9. Guilt Is The Original Sin

When you have desires you have guilt as well. Guilt is the opposite face of desire. Sometimes you feel guilty about desiring something because you feel it is not right to desire it. Other times you feel guilty when your desires are fulfilled because you feel you are not deserving of what you receive. When your desires do not come true you feel guilty because you feel you have not done what you ought to have. Desires invariably lead to guilt.

Guilt is nothing but your past decisions and actions being reviewed with your updated intelligence.

For example, when you were in school, you might have said a few mean things to one of your friends which caused a relationship to break. Now, this many years later, with the intelligence that you have, is it right to review that incident and feel guilty? No! At that time you had only that much intelligence, so you behaved in that fashion. Now, you have updated intelligence.

It doesn't make sense to review the past with your present intelligence.

The futility of the past

What is gone is gone. What has been done is done. You cannot undo it. Now if you constantly think about the past and feel guilty, you destroy your present and your future too. Nothing can be done about it, so guilt is useless. What can you do? All that you can do is not repeat the same pattern again, that's all. At that time with whatever intelligence you had, you acted, that's all.

The past is always past, it is always dead. That is why it is called past. Yet we always let the past affect us. How do we allow the past to affect us? In two ways:

1. If you review your past incidents or decisions using the present intelligence, you will create guilt in your being.

2. If you base your present decisions on past experiences, you will be repeating the same past into the future also, maybe in a little updated fashion!

Even though you might not commit exactly the same mistake, you will be moving in the same experiential level, in the same plane.

Our mind falls into a groove, a track, a mindset that forces it to do what it has always done. So we keep making the same mistakes as well.

There are three kinds of guilt that take root in us and kill our intelligence:

• 1. Guilt created by immediate family
• 2. Guilt created by social laws
• 3. Guilt created by ourselves

Before the age of seven, guilt is created by your immediate family. If you don't do according to your parents' wishes, they instill guilt in you. They tell you that god will not approve of what you are doing. Poor god, he has to support whatever anyone says about him! Or your parents tell you that you should respect their wishes as parents. Immediately you feel guilty of making them unhappy. In this way, family sows the first guilt in you. You in turn pass it on to your child. Like a crown, it is passed on over generations.

Because you don't have the knowledge to explain why things have to be done in a certain way, you change it to a rule and impose it on the child and create guilt through it. For example, children love whirling. They love moving and flowing with the body. It is a natural way for them to center their energy. But what do we do? We stop the child and put the fear in him that he may fall. We don't stop our efforts until we make the child stiff, frozen and dull like us!

The child may want to go outside and play in the sun or collect some flowers or just jump around in the fresh air. If you think about it, it is not much the child is asking for. But the mother says 'no' - he may fall ill due to the hot sun. If you look a little deep, you can see that by saying 'no' she gets a subtle feeling of power, of being in control. She might say it is the sun but it is subtler than that.

The 'no' by the mother actually has a deep impact on the child. It creates guilt in the child. Now, the child may force himself to stay in or he may escape from his mother's eyes and step out. But either way his raw energy is being suppressed. If he forces himself to stay in, his energy is not being allowed to express. If he goes out, he will feel guilty, he will be afraid that somebody might spot him. And all this for nothing big, just for playing in the sun!

As the child grows, this deep engram of guilt will actually settle inside him. Even after he grows up into a man and becomes independent, he may be sitting in the lawn under the sun and those childhood memories may be triggered. He may feel guilty and uneasy for no reason. There is nothing to feel guilty about just sitting in the lawn, but the old memories are awakened.

This is how guilt arises. Small incidents like this collect and make guilt your natural way of life.

Guilt and happiness

Why can't we enjoy and encourage the natural joy and happiness the child lives in?

If you look a little deep, you can see that happiness itself has become associated with guilt. A small child knows nothing of guilt, he is just wild and natural. That is why seeing a small child can be so captivating. He is total in whatever he does. He has not been introduced to the mask of civilization. He is still wild. That is why he is so full of energy. He is overflowing with joy and curiosity, he is just vibrating with the energy bubbling inside him.

The child wants to enjoy everything, but the parents are filled with the conditionings of society like guilt, seriousness, hypocrisy. The child wants to shout and jump and dance; that is his natural expression. But the adults stop him, 'Don't shout! It is bad manners. You should be civilized. You should carry yourself well like us.' By and by, the notion of being free and happy is itself associated with feelings of guilt.

