32. Everything in life is a choice you make

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

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

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

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

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

A small story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vasana, samskara and karma

There are three interrelated concepts, termed vasana, samskara and karma, in Sanskrit.

Vasana

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

Samskara

Samskara is the plant that grows when the seed of vasana sprouts. When you see that

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

necklace again and again, the desire to possess it

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Samskaras in the seven layers of the body

We have seven energy layers in our body.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pranic - Related to prana or life energy.

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

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

seven different layers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tamas - Attribute of inaction.

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

Pranic layer and the desire samskaras

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

Mental layer and guilt samskaras

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

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

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

flowing continuously towards the past, it is guilt.

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

Emotional Layer and Pain Samskaras

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

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

Pranic - Related to prana or life energy.

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

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

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

Causal layer and deep sleep

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three types of karma

There are three types of karma agamya, prarabdha and sanchita.

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

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

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

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

Prarabdha is a part of the sanchita karma you have brought into this life.

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

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

The way out of the daily irritation - living your prarabdha karma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The way out of the cycle of karma

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

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

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

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

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

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