is a unique masterpiece of god. That is why no two bodies look alike. God is not an engineer. He is an artist. That is why each of us looks different. If he was an engineer he would have made us all with the same mold, like in a production line! He has uniquely created each one of us. But we never feel that we are beautiful enough. We constantly compare ourselves with others and try to look like them. We never make our body feel it is beautiful.

Our body is influenced by the thoughts we entertain about it. Every cell responds to our thoughts and feelings about it. If we feel gratitude towards our body, our body responds by improving our health. If we hate our body, the body responds by shrinking with disease. It is just like the effect of our thoughts on other human beings. If we encourage people, they work better.

Only because of this body are you able to now sit and hear this talk. The fact that you are here reading these words is because of your body. Then how can you abuse it or take it for granted? If you just look around, you will see there are people born without an arm or a leg. There are people who were born without eyesight or lose their eyesight in an accident. We have everything and yet we take it all for granted. Sometimes people who have a physical handicap are more grateful than those who have a perfect body. The handicapped person knows what it is to miss a body part, so he is automatically grateful to the other body parts.

In the Sufi tradition they have a beautiful meditation where every morning as soon as they wake up they touch their body parts one after another and feel deep gratitude to every single part. They touch every part from head to foot with great love and gratitude. This is a wonderful meditation that can be practiced by everyone. You will see that your body starts looking more and more beautiful and it will also heal from any discomfort very easily.

Everything is auspicious, just celebrate it!

One thing has to be understood very clearly. The whole of Existence is an auspicious happening. You are part of Existence, so everything happening around you is also auspicious. This is the truth of Existence. Nothing that happens in Existence is inauspicious. Everything is only a blessing.

If this is understood clearly, there is nothing to complain about in life. If this is understood clearly, your very eye becomes a grateful eye. It sees everything as extraordinary. Nothing appears mundane. Everything appears as a miracle.

A small story:

One day a duck hunter went to the market to buy a bird-retriever dog. To his amazement he found a dog that could walk on water! He immediately took it home.

He invited one of his friends to hunt the next day and took the dog. When a flock of ducks came near, he took aim, fired and silently watched. The dog walked on the water and retrieved the bird. He looked at his friend for a reaction but the friend remained silent.

He asked him, 'Do you see anything unusual about my dog?'

The friend replied, 'Yes, your dog is unable to swim.'

Miracles are continuously happening in front of our eyes. But we continuously miss them! Only because we miss them, life

Just accept and celebrate whatever you are and you will see that you slowly realize the real Self.

itself appears to be dull sometimes. When we start perceiving them, our

entire life becomes a miracle. The truth is, there are too many miracles happening around us in our lives.

If we celebrate the three things, the existence of the self, world and god, we will experience the whole of Existence as a blessing that is happening continuously. Let me explain.

When you celebrate the existence of the self, god and world, all three will reveal their mysteries to you. Please understand that when I say celebrate the self, god and world, I am not giving you moral advice. I am giving you a spiritual technique.

The first step: you will never be able to realize or understand yourself until you accept yourself and celebrate what you are. As long as you fight with what you are, you will never be able to realize what you really are.

Usually we carry two identities within ourselves. One is the outer world identity and the other is the inner world identity. The outer world identity is what we present to the world, as how we want the world to see us, how we want to be recognized, how we want to present ourselves. This identity will always be much more than who we really are.

The other, the inner world identity, is what we believe we really are. This identity will usually be much less than what we actually are. This is what we refer to as low selfesteem.

Your whole life is nothing but the fight between these two identities. You constantly try to fulfill your outer world identity, and this is in conflict with the inner world identity. The struggle between you and you, the struggle between these two identities, eats your whole life.

It is time to stop this struggle. It is time to just celebrate whatever you are. Just accept and celebrate whatever you are and you will see that you slowly realize the real Self. Self-realization is postponed again and again only because of the fight between these two identities. The moment you stop the fight between them, you will see that both of them disappear into the realization.

The two identities exist only because of the non-acceptance in you. So just accept whatever you are in the outer world and in the inner world. Just accept and say a deep 'yes' to you as you are. Suddenly you will see that both these identities have no utility or purpose for you. They simply disappear. They leave your body. They disappear from your very inner space. Then you accept and celebrate your self as it is. You understand that you neither need to develop the self in the outer world nor do you need to develop it in the inner world. Out of this understanding, suddenly you will see that the Self will be realized!

In the next step, we come to the celebration of the world. Understand that all the difficulties and problems between you and the world are because you do not look at the world as a mystery. You continuously try to demystify the world with your logic. You try to understand the world with your intellect instead of celebrating it, accepting it, enjoying it. You analyze, segregate and try to bring it under your control. It is not possible to achieve this! It is too vast and too intelligent! It is meant to be enjoyed and not analyzed.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa * , an enlightened master from India, tells a beautiful story:

Two men entered a mango grove.

One of them sat and counted the number of trees. He studied the variations in their size, the number of branches, density of leaves and number of mangoes across the trees. He tried to determine the varieties of mangoes. He thought about where they would sell, what would be the cost etc.

The other man simply ate a few mangoes, enjoyed himself and then left! I have seen people who can't enjoy a resort unless it is owned by them.

When you have entered the world, understand you have entered the mango grove. If you continuously use your logic to analyze and judge and try to bring things under your control, you will miss the whole thing.