From seven to fourteen, society creates guilt in you through its rules. The guilt based on fear is created by social laws. Till the age of

Guilt is the greatest sin. Guilt will punish you when you are alive.

fourteen, family and society create guilt for you. An important guilt in this is the guilt of sex. Parents or family never open out the topic of sex. When there is a chemical change happening in you, you feel your body is new. A lot of questions arise and clarity is needed, but no one is prepared to give it.

And to add to the confusion and desire, the media around you constantly bombards you with fantasies in that vulnerable age of change.

To add to it, society instills in you the feeling that you are not enough unto yourself. It makes you feel guilty of what you are, what you do. Once it convinces you that you are a sinner, you are caught in its grips. Then you cannot enjoy the joy of life any more.

According to me, guilt is the greatest sin. At least other sins will punish you after your death. Guilt will punish you when you are alive.

The Tibetan poet-saint Milarepa sang, 'My religion is to live and die without regret.'

You are called a saint or a sinner only by society. As long as society labels you a

saint, you are a saint. The moment society labels you a sinner, you are a sinner. If you kill someone in society, you will be called a murderer, you will be punished. But if you kill someone on the battlefield you will be called a hero, you will be given a big award! So there is no absolute scale to decide what is right and what is wrong. It is society's own logic.

The means to exploit

People who create rules and regulations in order to create guilt in you hide their personal lives because it would be completely opposite to the rules set up by them. But they set up the rules so they can exploit you through guilt. Once you have the idea of guilt sown in you, you can be exploited easily by society. That is why guilt is the first thing that society sows in you.

A guilty person can never be at ease with himself. He will always lack selfconfidence. He will always look for a leader for guidance. This is where society steps in and exploits him.

Society functions on your guilt. The more you feel guilty, the more society becomes powerful. It attracts you with the keys to get you out of the guilt it put inside you in the first place. First it creates the disease, then it sells the medicine.

Another important thing is that only people who don't practice or can't practice teachings give teachings to others continuously, they give them more and more words. When you yourself overflow with words and find you are not able to practice them, you catch others and start teaching the same words! Actually it is a nice way of escaping from guilt. By making others feel guilty, you don't feel the guilt. It is just a chain process.

A small story:

Once four monks sat around a candle and decided to meditate in absolute silence for the next five days looking at the wick of the candle. At the end of the first day, suddenly the candle started to flicker.

One monk blurted out, 'Oh no, the candle is about to go out.'

The second monk told the first, 'Remember, we were not supposed to talk.'

The third monk blurted out, 'Why do you both keep talking?'

Finally the fourth monk exclaimed, 'I am the only one who did not talk!'

When we point out other people's mistakes, we don't realize we may be guilty of exactly the same thing. If we look in, we will find that in many situations where we correct others, we are also guilty of the same mistake, but because we are in a socalled higher position, we escape the guilt.

The dilemma

Guilt means you have done something which others don't want you to do. If you don't listen to society and listen to your natural intelligence, you feel guilty of doing something wrong. You are afraid and start defending yourself. You even pretend that you have not done it. You are in constant tension with life. Instead if you do something that others approve, you are not happy doing it because it is most often not what you naturally feel like doing. This is the dilemma you are caught in.

Guilt creates a dual personality, a schizophrenia in you – to the outside world you are one person and deep down inside yourself you are another. Guilt is a wedge inserted into your inner space which makes you take on double standards.

Heaven and hell

A very subtle and cunning way of sowing guilt today is through the idea of heaven and hell. People exploit your fear and greed by showing you ideas of hell and heaven. They create in you greed for heaven and fear for hell. They create so many concepts of hell and heaven and sell them to you. They say, 'If you practice these types of things, you will be

Guilt is a wedge inserted into your inner space which makes you take on double standards.

rewarded with heaven. If you practice otherwise, you will be punished with hell.' When you are given rules based on greed and fear, you automatically start creating deep guilt in you.

A small story:

Once a military general asked a Zen master, 'Master, what are heaven and hell?'

The master asked, 'What do you do for a living?'

The general replied, 'I am a general.'

The master just laughed, 'Which idiot asked you to be a general? You look more like a butcher!'

The general was furious and took out his sword shouting, 'I will cut you to pieces.'

The master just raised his hand and said, 'These are the gates of hell.'

The general realized his folly and bowed down deeply to the master for forgiveness.

The master continued, 'These are the gates of heaven.'

Heaven and hell are not physical locations. They are psychological states of your mind.

Be very clear, heaven and hell are not physical locations. They are

psychological states of your mind. One instant the mind may be in hell and the next it may be in heaven. The gates to heaven and hell open and close at any time alternately.

Till the age of twenty one, knowledge from family and society creates guilt. After twenty one, the guilt sown in you by family and society grows roots inside you. Then you start creating guilt for yourself without any reason. Guilt becomes a permanent guest in your being!

The guilt created by family and the guilt created by society are imposed guilt; they are like a crown that is passed on from one generation to another. The third guilt is the worst; it is the one which you create for yourself. When you internalize guilt based on greed and fear, you create new types of guilt for yourself.

The moment you start feeling guilty about something, you can be exploited. And when you start fighting with yourself it is easier to exploit you.

If you look into your life you can see how every moment you are subtly looking for some reason to fight with yourself, to feel discontent with yourself. You cannot remain without some conflict, you want to create misery for yourself because that is what you have been taught – happiness is a sin.

The stone of Guilt in the river of your mind - the block in the flow of intelligence

You are designed to move like a freely flowing river. Guilt is like the rocks in the path of the water. Society has subtly branded happiness as a sin. That is the problem. That is why you will notice, when everything is going smoothly and happily, there will be a lurking feeling of guilt in you. You are taught by society that being happy and enjoying life is being irresponsible in a way. So you feel guilty.

But when you feel sad and depressed, do you ever feel guilty? No!

You are taught that life is a chain of suffering and endurance, with happiness stepping in once in a while.

This is also why people can't take it when you are happy and smiling all the time. They try their best to bring you back to the so-called reality, by instilling guilt in you.

When you are enjoying, dancing or relaxing at the beach for example, suddenly you will observe guilt starts rising in you about all the work that is pending, about all the responsibilities that need to be fulfilled.

Guilt has no basis, but it can destroy your whole life. If you can live without guilt, you will enjoy every moment without any regret and still fulfill all your responsibilities.

The problem is that your being is a crowd of voices that don't belong to you. It is a totality of your mother's voice, your father's voice, your teacher's voice, your neighbor's voice and what not! All these voices are in there. If there is only one voice, you will never have any problem. Your mind will move like a river. But there are so many voices telling you so many things and creating the rocks of guilt in your path.

As long as you flow like a river, you will express extraordinary intelligence in your life. You will live with an energy that is overflowing every minute. The moment you allow guilt in you, the moment you are stopped in your free flow, you create energy clots inside your being.

Once you become aware of how you are driven by guilt, you can start practicing to come out of it. When you start practicing anything, naturally you

The moment you start feeling guilty about something, you can be exploited.

will slip a few times. When you practice to be without guilt, you are bound to slip back into the older patterns of greed and fear. Then suddenly you will remember, 'Oh, I started working out of fear,' 'I started working out of greed.' Then you will start afresh. When you start working, naturally you will see these things happening.

A small story:

A monk from a big spiritual organization was sent to a remote tribal area for doing service. Suddenly, the headquarters received a lot of complaint letters about the monk.

The president after reading the letters said, 'We have posted the right person.'

The secretary asked him, 'What is this Sir? We are getting complaints about him. How do you say we have posted the right person?'

The president replied, 'If we are getting complaints, it means he has started working, there is something happening!'

When you start something new you will have three phases. The first is resistance. The next is just indifference– people will Nobody can hurt you unless you allow. Nobody can help you unless you allow.

neither care nor resist. The third is acceptance.

In the same way, when you start doing anything inside your system, you will start growing, but

these three phases will be there. The first phase will be resistance. You will feel the new practice is a difficult change in your current system. Because of this, the next thing that happens is you start avoiding opportunities where you should be practicing the change. Again and again you will go back to your older ways. Your system will resist, it will try to create all kinds of complications, all possible arguments. If you allow the resistance to grow, you become your own enemy.

Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, 'Let you lift yourself by yourself. If you don't, you will be your worst enemy.' It is up to you to help yourself as your best friend or hurt yourself as your worst enemy.

Nobody can hurt you unless you allow. Nobody can help you unless you allow.