I have seen people who can't enjoy a resort unless it is owned by them. They can't enjoy anything unless it is legally owned by them. Their logic has to conquer things, only then they can enjoy anything. Your logic does not have to conquer everything. You don't need to own things to enjoy them. Trying to understand the world is nothing but trying to intellectually own the whole of Existence, the whole world. Trying to understand intellectually is also nothing but trying to possess, trying to own intellectually. You will never be able to celebrate if you follow this path.

Just accept and celebrate Existence with all its different dimensions and paradoxes. Don't judge anything. You continuously judge what is going on as something is right or something is wrong, something should have happened this way or something

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa - Enlightened master from West Bengal in India. His chief disciple was Swami Vivekananda.

Everything has a message for us including death and disease.

should not have happened this way.

Become

aware that whatever happens in Existence is auspicious. In Sanskrit, the word shiva means 'Causeless Auspiciousness'. Shiva is also the name of a Hindu* god. For no reason in particular, auspiciousness is overflowing all the time. You too are continuously expanding and growing, whether you accept it or not. Every birth, every action, every single incident happening in your life is increasing your frequency, raising your intelligence. Causeless expansion is happening in you also. But you may or may not experience it this way. That is a different thing.

In the whole world there are only two kinds of people. The first kind feels that whatever is happening in the world is against their will and things have to be slightly altered all the time. Such people will try to alter, judge, criticize and develop the things happening in the world according to their ideas. There is the other group, a rare group, that feels that whatever is happening is auspicious – Shiva* -like! Whoever feels what happens is auspicious, live in Shiva* -Consciousness, in eternal bliss, in celebration. The other group continuously suffers because it tries to change things all the time.

Everything has a message for us including death and disease. Everything has something to teach us. Every incident raises our intelligence, raises our frequency of consciousness. In the whole drama of the cosmos, anything that happens in our life brings auspiciousness to us. It adds to us. All we need to do is look at the world as a mystery, as an intelligent mystery.

A small story:

There was a certain village isolated and surrounded by acres of cornfields. The city was very far from it, so it remained very quiet.

One morning the villagers saw a sage whom they had never seen before in the village. He was seated under a banyan tree. They asked him where he came from. He told them, 'I have come to spend a few days with all of you whom I consider my own brothers.'

The villagers were happy to hear this and built a small hut for him. Soon the sage started healing and solving many problems of the villagers.

Once an epidemic struck the village and killed many birds there. The

Hindu - Belonging to the religion of Hinduism, estimated to have over a billion followers.

Shiva - Enlightened master from India. The word shiva literally means 'causeless auspiciousness'.

villagers reported this to the sage. He said, 'It is sad that you lost so many birds but if you have faith in Existence and pray, the loss may actually be a matter of gain.'

The villagers didn't agree fully with him but since they respected him they went away quietly.

The next week, suddenly, all the dogs in the village ran away. The villagers got upset again because the dogs used to guard the village against burglars. They went to the sage and reported this to him. He only repeated his message, 'If you have faith in Existence and pray, even this loss may prove to be a gain.'

A few days later a very strange thing happened. In those days, there were no matchboxes. People used to rub two stones together to make fire or keep a fire alive in their ovens continuously. One day, all the fires in all of the households went out. They tried to start a fire by rubbing stones but nothing happened. They got very disturbed.

They went to the sage again and told him what was happening. The sage told them, 'It looks like some very special phenomenon is taking place.'

The villagers started doubting the sage.

They started wondering in what way the sage was superior to them and whether he was in any way qualified to tell them

Existence is not an accident. It is independent intelligence.

such things. Some of the villagers proceeded to the next village to get some fire but the sage stopped them, sternly saying that they should not go.

Early the next morning some of the villagers started making their way to the next village anyway. Suddenly they saw something like a sandstorm in the distance. After a few moments they could see it was actually a large invading army on horseback. They were on their way plundering the city and the villages surrounding it. The villagers hid behind trees and watched them. The army stopped ahead of the village and one of them screamed, 'Let us invade this village too!'

Another person said, 'No use will come out of it. There is no bird that chirps even so early in the morning, no dog barks, no smoke comes out of the chimney of any house. It doesn't look like a single soul lives there.'

The army turned back and went away.

The hiding villagers ran back to the village and told the villagers what had happened. They suddenly realized how true the sage was all along! They went to the sage's hut to tell him everything

Only when an enlightened master happens in your life do you start knowing what gratitude is!

but the hut was empty. The sage had left.

Nobody knew where he had

gone.

Existence is not an accident. It is independent intelligence. When you understand that it is an independent intelligence, when you understand that it is a profound mystery to be experienced and not solved, everything in your life will open itself and reveal to you the lesson it has brought with it.

When suffering comes to you, if you approach it with non-acceptance, with resistance, it will create only pain in you. It will add only suffering to you. If you approach the same suffering with deep respect and gratitude, suddenly you will see that it reveals its mysteries to you. It will show you the reason why it happened in your life and the lesson it brought to you in your life. If you approach the suffering with acceptance and intelligence, suddenly you will see that the very suffering gives you enlightenment! It adds joy and experience to your life.

Everything happening in the world is auspiciousness, including what you call natural calamities. There is no such thing as inauspiciousness. Natural calamities are nothing but nature's ways of adjusting itself to certain actions of human beings. So accept and celebrate the very existence of the world.

In the third step, we come to celebrating god, the root and the source for the other two steps that are the self and the world. As long as you carry doubt or faith about the existence of god, you won't experience god. Just like doubt, faith is also an obstacle. I have seen people who believe but never try to experience god. They continue to have faith but never experience god.