If you have forgotten the practice, remember and again and again lift yourself. Don't fall into depression, don't have guilt. Don't think you will not be able to do it.

Even if you read in the life of enlightened master Buddha, he was about to leave the body when his disciples asked him to give his ultimate message, and he said Atma deepo bhava – Let you be your own light, let you be guided by yourself.

Guilt is actually the shadow of the ego.

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

The first way – feeling guilty

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

Getting out of addictions

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

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

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

Understand, when you carry guilt, you have already decided you can't change the future, and if you do have the confidence that you can change the future, you will not carry guilt. The deeper the guilt, the higher the chances of committing the same mistake in the future. There is a beautiful character named Vali* in the Hindu epic Ramayana * . The story goes All your negativity has only one power, and that power is nothing but your faith in that negativity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 4: Living Enlightenment (Gospel of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM)

The second way – looking in

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

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

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

Integrity

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

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

A small story:

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

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

Be aware, be spontaneously right

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

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

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

Go beyond right and wrong...

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

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

There are so many rules and so many regulations in different places, different situations and different societies. Where is the scale for all the so-called morality? It is a set of local customs. In the course of time, it becomes morality.

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

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

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

Conscience Vs Consciousness

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

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

People ask me, 'Swamiji, what is this? You are pulling down the whole social structure. Then how can we all live morally?' I tell them, 'Be very clear, it is only for kids that you need a forced morality. For them you need to say, 'Keep quiet, I will give you candy.' Of course, nowadays kids reply, 'I am happy. I don't need your candy. Who cares for your candy!' For a child you can say that you will give candy and restrict him. You can impose morality on him based on fear or greed. But for you, it is time to grow up. You are not kids anymore. Just stand up with consciousness. When I say consciousness, I mean the intelligent energy of your being.

The natural instinct to break rules

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

A small story:

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

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

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

The thrill of 'no'

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

A small story:

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

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

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

A small story:

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

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

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

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

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

Only life can teach

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

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

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

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

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

Dead rules Vs Live intelligence

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

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

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

A small story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

A small story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nobody can live life based on any law

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

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

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

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

The way out of rules - escape or revenge

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

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

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

You are a Nithya Mukta – eternally free

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

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

bigger car, more comforts etc. Your search

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Responsibility for your choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guilt is the sure killer of intelligence. According to me, guilt is the worst killer of intelligence. It will never let you move in your life.

Once one of our devotees had a tumor at the base of her spinal cord. For twenty years she suffered with the tumor. She came to THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM complaining, 'Please help me, heal me. I am suffering with this tumor for so many years. After undergoing surgery, it has reappeared.'

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM started talking to her slowly to trace the origin of the problem. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM asked her a few questions at the end of which she finally opened up and started weeping. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM asked her, 'Do you have any guilt related to your sex energy?' She slowly opened up.

She said she was physically abused when she was very young. One of her close relatives had abused her for many years. That guilt stayed with her. She said, 'I started hating that part of my body. I started feeling that this part of the body should not exist in me. I felt that part of my body was not my being. My hatred towards that person turned towards my own body.'

Her hatred was so deep. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM continued speaking to her. Slowly she opened up more and more. When she brought the guilt out, she came out of the guilt. She was psychologically healed.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM gave her a small meditation technique to meditate on that area. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM told her, 'Express your anger towards that man. Weep, shout, cry, hit. Close the doors, take a pillow, imagine that it is he and show your anger on it. After that sit silently and feel that part of your body also as your own. Feel love towards that part of the body.'

You will be surprised that in just ten days, the tumor disappeared! It never recurred.

Most of our ailments are due to psychological disturbances where guilt plays a major role.

Most of the time, our energy flow gets blocked because of guilt. If you look deep, wherever you are not able to move, wherever you are not able to take decisions, wherever you have fear, there will be some guilt lurking.

Acceptance is a wonderful tool to relieve yourself of the pull and push between the past and future. With acceptance you fall into the present straightaway. The first thing is to accept all the happenings of the outer world and all the happenings of the inner world. Whatever problems you have in the outer world and whatever problems you have in the inner world, just accept them in their entirety. Summarize all that you experience as problems and accept them in totality.

Accept all guilt, all mistakes and all failures. Even if you cannot accept, accept that you cannot accept. You will then relax and guilt will drop from your mind.

Just try this small experiment:

Just relax for three days with complete acceptance. If you relax for three days without the pull and push in the inner and outer worlds, are you going to lose all your wealth? Surely not! So there is no problem. In three days you are not going to lose anything. Why don't you give it a try? Just for three days, sincerely, utterly, accept everything in your life one hundred percent! If you are not able to accept one hundred percent, then accept that you are not able to accept one hundred percent. Even the acceptance of 'I am not able to accept myself in the inner world and outer world' will make you drop from the pull and push between the past and future. The moment you understand, 'I am unable to free myself from the pull and push of desires and fears, I am not able to accept my reality,' that very understanding will start doing its job.

If you can fall into the present moment, relaxing from the outer world and inner world things, in three days you will have a glimpse: What is life? What does it mean to live in the present moment? If this happens to you, you will experience such ecstasy, such a different space, such a different life that you have never experienced before.

You have lived based on your philosophy for maybe the last thirty years. Just for three days, don't try to alter anybody in the outer world. You will see that when you experiment with such great techniques, they work miracles in your being. They start a great alchemy process in your being. If you are not able to be sincere, accept that you are not able to be sincere. Even that sincerity is enough. You will start seeing a different space in you.

Let you be very clear, you can never help yourself by creating guilt. Is there a single person who says, 'No, I changed myself by creating guilt'? Never!

You might have stopped expressing the guilt attitude. You might have stopped doing that act for which you feel guilty. But unless you get to the root of guilt and work, it does not leave your system completely. Only the symptoms change.

A doctor asks a patient, 'You came to me with the complaint that you are hearing a telephone ringing sound in your ears. How do you feel after the medicine?'

The patient says, 'Oh, after the medicine I get only engaged tone!'

The ring tone may change into the busy signal. It does not mean the signal has disappeared completely!

The society which is created based on power and politics, by business people and politicians naturally will have techniques only to keep people in guilt. They need to control, so they will put people in guilt. Only through guilt people can be easily controlled. But the social system created by enlightened masters helps people to be liberated and move towards more and more expression of freedom. Understand the big difference between the society created by enlightened masters and the social structure created by politicians and businessmen.

In the system created by the masters, they constantly give you confidence. Even when you fail, they say, 'No, don't worry. Just because you committed a sin, you are not a sinner. Committing a sin is different, being a sinner is different.' There is no word 'sinner' used to address people in the ancient vedic system of enlightened masters. They address human beings as amrutasya putraha* or Sons of Immortality!

A small story:

A disciple goes to a master asking, 'Master, how can I become free? How can I attain liberation?'

The master asks him, 'Who has imprisoned you?'

The disciple replies, 'Nobody.'

The master asks, 'Where are the chains to bind you?'

The disciple replies, 'I have no chains.'

The master says, 'Then what are you trying to be free from?'

Just look at animals. You cannot find guilt in any animal. It just is. It has no ideals, no perfectionist attitudes and no discontent. That is why it is beautiful and innocent. But in the case of man, he always has an image of how everything should be, including himself, his family, situations, society - everything. He is always yearning to be what he is not.

This can be healthy and unhealthy. When you are yearning to actualize your potential, it is a healthy yearning. But most of the time we yearn to achieve only based on the ideas society imposes on us and the ideas we borrow from others.

Once you are caught in these imposed desires and ideals, you can never relax and enjoy the journey of life. You will always be discontented. And the more dissatisfied you are with yourself, the more it becomes impossible to reach your ideal. It is a vicious circle.

Amrutasya putraha - A scriptural statement from Shvetashvatara Upanishad that says: Shrunvantu Vishve Amrutasya Putrahah that means 'You are the child of immortality', that all human beings are divine.

In the soil of dissatisfaction the seed of intelligence and spontaneity cannot grow.

In the soil of dissatisfaction the seed of intelligence, spontaneity cannot grow. You become like the horse with blinders, with a narrow vision of how you think things should be.

If you are not dissatisfied with yourself, if you accept yourself as you are, what you really need can be fulfilled here and now.

Society teaches you constantly that you are not complete. It induces in you a fear, an inferiority complex so you will not be confident and independent. Then your intelligence gets suppressed and you follow the rules put down by society.

You are already what you can be. All you need to do is just relax and let the energy of Existence flow through you.

If you are caught in bettering yourself, you cannot relax. You will be tense and always anxious that you are lacking in some way.