So now, drop your doubt and your faith about god's existence or non-existence. Even if you believe in god's existence, you will have only an idea about Him – that He will have ten hands or eighteen heads, that He is tall or short. Whatever idea you may have, even those ideas can be hindrances to finally experiencing god. So drop your faith and doubt. Just remember that if there is a creation, there should be a creator.

The moment you see an object in front of you, you know that the creator of the object exists, is it not? If the creation exists, the creator also exists. Even the word 'creator' does not exactly fit god. He is simply creativity overflowing for no reason, that's all! He is just constant creativity that is expanding. He is a constant Big Bang…a constant black hole that is happening.

The creation, the created and the creator all three express as just creativity. God is creativity. So celebrate the existence of creativity. Unless creativity exists, creation cannot happen. The very existence of creation is solid proof that the creator or creativity exists. Creativity is not a set of dead rules. It is an intelligent independence. It is intelligence and independence. So just celebrate the existence of that independent intelligence. Celebrate the existence of god as creativity.

When you celebrate the existence of these three - self, world and god, suddenly you will see that these three barriers were created only by your unconscious mind. There is no barrier, there is just pure Existence, pure consciousness, pure celebration.

Living with the clarity that self, world and god are not three things but the single core of Existence, and celebrating the existence of this one core, is what I call Living Enlightenment.

If you celebrate the existence of all these three, self, world and god, you will suddenly see that only celebration exists. All the three disappear into the celebration!

When all these three disappear into celebration, what remains is what I call eternal bliss, nithyananda.

The boundaries between these three exist only as long as the not accepting or the fighting ego exists. The moment nonThe very existence of creation is solid proof that the creator or creativity exists. Celebrate the existence of god.

acceptance disappears, acceptance happens and ego disappears. Suddenly only celebration remains.

Some people ask me, 'How do we express our deep gratitude to you?' I tell them that the only way to express their gratitude is to live enlightenment the way I have just described it to you. That is the best you can do for me and that I can do for you.

The reason why you feel so much gratitude towards me is because only when an enlightened master happens in your life do you start knowing what gratitude is! Until then, gratitude remains just a social habit from your periphery. When the master happens, when the transformation starts, you start feeling a movement inside you, a deep joy… an inexplicable feeling not from your periphery but from your being. That feeling is gratitude. That is what is called devotion. You cannot express it with words. That is the beauty of real gratitude. Just relax into it and allow it to transform you. It will transform you from your being. That

The greatest service one can do is working for the flowering of one's consciousness.

is enough. Then the work of the master is done!

People ask me, 'What service can we do for the mission?' I tell them, the greatest service one can do to the world is working for the flowering of one's own consciousness. Once this happens, automatically, you will serve where required, not out of ego but because you are celebrating and overflowing. Then it is not called service. It is just an overflowing. That is the way service should happen, not as a giving, but as a spontaneous sharing.

People generally do service to gain credit. Society has taught us that service will get us a place in heaven, that service will somehow nullify our bad deeds. No! Service will not reserve any place for us in heaven. Heaven does not run any exchange offer for us in this fashion.

When you overflow within yourself, you automatically feel there is nothing more to be done, and you start serving, that's all. The overflowing does not have anything to do with your material wealth or anything. It has to do with the state within you, the state of causeless bliss, of gratitude towards the Whole. Service, when done in this way, can itself lead you to enlightenment.

Gratitude can burn your karmas

Sufism* is completely a gratitude-based religion. If I have to reduce the whole of Sufism* to one word, it is gratitude. You can see it in all the poems of the great Sufi* masters like Jalaluddin Rumi* and others. You can see the flowing energy of gratitude in their words. Gratitude makes you a nobody, just flowing energy.

Gratitude is like a fire that can burn all your karmas* . What is karma* ? It is an unfulfilled action on your part that pulls you again and again to fulfill it. In order to fulfill and exhaust all such karmas* that we have accumulated, we take birth again and again on this planet. Just by being with the energy of gratitude, these karmas get burnt! Such is the power of gratitude.

Sufism -Mystical dimension of Islam.

Sufi - Followers of Sufism, a mystical dimension of Islam.

Jalaluddin Rumi - Thirteenth century Persian Sufi poet.

Karma - The vedic concept of one's freewill actions deciding one's destiny.

Gratitude - the ultimate prayer and religion

When your prayer becomes gratitude, you attract more benevolence to you. This is the law of attraction and the law of nature. Like energy attracts like energy. Gratitude is the ultimate prayer that can bring us more than we can imagine.

Many people think prayer and gratitude are bondage. No. They are the greatest liberators. They liberate you from the bondage of discontentment. Discontentment can destroy your whole life. Only because of discontentment, we run behind something or the other all the time. When gratitude flowers the feeling of discontentment is simply wiped away. Then you experience life differently. You experience that life is fulfilling.

To live with a feeling of fulfillment is the greatest blessing for any human being. Only when gratitude flowers can fulfillment happen. When fulfillment happens, irrespective of what you do or how you do it, you remain fulfilled. You don't do things to become fulfilled. You are already fulfilled so you do things out of it. When gratitude becomes your attitude, fulfillment becomes your nature. Then every moment becomes an overflowing, including your prayer.