True religion says you are complete as you are. How else can you be when you have emerged itself from fulfillment? Man as such has emerged from fulfillment. So his very nature is fulfillment. This is what is implied in the great declarations such as Tat tvam asi – That Art Thou, Aham Brahmasmi – I am Brahman.

You are complete and you are total. You don't have to reach anywhere since you are already there. You don't have to become something because you are already that. It is just a question of waking up to this Truth.

Guilt of not being worthy of love

Many people carry the guilt of not being worthy of being loved. This guilt happens from young age conditioning. When we are children, our parents tell us, 'If you do this I will love you more. If you do that, I will give you a candy. If you listen to me, I will take you to a movie.' All these things take root in you and you grow up with a strong impression that you should deserve to be loved. You feel guilty if someone loves you without you doing anything to deserve it.

Many people when they come to me, carry the same guilt. Be very clear, you are here not because you deserve to be here. You are here as part of the flow of Existence, that's all. There is nothing deserving or undeserving in this. I am like a full cloud ready to shower. You don't need to do anything or deserve to be showered on.

There is no question of the master's love asking for any qualification from you to receive it.

If you are open, if you choose to stand with open arms, you will receive. Instead if you decide to open an umbrella of guilt and stand under it, naturally you will not receive much.

Guilt vs Gratitude

If you are caught in guilt, you can never feel connected to the Divine. The only way to get out of guilt completely is to feel the connectedness to your higher Self. But your very guilt acts as the barrier to this. The only way to overcome this guilt is to start melting with gratitude.

When you accept things as they are, when you experience the causeless blessings of the Divine, you become more and more grateful. Gratitude is the fragrance that can pervade your inner space and replace the smell of guilt.

With guilt, it becomes impossible to celebrate life. Guilt sits on your chest like a rock. You become heavy and frozen. It does not allow you to be free to dance, sing, laugh and love.

Total acceptance and surrender

Especially in the subject of master-disciple relationship, I have seen people creating a lot of guilt for themselves. When it comes to your relation with the master, you have certain fixed ideas as to how you should relate with the master, how you should receive him and such things. Based on this, you create guilt for yourself. Just receive the master in the way in which you are ready, that's enough. Every state is right, every stage is right, every relationship is right. Just be authentic and integrated about what you feel. That is enough.

Whatever way you feel, be honest about it to yourself and the master. And he will guide you to the final goal.

Don't set ideals looking at others. Your relation with the master is unique. You are close to him in your own way. Don't try to jump ahead of yourself. Then you will create your own suffering and feel guilty.

Accept yourself as you are, totally and unconditionally. The total acceptance will bring about an active and intense relaxation in which your natural intelligence will flower. Then the transformation will happen, the realization will happen of what you always were deep within you. Suddenly you will see that you have started moving, flowing. You move towards realization, just like the river moves

If you want to slow something down, hurry up.

towards the ocean on its own with no rules or directions from anybody.

Start living and flowing. Enjoy the ultimate surrender to Existence just as you are. Don't feel guilty, don't feel afraid you have missed. What you are searching for was always inside you. You were always complete. Then how can you miss? When you are relaxed, you can sense this completeness. But when you are guilty, you create a gap and then you feel you are incomplete and separate, away from the Whole.

For example, if you are talking to a child some concepts of philosophy, what do you expect the child to do? Naturally, he will not be interested. He will just continue jumping and playing around. Can you say there is anything is wrong in it? No.

In the same way, you are who you are. Be where you are. Whatever you can receive, receive. Don't feel guilty you are not able to receive in the way you imagine you should receive.

A small story:

Once a young boy set out in search of a master to study the art of swordfighting. He finally found a master and approached him to accept him as his disciple.

He asked the master, 'Master, if I study sincerely, how long will it take me to be a master at sword-fighting?'

The master replied, 'Maybe seven years.'

The disciple thought aloud, 'My mother is alone. I need to get back soon to take care of her. Master, if I work really hard, how long will it take me to become master of the art?'

The master replied, 'In that case, it may be twelve years.'

The disciple was surprised and asked, 'First you said seven years. But when I said I will work extra hard, you say twelve years. I am willing to undergo any hardship and sacrifice but I want to learn in the shortest time possible.'

The master replied, 'Oh, in that case, it may take eighteen years.'