Prayer should be an overflowing of the gratitude and fulfillment in you. Some people ask, 'Why do we go to the temple and pray?' Understand, prayer is a celebration of the benevolence of Existence. When our prayer is this way, Existence responds. When Existence responds, it comes to you as more benevolence in your life. This is the virtuous cycle of prayer and blessing!

The problem is that we have been taught that prayer and god are tools of last resort. We have not been taught that they are the very source and result of the continuous auspiciousness that happens.

A small story:

A pilot announced to the passengers in mid-flight: 'We regret to inform you we are in terrible trouble. Only god can save us now.'

A passenger turned and asked the man sitting next to him what the pilot had just said. The man replied, 'He said there is no hope.'

God has become the 'last resort of no hope' in most human minds!

Prayer is actually bowing down to the infinite Existence and surrendering your respect, fear, confusion, anxiety and everything to it. Existence, which is the very breath in your body, the thoughts in your mind, and the life force in your being responds by taking care of you.

When you pray with such deep reverence, Existence showers you with the four things you need in life.

1. The energy to change the things that need to change.

2. The intelligence to know what things do not need to be changed.

3. The understanding that whatever you may change, Existence itself is an eternally changing dream.

4. The liberation that comes from the above three.

Whenever you feel the presence of Existence, you start feeling gratitude, and that is prayer too. Prayer is nothing but deep devotion and a feeling of connectedness with the presence of Existence all the time. Even satsangs, spiritual gatherings, are meant only to foster this feeling of connectedness to the Whole.

Real prayer is not reading prayer books, it is not offering material things to god, it is not donating money to temples, it is deep and silent gratitude to the whole of Existence for being what it is. It is the undaunted trust that Existence is taking care. It is a deep and passive waiting for Existence. This is real prayer. If the other things happen as a result of this overflowing, then it is ok.

I always tell people a wonderful story of a Sufi saint. Sufism is a religion rooted in gratitude. It is nothing but gratitude towards the whole of Existence.

One Sufi saint and his disciples were in their spiritual wandering.

They went without food for almost three days. On the fourth day they were even chased away by the villagers and so they slept in a graveyard that night.

The next morning, the saint as usual started to say his prayer of thanksgiving to god. His disciples could not believe their eyes. They had gone without food and shelter for so many days and their master was thanking god. They refused to follow suit.

The disciples asked the saint, 'Why should we thank god when we were refused food and a place to stay for three days?'

The saint replied, 'You have been fed and given a place to stay for thirty years. What about thanking Him for that?'

Prayer is gratitude for the continuous showering of Existence upon us.

Don't think I am suggesting to you very old and outdated techniques. No! I am telling you these things from what I experienced in my own life. In my days of spiritual wandering before enlightenment, I traveled extensively by foot. I went across the length and breadth of India. I traveled with just two pieces of clothing and a vessel for begging food. I also took a vow not to touch money and not to keep food for more than one meal.

I tell you honestly, I lived like a liberated king on planet earth in those few years! Existence simply gave me what I needed for the moment. I did not bother about the next moment. I experienced the invisible hand of Existence every moment of my wandering days. So understand that these things are possible and have happened to me, who is now sitting right in front of you!

Expectation is the culprit; let go!

Try to sit down and make two lists. One of all the things that you have and one of all the things that you don't have. The first list should include every single thing that you have, starting from your eyes, ears, hands and legs, because there are people who don't have some of these. Include all your physical and mental faculties before moving to material things. If you write very sincerely without leaving out anything, you will not be able to complete the first list! That is the truth. If you find you are unable to finish the first list, it means gratitude has started happening in you!

The problem is

You can never feel fulfilled if your actions are rooted in expectation. You will only tire your senses.

that there is a continuous expectation in us all the time. That is why gratitude doesn't happen easily. We continuously receive input from our eyes, nose, ears, tongue and touch. Based on this, we continuously expect something or other to happen in a certain way. When we see someone who has a better house or a better car, it registers in us. When we hear of some great achievement by someone, it registers in us. Our energy moves only outward, constantly following our five senses, never inwards towards our self.

Gratitude is when this process reverses and you suddenly awaken to the abundance in you! With gratitude there is no expectation or greed.

Working with expectation is like pouring clarified butter into the fire to quench it. Can you quench fire by pouring clarified butter into it? Never! In the same way, you can never feel fulfilled if your actions are rooted in expectation. You will only tire your senses.

You can live either in expectation or in gratitude, never in both. With expectation there is a desire to possess things. You become the owner. With gratitude, you become the enjoyer. When you are the owner you enjoy only the few things that you own. When you are the enjoyer, you enjoy everything in Existence. When you look to own, nothing will seem enough. When you enjoy, everything seems to be overflowing! That is the difference.

A small story:

In a village, the night guard was on his rounds blowing his whistle periodically.

He had an earthen pipe that he smoked. He filled it with tobacco and searched for a match box. He didn't have one.

He went to the nearby hut where an old lady lived and asked if she could give him some ember from her oven. The old lady said her stove had not been lit for the past three days and that she herself was managing with the little food they gave in the temple.

The guard went to the next house and asked if he could have a match box. They said that they themselves had taken a burning log of wood from the neighbor to light their stove. Now they neither had fire nor a match box.

The guard decided to go to the village chief 's house where the maids would surely have a match box. He went and asked them for a match box to light his pipe.

One of the girls looked at him and asked, 'Fire to light your pipe? Why not use the lantern you are carrying?'

The guard couldn't believe his eyes. He had been carrying a lantern all along while searching for a matchbox!

When we believe that what we need is always only outside of us, we will continue searching like the night guard! When we believe that Existence always gives us what we need, we will find everything within us all the time.

Your very body language can change with Gratitude

When we work with expectation all the time, we will carry a subtle violence in our body language. It is not deliberate violence, but inherent violence. If we become a little sensitive to our body language, we will be able to catch this.

Watch yourself when you type on the computer, when you handle phone calls, how you place the phone receiver back in its cradle, with what aggression you walk, how you close the door behind you, how you hold your child's hand… everything. You will see that everything carries a subtle violence in it.

You can try this. The next time you close the door, remember and observe how you closed it. Now, open the door and close it again softly, with tremendous gratitude and awareness, until it closes completely. Feel yourself when you do it. You will observe the difference between the two experiences. The second time, you will suddenly soften inside yourself! This is the effect gratitude has on you.

With gratitude, your entire body language changes. When you start experiencing deep gratitude, your responses to situations change. You start resonating with Existence. Your body will flow with that resonance, with a cool grace and softness. All your actions will arise out of this grace. There will be no violence. Only joy will be flowing. Then anything you do will only make life sweeter.

Meditation

Every day, just sit by yourself for half an hour. Close your eyes and allow any thought, person or situation to come to your mind. If it is a positive thought, a person you love or a situation that you cherish, feel deep gratitude for it and see it go away. If it is a negative thought, or a person you don't like, or an unpleasant situation, feel gratitude for that too and bless it. Anything that comes to your mind, bless it with deep gratitude.

You will see that in a few days, your whole attitude becomes soft and compassionate. You will start seeing things with great compassion and receptivity.

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

We have thus far looked at the basic emotions that drive us. When these emotions are negatively expressed, we destroy the energy within us and block ourselves from receiving energy from without. If you have practised the techniques that have been given with each of the preceding chapters, you would also have seen how you could overcome these negative energies and unblock yourself.

Let us now look at a few other issues, which if we understand well, can change the way we live. These understandings can transform us.

Let us start with something very simple, something that we all take for granted. Let us look at the way our mind reallyworks.

The ten-minute experiment

Try a very simple experiment for just ten minutes.

Take a sheet of paper and a pen. Sit down alone. Write down whatever thought comes to mind as if a transcribing software has been connected to your mind. Transcribe exactly what you think. Do not edit or suppress any thoughts. It is an experiment only for you. No one else is going to look at what you have written. Visualize that a transcribing software has been connected to your mind. Just like how the transcribing software which is connected to a taped speech transcribes everything, transcribe whatever is going on in your mind verbatim. At the end of ten minutes, read what you wrote just once. You will be amazed! You can clearly see that there is no logic in the way thoughts form in your mind!

For example, you see a dog on the street. Immediately you remember the dog you were afraid of when you were young, or the one you used to play with when you were young. The next thought could be about your childhood. The third may be about the teacher and the room you used to sit in at school. The fourth may be about the house where your teacher used to live.

There is no logical connection between the dog that you recently saw on the street and the teacher who taught you in school. However, in a few seconds you simply jumped from seeing the dog to your childhood teacher. You can see that your thoughts are just moving, drifting from one thing to another. We can't even call this 'thinking'. It is just 'association', that's all. You associate the dog with your childhood, your childhood with the teacher, and so on.

Actually, if you do this exercise just once, the very understanding that it gives you will transform the way you think about yourself, and how you treat yourself and others. Your whole life will be transformed.

How does our mind work?

How do we create thoughts and how do we give meaning to them?

How do we experience life?

The nature of the mind

Let me give you a simple diagram to understand how thoughts flow in the mind and how you connect them.

Each thought in your mind is shown here as a rectangle. Each is a different shape, size, and color. Different thoughts are continuously flowing in you. One may be related to pain or a painful experience. Another may be related to joy or a joyful experience. The next one may be related to joy, but you think of it as pain. It is referred to as JP on the chart – joyful

experience, painful impression. Similarly you may have a thought that is related to a painful experience, but you think of it as joy. It is referred to as PJ – painful experience, joyful impression.

Generally, all your thoughts are related to something about the past or the future. You cannot have thoughts about the present. In the present moment you can have only consciousness, no thoughts. Thoughts are either related to some joyful experiences that you had in the past and want to have in the future, or painful experiences that you had in the past and don't want to have again.

Even at the time of some serious problem, you will suddenly have a positive thought. Even in the peak of joy, you will have some unconnected negative thought. Each thought is completely independent, completely unconnected to the previous thought. That is why you are able to have a happy thought amidst sad thoughts and vice versa.

Understand that no two thoughts are logically connected. No thought is responsible for the creation of another thought. They all appear randomly, independently, and illogically.

How do you 'unclutch' from this random stream of thoughts? We will be using the word 'unclutch' again and again. Let's clearly define what is meant by 'unclutch'. When we change gears while driving a car, whether we change from first to second, or second to third, or any gear for that matter, we have to pass through neutral every time. We have to completely depress the clutch, or 'unclutch', move through neutral, and only then we can go to the next gear, right? In the same way, we experience a neutral space between any two thoughts in our mind. That neutral space, that silence that exists between two thoughts, is peace and bliss. When we no longer grab onto thoughts and connect them to the past or future, we remain 'unclutched'. As we remain 'unclutched' from our thoughts we become more aware of the neutral spaces between thoughts. The gap between the thoughts will automatically extend when we remain 'unclutched' from the stream of thoughts. We will dwell in the neutral space longer and experience more and more peace and bliss.

Awareness

The ultimate key

When you suddenly become aware, any thought that flows in front of you becomes your life for that moment. You start giving attention to it, either to fulfill it or to escape from it. It is like slides on a projector. Any slide that is kept in front of the projector light is seen as reality on the screen. The problem is that in your inner space, the projector light is not continuously on. When I say projector light, I mean your awareness. It just comes and goes, comes and goes – you are not fully, continuously aware.

Many times, even though your eyes are open and your body is moving, you are not aware of your existence. An example from everyday life is like when you get into your car and drive for half an hour to the office. It is only after you reach the office, park the car, and get out, do you suddenly realize, 'Oh, I have reached the office!' It means that in those moments of driving, the projector light was off most of the time.

Any slide that is placed in front of the projector during moments that the projector light, your awareness, is off is not part of your life. You don't remember it at all. When the light comes on again, when your awareness comes back again, whatever thought you have at that time becomes a part of you. Understand that this is a very subtle truth. Your life is the totality of all the thoughts you have when you are aware and unaware.

Unfortunately, many times there are thoughts, many major decisions, and lifechanging incidents that happen when you are not aware. These are also part of your life, part of your biography. Unfortunately, you are not aware of these scenes,

Your life is the totality of all the thoughts you have when you are aware and unaware.

decisions, or thoughts when they come up. Without your knowledge

they have contributed significantly to your life.

Be very clear, every moment that passes in your life without you being aware of it, without your presence, is suffering. You will either directly or indirectly create situations for suffering. Just like when the turn indicator light in your car blinks, your consciousness blinks also. But, because of your lack of awareness, you do not know when it is on and when it is off.

I read a joke the other day:

One man got into his car and started the engine. He flipped on the turn indicator and asked his son to see if the light blinked in the rear of the car.

His son shouted back, 'Yes, it's on…no, it's not on…yes it's on…no it's off…now it's on!'

If you just see the thought flow in front of you, suddenly you will realize, 'Oh god, all these things are actually going on in me! I don't have a clue where I am heading. I don't know what is happening in me!'

You are not aware, but constantly you believe you are aware. That is the first illusion.

If you become aware continuously, you open up to reality for the first time. It might be a bit intense initially, because until now, you have spent most of your time in unawareness. Ultimately, it will lead you to experience only joy and bliss.

You are not aware of your true past

This is the first truth. You are not aware of all the things that are happening in front of you. You do not remember your biography as it happened. You remember it only as you want it.

Just take a simple example. Your life is filled with different kinds of incidents relating to joy, suffering, guilt, pain, and depression. You don't look at life as it is. What do you usually do? You collect only the incidents related to suffering and create a shaft, connecting only these ideas, and you think your life is nothing but suffering. You think that your life is a long chain of suffering, a pain shaft.

Very rarely, you create a joy shaft. It is very rare that you collect joyful incidents, create a joy shaft, and feel life is joy. It is rare not only in the number of joyful shafts, but also in the quality of them. Most of the time you collect all the painful memories and incidents, and create the idea that life is only pain. The moment you believe life is continuous painful occurrences, unconsciously you try to strengthen that belief, even though consciously you try to break the pain shaft. Please understand, your belief that life is a pain shaft or a joy shaft will stay only as long as you are unconscious, not when you are aware.

If you normally enjoy lustful thoughts, then whenever lustful thoughts cross your system, you come to the awareness, 'I exist'. If you normally enjoy violent thoughts, whenever violent thoughts come into your system, you come to life and know that you exist. This is what I call a vicious circle: you empowering negativity and negativity bringing you back to life, you empowering more negativity, and more negativity bringing to life perceived excitement.

The shaft that does not exist

Shaft of pain

There is a very beautiful analogy by Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened master from India. A dog chews a dry bone. As it chews, fragments of the bone will poke into its mouth making it bleed. The dog thinks the blood is coming from the bone and it enjoys the blood. It continues to chew on the bone for the pleasure of the blood! It doesn't realize that the blood is coming from its own mouth and not at all from the bone.

If violence excites you, you wait for that kind of incident in your life. If pain excites you, if you believe life is a pain shaft, you wait for that kind of incident in your life in order to strengthen and reinforce your belief. That is the general human psychology. Although people claim they want to break the violence shaft or pain shaft, they secretly nurture it.

Let me provide a deeper understanding. The pain that you had ten years ago, the pain that you had nine years ago, the pain that you experienced seven years ago, the pain that you experienced three years ago, and the pain that you experienced yesterday are all unconnected, independent, individual incidents. But you start connecting all of them and create a shaft of pain. You connect all these thought shafts and create one big shaft. You start thinking and believing, 'My life is pain.' Is that true? No! What happened to all the sweet incidents of joy that you experienced in between? Surely, there must have been at least a few moments of joy in between? They are simply forgotten. They are never picked to form a shaft. So the shaft, any shaft, is never true, because it focuses on only a fragment of your complete biography.

First, you start archiving the painful memories for utility purpose. You archive all your pains, probably for medical history sake or to tell your doctor. By and by, you start believing that all these pains that happened in your life are connected. You decide that your life is pain, your life is suffering. The moment you come to the decision that your life is pain or your life is suffering, you create hell for yourself.

For example, until yesterday you were only walking, you were not able to fly. You know in your past you never flew, you only walked. Can you believe you can start flying from tomorrow onwards? You can't. You know tomorrow you will still only be walking. You rely solely on your remembered past experiences to predict your future, eliminating many new possibilities.

There is one more important thing about pain that I want to share with you. This may look mystical, but let me be honest, Patanjali* says very clearly that any pain can be used as a door to enlightenment. The technique is to not label it as pain. Just observe and see what is going on. See the way a small child experiences something new with all excitement and curiosity. Do this with situations that you currently label as pain and see how the whole experience transforms.

When you just observe the pain, you come to understand two things. First, in the process of pain you will see your body rejuvenating itself, reconstructing itself. You incorrectly label this process of rejuvenation and call it pain. Second, when you stop labeling it 'pain', you stop resisting the pain sensation and it can heal more rapidly. When you label it as pain, not only are you fighting with the selfhealing process, you are also elongating the process and creating more pain.

Shaft of joy

The joy that you experienced ten years ago, the joy that you experienced nine years ago, the joy that you experienced three years ago, and the joy that you experienced one year ago are all independent, individual, unconnected thought shafts. At the present time, you connect all of those thoughts and create a big shaft of joy.

You may identify your joy with an object, a person, or a space like a particular vacation resort. Now you will try again and again to bring that back in your life, to bring that person, that object, that space, or that same incident back in your life. Try as you might, you will not be able experience the same joy again. This puts you in further pain!

Patanjali - A sage of ancient India and author of Yoga Sutras, which is the foundation of the system of yoga.

In life, we constantly create either shafts of pain or joy. Once you create a shaft of pain, you try to break it. If you create the shaft of joy, you try to elongate it! But you don't understand that you can neither elongate the joy shaft nor break the pain shaft - simply because the shaft itself doesn't exist. It is just selective memory. The very shaft is your imagination.

Thoughts are like bubbles in a fish tank

There is no linear connection between one thought that we have and another thought that we have. The only relationship between thoughts is that they come from the same source. But we constantly connect one thought and the next thought in a linear manner.

Just as bubbles in a fish tank rise from the

Neither the joy shaft nor the pain shaft exists.

bottom, our thoughts also rise in the same manner. When one bubble comes and reaches the surface of the water, the next bubble starts and then the third bubble starts. Because the bubbles are rising at a high speed, they look like a continuous stream! Actually there is always a gap between two bubbles.

Like the bubbles, we also experience a neutral space between two thoughts. Since the gap or the neutral space between two thoughts is so small, we think all thoughts are connected and form a shaft. But there is always a gap between two thoughts.

Let me tell you about an incident that happened:

A middle aged man came to me and said, 'Swamiji, I am going to divorce my wife. Please bless me!'One gentleman around forty five years of age came up to me and said, 'Swamiji, I am going to divorce my wife, please bless me.' I told him, 'I only bless people for marriages. Why do you want me to bless you for a divorce?' He replied, 'No, you have to bless me, because I have suffered so much.'

I said, 'Suffering is always give-andtake. It is never just taking. You must have given your wife enough suffering

The only relationship between thoughts is that they come from the same source.

too. So, please tell me the truth about what happened and then we

will analyze the situation.'

He replied, 'How do I decide which incidents to tell you, and which ones to leave out? There are so many of them! From day one she has been torturing me. You don't know how much torture I have gone through!' Then he narrated an incident from the day of his marriage.

In Indian villages, when a wedding takes place, the newly married couple plays games after the marriage ceremony. For one of the games, a ring is dropped inside a pot filled with water. The husband and wife put their hands inside and compete to pick up the ring. Whoever grabs it first wins. These small games were created mainly to reduce the unfamiliarity between the couple because in arranged marriages the bride and groom first meet during the wedding ceremony. They have small games to reduce the distance between the couple because they are new to each other.

This man said, 'During that game, she scratched my hand. With her nails, she scratched my hand!' And he started a big story about everything that she had done to him since that day! For all practical purposes, he had kept a file, like a police report from the first day of his marriage.

After two or three incidents, I told him, 'Please stop! If this is the case, she should be happier than you to part ways. It is very difficult to live with someone who keeps such large and detailed files in his head!' Any time she does something, this man will always be looking through the files.

Then he told me the immediate reason for the divorce. He said, 'She spilled some coffee on my clothes!' I told him, 'Spilling coffee on your clothes cannot be a reason for a divorce!'

He said, 'No, you don't know. Today she poured coffee; tomorrow she will pour acid!' He really said this. I did not understand the connection. I asked him how he could possibly connect coffee and acid. Again he said, 'No, no Swamiji, you don't know.'

He may seem extreme and you may laugh when you hear this. But just look intensely at your own life. You are doing the same thing - constantly creating illogical connections. You forget to see incidents as being independent of each other. You forget to see thoughts as being independent.

If you just learn this one simple technique of unclutching, you will be able to retain a significant amount of energy in your system, in your being. As a result, you will be many times more productive and creative. Your relationships will be much friendlier because you will not clutch incidents that are not related. You will not feel suffocated by people or their expectations of you. You will have tremendous inner space available to you to fulfill your needs, as well as others' needs. You will also have tremendous compassion to know why others are suffering. It is only when you don't understand why the other person is suffering that you are harsh with them. When you unclutch, you are able to accommodate that person in your inner space. You are automatically compassionate. Your very life has a different quality and you become a different person in the world.

It is never the 'same'

Every single happening in our lives is unconnected, even our everyday activities like eating and drinking. Each and every experience is independent by its own right. Drinking water yesterday and drinking water today are two completely different incidents. The food that you ate yesterday and the food that you eat today are different, even if they seem physically the same! But your mind creates the shaft between these two incidents and says, 'I eat the same food every day.'

Please be very clear, you don't eat the same food every day. You may use the same word 'eating' for both the experiences, but they are not the same experience. Do not be cheated by the words that you use. Yesterday's eating, tod-ay's eating, and tomo-rrow's eating are separate incidents, separate experiences. They are completely independent and unattached.

A beautiful incident from the life of an enlightened master from central India:

During the last ten years of his life, the doctors asked the master to eat a particular kind of food. He was not allowed to eat anything else. He had to eat the same kind of food three times a day, everyday.

After two years the person who cooked for him came and complained, 'Master, I am bored with cooking the same food. How are you able to eat the same food day after day?'

The master just laughed and said, 'I am not eating the same food every day. How can I eat the same food every day? I can only eat this food today. Tomorrow's food is totally different!'

Life is new Every single happening in our lives is unconnected.

every moment. It is the mind that

makes it look repetitive, dull and mundane.

From fear to freedom

Your fear gives power to the mind

When a local gangster steps out on the first day of his job, he has a little fear. Once the people start obeying him, even if he is unsure of himself, just seeing people obey him gives him confidence, 'Yes, now I am a great guy!' His whole body language changes.

In the same way, when the mind comes to attack you, initially it will not have enough confidence. But when it sees that you are afraid of it, it gains confidence and traps you! You give confidence to the mind to attack you. Once you show your fear, once you show that you are very fragile, that is enough for your mind and you are caught.

The person who wants to exploit you first makes you believe that you can't run your life without him. He gives you the impression that you cannot survive without him. Once you fall for it, he starts exploiting you and playing games with you. The moment you start believing that you cannot survive without him, you start putting up with him even though it is an abuse.

In the same way, the first thing your mind does is convince you that you cannot be alive without it. The moment it convinces you of this, nothing more needs to be done. Then you never try to drop the mind!

Just let Go…and you can fly!

I saw this in my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern India the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. The rope is tied at the midpoint of the stick. This is actually a hunter's trap for birds.

You may think, 'How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?' Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope, that's all.

When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird's own weight turns the whole stick upside down, it turns topsy-turvy. The bird is now hanging upside down, clinging to the stick.

The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds onto the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, 'If I unclutch from this stick, what will happen? I will fall and die.'

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head! But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose its freedom, it loses its life too, because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don't realize that if you just drop your mind, at that moment you can become a Paramahamsa* . That very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird's fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can't let go and if it does it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, 'I can't let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent and illogical thoughts, I might be lost.'

The hunter comes leisurely, after four or five hours, takes the bird, puts it in the cage, and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn't know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away!

Paramahamsa - Literally means Supreme Swan. Title bestowed on enlightened beings.

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security – your education, your mind, your life, your relationships, or your bank balance. Yama* ultimately comes to remove the stick that is your identity. Then you are neither a Paramahamsa, a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching, because the stick itself is an illusion.

Let me tell you, if the bird lets go and relaxes, it may flutter to balance for a moment or two. It may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying.

Be very clear, let go and you will never fall and die. You will only become a Paramahamsa!

This moment, trust yourself. Don't bother about losing your identity. Just trust yourself and let go of your identity. You will immediately become a Paramahamsa and be liberated. All you need to do is to trust that you are unclutched. Even if you don't trust that it is still the truth!

Safety net of the sangha

When you unclutch, there will be some revolutionary changes in your life, your day-to-day thinking, your decision-making, and your daily routine and your lifestyle. Courageously going through that revolution, going through the transformation that happens in you, is what I call tapasor penance.

On rare occasions during my wanderings, I have seen a bird hanging on the stick. Another bird that was once stuck in the trap, but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back. It pokes the hanging bird and says, 'Hey, let go! Relax! I was like you. I had the same problem. When I relaxed I just started flying. All it takes is just two or three seconds to balance. When I opened up, I never fell and broke my head or died. I only became liberated. I only became a free bird. Come on...' But the hanging bird will not believe it.

Understand that the responsibility of the free bird is to go about freeing other birds. It is the responsibility of the free bird to go and poke the bird trapped on the stick and say, 'Free yourself.' I am that free bird and I have created a safety net. Even if you fall, you won't hurt yourself. Relax! Let go, you will only fly! See, the sangha,

Yama - Hindu god of death and justice.

the community of the master, is the net. Even if you fall, you will not hurt yourself.

First of all, you will not fall. But just to give you the deeper assurance, the sangha, the spiritual community, is created. So, I invite all of you to come and experience the sangha.

Understand that it is a free bird's responsibility to liberate all the trapped birds, to help them, to inspire them to free themselves.

Similar to the bird trap, hunters also have a trap to catch monkeys. They catch monkeys using a small box for a trap. They place some sweets inside a box that has a small opening. The monkey puts its hand inside the box and grabs the sweet. As long as the monkey holds onto the sweet, it will not be able to take its hand out because its fist is larger than the hole!

If the monkey lets go of the sweet, it can remove or slide its hand out immediately. But the monkey is not intelligent enough to realize that. It holds on to the sweet and just because it is holding on, it is not able to take its hand out. If it just lets go of the sweet, it can take its hand out and be free. If you allow the understanding of this story to happen in you, you will instantly unclutch from your shafts and be free this very moment.