If you try to jump ahead of the game, you create tension. It will take longer for you to achieve what you want to achieve.

As the Zen saying goes, if you want to slow something down, hurry up.

When you try to hurry up, it is like trying to make a bud bloom by opening out its petals. Can you call it real blooming? No. The bud can never be forced to bloom.

When the maturity happens, when the time comes, whatever needs to happen will happen. Life is beautiful when things happen at the correct time. Sometimes it will happen that you will hear me today but you will understand what you heard only after months or years. The seed I plant in you today may lie dormant inside you but it will sprout at the right time, in the right season. It is okay, don't be worried about it, don't feel guilty about it. If you start feeling guilt, in the agitation, the seed may even get lost.

Life is a dream

What you see as reality is actually just a dream. When you awaken to this truth, it is true knowledge. Then you relax, you are able to enjoy the dream, because you know it is not reality. It is just like in a game of chess. The players themselves may not see the right move because they are involved in the game. But a watcher of the game will know the right move. It is because he is not involved. So he can easily enjoy the game and intelligently know the next move.

You enjoy life more when you are watching, when you know it is a dream and you have nothing to lose. Then there is nothing to feel guilty about. You lead a life of celebration, living in this world yet detached from it. You enjoy it with no guilt.

It is like when you go to a theater. You watch a movie but you know it is not real. That is why you are able to enjoy it, no matter what happens on screen. When you come home you forget about it. Life is exactly like this. The whole world is like a movie on a vast screen. When you understand this, you can enjoy the movie. You realize there is nothing wrong in enjoying it.

Another common guilt is the guilt of following more than one master. Understand, feeling conflict about following different masters is nothing but a conflict inside yourself. There is no real conflict between the real masters. All masters are embodiments of the same energy. The energy is one and the same, there is no need for any conflict.

I always tell people: go around, pluck flowers from any garden and make a nice garland for yourself! But the problem is, people go around to many gardens, but don't pluck flowers from any garden, instead, they collect only thorns! If you are doing only window shopping, you don't learn from any master.

When you sincerely go to many masters, you will learn from all of them and become more intense. Once you become intense, it is better that you stay with only one master so that you start going deep with any one ideology. But if you don't learn anything from any master, it is better to stick to one. After all, what are you going to learn from so many masters that you can't learn from one? It means you are only a window shopper. Going to the first master itself is wrong if you are doing just window shopping. You will only be troubling him and troubling yourself. If you feel the master is only a teacher and not the path, just leave him.

The thumb rule is, if he is really your master, your heart will simply fall, you won't even think of anyone else!

1. Relive to relieve

Re-living is relieving. The best way to relieve yourself of guilt is to relive it. Sit in a meditative mood. Close your eyes and one by one bring to surface each of your guilts. Relive the wounds completely. Do not console yourself about the guilt. Open your eyes and write it all down in detail. Write in as detailed a way as possible. You will see that you are free from all the guilt feelings that you are carrying.

2. From head to heart

Sit down and close your eyes. Take slow and deep breaths, just for a few minutes. Along with it, feel that your head is being pressed into your heart, into the chest region. Become totally headless. You have no head now. You are headless.

Feel that you are breathing from the heart. Feel that you are seeing through the heart. Feel that you are smelling through your heart. Feel very clearly that you are breathing through the heart. Listen through the heart, see through the heart and feel through the heart.

Stand up. Have the consciousness from the heart and let your movements be as slow as possible. Don't walk. Just move your body around slowly. Remember that you are moving from the heart. Your center is the heart, not the head. Again and again, forget the head. Move from the heart. Remember you are a headless being.

Stand in one place. Now increase the speed slowly, very slowly. Remember to move from the heart, not from the head. Forget your head. You are a headless being moving.

(After few minutes)

Sit down where you are. Just be without the head. Sit only with your heart. Relax.

(After few minutes)

Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes.

3. Be a witness

The sure way to handle any emotion including guilt is to be a witness. Just watch it. Hindus call it being a sakshi, Sufis call it sahada. Don't do anything. Anything done under the impact of a negative emotion is bound to be wrong. Later guilt will arise. Just be a watcher, a witness. See it. It is there. You are not it. You are only the witness. You will be surprised how it goes away. It cannot be there forever. By its very nature, the mind will change state. In a few minutes the guilt will go and leave no trace behind that it ever existed.

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT