Innocence Regained Opens Many Doors To Life

Constantly, we are asked to be good, to be pure, and to be innocent. The idea of innocence is forced upon us. Constantly we are taught by society, by moralists, that something is right, something is wrong, something is pure, something is impure, something is good, and something is bad, something is innocent and something is corrupted. Constantly we are taught the idea of good and bad. We are forced to practice something that is good or what society thinks is good.

But life is no way related to what society believes in. Life is totally different. What society believes is different from what life is. There is a beautiful saying, 'When you think, you think in a generalized way. But when you live, you can't generalize.' This is like what they say in marketing, 'Think globally but act locally.'

Situations can't be generalized. In your life there are so many things where generalization is not possible, where you can't decide what to do and what not to do based on popular guidelines. All your ideas about morality, about right and wrong, might not have any relevance practically. Somebody asked me, 'Swamiji, why do our ancient Hindu scriptures not speak of gambling? Only the epics speak about gambling.'

I tell them that at that time there was no gambling, then how do you expect them to speak about gambling? Naturally no Hindu scripture bans gambling or drugs because at that time these problems did not exist. When it comes to morality it depends completely on the situation. Morality is relative, not existential.

Innocence means purity of the inner space, not being affected by thoughts or engraved memories. Let you be very clear, even if you are not expressing your emotions like anger, greed and lust, if they are present in your inner space, you are not as yet a total and innocent person. Socially you may be pure, that's all. On the other hand if you express your anger, lust and greed but nothing touches your inner space and you live like an innocent child, then be very clear, you are a pure being.

Children have greed and anger, but their inner space is beautiful and pure.

You can see children get angry. Children are greedy also.

They build their personality mostly on greed. That is why they are so aware and conscious of 'mine' attitude. Try to take away a toy from a child. The child will behave as if his life is taken away. He will scream and shout. This is because his whole personality is built upon 'mine' attitude. Children have greed and anger, but you cannot call them impure. This is because whatever you may think as impurity does not affect their inner space. They will sit and play with their toys and after a few hours they will throw them and go away. They don't carry anything in them. Their inner space is beautiful and pure.

You can't call them thieves even if they have stolen something because they don't have an idea that something belongs to someone and that you cannot take it from them. The idea that an object is someone's property does not exist in them. Innocence is purity. Knowing that an object is someone's property, even if you don't steal it but if you covet it some way, you have not become a thief as yet only because of the police, that's all.

Innocence is directly related to the inner space. It is in no way related to the outer world. In the Shiva Sutras, Shiva gives us techniques to achieve this innocence. If you follow Shiva's life as is described in the Hindu mythological stories, you will not be able to see any social or traditional innocence in him. But there will be the pure and ultimate innocence. The place where he lives or the way in which he lives is not directly related to his purity or innocence. Shiva lives in a cemetery where bodies are cremated, surrounded by spirits and ghosts.

The word Shiva in Sanskrit means causeless auspiciousness. This causeless auspiciousness, the energy to create bliss wherever he is, wherever he happens, arises out of his innocent inner space.

In the vedic tradition, there are scriptural writings called Upanishads. The word Upanishad in Sanskrit refers to teachings of a master to his disciples as they sat with him. There are 108 such Upanishads. They are the essence of the enlightenment science handed down by the great masters of the vedic times. One of these, the Chandogya Upanishad* describes a beautiful story:

A boy by name Satyakama goes to a master seeking enlightenment. The master gives him four hundred cows telling him, 'Take these cows. Go live in the forest and look after them. When

Chandogya Upanishad - One of the oldest and primary Upanishads or vedic scriptures.

these multiply into a thousand cows bring them back to me.'

Satyakama goes to the forest and lives with the cows, waiting for them to multiply. It takes many years for the cows to multiply to one thousand. For all those years he sits not talking to anybody, just being with the cows. Soon, he forgets the human language. In deep silence, not relating with any human being, he slowly loses his outer world identity.

By the time one thousand cows happen, he forgets how to count. He simply sits waiting, with a beautiful feeling of ecstasy.

Finally a cow comes to him and says, 'Sir, we have become one thousand now. We can go back to master.'

He replies, 'Is that so? Alright.'

Satyakama is in ecstasy. He has forgotten the way back. The cows lead the way. On the way back, animals, birds and even the fire that he kindles to cook his food instruct him on the nature of the Brahman, the ultimate Truth.*

When Satyakama returns to the master, the master looks at him and smiles. He says, 'You look so radiant like the knower of the Truth, Satyakama. Who taught you?'

Satyakama tells him how he had understood the Truth through animals and birds and requests the master to teach him the Truth in his own words.

The master says, 'You already know the Truth,' and blesses him.

The story says that just by being, just by listening to what nature has to say, Satyakama established himself in the Truth. He became enlightened.

Total innocence leads to enlightenment.

Satyakama asks the master for enlightenment and the master asks him to multiply cows! Many of you will ask, what do cows have to do with enlightenment? Fortunately Satyakama was not so intellectual. Fortunately he did not receive formal intellectual education. So he did not ask this question! He was simple, innocent and humble, ready for the transformation to happen. He had no logic to use.

Understand, unless you are without logic, or tired of logic, you cannot be ready for the transformation. Logic cannot help you understand even your own life. Logic

Brahman - Absolute, Cosmic Consciousness, formless god etc, all referring to the universal energy source of which the individual energy of soul is a holographic part.

cannot help you look even into your own mind. How can it help you change?

People ask me, 'Swamiji, why are you against logic?' I am not against logic. I am only telling you that all your suffering is because of logic without intelligence. Your logic creates so much politics inside you from morning till evening.

What is politics? It is nothing but differing opinions on the same subject, is it not? Now watch your mind. It says one thing in the morning and a different thing in the evening on the same subject. This creates the dilemma in your mind. Your mind itself is such dilemma.

People say that in all spiritual organizations there is so much politics. I ask them, 'What do you mean?'

There is politics inside the very persons who make this statement! To create politics, you don't even need two people. One person is more than enough. One single person with logic is enough because in the morning his logic will say something and in the evening it will say something else! Naturally the fight between you and you is politics! Am I right? Then why are you making the statement that even spiritual organizations have politics?

If you place the decisions that you make in the morning and the decisions that you make in the evening together in front of you, you will see a politician sitting inside you!

Logic does not allow you to be simple and innocent. It does not allow the transformation to happen easily. Logic has to be overcome for the transformation to happen. Only when there is no logic there can be innocence. Innocence is the space for transformation to happen.

In the case of Satyakama, fortunately he was not bitten by logic.

The disciple goes to the master for enlightenment and the master tells him, 'Alright, take these cows, go to the forest and stay there till they become one thousand cows. Then come back!'

If today's seeker was in that disciple's place he would have said, 'I think the master is trying to exploit me. He wants a thousand cows, which is why he is telling me to do this work. He is using me to get his work done.' Innocence is lost to logic! That is why no modern day seeker receives such amazing techniques.

Understand, this is not a mere story. It has got a great truth behind it. With innocence, Satyakama simply followed what the master said. Further, he lost his logic of counting. He was completely lost in ecstasy and joy. The mind stopped functioning. He didn't care about one thousand or two thousand. Just the innocence and acceptance caused the greatest happening of enlightenment in him! When you completely accept, you don't need the mind. The mind is necessary only when you live with struggles, only when you are fighting. Just this moment accept yourself in the outer world and the inner world. You will go out enlightened.

For so many years, completely accepting what the master said, Satyakama just was. What else can happen to him but enlightenment?

You may think, 'How can simple acceptance do such a big job?' The problem is that even spiritual knowledge is approached by us with the space of an intellectual mind. It is from that intellectual space that we ask the 'how'. Intellect always questions. Innocence straightaway starts practicing what the master says. That is the difference.

Shiva says in the Shiva Sutras, 'Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated.'

Why is he using the words 'senses shut down'? How do you find out if you are completely lost in something? Your senses will not work! You will not see or hear! That is the way to find out. If your senses still work, you are still not lost.

Shiva says, 'Absorb the ultimate truth, senses shut down, and be liberated.' When your senses are working you may think you are hearing, but you may not be actually listening. The sense organ may work, but not the energy that activates the sense organ. Hearing is different from listening. If you are only hearing then the intellect is still at play. If you are listening then you are lost. Then the intellect is no more. The click happens. You sit completely melting. You exclude everything except you and the master. You are utterly innocent and open like Satyakama. Then just one word from the master is enough and you become enlightened!

He means that in that utterly innocent and open state, initiation is enlightenment. Just a word is enough to enlighten. Shiva is giving initiation itself as a technique. He says, 'Just listen while the master is expressing the truth, and become enlightened!'

How can mere listening lead to enlightenment? Why did it happen to Satyakama when it is not happening to us? First thing, he was innocent and therefore intelligent to receive the master's instruction. Second, he was courageous enough to live with it. He had complete trust in the master.

Innocence always comes with trust.

I am not asking you to get me a thousand cows. No! I am asking you to come with the same mood as Satyakama. Come with the same innocence. You don't have to do exactly what Satyakama did. But you have to be like Satyakama. If your being is like that, in this moment the transformation can happen. Just in this moment the transmission of light can happen.

The word upanishad means 'sitting at the feet of the master'. In ancient Bharat, there was the gurukul tradition of masters and disciples. Children were left with the master at the age of seven and they grew up centering beautifully in their consciousness. Masters are living embodiments of the scriptural truths. Their thoughts, words and deeds stem from the ultimate Truth. Disciples pick up the truth just by living around them.

Swami Sri Yukteshwar Giri, an enlightened master from Bharat says, 'Sitting with the master is not merely being in his physical presence, but keeping him in your heart, being one with him in principle and tuning yourself to him.' This is the whole technique of upanishad. The master is superconscious energy. When you tune to him, you tune to that energy. You can tune only through innocence, openness.

Openness is emptiness. Let not knowledge fill you. Knowledge is but a mere tool, not your substance. Reject all knowledge as 'not this', 'not this'. When I say reject, I mean don't settle for any intermediate knowledge except the ultimate Truth. Because when you drop everything that continuously arises in you, then you have no other go. You are thrown back into yourself and it is there you will find the ultimate Truth. It is then you are ready to be filled with the Truth. Then alone can you make upanishadhappen.

Adi Shankara, the great sage from ancient Bharat, sang the beautiful Nirvana Shatakam when he was a mere eight year old:

I have neither hatred nor liking, I have neither greed nor delusion,

I have indeed neither pride nor jealousy, I have no duty to perform, Nor any wealth to acquire, I have no craving for pleasure, I am not being bound for liberation, I am of the nature of pure Consciousness andBliss,

I am all Auspiciousness,

I am Shiva.

Such was his blissful emptiness at that young age.

If you watch children, their eyes will be filled with wonder and freshness all the time. They are so empty inside. They don't hold any opinion about anything. They are ready to receive. Their readiness is expressed in their eyes. Have you ever seen an adult with such eyes? The eyes lose their glow as we grow older because we become dulled by what we start knowing. Knowledge makes us dull. We may know many things, but the knowing should not dull us in any way. We should remain empty in spirit always.

If you just look at life without any opinions, without any words of description, without any fixed ideas, then you are like an empty teacup into which the brewed tea can be poured. You receive because you hold nothing, because you are empty. Then you never lose your enthusiasm. You are never bored. You are like a child, innocent and fresh.

We may know many things, but the knowing should not dull us in any way.

A young girl was writing something on a piece of paper. Her father asked her what it was.

She said, 'I am writing a letter.'

He asked, 'To whom?'

'To me,' she replied.

'What does the letter say?' He asked.

She replied, 'How do I know? I have not mailed it and I have not received it yet.'

There is so much freshness behind innocence. Life becomes an unfolding mystery every moment with it. That is the truth. Life is an ever unfolding mystery. It is the mind that typecasts it. The mind always wants life on its own specific terms. Innocence embraces life with life's own terms. With the mind, life does not find a gate to enter with its mysteries. With innocence, life is welcomed to share its mysteries.

If you play hide and seek with children, you will see that they will hide in the same place as you hid the last time! Not just once but most of the time! How is this possible? It is because of one thing: they move with

When you see with empty eyes, everything you see goes deep.

innocence. They don't have any idea in their head.

They simply follow their heart. They have great trust in you, so they simply hide where you hid, not even suspecting you will look there! That is the beauty.

In child psychology a simple experiment is conducted to determine the intellectual awareness of children. The child will be shown a doll house with dolls of father, mother, son and daughter. The counselor will take away the father and mother dolls and tell the child that they have left for work or shopping. The child will be asked to confirm the statement. Then the child is diverted to look elsewhere and the parent dolls are put back in the doll house where the child can see them. The child is now asked where the father and mother dolls are, and there are very interesting observations in the responses.

A child of up to four years would normally respond saying that the mother and father are still away at work or shopping even though they can see them clearly in the doll house. It is only beyond that age, perhaps at the age of five, that the child connects what it sees with reality. Till then the child just believes what is told to it earlier.

This is the beauty of innocence. Innocence trusts. Innocence does not worry about being exploited. Neuroscientists have explanations for this now. They say that till about the age of five or six, a child's brain wave patterns are in the theta and delta states. These are extremely impressionable states of mind in which we dream and sleep. These are states of no identity. Till the age of twelve they say that brain waves are in alpha state, still very impressionable. This is why children believe most of what adults say to them. In their innocence they trust.

If you watch children's eyes, they will be clear and empty. This is why they are in bliss. As you grow up, your eyes become filled with knowledge. Then you may have sight, but not insight, because you see through your eyes that are already filled with opinions, judgments and beliefs. Your sight is no longer innocent. It is filtered and clouded. You see through the filter of your beliefs and conditioned memories. There is nothing new to learn from what you see because it becomes a repetition of your past memories. The learning is missed.

On the other hand, when you see with empty eyes, everything you see goes deep and causes fresh insight. Life becomes an eternally unfolding mystery. The very nature of your questioning changes. The nature of the questioning reveals the depth of innocence of the questioner.

There are three ways to ask a question. You can ask out of innocence, or you can ask out of knowledge to show that you too know, and third, you can ask to confirm that what you know is correct. When you ask out of innocence, you are completely ready to receive the answer. When you ask out of knowledge, you completely miss the answer. When you ask for confirmation, you simply resist the answer.

A small story:

Zen masters generally give personal guidance in a secluded room. No one enters when master and disciple are together.

A Zen master used to enjoy talking with merchants and newspapermen as well as with his pupils everyday. Amongst his regular visitors was an illiterate potter who used to come and ask foolish questions of him. He will then have tea and go away.

One day, while the potter was there, the master wanted to give personal guidance to a disciple, so he requested the potter to remain outside.

The potter asked, 'I understand you are a living Buddha. Even the stone Buddhas never disallow the coming together of people before them. Why then should I be disallowed?'

The master had to go outside to see his disciple.

The potter's question was of knowledge. He missed the learning for the

When you ask out of innocence, you are completely ready to receive the answer.

moment. Masters impart learning every moment. If there is implicit openness the learning can be received. In the space of innocence learning happens. The potter's knowledge came in the way of absorbing the master. Children absorb everything and everyone around them like a sponge. There is nothing hindering the process as yet. That is why they were taken to masters at the young age of seven in the ancient vedic tradition. The fundamental secret of learning is to function from a state of innocence.

The problem is that those who are not empty never recognize that they are not empty. You cannot tell them they are full. They will neither understand nor accept it. But a man of innocence can say, 'Because of my knowing I missed it. I actually don't know. I am now eager to know.' The moment this space is created, the learning continues to happen. In this space there is no ego of knowing. The resistance is dropped and there is pure receptivity.

J. Krishnamurti, the great philosopher, beautifully says, 'There can be freedom from know-ledge only when the motivation for gathering of knowledge is understood.'

The unknown can be known only by surrendering to it.

What is generally the motivation

for knowledge? You see, the present is an unfolding miracle and mystery of Existence. We try to grasp it with the net of knowledge. That is the motivation for knowledge. But it can never happen! The unknown can never be trapped with the known. The unknown can be known only by surrendering to it. That surrender is what is called intelligence! Intelligence recognizes the mystery of the present moment and surrenders to it joyfully. That joy is the joy of innocence.

Knowledge on the other hand denies the mystery of the present moment. It tries to ascertain it every minute and the present can never be ascertained. So you continuously remain with what is called 'fear of the unknown'. It is through the process of trying to ascertain the present moment that the fear of the unknown takes root. Otherwise, you have no fear! You are very clear that the present moment is a mystery!

Through knowledge, you somehow try to escape from the 'not-knowing' of the moment. To the ego, not-knowing means being nothing. It cannot handle being nothing. But innocence is being nothing and enjoying the present! The present is an unopened gift. But knowledge robs it of its suspense. When knowledge understands that the ways of the Self are yet to be discovered, then it doesn't hinder the process of the ultimate knowing. Then it behaves as a tool that comes into play when actually required and not stand in the way of embracing the mysteries of life.

When we understand that knowledge denies the mysteries of life, when we understand that we gather knowledge because we are afraid of the unknown, we will awaken to a new intelligence of surrendering to life, and that awakening is the birth of innocence.

The problem is that society believes in instilling a set of beliefs into every child that is born. The whole method of bringing up a child is by instilling a set of beliefs in it.

What is belief?

It is nothing but an individual and independent interpretation of something.

There is no need to instill any belief into a child. A child can remain free to have its own interpretation.

J. Krishnamurti says, 'Knowledge is both tradition and instinct.' What does he mean by that? Let us say you are born in a Hindu family. Then, the knowledge you pick up will be from a solid Hindu tradition. Your responses and your actions will carry the strong beliefs of Hindu tradition and ideology. Both at the conscious and unconscious levels, you will be conditioned through it. The unconscious response becomes your 'instinct'. The very experience of anything around you, happens only through instinct, not as it is. And because of this, you cannot know anything as it is. You can know it only through your knowledge. That is why we say, knowledge is a hindrance to knowing.

Once knowledge solidifies in the being there is no space left for experiencing. There is scope only for replay of knowledge. Everything becomes a reflection of some past knowledge or some past conclusion. The future becomes a continuation of the past patterns and experiences. You already know the fragrance of a flower. You already know the sound of the waves. You already know the sunrise. In the very beginning, at the time of the first experience as a child, these would have been truly innocent experiences. But as we grow up, these innocent experiences start becoming mundane tradition.

Understand, Existence is not a continuation of anything. It is fresh every minute. So it is not possible to know anything. What do you know of what happens the next second? If this is understood, all knowing can be dropped. Then there is only wisdom and wisdom is innocent intelligence. It allows the experience to happen without knowledge hindering. Then the great discoveries of the Self and that which is around the Self Belief is an individual perception.

as well as the mysteries that link both happen.

J. Krishnamurti rightly says that belief discards so many possibilities and urges you into one particular activity. Since the mind is constantly looking for activity you go behind belief. We base our whole life on beliefs. Because of this we are immersed in activity, but not action. Activity needs constant fuelling through beliefs. Activity cannot afford to stop. If it stops, the mind falls into depression. Action happens as and when required and stops. Activity happens out of belief. Action happens out of understanding. Activity causes fatigue while action creates energy and inspiration. What you need is action, not activity.

Just understand that belief is nothing but your own understanding of something and not the truth. In any given situation, four different people can conclude differently with four different beliefs. There is no absolute reality in belief. It is merely an individual perception. But innocence keeps the perception open. That is the beauty of it. It doesn't conclude and close the doors on anything.

Look at this picture here.

What do you see? You see an old woman.

Not holding onto any one interpretation is the essence of innocence.

But you can also see a young woman! The nose of the old woman is

the left cheek of the young woman. The mouth of the old woman is the neck of

the young woman's dress! The left eye of the old woman becomes the left ear of the young woman.

There are innumerable interpretations to anything. Not holding onto any one interpretation is the essence of innocence. Then the spirit is kept alive.

Paramahamsa Yogananda* says, 'Daytime is the devil's playground.' In daytime, we continuously feed our mind with words. Actually if you observe, words come in the way of learning. For example, now you are sitting in front of me. Many of you don't understand what I am saying because I am talking a foreign language to you. You feel sad. But you are the most fortunate in the group! It is not possible to learn from me through words. I talk only to make you silent. If I don't talk, you start talking inside you. So I talk. But you can learn a lot from me only through silence. In silence there is innocence. In words there is intellect. Intellect can never receive the truth, only innocence can.

Just sit here with innocence, that is enough. Then you will receive the ultimate understanding. It is in the gaps between my words that the real teaching lies. The master is sheer poetry, the poetry of Existence. His expression is an overflowing of Existence. The master speaks because you want to hear. As he speaks there is a beautiful silence, which is his undercurrent. If you are open you can feel it touching you. Silence bridges the gap that words

Paramahamsa Yogananda - An enlightened master from Bharat well known for his book 'Autobiography of a Yogi'.

create. Silence is the space of transformation into fresh learning. In silence you are open and in those moments I can transform you easily. With the transformation, you regain your complete innocence.

Communication is between two heads. With communication you can easily misinterpret me. However, communion is between two hearts. It is between two beings. With communication you work with your intellectual defenses. With communion you receive the direct initiation into the experience. With communion you fulfill the longing that you have for something beyond words. I have exactly that with me. That is what you need to take.

The whole process of meditation is to start communing and find the silence within you. The inner silence can never be touched by thought or experience. Inner silence is the innocence that you seek. That is why people crave to sit by themselves in the Himalayas or in the forest. They hope to find the inner silence through the outer silence. When it happens you start communing with the whole of Existence. Anything that happens from this silence will always be in conformance with Existence.

One disciple visited a Zen master in China.

The master asked him, 'What do you seek?' The whole process of meditation is to start communing and find the silence within you.

The disciple replied, 'Enlightenment.'

The master said, 'You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside?'

The disciple inquired, 'Where is my treasure house?'

The master replied, 'What you are asking is your treasure house.'

The disciple got enlightened that very moment.

The inner silence is the treasure zone. Finding that for you is the work of the master. So next time, don't feel sad when you cannot understand what I am saying. Remain innocent and merge with the silence in the words. The unlearning and learning will then happen as they should. In that silence, there is no greed of heaven or fear of hell or jealousy of the other or want of love, or any worry. There is only resonance with innocence, with the master. The direct transmission then happens.

Innocence is a delicate fragrance, while knowledge is a strong filter. That is the difference. The fragrance of innocence draws the whole world to you. The filter of knowledge prevents many things from coming to you. When you are caught in knowledge you are in a great hurry all the time, because there is too much knowledge to gather.

When you are with innocence you simply enjoy the moment. If you watch innocent people, they will never appear to be with any great purpose. They will simply revel in the moment with a totality, with simplicity. Innocence grasps the moment while knowledge misses it. Knowledge knows only purpose while innocence knows the beauty of purposelessness.

If you set aside your knowledge, you are ready to grasp the moment and the Truth. The present holds the truth in it. The problem is that today education teaches only knowledge and how to be clever. It doesn't educate on innocence. Where in the universities do they teach innocence?

A small story:

A young boy walked into a fish market and asked for six trout.

The fishmonger enthusiastically started selecting the trout. He was about to wrap them when the boy said, 'Please don't wrap them up yet. Can you just throw each of them to me and I will catch them one by one before you wrap them up?'

The fishmonger said, 'Of course I will, but what for?'

The boy replied, 'That way, I can at least say when I get home that I caught six trout.'

There is such a pressure to be clever today. Children lose their innocence to the conditioning that they receive in the name of 'how to be clever'. Over time, like this small boy, even innocence is used only to make up for cleverness!

A father introduced his son proudly to his colleagues at office for the first time.

All his colleagues were standing around the boy and the father said, 'Son, why don't you tell them how old you are?'

The child promptly said, 'When I am at home I am seven. But when I am on a bus, I am five.'

This is how children are trained today. They are trained to see utility in everything. Education evaluates you by your own utility. But you are not your utility. You are your being. The being can never be evaluated. Only the mind can be, and mind itself is a myth! Society creates a myth, which is your mind, and holds it as the yardstick to evaluate you. That is the reason why knowledge is so popular today.

• A small story: Four friends lived in a town. They spent a lot of time together. Three of them were very learned. The fourth was not as learned but he was wise.

One day, they decided to travel to other lands to exhibit their learning to men and earn money.

The fourth friend had nothing to boast of, but expressed his wish to accompany them.

The first friend said, 'You don't know much. If you accompany us, we will have to unnecessarily share our money with you.'

The second friend said, 'Yes, that is true. It is better you stay back.'

The third friend was more kind. He said, 'We grew up together all these years. It is not right to tell him to stay back. He should come along.'

So the four of them started their journey.

They passed through a dense forest. They saw many wild animals and experienced many exciting moments. Suddenly one day, they came across a heap of animal bones.

One of them said, 'I think this is a wonderful way to put our knowledge to test. Let us bring this animal back to life.'

The two other friends agreed, but the fourth one said, 'I feel these are the bones of a very big animal, so we

The other

three laughed at him and called him a coward. They said, 'If you had knowledge like we do, you will not feel so afraid of these things. Keep quiet and watch us.'

The three proceeded with the experiment.

One of them arranged the bones in a way that it looked like a proper animal. Then he chanted some verses, sprinkled holy water on it and the bones suddenly took the shape of a skeleton. They were amazed by the power of their knowledge.

The second one came forward, chanted a few more verses and sprinkled more water on it. The skeleton suddenly got covered with muscles, flesh, blood and a coat of fur. It was a lion and lacked only life.

The friends were amazed at themselves.

The third friend came forward and said he would infuse life into it.

The fourth friend gave another warning but they laughed at him. He then slowly climbed up a tree and sat there watching.

The third friend waved life into the lion's body and the lion came to life.

With one roar, the lion advanced towards the three of them. They looked up to see where the fourth friend was. He was perched up on the tree watching the whole scene.

The lion made short work of them.

Knowledge is a tool. It doesn't directly lead to intelligence. It is just a tool. As long as we use it as a powerful tool where needed, it is good. It can do amazing things. The mistake we do is giving our whole lives to the hands of knowledge. On the other hand, innocence leads directly to pure intelligence.

Another small story:

There was a banyan tree in a small village that was giving cool shade. Under the tree there was a cow and a tired dog. There was also an old man with a long beard leaning his back on its trunk, his legs spread out in front of him.

The tree was in the frontier between two kingdoms.

A traveler was passing that way to cross from one kingdom to the other. He saw the old man and commented, 'Good disguise you are sporting. It doesn't work. I too sported a similar disguise when I stole a gold chain a few days back. A guard searched me and found the chain. He beat me up as well. Let us see how you are able to get away with your disguise.'

Next came a man on horseback. He was a spy who was about to enter the kingdom. He stopped upon seeing the old man and thought to himself, 'Who knows with what motive this man is lying here? He could as well be a spy like me.' He hurried away as he had no time to lose with his job as a spy.

One hour later, another man staggered towards the old man. He was drunk. He laughed at the old man and loudly asked, 'How much did you gulp down old man? Look at me. I have gulped an entire pot and I am still so steady although at times I feel my head is a little heavy.' Saying that, he went away.

Soon it was nighttime and the whole place became very calm.

A fourth man passed by that way and came across the old man. He looked at him for one long moment and went near him and bowed down. He spoke, 'How lucky I am. I have the good fortune of seeing you.' He then took a large leaf and fanned the old man to drive away the ants and other insects that were crawling up his body.

The old hermit opened his eyes from his trance and saw the man fanning him and smiled.

The young man asked, 'Oh great soul, I would be most blessed if you accept my invitation to spend the night at my house which is nearby here.'

The hermit said, 'If that is god's will, so be it,' and followed the man to his house.

Innocence grasps dimensions that cleverness misses. Innocence may miss the facts but it catches the Truths. Cleverness is too busy with facts. When cleverness combines with innocence, it becomes a rare combination of intelligence and innocence. Setting aside knowledge for the sake of innocence is intelligence. I don't mean that you have to stop gathering knowledge. Just understand that knowledge cannot substitute innocence.

If you observe villagers who are not educated you will see that they exhibit pure intelligence! That is why you will find that when you are stuck, a villager effortlessly pitches in and helps you out! Innocent intelligence has that capacity.

Compre-hending complex things is not a difficult thing. You have to work your mind a little more, that's all! You only need to see in a more divisive way, in a more analytical way. For example, a person may not find it very difficult to understand Innocence grasps dimensions that cleverness misses. Innocence may miss facts but it catches the Truth.

aeronautics, but what about understanding the simple Zen koans? Zen koans are simple teachings of Zen Buddhism. They are not concerned with where you are or what you do but with what makes you. They are meant to cause an awakening at the being level. They are concerned only with that, nothing else. They are not caught in giving ideas. They directly give the solution for the being. But they are difficult to grasp because they are too simple and straightforward!

Today all universities work on sharpening the intellectual faculty of the individual. They teach us how to make ourselves more useful to society and how to be productive or effective. There is nothing wrong in being productive and effective, but in the process we forget how to be innocent and receptive. We forget how to open up to the cosmos, to Existence. We forget how to move in synchronicity with the cosmos, how to make productivity happen in tune with the cosmic plan, which is the source of all productivity. This happens because we are caught in 'doing' and 'having', we forget the 'being'.

Koans - Riddles given as techniques in Zen to aid Self Realization.

There are three important states: being, doing and having. Right now, we move from doing to having. We continuously 'do' things. We learn and we put the learning into useful action. We then 'have' what we want: money, relationships, comfort, and what not. Then we want to have better things or have more things and so we continue doing. We are all the time between doing and having. In the process, the being is forgotten. Our real restfulness lies only in the state of being. Because of this, however much we do and have, we still search for restfulness. This feeling is the 'call of the being'.

If we nurture the being and cause the doing to happen from the quality of the being, then we don't have to work so much for the having. That will simply happen as a byproduct. This is the secret of Existence. But this is not seen as a direct utility to society by the universities. That is the problem. But this is what gives the real utility of every individual, not only to society but to the whole of the cosmos. We should always be concerned about the Whole.

In the ancient Hindu universities like Takshila* and Nalanda* , the preparation of the students was always at the being level. Outer world learning happened as a natural consequence. Bharat has always focused on nurturing the innocence of the being because only that will lead to strength of the being. When there is strength of the being, anything can be achieved.

Paramahamsa Yogananda * beautifully describes the intent of spiritual learning. He says, there are trillions of cells in the body. Every cell is like an intelligent being. Every cell has the DNA* substance in it which has the information and intelligence to grow a whole new body and brain. This dormant intelligence needs to be awakened so that the mind doesn't move towards suffering and remains in bliss.

He goes on to say that spiritual education magnetizes the cells by sending life current around the brain and spine, ensuring evolutionary advancement of the individual. With this divine magnetism, every cell becomes a brain alive and ready to grasp every bit of knowledge. With these awakened brains, the mental capacity

Takshila - A center of learning mentioned in the Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, now a world UN heritage site in North eastern Pakistan.

Nalanda - A great Buddhist center of learning in modern day Bihar, Bharat comprising a university and library. Paramahamsa Yogananda - An enlightened master from Bharat well known for his book 'Autobiography of a Yogi'.

DNA - Deoxyribonucleic acid, the building block of all living beings containing the genetic code.

of the individual multiplies multifold and all sorts of knowledge will be effortlessly comprehended! Such is the impact of spiritual learning.

Alexander, the emperor of Greece, had conquered three fourths of the world and traveled downward to Asia to conquer it. He settled down in the banks of the river Sindhu to conquer India.

On the banks of the same river lived a hermit.

As Alexander and his army passed by, the hermit was meditating and did not stand up to salute him.

Alexander felt humiliated and shouted at him, 'How dare you do not salute me!' And he took out his sword to chop his head off.

The hermit looked at him and laughed.

Alexander was shocked. 'I am going to kill you and you are laughing!' He asked.

The hermit said, 'I am wondering what you are trying to kill! I can never be killed. I am immortal, eternal and imperishable. Weapons cannot cut, fire cannot burn, water cannot wet, wind cannot dry up this soul.' He quoted from the Bhagavad Gita.

Alexander dropped the sword and saluted the hermit saying, 'Bharat has such great people who are fearless about death. I offer my salutations to this great country.' He retreated from the Hindu soil a wiser man.

The teachings of olden day universities created the possibility for supreme knowledge and confidence to flower in individuals, at the same time preserving their innocence. Then every student acquired the quality of a sage. A sage has the vast knowledge of the outer world and the utter innocence of the inner world.

Buddha beautifully teaches in the Dhammapada* :

Even the gods envy the saints,

whose senses obey them like well-trained horses

and who are free from pride.

Patient like the earth, they stand like the threshold.

They are pure like a lake without mud,

and free from the cycle of birth and death.

The sage is qualified to do anything in the outer world.

In the ancient gurukul* system of education, learning happened in a completely different plane. Creative

Gurukul - Vedic educational institution.

Dhammapada - Teachings of Buddha in scriptural form.

intelligence stemmed from deep consciousness. Straightaway, the being was addressed and the doing and having had a different essence altogether.

A small story:

A young boy was considered to be very dull and his father one day took him to the Sanskrit school where all the boys of the village learnt their lessons.

He met the teacher and said, 'My son is not a bright student. Will you allow him to sit in the back row of the class so that he is in the atmosphere presided over by goddess Saraswati ? I know you are kind and compassionate. Please guide him. He will be lucky if he learns anything.'*

The teacher readily agreed.

The young boy joined the school. He would be present every day before any of the other boys came in, dust, sweep and mop the room, and set up the teacher's wooden table and chair and sit down in a corner to listen to the class most attentively.

No one expected him to gain anything out of the classes.

One day he humbly asked the teacher, 'Sir, what about the guidance you were supposed to give me? When will I receive it?'

The teacher said, 'Right now! Here it is: Aham Brahmasmi (I am That). Recite this audibly or silently, but continuously.'

With determination and inspiration the young boy learnt the phrase without even bothering to ask the meaning of it. Neither did the teacher bother to tell him the meaning. He did not feel the necessity to do so.

'Aham Brahmasmi,' the boy went on repeating at home.

His father asked him, 'Do you know the meaning of those words?'

The boy's eyes bulged out. 'Meaning?' he asked. It never struck him that the words might have a meaning.

The father told him, 'The words mean, I am That.'

The boy went to his uncle's house the next day and continued reciting, 'Aham Brahmasmi, which means Father is Brahman .'*

The uncle heard this and said, 'It doesn't mean that! It means: I am Brahman .'*

Saraswati - Hindu goddess of learning.

Brahman - Absolute, Cosmic Consciousness, formless god etc all referring to the universal energy source of which the individual energy of soul is a holographic part.

The boy was surprised but kept quiet. On the way back home he was reciting, 'Aham Brahmasmi, which means uncle is Brahman.'

The village priest passed by him and heard him reciting. He stopped him and said, 'Son, it does not mean that uncle is Brahman, it means I am Brahman.'

The boy was amazed. 'How can just two words mean so many things, father, uncle and the village priest are all Brahman!'

His head was reeling and he sat down on a nearby slab of stone. He started reciting with the spirit of asking the words themselves what they really meant.

The sun went down and darkness came. The stars and moon started shining. The boy went on reciting Aham Brahmasmi to find out its real meaning.

At dawn, the ultimate knowledge dawned on him that he too was Brahman! Not just his father, uncle and village chief, but he too, and everybody else was Brahman.

He became a realized soul.

Understand, the moment the boy understood he was ignorant, an alchemy process was triggered in his system. When you don't know that you don't know, it is ignorance. When you know that you don't know, it is innocence. Then the knowing can start Knowledge that is not yet experienced is not your own. It is borrowed.

happening. But in the knowing, the feeling of knowledge is to be checked. Knowing is different from knowledge. Knowing is innocence. It is an understanding that has become your own experience. Knowledge that is not yet experienced is not your own. It is borrowed. It is just a collection of words in the head.

A person may go on and on reading something here and there, and entertain himself. If his intention is just reading books it can be good entertainment, but not enlightenment. Entertainment is different from enlightenment. Just because he has been entertained by some good books, it doesn't mean that he is enlightened. Understand, the books which help you sharpen your logic give you the feeling that you know. There starts the problem.

Work so that everything becomes a deep expe-rience in you. You will then be a simple person. Simplicity is weightless. It will never weigh you down and hinder further learning. It will just aid in the flowering of innocence, that's all.

What innocence grasps one may not even be able to express, because it is an understanding beyond words. But it can be

Vulnerability is allowing everything to touch your being. It is not weakness.

seen in the eyes. The eyes are the windows of the soul. That

is why when you see the eyes of sages you will see an oceanic look in them. They will radiate something that cannot be framed. To try to describe it would be like trying to scratch the foot from the outer side of the shoe.

One cannot blame modernization for loss of innocence. Lord Krishna says, 'I am Time.' When Krishna says that, you need to understand that modernization is also the divine play of Existence. Man should understand modernization in the right light and not take it as a replacement to the ancient foundation of growing.

When you are innocent, you are vulnerable to everything that Existence wants to teach you! If you are closed, you create a wall around you. The wall neither allows fresh breeze to touch your being nor does it allow you to step out and touch the cool breeze. Vulnerability is breaking the wall and inviting the cool breeze to touch your very being every time it blows.

Vulnerability is allowing everything to touch your being. The entire cosmos comes to you when you are vulnerable.

Vulnerability is not weakness. The wall when broken will not cause you danger. The wall itself was built out of a deep fear of exposing your reality. Your reality is your vulnerability and you are so afraid of opening it to the cosmos. You know deep down that if you let go and open up, you will simply be swept away in innocence. So you close yourself up. But it is suffocating to be in there because it is the same air that is circulating. You experience the same patterns that the mind knows. Then of what use is the wall? When the wall is broken, you will realize that nothing leaves you. Instead, you only gain one thing, freshness of life.

Two astrologers met on the road on a beautiful autumn day. One of them commented, 'Beautiful autumn. It is something we have never seen earlier.'

The other replied, 'True. I am reminded of the autumn of 2070.'

When you are vulnerable, you experience everything at the being level. Otherwise, it becomes an experience through the head. The being is poetry, the head is prose. And poetry is life.

One night a wife found her husband standing over their baby's crib.

As he stood looking down upon the baby in the cradle, she saw his face assuming a mixture of emotions of

disbelief, awe, skepticism, doubt, amazement and what not.

She slowly went up to him, put her arm around him and said, 'A penny for your thoughts.'

The husband replied, 'It's amazing. I can't imagine how anyone can make a crib like that for just 45 dollars!'

With the head you cannot be vulnerable! When you are not vulnerable, you are sitting behind the great wall of your house. Life has not yet started. Life happens with vulnerability.

With vulnerability you move towards the truth in a different path, in a joyful path because every moment you are receiving directly from Existence. Existence is able to give you because you are vulnerable and ready to receive it! Existence has its own ethics. Enlightened masters have their own ethics. When there is vulnerability, they can simply shower on you. When there is a wall, it becomes difficult. Their ethics does not permit them to penetrate. So they wait for the wall to break.

When you become vulnerable, you are saying a 'yes' to Existence. Existence is the greatest mystery and the eternal teacher. When you say yes to it, your energy starts moving in a new direction. It moves from the head to the heart and you start receiving the teachings for your very being. Whatever you said 'no' to earlier will start becoming a 'yes'. Then you will see that the world is very different from what you thought.

Once you start saying yes, you start expressing love, which is the language of the heart. Love can never be known through logic. It can be known by saying 'yes' to the other, by welcoming the other, not for any utility but for the sake of love. It can be known through a deep trust on the other. When you are vulnerable, you have great trust on the other.

People ask me how to 'be' in my presence. Just be completely vulnerable and innocent. With openness, you can receive the truth directly in your being. The master is a pure expression of Existence. By allowing him, you are allowing Existence to enter into you. When Existence enters it leaves an impression of the truth in your being. With every darshan or touch from the master, the impression becomes deeper. This impression is greater than any teaching he can impart to you.

Buddha's disciple once asked him, 'Master, you have not as yet answered our questions about whether the world is eternal or not, whether it is finite or infinite, whether the soul and body are the same or different.'

Buddha looked at him and asked, 'Did I make any promise that I would be answering these questions?'

The disciple said no.

Then Buddha asked him, 'Suppose there is a man with an arrow in his chest, and when you are about to remove it for him, he says to wait saying unless he knows the caste of the man who shot the arrow, his height, weight, his family background, where he comes from, and what wood he made the bow out of, he will not allow you to remove the arrow, what would you think of him?'

The disciple said with a shameful face, 'He would be a fool, master. His questions have nothing to do with the arrow and he would die before the answers were revealed.'

Buddha said, 'You are right. In the same way, I do not teach about whether the world is eternal or not, whether it is finite or infinite, whether the soul and body are the same or different. I teach straightaway to remove the arrow because the arrow is the root of your suffering, which is ignorance.'

Understand, a master can't teach you spirituality, but you can learn by being open and trusting towards him. Spirituality has nothing to do with words. It is an experience. You need to imbibe it by watching the master's body language, by smelling the enlightenment that radiates from him. You can catch it if you are aware. If you are impatient with questions, the very questions prevent you from catching the truth. If you are patient and you catch the smell of enlightenment, the questions will dissolve. Then even before questions arise, the answers will happen in you. That is the great experience of being around a master. That is why masters take a body and come down from time to time, with the hope that a handful of disciples will catch the smell of enlightenment and awaken.

When you are vulnerable, you are open in your entire response system. You give space for the intelligence of the cosmos to act through you.

A small story:

On the banks of a river there lived a sage in a small plot of land owned by a farmer. The village chief did not like the sage and wanted to buy the piece of land. The farmer would not let go of it.

The village chief was ready to pay any amount of money.

The farmer told him, 'If I sold the land to you, you will drive the sage away once it become yours.'

The village chief angrily said, 'Why do you call him a saint? Just because he is wearing an orange robe? He must be as ordinary as you and I.'

The farmer said, 'No Sir, I have seen many signs of a sage in him. For example, I have never seen him getting angry.'

The village chief said, 'How can you conclude like that? He has probably not had a chance to exhibit his anger, that's all. Tomorrow come by his hut and I will show you how angry he can get.'

The next day morning the farmer went near the sage's hut and watched.

A boy apparently sent by the village chief approached the sage. The sage was writing something on a palm leaf with his head bent.

The boy went behind him and spat on him.

The sage looked back, saw that it was the boy who did it, got up and took a dip in the river and came back and sat.

The boy spat again on him. The sage went and had a dip again and came and sat.

The farmer could not bear to see what was happening. The village chief was standing behind a tree and watching as well. He was surprised at the sage's calmness.

Every time the sage returned from the dip, the boy spat on him. Every time the sage smiled at him, got up and went and dipped.

The boy had spat on the sage a hundred and seven When you are vulnerable, you are open in your entire response system.

times. By now, the boy's face was losing its color. He could not bear it anymore. He fell at the sage's feet and cried, 'Please forgive me. I have sinned. I harassed you in this manner only because I was paid to do so. I am afraid that you might curse me now!'

The sage calmly asked him, 'So you will not spit on me again?'

The boy replied, 'I would rather die than spit again.'

The sage lifted him up and said, 'Let me tell you a secret. I should actually thank you for this because many years ago I had taken a vow that I would dip hundred and eight times in this sacred river. Today that has been fulfilled. I have to dip one more time to complete the vow. This time I will pray for you.'

The sage dipped one more time and when he came out, the village chief was at his feet begging for forgiveness. He said, 'I am the real sinner. I paid the boy to do this. I wanted to prove that you would get angry.'

The sage laughed and said, 'Had the boy told me his real mission, I would have got angry quickly and made him

receive his reward!' To just express with vulnerability is to just be.

The village chief became a disciple of the sage.

The sage's response was neither for nor against. He simply remained open. Automatically the forces of the cosmos came together and fulfilled an old vow through the incident. I am not saying that you should allow someone to spit on you! Understand the importance of being open in your response. When you are open, you create tremendous space for the best to happen to you at that moment. Soon, you can reprogram your entire response system and thereby the very course of your life.

A small Zen story:

Zen teachers train their young pupils to express themselves and leave it at that. One child from a particular Zen temple would meet the child from another Zen temple every morning on his way to buy vegetables.

One day, the first one asked the other, 'Where are you going?'

'I am going wherever my feet go,' responded the other.

This reply puzzled the first one who went to his teacher for help.

The teacher told him, 'Tomorrow morning, when you meet that fellow, ask him the same question. He will give you the same answer. Then you ask him, 'Suppose you have no feet, then where are you going?' That will fix him.'

The child met the other the next day morning. He asked, 'Where are you going?'

The other one replied, 'I am going wherever the wind blows.'

The first one was baffled and went to his teacher again.

The teacher said, 'Tomorrow, you ask him where he will go if there is no wind.'

The next day the child met the other one on the road and asked, 'Where are you going?'

The second one replied, 'I am going to the market to buy vegetables.'

To just express with vulnerability is to be free like a bird, not worried about any past or future, to just be. That is what Zen masters taught their disciples.

Immense trust leads to surrender. Surrender is simplicity of the heart. It is the knowing that you do not have to decide about the Truth, that you just have to go by it. When you awaken to the powerful presence of the Truth, surrender happens. If you observe your pet dog, you will find that even if you cheat him once in a while, he will come back to you with utmost trust. His trust is absolute and innocent. The trust comes with no reason. He has no questions, so no answers need to be given. He sees no utility in anything. He just exists like an open book, that's all.

Two gold fish were in a water tank. One asked the other, 'Do you trust in god?'

The other replied, 'But of course. Who do you think changes our water everyday?'

It is only innocence that is capable of taking the leap into trust and surrender. Knowledge somehow sees utility in everything. It looks for reason in everything. Surrender and reason are mutually exclusive. Surrender is to do with trust. Surrender is possible only out of innocence, because out of innocence arises trust.

With trust arises acceptance as well. Acceptance does not mean compromising to life, situations and persons. No. It means welcoming life and all its forms as a wonderful gift from Existence. Each person or situation is a fresh happening. Accepting it at a deep level is surrender. People and situations have to be handled with the required tact. But the spontaneous and deep acceptance of the moment is surrender.

Acceptance is the deep humility towards the profound Existence that takes care of everything including you. It is again saying 'yes' to Existence. When you say yes, you are acknowledging the presence of the allpervading life force that is conducting this universe. That is surrender.

Out of surrender arises deep relaxation. Out of surrender arises a fresh intelligence that knows on a different plane. On this plane, there is no worry of result, there is only action driven by pure energy. And energy is intelligence. Trust does not mean inaction. It means continuing to be in action with intelligence instead of intellect. It is having trust in thought, and intelligence in action.

A disciple came riding on his camel to the tent of a Sufi master. He dismounted from the camel, walked into the master's tent, bowed down low and said, 'Master, so great is my trust in god that I have left my camel outside untied, convinced that god protects the interests of those who love him.'

The master shouted, 'Go tie your camel you fool! God cannot be bothered doing for you what you are perfectly capable of doing yourself!'

Trust is an attitude. It is not a substitute for appropriate action. The spirit of trust is the essence of the very life. It leads to innocence, surrender, relaxation and bliss.

Trust is an attitude. It leads to innocence, surrender, relaxation and bliss.

If it is followed out of complete understanding, there is nothing to lose in its

path. Until then, you are still on the path to trust.

All great enlightened beings are eternally blissful because they have surrendered their very body to Existence with trust. Existence flows through them like air flowing through hollow bamboo creating music. That is why they are so beautiful. When Existence flows through, the expression is divine. Enlightened master's grace is the grace of the whole of Existence. They are the only utterly innocent beings on planet earth.

Enlightened masters are established in the knowing that nothing is impossible in the space of Existence. They are living embodiments of trust. Their bliss is an expression of this. They have access to all the knowledge of the world but are yet utterly innocent. They know that their knowledge is the knowledge of Existence. Their knowledge is not knowledge but a flowing experience of the truth of the moment.

We too have knowledge. But the problem is that we think our knowledge is the only right knowledge and all other knowledge is wrong. Understand, the ultimate knowledge is the same for everyone. Anything in between is just a bunch of borrowed ideas. If this is known clearly, surrender will happen and we will drop the burden of knowledge and become innocent.

How to start knowing that we don't know? Mere clarity that we don't know is enough. Just meditate on Existence, the source of all knowledge. Be in a prayerful and surrendering mood to it all the time. Be firm in surrendering to the knowledge of Existence. You will see that miracles start happening around you.

There is a story about Hanuman , the monkey god in Hindu mythology who was a devout disciple of lord Rama* .*

Hanuman was once asked what day of the lunar month it was.*

He replied, 'I don't know anything about the day of the month or the positions of the stars. I think of Rama alone.'*

When you are established in the wonder of the Truth, you become so innocent, that your very life becomes meditative and

Hanuman - The monkey god revered by Hindus and a disciple of Rama.

Rama - Prince of the kingdom of Ayodhya in the Hindu epic Ramayana.

miraculous. It was Hanuman* who crossed the ocean from Bharat to Sri Lanka with just one leap by chanting the name of Rama* . Rama himself had to build a bridge to cross over with his army! Such is the power of innocent surrender to Existence and all its forms.

When one is established in surrender to the Divine, miracles happen every moment. People are always in search of miracles. The biggest miracles happen with surrender. There is a wonderful story from the life of Shirdi Sai Baba * , a great enlightened master from Bharat.

In the mosque, Shirdi Baba * used to light the lamps everyday. He used to light them symbolically for the destruction of the darkness of ignorance in humanity. But people would think that he loved lighting the lamps.

Baba used to get the oil from the oil merchants. After some time, the oil merchants decided that they would not part with the oil free of cost. They all got together and decided not to give Baba oil any more.

Baba though aware of this decision, pretended not to know about it and went

the following day to get the oil. The merchants refused to give him oil.

Baba returned to the mosque smiling.

The villagers and the oil merchants however got curious as to how he would light the lamps. They gathered around him.

Baba filled the lamps with water and lit the wicks. They burnt with more brightness than usual emitting radiance of a different plane!

The oil merchants were amazed and shocked. They begged for forgiveness, and of course Baba forgave them.

Surrender is allowing Existence to happen through you. Enlightened beings enjoy the play of Existence through them. They enjoy it with the utter innocence and awe of a child. That is why they are so delightful to watch.

One more thing: when you are trusting and surrendering, it becomes difficult to cheat you. Innocent trust always protects from deceit. It radiates that kind of energy. In our ashram, people from all walks of life come together to live. Once they enter the ashram they develop a sense of deep trust. The very decision to take the jump from

Hanuman - The monkey god revered by Hindus and a disciple of Rama.

Rama - Prince of the kingdom of Ayodhya in the Hindu epic Ramayana.

Shirdi Sai Baba - An enlightened master worshipped by Hindus and Muslims alike. Lived in Shirdi near Nasik, Bharat.

the material world to the spiritual world as an ashramite* comes from trust. Further, when they enter the ashram and start living, sharing their things with other seekers, there is such trust that no one cares to keep anything under lock and key! The room may be filled with strangers but still there is no thought to keep one's possessions locked. Nothing gets lost. Even if something cannot be found, the very attitude is such that it doesn't matter to them! That is the beauty of it.

There was a great Sufi Saint by name Habib Ajami. He went to bathe in the river one day leaving his coat on the bank of the river unattended. One man passed by at that time and saw the coat. Thinking someone had left it there carelessly and it had to be protected, he decided to stand guard over it till the owner came by.

Habib came back looking for his coat. The man asked him, 'In whose care did you leave the coat when you went to bathe?' It might as well been stolen!'

Habib replied, 'I left it in the care of Him who gave you the task of guarding over it!'

When trust happens with the utmost understanding, nothing can be lost. In the quality of trust is its true essence. I always tell my disciples about the monks I have seen in the Himalayas during my spiritual wandering days. The monks come to the Himalayas to meditate leaving everything behind. But there they fight for their small water pots! Just the object of possessiveness changes, that's all! When you trust, all material possessions will seem like they belong to Existence. The very attitude of possessing then drops. That relaxes the mind. That is the space for relaxing.

In a lifetime at least once you should visit the Himalayas. We went to Gomukh*, which is the source of the sacred river Ganga. The trek is on mule back taking almost five hours up and five hours down. The path is just four feet wide. If you miss your footing you will go into the gushing Ganga river beneath! Once we reached Gomukh* we spent some time there, and the group returned while I stayed back with a few disciples. The group that returned started at dusk. I told them not to worry and that Existence will take care. Through pitch darkness, not knowing if the mule was taking the bend of the mountain or going straight ahead into the darkness, the entire group made its way

Ashramite - Resident of ashram.

Gomukh - Source of sacred river Ganga in Bharat.

back. The next day, I asked them how the experience was. One of them said, 'Swamiji, we experienced what blind trust means!' If those trusting moments could be extended, they can be the very essence of your life. Then, you can simply do, leaving the result to Existence.

Just seeing the Himalayan mountains can help trust and surrender take root in you. The mountains straightway tell you that Existence is mightier than the intellect! They tell you that intellect cannot fathom their majesty. When this truth happens, the struggle ceases. The mind stops. If you wander in the Himalayas for some time you can experience that bliss is not a goal at all but the path itself. You realize that bliss is in the moment and not in any goal. When you come to the present moment you are open and innocent because there is no mind in the present. For the mind to exist there has to be movement towards the past or the future. In the present moment, there is no past or future. It is just there, that's all.

To be trusting and surrendering is like losing the 'I' and the 'mine'. Ego starts with 'mine' and then moves to 'I'. Even before the identity of 'I' sets in, the 'mine' comes into play. If you notice a small child, even before the 'I' takes root in him, he will fight for 'mine'. Just try pulling a toy from his hand. He will resist! It is his, you cannot take it away. Even before he talks 'I', he will talk 'mine'. Surrender is nothing but merging with Existence, with no

The mind is a direct conflict to the being. The being always concurs with Existence.

identity of 'I' or 'mine'.

Surrender is death of the mind, death of ego. Ego is nothing but feeling yourself to be a separate entity from Existence. This feeling happens as a result of a strong 'I' and 'mine'.

The mind is a direct conflict to the being. The being always concurs with Existence. The mind invariably comes in the way. The being knows. The mind doubts. The being always says yes. The mind mostly says no. The being is innocent but the mind is cunning. Saying yes is like death for the mind. So it continues to say no. With persuasion it says yes. If left to itself, it says no.

Now you will ask, 'How to silence the mind?' You cannot silence the mind through the mind. It is like expecting the suspect to surrender! It will never happen. You just need to understand that the mind is not a reality. It is a just a myth. You are holding on to something unreal and trying to silence it. If you bring awareness to this process that is going on within you, you will be able to see where the mind is saying no. Then you will be able to put it to rest

Unless innocence happens intimacy cannot happen. Only the being knows it.

so that the yes of the being is heard. Awareness is the key to

anything. Just bring in awareness. The resistance of the mind will then drop. You will then relax into the being. Innocence starts expressing from there.

Unless innocence happens intimacy cannot happen. Intimacy is the language of Existence. The mind doesn't know intimacy. Only the being knows it. With intimacy there is openness and you can say and do everything that you feel genuinely and earnestly about. There will be authenticity in your words and actions. You will radiate energy that spurs the others around you to be innocent and open. Then the real beauty of Existence can be experienced.

There is a famous saying, 'If you worry, then you didn't pray. If you prayed, then don't worry.'

Spirituality is a straight path to surrender worry and be free. It is a tremendous relief for the modern day man. It is a proven science. In today's world of science and knowledge, the call of the being needs to be addressed compassionately and immediately. Spirituality is the way. Spirituality restores the cosmos with its sanctity and mysticism. It reminds man that he is not the greatest creature on the planet. It reminds him of the powerful Existential energy that pervades the universe. It creates not-knowing and innocent surrender in the mind.

Spirituality is not a ritual. It is the science of merging with Existence. From time immemorial, the first thing that all world religions did was to create a space for the Divine to become a part of life. A temple is a space to reconnect with the cosmic energy and be restful in it. That is the core purpose of all world religions. When the connection deepens, it becomes a blissful space within oneself. Religion is a clear stepping stone to spirituality.

From time immemorial, from the time humans lived together in tribes or groups, they have allotted different areas in their living place for different purposes. Almost in all cultures these groups created special places that they used only for worship. Researchers have discovered that even animals do the same thing. They keep aside a space where they do nothing but rest. They do not use this space for any other activity. Of course, they don't know anything called worship or prayer. That is the reason they use it only for rest. If they knew they would have used it for worship. That space was to reconnect and relax in the lap of Existence. What man might miss because of the pace of his life, animals do naturally and meticulously! If you look into the eyes of animals, you can see deep innocence because they live in deep surrender to Existence.

When man pursues science alone, he becomes too knowing because his inventions and discoveries seem to be his own findings. Everything seems to fall under the purview of his intellect. Spirituality on the other hand keeps the mystery of the cosmos alive. It creates humble obeisance towards a life force that is mightier than the intellect. That is why spirituality can restore innocence. There is an immediate need to pay obeisance to the cosmic force and calm the intellect. With obeisance comes fresh intelligence that sees the cosmic consciousness as the central core of activity. Then, man will no more be afraid of the unfathomable cosmos. He will simply fall in tune with it with deep devotion, love and in ecstasy.

The greatest saints of Bharat who had the power of willing the cosmos to lovingly respond achieved this power through spirituality.

There was a man by name Muruganar who was an ardent devotee of Shiva.

Everyday before break of dawn he would bathe in the cool waters of the river, gather flowers from trees, fields, the river and creepers and make garlands for the Shiva deity in the temple.

He would walk to the temple every day taking care while walking not to disturb the flowers in their setting in the garland! After offering them to the deity he would chant sacred verses for long hours.

It is said that he attained enlightenment through just this innocent worship.

Today he is worshipped as one of the 63 saints called Nayanmars who attained enlightenment through innocent devotion to god.*

Those who shun spirituality are those who have not tasted its transforming sweetness. They are the ones who think spirituality is seriousness. No! God is always an embodiment of bliss, then how can spirituality be seriousness? Man has made it serious by reducing it to mundane rituals.

Our masters have even specified the times in which to connect to the deeper realms of our being through prayer. They have said it is good to pray in the early morning. What is the reason for this? The intellect has

Nayanmars - Tamil devotee saints of enlightened master Shiva, 63 in number, whose life stories are told in the book Periya Puranam.

rested well in the night and has not as yet

started functioning in the morning. When spirituality is practiced at that time, the impact on the mind is greater. The impact is made while the mind is still fresh and innocent, while the mind has not yet started chewing on the intellect. Not for nothing have the great masters gifted spirituality to us. When the intent is understood, spirituality becomes a straight route to restoring innocence and trust.

A small story:

One evening, a farmer on his way back from the market found himself without his prayer book. The wheel of his cart came off right in the middle of the woods and he felt sad that the day should pass without having said his prayers.

So he made up a prayer for god. He spoke aloud, 'Oh god, I have done something very foolish. I have left behind my prayer books today. And my memory is so poor that I can't recite a single prayer without the book. So this is what I am going to do. I will recite the letters of the alphabet five times very slowly and you, who knows all the prayers, please put the letters together to form the prayers I can't remember.'

And god said to his angels that day, 'Of all the prayers I have heard today, this one was undoubtedly the best because it came from a heart that was simple and sincere.'

Spirituality is an opening to express innocence in its purest form. Innocence itself is an offering to god. Innocence itself is the greatest prayer to god.

Religion is by itself not any belief as it is made out to be. Every religion is the result of the deep spiritual experience of the great master who founded it. What they experienced, they gave as a religion to humanity, through which humanity can get the same experience. There was no other intent. If this is understood, any person can practice any religion. That is the beauty of all original religions.

The same is true when you are around a master. Be in a mood of innocent surrender. When you are innocent and prayerful, the master's silence penetrates your being. The religion of silence is the greatest religion. It is the religion of the great masters and disciples. That is true spirituality also.

Spirituality when practiced out of innocence keeps you childlike. If you see the Tanjore* art paintings depicting themes from the Hindu epics, you will see that the

Tanjore art paintings - Devotional paintings from South Bharat that use semi- precious stones and gold as adornment.

faces of the men, women, sages and gods in the painting are always young and innocent. The reason is that true spirituality keeps the essence of life young because it deals with the 'feeling', not with the 'knowing'. When you are with the head you age quickly. When you are with the heart you remain fresh and young all the time.

With spirituality comes deep devotion to the Whole. It is devotion from the being. Devotion is an outpouring that removes all your defenses and makes you vulnerable for Existence to enter you. There are enchanting stories of the great devotees of Hindu mythology who made miracles happen through sheer devotion.

Such is the depth of innocent worship. The innocent worshipper continues to be prayerful even after the worship is over. The prayer is an expression of the humble innocence and gratitude towards the Whole, so it knows no reason. It just continues.

When I told the story of Satyakama to a group of people, one person asked me, 'Maybe these techniques are for highly evolved souls. Spirituality when practiced out of innocence keeps you childlike.

In that story, the disciple gets enlightened when the master just blesses him. He must have been a highly evolved soul for that to happen.

I told that person, 'No, it is not for highly evolved souls. It is for highly innocent souls!' Understand this. Highly evolved people don't need techniques. It is like how I was telling you the other day. In sage Patanjali's teaching of Ashtanga yoga* , the eight techniques described are to be practiced all at once. It is not that if you finish the first technique you are one step higher and ready for the second one. No! Even the first technique is so strong that if you are able to master it and move to the second, you don't even need the second because you are already done! The first step is yama, which is about codes of behavior. If you are able to master this alone, then you don't need the remaining steps. You don't need any further yoga or breath control! So understand this. All eight techniques are individually fulfilling techniques for the sincere seeker. They are not sequential steps.

Ashtanga yoga - Eight limbs or paths of Patanjali's Yoga: yama (discipline), niyama (rules), asana (body postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (bliss).

Similarly, techniques such as those given to Satyakama are given to innocent people who are tired of being cunning. Understand these words, 'tired of being cunning'.

What is cunningness? It is the opposite of intelligence. You can be either cunning or intelligent, never both at the same time. Cunningness is also the opposite of vulnerability. When you are cunning, you cannot be vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, you are pure like a child. A child can be intelligent and innocent at the same time. Over time, his intelligence grows but the innocence invariably takes a turn to become cunningness. Then he is no more pure like a child. Societal conditioning causes the innocence in the intelligence to take the turn into cunningness. Children if left to themselves remain innocent. But we teach them so many things that they become social animals. We hold a great responsibility in bringing up children without making them cunning.

The poet Khalil Gibran* says beautifully about children:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The problem is that we know only to divide and look. We never know to look as a whole. If you watch a baby, it will look at each of its toys as a whole. It will just try to push it in as a whole into its mouth! Sometimes it will push the larger part of the toy first into the mouth where it won't even fit. It doesn't know what toy it is or what its parts are or whether it is appropriate to put it into its mouth. Its eyes know only to see as whole, never divided. The moment you teach the child to divide and look, you sow cunningness in him.

Cunningness is division. It is a constant calculation. It hinders free and innocent expression. It knows to express only through calculation. Calculation is alright for arithmetic, not for the being. We calculate for the wrong reasons. Do we ever calculate our blessings? No, never! They are just taken for granted.

Cunningness starts with division of the whole. Innocence is lost when the mind is taught to divide. Once it picks up the thread, the mind continues and moves far away from its original innocence.

Two babies were in a pram next to each other in a mall.

One of them turn-ed to the other and asked, 'Are you a girl or a boy?'

'I don't know,' the baby replied.

The first one said, 'I can tell.' And he dived beneath the clothes and came out and said, 'You are a girl and I am a boy.'

The baby girl was surprised and asked, 'How did you know?'

Pat came the reply, 'That's easy. You are wearing pink booties and I am wearing blue ones!'

From a very early stage, the child is taught division by people who are themselves struggling with cunningness. The child unconsciously trades his innocence for cunningness.

The danger with cunningness is that it grows roots in many direc-

tions and solidifies as the very nature of the individual. The person will not even know he is cunning. He won't even know that his struggle with himself is because of his cunningness.

One person came to me and started telling me, 'Swamiji, I have extramarital relationships.' I asked, 'Do you feel it is wrong?' He said, 'Yes, I know it is wrong, and I am very clear that I am doing something wrong.' I told him, 'Then stop it.' He said, 'No, only you can stop it.' I told him, 'Hey, I am not the one having the relationship to stop it! You are the one having it, so it is you who is supposed to decide and stop!' He stood silent. I asked him, 'What do you mean by I should stop? Do you mean that I should take your car keys and not allow you to go there? What do you mean by I should stop?'

This is cunningness. He told me, 'No, I have surrendered myself to you, so you should take care of it.' I told him it was a good story! Then I told him, 'You told just now you have surrendered everything to me. Alright then, just sit here and meditate.' He asked, 'What are you saying Swamiji?' I told him, 'You were the one who said just now that you have surrendered

Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game you play with yourself.

everything to me! Then just do whatever I say. Don't

move from here, just sit.' That he was not ready to do!

A small story:

The rivers one day gathered together and made a complaint against the sea. They asked the sea, 'Why is that when we enter your waters fresh and fit to drink, you make us salty and undrinkable?'

The sea hearing itself being blamed replied, 'Don't come. Then you won't turn salty.'

If you are not ready for the simple solution, then be assured that you are playing a cunning game! Unless you are tired of being cunning, you can't be helped. No technique can help you because your cunningness knows how to escape from every single technique. People come and tell me, 'Whatever you are saying is correct, but…' Understand this. The moment you say 'but' to me, you have missed! The moment you say 'but', it is over. You are trying to escape with your cunningness.

Some people tell me, 'Whatever you say is right, but please make me do whatever you say.' What do you mean? Should I have two or three people continuously watch you and make you do things? Drop your cunning game, then automatically you will start doing what I say. Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game that you play with yourself. You can't play it with me. I straightaway know where all you are hiding. I don't need to come to you to find you. So understand that you are just playing with yourself. Just take a strong decision to be completely sincere and authentic to yourself. Only then you can drop your cunningness.

When cunningness dissolves, authenticity and sincerity happen and you will enlighten quickly. Also, with authenticity you will not indulge in any kind of gossip. Gossip is a pure expression of cunningness. When you are so cunning that you can't tell a person anything on his face, you talk behind his back.

When I tell people that they need to become tired of cunningness to come out of it, they ask me, 'How come I know and yet I don't know? How come I can't stop being cunning?' You can't stop because you are secretly nurturing it. It is your creation. You never miss a chance to nurture it. That is why you pretend that you want to stop and you urge me to stop it for you. You can wake up a sleeping person but you can't wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. Until you are only pretending to sleep, you will never find the burning need to wake up. Straightaway stop cooperating with it, that's all. That is the only way and it is so straightforward. When you know fire burns, will you beg me to stop you from touching it? No! Then when you know you are cunning, why can't you just drop it?

When you drop cunningness, spontaneity flowers. Spontaneity is the opposite of calculation. Intelligence plus innocence is spontaneity. Intelligence plus cunningness is calculation. Spontaneity is nothing but a flowing expression of your innocence. It is a non-calculating state of mind. It is called sahaja* , being yourself without any burden. The burden is the burden of constant calculation.

Understand this, with cunningness, you may think you are gaining a lot of things, but the truth is that you are losing your innocence. Losing your innocence is like losing your entire life. You can afford to lose anything but not your innocence.

With cunningness you miss your state of sahaja* , the spontaneity that is your own. In being cunning you are constantly trying to be someone else. When you pretend to be someone else you are not only cheating yourself but you are also in danger of missing your own fragrance. Like all other creations of Existence you have your own beautiful fragrance. It is the fragrance of sahaja* , your natural spontaneous state that is unique to you.

When you are spontaneous, you are without any conclusions. There is no need to function out of conclusion all the time. Intelligence is fluid and creative. It is of the present moment. Conclusion is a foregone thing. It is of the past. With conclusion the juice of spontaneity is lost. Society has taught us to be with conclusions all the time. There are some standard conclusions, which we quickly try to fit with anything that we see. We are afraid to drop our conclusions and be open because the mind is always comfortable in repeating patterns. It finds security in it.

Existence never repeats patterns. Every day is different. Every night is different. Can anyone say it is the same day or same night? No. It is an event that happens everyday and yet it is never the same. That is the sheer beauty of Existence. Then why should we look for patterns? There is no need. The very joy of spontaneous living can be very well experienced. Children are open and spontaneous till the age of seven. Then society starts creating an impression on them.

A woman stopped and asked the little boy who was smoking on the street, 'Son, does your mother know that you smoke on the road?'

The boy looked at her and asked, 'Does your husband know that you stop

Sahaja - Spontaneous divine joy.

The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action.

and talk to strange young men on the road?'

Children are like this! They don't bother.

They are just spontaneous.

A teacher asked in the class, 'What is a comet?'

One boy stood up and said, 'A star with a tail.'

The teacher asked, 'Can you name one?'

The boy replied, 'Mickey mouse.'

Children are not afraid. They just express, that's all! No one can predict what the child is going to say the next moment. That is his specialty! The problem is that we are ready to handle spontaneity with children, but we are not ready to handle it with grownups. With a child, we mentally give him the space because we accept he is from a different plane. But with adults we perceive them as being in the same plane as us and so we cannot tolerate it.

Children get away with so many things like even hitting you. You actually enjoy it! Can you imagine feeling like this if an adult hits you? The innocence of the child makes even the act of hitting beautiful. The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action. That is the difference.

A teacher was speaking at a meeting when a critic shouted, 'Listen to him! And his father used to drive a wagon pulled by a donkey.'

The teacher replied, 'That's right. Today, my father and the wagon are no more, but I can see we still have the donkey with us.'

You can imagine the state of the critic!

The Dhammapada* says:

Light the lamp within; strive hard to attain wisdom. Become pure and innocent, and live in the world of light.

When you came into the world, you came as an innocent infant. You radiated the beauty of your innocence until society gave you the mind. Now, you want to get rid of your mind and become innocent again. The regained innocence is what is called maturity. It is possible to regain it. Just believe that you were innocent once upon

Dhammapada - Teachings of Buddha in scriptural form.

a time. Trust that the innocence is still within you. Then it is possible to start radiating it again. This understanding will start the process again.

Maturity causes us to live in totality. Totality is functioning out of immense innocence and giving your whole to the moment. There is no opinion, no judgment, no fragments within you. There is only intense enthusiasm for the moment. The openness to the moment is the innocence. Just one thing is needed to become innocent once again. Don't hide behind false knowledge. See where all you are hiding and step out to reveal your natural self. Then you are completely open. This is the attitude for enlig-htenment. Knowing that you are hiding is the first step. Taking a strong decision to come out of it is the next step. Then you will see that innocence and maturity start happening.

To become mature you need to go in first, because maturity is all about falling at ease with your true nature with no pretensions. Making your natural self to be your very nature is maturity. The best way to become your natural self is to keep your core at ease. Let the core of you be at ease all the time, irrespective of where you might be or what you may be doing. Then you can retain your purity. Always feel your natural self at your core with no strain, with no effort or pretensions.

The problem of falsity comes because society teaches

Making your natural self to be your very nature is maturity.

you to be someone special all the time. There is no need to be someone special all the time. It is an immature idea to be someone special all the time. Once this idea is renounced, the mind relaxes. It feels no pressure to be shrewd. This relaxation gives birth to innocence.

Right now, you are struggling for innocence because you are unable to pacify your mind. If you cooperate with the understanding that your mind is hindering your regaining of innocence, the struggle is over. On the other hand, if you resist the understanding, then you struggle. The struggle is with your ego. The ego resists any understanding that shakes it.

When you drop the mind, you fall into the moment. To harbour the mind you need to travel either in the past or in the future. A child is always in the present. He doesn't care to retain any past in his memory. It is of no use to him. He is interested in enjoying the moment. There is no need to hold on to the past. When we remember anything, we don't remember days, we remember only moments, is it not? Then why not make each moment worthy of remembrance? Why go behind the past or future? Just pure logic!

To feel the urge to regain your

innocence you may have to go astray, because when you go astray and face the consequences, introspection starts. The introspection triggers the need to regain innocence. Don't condemn yourself for going astray. Just bring in the awareness to integrate yourself into the right path forever. If maturity is going to happen this way it is definitely worth it.

Maturity is taking a strong decision not to delude yourself anymore. It is to awaken to the consciousness within. It is to integrate yourself with honesty. When this happens, you start to become a child again. As a child, you were innocent but not with awareness. Somewhere in the process of growing up you lost the innocence. You are regaining it now. The new innocence will be with full awareness and that is the real innocence.

When you regain the innocence, you flower with the understanding that there is nothing more priceless than becoming childlike again. That is the process of enlightenment.

That is why a child's innocence is to be nurtured with utmost care. For every innocent observation that a child makes, if we can be without imposing our knowledge on it, the child will grow up preserving its innocence. For example, if the child asks, 'Why is it that the sky is blue sometimes and white sometimes?' just tell the child that the sky is blue sometimes and white sometimes. He will anyway learn that in his lessons in school. But if you can tell him they are just the way they are, he will straightaway understand the spontaneity of nature. He will not be looking for further knowledge to feed himself with. The universities take care of that anyway.

At home, when you are still the most influential person in his life, if you make him understand that that is they way things are, that there is no need to know it all with knowledge, the innocence in him survives. He doesn't catch the thread of passing judgment on nature. He learns to see without bringing words in. He learns to just see and be. The moment words are brought in, the innocence is lost. Then it is no more seeing. It becomes looking. The whole beauty of it is then lost.

Growing up is always considered to be a serious thing. If you grow up in seriousness you only grow old. If you grow up in playfulness, you remain young! It is a good thing to see what children, animals and other creatures are doing at times because they all live with innocence and playfulness. It will help understand and reconnect with innocence.

A small story:

A lion was walking through the jungle taking a poll to determine who was the greatest among all the wild animals.

He came across a rhinoceros and asked, 'Who is the king of the jungle?'

The rhinoceros replied, 'Of course you are!'

The lion was happy and walked on. Next, he came across a zebra.

He asked the zebra, 'Tell me, who is the king of the jungle?'

The zebra immediately replied, 'You are, oh king!'

The lion walked on with great pride and saw an elephant.

He asked the elephant, 'Tell me, who is the king of the jungle?'

The elephant picked him up with his trunk, and swung him against a large tree. The lion bounced off the tree, hit the ground and said, 'You don't have to get so mad just because you don't know the right answer!'

Innocence is the way to approach life! The moment you realize that you need to regain your innocence, you are ready for the transformation. The scale of measure of regaining innocence is to watch your reaction to the little things in life. Innocence sees all little things with awe and wonder. That is why children are so wonder filled all the time. You can see it in their wide eyes. If you are able to see things in wonder, then innocence has started happening in you. It is possible that with all the knowledge of the world you can still have clear and innocent eyes. Those are the eyes of the sage.

Childlike innocence discovers many things but cannot understand most of it. It enjoys it at the level of its innocence, that's all. Whereas innocence regained not only discovers these new things, but also understands all of them. That is the difference.

Childlike innocence is beautiful but not enough. It has to be lost to life and regained with complete awareness and maturity.

It is said that a mad man and a mystic look alike. Both of them will be eccentric in their ways, laughing abruptly and doing things incomprehensible. But they are actually at the extreme two ends of the same spectrum! Extremes always look alike. Outwardly they appear to be the same, that's all. Similarly, a child and a saint may look alike in their innocence, but they are actually at the two extreme ends of the same spectrum. The child has not even started its achievement of regained innocence, while the saint has finished it.

The innocence of the child is still the god given innocence he came with, not the

Decide not to rest until the deconditioning is total.

innocence that he regained through life.

The innocence of a child can be easily disturbed, whereas the innocence of a sage can never be disturbed. Getting the innocence disturbed and working to regain it permanently is the process of maturity. That is the travel through to the other end of the spectrum in becoming a saint.

If a child is brought up in love, the innocence of the child is preserved. Then he moves around with his heart, not with his head. He may use his head as a utility but functions from his heart. It does not mean that the child will become useless. No. His innocence will not be corrupted by knowledge, that's all. He will be centered on love instead of on knowledge, that's all. Knowledge itself is not the problem. Only the attitude with which it is carried is the problem.

With innocence regained, you will once again be able to look into the eyes of the other. Your innocence not only makes you vulnerable, it also makes you integrated. With knowledge, you are fragmented within you. With regained innocence, you are integrated and honest to yourself and to others. That honesty will radiate from your eyes and touch the other. That honesty is maturity.

Just the longing to become innocent again is enough. It will start destroying all that is not you inside you. After all, it is just layers of conditioning. But it is important to hold your will strong until the process is complete. The will is a constant reminder to be sincere and honest without cunningness. Decide not to rest until the de-conditioning is total.

The beauty of maturity is that it allows you to function as a mature person when required and as a child at all other times. It easily allows you to flow from one to the other so that you are in perfect harmony with the Whole.

When you regain your innocence, you are called dvija* , reborn, mature. The key is not to give up in your effort in regaining your innocence. The journey may be frustrating at times, because it is taking time and not happening. It is so because society has conditioned you with many layers. The onion has to be peeled layer after layer to reach the center. Frustration is a precondition to burst open with transformation. So don't relax, that is enough. It will happen. Remember, innocence is already in you. It is not about any end objective outside. Just this

Dvija - Twice born. Refers to the state of awakening of Consciousness.

remembrance will give you the relaxation after every frustration.

Everyday just sit for a few moments, sit by yourself and calmly go into your innocence. Feel the innocence in you. Feel the purity in you. Feel the overflowing from within you. Let it spread through your body, mind and being. Feel how beautiful you are in your innocence. Do this everyday. Soon you will see that you will awaken to it as your very nature. All that is not you will be burnt and the real youwill emerge.

Innocence has a totality about it. This totality is called grace. That is why enlightened masters appear to be so graceful and beautiful all the time. Innocence manifests itself as wondrous beauty to the eyes of the beholder. It is so total that even the most cunning mind cannot deny it. It simply defies all logic and touches you.

Being innocent is like functioning from your very consciousness. It is thoughtless awareness. Until then you function from your mind. If you just sit and watch the source of every thought that rises in you, you will soon drop all thoughts and go back to the thoughtless awareness that you had as a child. Thoughtless awareness is innocence. But this time it will be the innocence of maturity because you have gone through the process. Thoughtless awareness doesn't add to your knowledge. It simply deepens your innocence and makes you see the universe with more awe and wonder. Innocence sees no opposites, it just sees, that's all. Its beauty is in its nonjudgmental seeing.

A man went to see his girlfriend after a long time.

Unfortunately, he found that her younger brother who was much younger to her was sitting there watching television and eating some snack.

He sat beside him and told him, 'You know what? If you sit upstairs in the terrace and watch the road, for every man wearing a red hat that passes by you, I will give you fifty cents.'

The boy was thrilled and raced up the stairs and assumed his position in the terrace.

The man took his position beside his girlfriend.

Ten minutes later, just as he was getting intimate with her, the boy rushed into the room.

The man was terribly disappointed and shouted, 'Didn't I tell you to watch the road for men with red hats?'

The boy replied gasping for breath, 'I know! A parade just went by and at fifty cents a head, you owe me twelve hundred dollars!'

We always think children are immature. We think that the grownups who cry are immature. We are conditioned to believe that expression of any emotion is immature. Expressing the emotions in an unfiltered way is a sign of innocence. The cunning ones edit even their emotions. Once in a while it is good to cry in front of people. What is wrong with it? What are you trying to hide? By crying you are only expressing your true feelings. What is there to hide? The problem is that society has always taught us to hide our true nature and show only our projected personality. That is why with time we forget what our nature is. We forget how to be innocent.

One teacher told the parent during the parent teacher meeting, 'Your daughter is very good in all her activities. She is just a little emotionally immature. But she will be alright.'

The parent looked at her in a puzzled way and asked, 'At three, how else do you expect her to be?'

Just by being with children as their friend, as their playmate, it is possible to get back in touch with the innocence. When you are with them don't pretend to be like a child. Take it really seriously and become a child! It is the greatest favor you can do to yourself.

The problem is that we are afraid of losing what society taught us. From society we learnt how to build our personality. But our character is different from our personality. Character is real. Personality is a built up image. If we work towards solidifying character, we are working in the zone of reality. If we work towards solidifying personality, we are working in the zone of dreams.

You may have noticed that when you are sitting at the table and eating with your children, they will hold up the little potato chips and admire the shape of each chip before eating. They have the ability to be enchanted by life's eternal mysteries and wonders. That is their greatest blessing. They don't think, they just enjoy, that's all. When the child draws our attention to the chip, we ask him to eat fast! We miss the moment of getting led into life's mysteries. We miss stumbling upon our own innocence.

There are umpteen ways to rediscover the child hiding in you. Just play hide and seek with children or learn how to make cookies or watch Tom and Jerry cartoons or eat different color cotton candies or make mud dolls! All these will bring out the child in you. Your solid identity will dissolve. You will become fluid like a river and flow. The weight of your seriousness will drop and you will become light and blissful.

Seriousness is ego. When you are afraid of getting hurt, when you are afraid of losing your control or power, you become serious. When you are too centered on yourself this happens. When you let go and play and touch your innocence again, you will suddenly enjoy a break from yourself. That break is the falling of your seriousness. In that gap you will realize there is nothing to hold on to. There is only free spirit. When you become aware of this you can work on it consciously and move towards becoming completely innocent and sincere.

Innocence is keeping the consciousness at the level of the heart, not allowing it to settle in the head.

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

We now move to a slightly more complex subject. It is about the relationship that we have with the world around us. Why do we see what we see? How do we see what we see? How do we fit into the scheme of Existence?

What is this world made up of? Our five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch are our gateways to perceiving this world. They tell us that this world is made up of matter or objects in various forms, shapes, colors and qualities.

We see ourselves living in a three dimensional world fundamentally made up of the five basic elements - earth, water, fire, air and space. We see all the objects in this world undergoing change with time. They all undergo creation, sustenance and dissolution with the passage of time.

Classical physics tells us that matter is governed by the laws of physics like the three laws of motion, the law of gravity, the laws of fluid dynamics and so on. All objects are considered to be made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which in turn are made of three types of particles - protons, neutrons and electrons. We learned all these fundamental things in school.

But according to modern science, the world is not fundamentally made up of matter. The fundamental particles are not protons, neutrons and electrons. Modern science says matter itself is actually energy!

The scientist Albert Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2 (where E is energy, m is mass of the object and c is the speed of light) proves the equivalence of matter and energy. I was reading a very recent article on a research that proved Einstein's equation. The fundamental particles in the nucleus themselves are considered to be made of smaller particles called quarks, which are bound by gluons. The surprising thing is the mass of gluons is zero and the mass of quarks is only five percent. The study says, the missing 95 percent comes from the energy of the movements and interactions of quarks and gluons. So, energy and mass are equivalent.

This truth discovered by science a few decades ago, was declared by the Eastern rishis in the Upanishads, the essence of the vedic knowledge. The very first line of the Isa Vasya Upanishad, written thousands of years ago, declares, Isa vasyam idam sarvam or all that exists is energy!

Isa Vasya Upanishad - One of the major and oldest vedic scriptures.

Today, we are in the age of the quantum world. We talk of quantum physics, quantum leaps and quantum thinking. What exactly is meant by the word 'quantum'?

Quantum simply means a jump from one state to another state without going through any of the intermediate states. Today, no one has the time to go through intermediate states. We want instant results in everything. We want quantum results!

A small story:

One man found it difficult to sleep and visited his doctor. He begged the doctor to give him a really strong medication. The doctor told him, 'Not much is required. Just take half of this pill and you will sleep very well.

The man went home and took out the pill. He took the whole pill to ensure that he slept well. In the morning, he woke up and felt thoroughly refreshed and cheerful.

He got ready and went to the office. He went up to his boss and said, 'I am ready to move anything today! I slept like a log and woke up feeling like a kid this morning!'

The boss replied, 'That's nice, but where were you yesterday?'

We want quantum results in everything!

Coming back to the topic, we learned in physics that an atom is made up of a nucleus with electrons orbiting at specific distances from the nucleus.

We learned that the electron usually remains in its orbit (its regular circular path of motion). But if it is excited by means of heat or some chemical reaction, it absorbs energy and jumps to the higher orbit. If it releases energy, it jumps to the lower orbit. The important point to note is that when the electron jumps from one orbit to another, it makes the jump without moving through the space in between. One moment it is seen in one orbit, and the next moment it is seen in the other orbit! This is called a quantum jump. A quantum jump is a change from one state to another without passing through anything in between.

Matter is actually energy vibrating at various frequencies and manifesting itself in various forms. We are not able to see this vibration with our eyes because the frequencies of vibration are too high. It is just as when movement is too fast, the eye cannot perceive the moving objects as independent frames. The eye sees the objects merging into each other continuously.

In the same way, the vibration of energy cannot be perceived by the eye. It appears to be solid matter! Energy in gross form is matter. Matter in subtle form is energy. The body is the gross manifestation of the subtle mind. The mind is the subtle manifestation of the gross body. An important thing to be understood here is that the perception of the world varies from person to person because the functioning of the mind varies from person to person!

Even interactions between people are only energy interactions. For example, an atom that consists of a nucleus with a cloud of electrons around it can be compared to a football field. The nucleus is like a peanut in the center of a football field and the cloud of electrons is like the empty space in the field. Another comparison I came across is, if you were to remove all the space between all the atoms on planet earth, the The body is the gross manifestation of the subtle mind.

remaining matter would come to just about the size of a sugar cube!

What we see as solid matter, as the football field in this example, is actually the electron clouds or huge empty spaces interacting with each other. In the same way, our interactions and contact with other people and objects are also only interaction of energies. There is an exchange of energy that happens. You give some of your energy and you get energy from that person or object!

Now, what is the origin of matter and energy? What is the origin of the body and mind? From where does the energy in all objects arise? What then is the reality behind this perceived world? If we are not able to see reality as it exists through the senses, what is the nature of reality?

This question is asked in the Shiva Sutras, an ancient vedic scripture on the science of enlightenment. Shiva's consort Devi asks Him, 'What is the nature of this wonderfilled universe?' As a response, Shiva delivers 112 enlightenment techniques

This whole Existence and all its events happen as causeless auspiciousness.

which, when practiced, give the answer as a direct experience!

This question about reality leads us to a world beyond matter and energy, beyond the limitations of space and time. This is the world where all the possibilities exist as seed. It is the essence and the origin of thoughts, and it is the essence and origin of events in the material world.

In this world-beyond, ordinary logic does not exist. Cause and effect relationships do not exist. The happening of one event does not cause another event to happen, but it is correlated with the other event that happens. This correlation has no dependence on space and time. So what we call the seed is the ocean of infinite possibilities from which the waves of events arise.

This whole Existence and all its events happen as causeless auspiciousness, like waves arising in an ocean. Existence is an ocean of bliss and ecstasy. Out of the causeless, overflowing ecstasy, the wave of creation rises in the ocean of Existence! That is how things happen. The Divine, playing with its infinite manifestations in innumerable universes is called sustenance. Dropping from the play and relaxing into Itself is called dissolution. Dissolution is the settling back into the Absolute or Parabrahma* state. Then for no logical reason, the play starts again…! This continues. What we see as results are the infinite happenings in the universe.

We see this causeless and ecstatic play of Existence through our own individual perception! Our very perception collapses the beautiful happening into a localized reality. Each individual 'boils down' the beautiful happening into his own individual reality.

Someone asked me, 'I see this table here. All the people in this room see this same table. Then how can you say that this table is not a reality?' Please understand that what you see as this table here is not the same as what the other person sees! Each person in this room sees this table differently! That is the truth. That is what I am trying to explain here.

As long as the mind tries to perceive, what is perceived is not the ultimate reality. Only an infinite being can perceive reality exactly as it is happening. Also he cannot explain it in words, because words cannot describe what is beyond space and time.

Parabrahma - Supreme Being.

He can only tell you to wait for it to become your own experience! That is why Shiva answers not with philosophy but with techniques. He directly gives techniques for Devi to experience the reality, the nature of the universe.

Let me explain this concept based on the energy-matter idea. We saw that matter is actually energy. Classical physics said that the electron is a particle. However, quantum physics says that it is a wave. Actually, the electron exhibits the properties of both a particle and a wave in different situations. Physicists have now concluded that the electron has a dual nature as a 'particle-wave'!

Since the electron is a particle, what is the location of the electron? Since it is a wave, what is the momentum of the wave? The answers to these questions lead to a very startling discovery that the particle-wave can be either a particle or a wave or even both at the same time. But you cannot determine both the location and the momentum of the electron at the same time, because the very act of observing the location of the electron will change its momentum, and the very act of determining the momentum of the electron will change its location! This is

what is known in science as the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.

The particle-wave is both a particle and wave at the same time until the act of observation comes into play. This act of observation can now be connected with our act of observing the causeless happenings of Existence. When we observe, we observe through our own set of conditioning, what we call engrams or preconceived and deeply engraved memories and conclusions. Each individual's act of observation is colored by his own conditioning or engrams. Based upon that, he boils down the happening to suit his own experience of reality!

In the case of the particle-wave, the very act of observation 'collapses' the waveparticle to a particle or wave. This is what the physicist Erwin Schrödinger showed in his hypothetical cat experiment.

Suppose you put a cat and a vial of poisonous acid in a chamber and seal it. There is no way the observer outside can determine whether the cat is alive or dead. Since we cannot know, the cat is both dead as well as alive. It is a distribution of probabilities which includes the probability of dead as well as alive states.

When you break open the chamber to see the condition of the cat, the very act of breaking open the chamber could potentially change the state of the cat. The

The very act of observation changes the possibility into a particular reality.

cat could be killed by the acid vial being broken due to

breaking the chamber. So, it can never be known what the outcome would have been if it were not observed in its true happening.

This leads us to a deep understanding that both possibilities exist simultaneously, and it is the very act of observation that changes the possibility into a particular reality.

Let me give another scientific experiment that highlights how the very act of measuring distorts the beautiful reality. You may have heard of the double-slit experiment with light.

In this experiment, a beam of light is aimed at a barrier with two vertical slits. On the other side of the barrier is a photographic plate that is used to record the light as it falls on it after passing through the barrier. If only one slit is open, the pattern on the photographic plate is as expected, a single line of light aligned with the slit. If both the slits are open, we would expect two lines of light on the plate aligned with the slits, but what is observed are multiple lines of light and darkness in varying degrees. This is the principle of interference where light beams behave as waves that interfere with each other.

Now, if the light beam is slowed down enough so that instead of a stream of light particles or photons hitting the plate, each photon individually hits the plate, then there should be no interference and the plate should show a light pattern aligned with the slit. But the resulting pattern still showed interference!

How is this possible? There is only this one photon, what can it be interfering with… other than itself? It was concluded that each photon not only goes through both the slits, but also simultaneously takes every possible path on the way to the target!

To see how this can occur, experiments were done to track the individual photon paths. But what happened was that the measurement in some way disrupted the paths of the photons. Whenever an attempt was made to observe, only two bright lines on the photographic plate aligned with the slits! If they didn't attempt to measure, again the pattern became the multiple lines of light and darkness!

Each photon moves simultaneously in a number of paths. But an effort to measure the paths causes it to collapse to a single path! In the same way, our very effort to perceive the infinite risings of the ocean of Existence causes it to appear as what our limited mind perceives!

Once a student asked a Zen master, 'What is the path?' The master replied, 'Everyday life is the path.' The student asked, 'Can it be studied?'

The master said, 'If you try to study, you will be far from it.' The student asked, 'If I do not study, how can I know it is the path?'

The master said, 'The path does not belong to the perception world. Neither does it belong to the non-perception world. Perception is a delusion and non-perception is senseless. If you want to reach the true path beyond doubt, place yourself in the same freedom as the sky. You name it neither good nor not-good.'

Physiology of perception

Let us start with what really happens on a physical level when we perceive things.

When there is a perception of physical reality, the various parts of the brain show a change in neural activity as the neurons, which are the basic building blocks of the nervous system, fire in synchronicity. This results in the random visual patterns of light being perceived as specific shapes and forms. This is how the input from each of our senses is perceived as an experience of particular sound, touch, smell, taste or sight.

Each photon moves simultaneously in a number of paths. But an effort to measure the paths causes it to collapse to a single path!

If you now step back and look, you can see that before the observation or the perception, both the world as well as you, that is the seen and the seer, existed in a dynamic and chaotic state of activity. The act of perception changes that chaotic state into some sort of an order that becomes both the seen in the outside world and the process of seeing in the seer (as the activity in the nervous system) at the same time. At the moment of seeing, the probability of what is seen collapses into a specific form.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, the lord and master, chooses to give Arjuna the experience of Krishna's cosmic form. Until then, Arjuna had seen Krishna only as the six foot tall, handsome friend. But upon Arjuna's request, and after Krishna sees that Arjuna is ready to receive the cosmic

form experience, He decides to give it to him. Arjuna then sees Krishna as the manifestation of the entire cosmos in all its seeming chaos.

He cries out, 'O Lord! I can see all the gods and deities in Your body. I can see all the sages and divine serpents. O Lord of the Universe, I see many arms, stomachs, faces, eyes and your limitless form. O Universal Form, I cannot see your beginning, middle or end.'

Arjuna is unable to bear the experience because he loses his intellectual control over things! He begs for equilibrium, meaning he wants his mind to be under his intellectual control again. He wants to know the cause and effect of things and feel that they are in his control, because the experience rips him away from his perception of the cause-and-effect logic itself.

As long as cause and effect logic is under your control, you feel you are perceiving reality! Your ego is strong and steady. But the moment the logic is shaken, you feel tremendous fear. You feel you are just a drop in an ocean. What Arjuna sees is the absolute Reality, but he is afraid of that very Reality because it doesn't conform to his logic. He begs to revert to the earlier state of perception through his five senses alone, through his own solid identity, his own solid ego.

Let us analyze what space is.

Take a basic element, a point, a onedimensional object. When a point traces across a direction, it generates a line.

Now, let us trace the motion of a line, a two-dimensional object. If it moves in the

same direction as it is in, of course it will just continue to be a line. If it moves in a direction not contained in it, it traces a surface or a plane.

Similarly, if a surface or a plane moves in a direction not contained in it, it will trace a solid, a three-dimensional object.

So, a line is an infinite number of points. A surface is an infinite number of lines. A solid is infinite number of surfaces. Similarly, we can imagine a four dimensional space as an infinite number of three dimensional spaces.

Now, just as we built up these higher dimensions from the lower dimensions, we can also see the lower dimensions as parts or sections of a higher dimension space.

For example, a point is the intersection of two lines. So, a point is a section of a line.

A line is a section of a surface. A surface is a section of a solid.

Extending this, we can say a solid is a section of a four-dimensional body. Our three dimensional space is a section of a four dimensional space. P.D.Ouspensky , in his book Tertium Organum, explains these very beautifully. He extends this to say that many separate three dimensional bodies, like humans for instance, may actually be the sections or parts of one four dimensional body!

He explains this with a simple example. Suppose a horizontal plane intersects the top of a tree, parallel to the surface of the earth. Now, on this plane, the sections of branches seem to be all separate, not

connected to each other. But, from the three dimensional space, we can see that these are all sections of branches of one single tree.

In our four-dimensional world, the maximum dimensions in space can be only three. We can call this fourth dimension time. So, the four dimensional world can be looked at as a space-time continuum. It can be said that time is the fourth dimension of space.

We understand time in three forms – past, present and future. We think that the past is over and does not exist anymore. The future has not yet happened, hence it does not exist. The present thus happens at the transition of the non-existent future to another non-existence, the past.

In the three dimensional world, we see that the seemingly separate sections of the tree in the two dimensional world are actually joined in the third dimension. In the same way, if we imagine a consciousness that can rise above our plane of living, this consciousness can also see the continuity in the fourth dimension of time with the past, present and future all existing simultaneously. This consciousness sees the simultaneous happening of events, which the ordinary consciousness sees as distinct events separated by periods of time.

A three dimensional body, moving in time, traces a four dimensional body. Across time, we can see the motion as we grow from a child to youth, to adult, to elderly person. But we are not able to see or feel this 'four-dimensional body' because of our limited perception. Being in the same three-dimensional world, we see only the section of the four dimensional body that is the normal three-dimensional body. It is like one of a series of pictures on a cinema roll.

To understand how a four-dimensional world is perceived in three-dimensional form, let us first see how a threedimensional happening is seen in a twodimensional world.

Suppose you are in a two-dimensional world, the world of planes and surfaces. Your life, your perception is restricted to a plane, like a vertical wall. Now, imagine a wheel with each of its spokes painted in a different color is rotating perpendicular to the plane in which you live.

How will you perceive the motion of this wheel? When a spoke of the wheel intersects the plane, you will see a line of a certain color at the intersection of the wheel and the plane. Then, after one spoke passes, there will be a gap when you will not see anything. Then, the next spoke of a different color will pass through the plane. So, you will perceive the motion of the wheel as lines of different colors happening at regular intervals of time.

What is happening is this, the limited perception in a lower dimensional world is changing the perception of space to a phenomenon in time! Since you can see only two of the three dimensions of space, you see the third dimension only when it becomes manifest on your plane over time. Hence, you see it as unrelated to your two dimensions of space, and you call it a

phenomenon in time.

Now, imagine when a green spoke passes through the plane, simultaneously The limited perception in a lower dimensional world is changing the perception of space to a phenomenon in time!

another independent phenomenon occurs, say the barking of a dog. In the two dimensional world, it will be seen as a correlation between the appearance of the green line and the sound of a dog barking, when in reality it is not!

It is not possible for the two-dimensional being to believe that there can be a rise of events outside his plane of perception. That means, to understand the threedimensional world, he cannot be in the twodimensional consciousness, he has to rise to the three-dimensional consciousness. Similarly, to understand the fourdimensional world, we have to be in the fourth-dimensional consciousness.

Is this possible? Is it possible for us to go beyond the perception of the senses which give us only a three dimensional view? Can we actually see reality instead of mere glimpses of reality as phenomena in time? The answer is YES.

Through in-depth rese-arch and development, the Eastern mystics and sages have discovered that it is possible to understand

From whatever quality of consciousness we see, that appears as our reality.

Reality as it exists and to experience it also. This can happen

as a natural way of life, not just as a chance happening. This experience has happened in them.

Through meditation, it is possible for us to experience this same state of awareness.

A beautiful Zen story:

Once, two soldiers were looking at a flag flying in the wind. One of them said, 'The flag is moving.' The second one said, 'No, it is the wind that is moving.'

A Zen master passing by saw the argument going on. The soldiers requested the master to help them resolve this serious issue.

One of the soldiers asked, 'Master, I say the flag is moving. But he says the wind is moving. Which is correct?'

The master says, 'Neither is correct. Only consciousness is moving.'

As of now, what we feel as reality everyday of our life is also a 'virtual' reality. It is only a perception of things being separate in space and time. If you look deeply, you can see how our very perception of the world itself is questionable. From whatever quality of consciousness we see,

that appears as our reality, not the absolute Reality.

We think we live in a world of the three dimensions of space and the fourth dimension of time. However, there are actually eleven dimensions. The fundamental dimensions are length, breadth, depth, time and consciousness. The higher dimensions are combinations of these fundamental dimensions.

For example, a stick has length, breadth and depth. It is in time and space. Now, if we keep length and breadth and just remove the depth, the stick will be seen, but the hand will pass through the stick. You can also keep the depth and remove the length and breadth. Then nothing will be seen, but the hand will hit something if you try to pass it through.

In this way, there are various combinations leading to the eleven dimensions that make up the universe. When you are in a plane above the four dimensional spacetime you can currently perceive, you can see these eleven dimensions, you can see Reality as enlightened beings can.

Whether it is the energy in the atom or the energy in the cosmos, there is a big chaos in the energy play. Within that chaos, there is an order that you cannot even imagine.

When chaos moves in an order, it creates what is called consciousness or intelligence.

Chaos is energy

Anything in chaos is wild and energetic. Anything that has order is dull. In our life, we can see: anything in chaos, anything wild, radiates energy. We can see that when kids are allowed to be free, they are so wild. They radiate so much energy. In our own lives, if we are allowed to break some rule, we feel so much joy. We radiate so much energy. Chaos is directly related to energy. The freedom of chaos, and not being bound by rules, is the reason why we feel so energetic while dancing freely, without any decided steps.

The moment we know we are bound, we will be dull. The dullness will automatically enter into us, even if it does not affect us directly physically. For example, if you are sitting in the hall and you know that the hall is open, and you know you can leave at any time, you will be alive, fresh and 'Chaos in order' is 'cosmic intelligence'.

joyful. Suddenly, if you get the information that the hall is locked and you cannot leave, will you be able to sit comfortably? No!

Any rule curbs freedom, reduces the energy. Any regulation brings your energy down. Even in your house, if somebody says, 'Do not sit in that place', you will feel like sitting only in that place. But until that rule is made, you will never even bother to sit there!

Even habits like smoking are maintained for the subtle mental satisfaction that you are wild, that you are not bound. If you scan yourself consciously, you will understand that almost all of your happiness comes only when you break some rules, when you are chaotic!

Chaos is order

The whole of Existence is chaos. In the universe, so many planets are moving. There are no traffic signs or cops or signboards! Yet, the planets are moving so beautifully in order. In the same way, in quantum physics, the smallest elements are not even particles. They are both particles and waves, and a multitude of probabilities! But there is an order in that chaos.

If the universe is chaos without any order, it will head toward destruction. 'Chaos in order' is what I call 'cosmic intelligence'.

Take the planet earth on which we are living. Even if a single thing is missing, whether it is temperature or water or air or fire, if anything is missing, we will not be able to live on this planet earth as we live now. So, this is not just an accident. The whole chaos has some order.

Science is still not able to prove that there is order in the chaos of the universe, that there is order inside the atom, because that understanding requires us to go beyond the intellect. The rishis, the vedic scientists are very clear that there is an order in the chaos. This is what they call 'cosmic intelligence'.

I had an opportunity to meet Dr. Charles Townes , the Nobel laureate and physicist, who is well-known for his work on the laser and maser devices. He told me so beautifully, 'I feel the whole universe is something special, the whole universe is a spiritual being. It has its own intelligence. Even though I am not able to specifically prove it with mere words, I feel it is an intelligent and spiritual being.'

Please understand, the whole universe has its own intelligence. It is not just power. It is energy also. There is a difference between power and energy. Power plus intelligence is energy. Energy without intelligence is power. The cosmos is not just a force. It is 'force plus intelligence'. It responds to your thoughts, to your prayers, to your being, because it is intelligence.

Once somebody asked Buddha, 'Who is the creator of this universe?' Buddha replied, 'The universe itself is its creator.'

If the creator and the created are two separate entities, it means only the creator is intelligent and the created is not intelligent. The cosmos itself is the creator because it has its own intelligence. The cosmos is a living energy. You are sitting inside a living energy.

The Taittreya Upanishad says beautifully, 'From the Consciousness, or god, or the Ultimate Consciousness, came ether, space. From ether came air. From air came fire. From fire came water. From water came the earth. From the earth came food. This is the way existence has happened.' Thus, mystics again and again emphasize that we are from Consciousness, we are from god.

The creation itself is the creator, it is simply intelligence expressing itself. As long as you believe that what you see as the universe is material, mechanical, without any intelligence, you will have nothing to aim for in life. 'Might is right' will be the ultimate law.

Believing the world is just matter is the basic mistake. This belief is the root of all terrorism and violence on planet earth. As long as we believe the universe is just dead matter, it is going to create only more and more thirst for power. If we feel the whole world is chaos, then naturally we will think, 'When everything is chaos, let me catch hold of whatever is possible and live as much as I can.' We will be inspired to live with the idea 'might is right'.

Again and again, the cosmic intelligence proves that it responds to our thoughts. There are hundreds of experiments done, not only with plants and animals, even with stones, fire and water. All these things respond to our thoughts. The experiments done by the Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, prove how water responds beautifully to our thoughts and how it changes its very structure according to those thoughts that it is exposed to.

Only when we realize that the universe has its own intelligence, when we realize the universe is a spiritual being, the seed of peace is sown. Only when we understand that our thoughts are responded to, our way of life is rewarded, our prayers are answered, there is a living intelligent force and there is an order in the chaos, only then we can realize and work for peace, bliss and spirituality. Then, instead of trying to own or expand our boundaries and borders, we will try to expand our consciousness. The moment we start believing or trusting that the universe is 'intelligence', we can simply relax, trusting It.

There is a beautiful Zen story:

A disciple goes to a Zen master and asks, 'Master, please explain to me how you started, how you traveled the path, how you attained the ultimate experience.'

The master says, 'When I started, mountain was a mountain, river was a river and tree was a tree. When I was traveling, mountain was not a mountain, river was not a river and tree was not a tree. Again, when I attained, mountain is a mountain, river is a river and tree is a tree.'

Before achieving, even though you think you are extraordinary, you are ordinary. After achieving, even though you are extraordinary, you understand you are ordinary.

There is a wonderful chaos in what you call as 'order', your body, mind and being. When you experience that there is an order in the chaos of the cosmos, the

When you realize the chaos in the order, you will become a compassionate being.

macrocosm (brahmanda), you realize there is a chaos in the order of the microcosm, the body (pindanda).

You are not just a simple body. You are not just a microcosm. You are the macrocosm in miniature form. You realize you are the ultimate, endless ocean of potential energy just like the universe. You experience you are something beyond, something more than what you think.

Now you think you are in an order, because you think your boundary is very small. The moment you experience the cosmic consciousness, the order in the chaos, you will realize the chaos inside your order. You will realize the energy, the consciousness inside your body. Then you will never bother about how to keep yourself in order, it will simply happen. You will not work for discipline, discipline will simply happen in you!

Only when you realize the cosmic consciousness in your body, the macrocosm in your microcosm, you will really become orderly, you will really learn how to be orderly without reducing your energy. As long as you try to become orderly, you will only suppress your energy, and you will also be suppressing everyone else.

First, when you realize the order in the chaos, you will become a spiritual being, you will experience love and bliss. When you realize the chaos in the order, you will become a compassionate being. When you realize the order in the chaos, you will experience the experience part of love, bliss. When you realize the chaos in the order, you will express the expression part of love, that is compassion.

We see two things in the process of 'seeing', the seer and the seen object. Actually, what is happening in the process of seeing? (Though the example of eyes is taken here, it applies for all the senses.)

From the seer, consciousness takes a jump continuously to the seen, because it is not able to relax into the seer itself. Because of its restlessness, it gives life to the seen.

The continuous jump that happens between the seer and seen - from the seer to the seen, from the seen to the seer, again from the seer to the seen and again from the seen to the seer - is what is SEEING.

When the seer is not completely in bliss within himself, he starts becoming restless and jumps. When he jumps, he gives life to the seen. Because he gives life to the seen, the process of jumping becomes SEEING.

There are two ways to drop this process of seeing. Either the seer or the seen has to drop for the process of seeing to stop.

When the seen is renounced, it loses its power over the seer. There is no point in jumping because there is nothing to be seen. When there is no place to jump, the seer relaxes in the seer himself, then seeing does not happen. When seeing is not there, the seer is enlightened.

A person who stops this jump by dropping the 'seen' is a renouncer, a sannyasi. He takes away all his desire to see things, to believe that any of the sense objects hold value for him. The seen becomes unexciting, and the jumping stops. He becomes enlightened through renouncing. This is true selfknowledge gnana.

In the path of gnana, the seer experiences detachment and a complete witnessing of

Existence happens! life. In this way he tries to discover Reality. The main objective is the development of a sharp and pure intelligence through which Reality can be experienced. Adi Shankara, the great enlightened saint from Bharat, walked on the path of gnana and attained enlightenment. He created the most profound and sharp scriptures on Selfknowledge ever written.

On the other hand, when the seer himself drops, what remains is the seen, and again the jumping between the seer and the seen stops. Reality is seen. The seer becomes enlightened through devotion or bhakti.

When the identity of the seer drops, dissolves into the seen, deep devotion to Existence happens! Everything becomes an exciting manifestation of Existence for him! His identity is no longer there. He merges into Existence itself. That is why enlightened saints like Meerabai from Bharat, who went on the path of bhakti, were in a trance all the time, merged into the god consciousness, forgetting their own identity. She just sang praises of god and walked around on the streets with no self consciousness whatsoever.

So, in some way, either the seer or the seen has to drop. Only then the jumping between the seer and the seen will stop. When the jumping stops, the process of seeing also stops.

Whether you are stuck with the seer or with the seen, get completely stuck and you are enlightened! If you are jumping between the seer and the seen, not relaxed in either, you are under the illusion of a separate existence of the seer and seen. This jumping is what manifests as your individual seeing.

When the frequency of the seen is more than the seer, the seer can be changed or manipulated by the seen. When the frequency of the seer is more than the seen, the seen can be changed or manipulated by the seer.

As we said earlier, out of causeless, overflowing ecstasy, the wave of Creation arises in the ocean of Existence. The Divine, playing with its innumerable manifestations in innumerable universes, is called sustenance. Dropping from the play and relaxing into Itself is called dissolution. This is settling back into the Absolute state. Then for no logical reason, the play starts again. In this way, the universal Consciousness assumes innumerable forms, thus creating countless seer(s) and seen(s)! This is the origin of the physical world.

We are not disconnected and separate islands as we think. Maybe in the physical layer, we all seem like individual islands. But whether we like it or not, whether we accept it or not, whether we want it or not, we are all interlinked by the collective consciousness.

It is like this: if the food is poisoned, only the person who eats it will suffer, not everyone. In this sense, you can think of yourself as an individual. But as you move towards the subtler levels of Existence, you can see our interconnectedness more clearly. For example, if the air is poisoned, whoever is breathing it will suffer, even if they are a long distance from each other. This connection is at the breath level. This means that in the subtler energy layers, the distance between us is reduced.

Even more than the physical and breath levels, we are connected more closely at the mental level. When I say mental level, I mean the level of thoughts. Our thoughts affect not only us but also everyone around us and beyond. Your thoughts are more infectious than your cold. In fact, people may escape from your cold, but they cannot escape from your thoughts.

Take a simple example of going to a college football match on a Sunday. When you enter the stadium itself, you can see the air charged with emotions. You are also immediately affected by the cheering mood prevailing there! Similarly, if there is group violence, like a religious fight or collective grief, like a death in the house, the mood affects you beyond your control. (The chapter on 'Intelligence' has more details on this.)

If you catch a cold from someone, you might suffer physically for a few days and then finally get over it. But when you catch thoughts from people, you suffer mentally with them. Similarly, anything you think affects the people around you. If an individual mind is polluted, not only the individual, but a much bigger group suffers. For example, if one person who has a disturbed mind sits as a leader of a city, the whole city will be affected by the decisions that he makes! His disturbed thinking will result in wrong decisions and hence will be harmful for the whole city.

Going a step further, if one corrupted visualization leads to a particular action, the action can have tremendous impact on a huge population, not just on that person with the corruption.

For example, take the case of the atom bomb. It is nothing but a 'visualization' of the nuclear theory! The basis of the nuclear bomb can be found in the famous formula E=mc2 , that was discovered by the physicist, Albert Einstein. But corrupted visualization of this formula led to disturbance of the whole planet earth. We are all now threatened by this one theory, by this one invention. Today planet earth has enough atomic weapons to burn itself 700 times, over and over again.

Seeds of violence are created whenever we feel we are individuals, unconnected or unrelated to others. We become selfish, dogmatic and violent. When we live with only individual consciousness, we dissect, we cut things into pieces and analyze. Such logic always destroys things. On the other hand, by tuning into the collective consciousness, we unify things.

Understand: not only in the mental level, even in the deeper conscious levels, the deeper you go, the more deeply you are connected. Just see this diagram here. I shall try to explain the truth on the basis of this diagram.

These seven circles represent the seven energy layers in us. The first layer is the physical body, the body that you can feel as your hands, legs etc. The second layer is the pranic body, the body in which your prana or life energy or breath circulates. Like this, there are seven energy layers that make up the total body, with the physical body being just one of those layers.

Now, in the physical layer, you, god and I can be represented as three different points in the circle. In the physical level, the distance between us is great.

If you go inward a little to the pranic level, the distance between us is reduced. If you go in deeper to the mental level, the distances are further reduced. When you go deeper and deeper, it finally merges into one. You can see that at the innermost point of all these layers, god, you, and I are one. There is no distance. That is the Truth even at the gross level! It is only your perception that causes you to think you are a separate entity.

You are not a separate entity as you think. When you love someone intimately, his or her love and suffering affects you. It comes and goes out of your being. It is because, in the deeper levels, you don't have an individual entity, you are a part of collective consciousness. You don't want suffering, but somehow you are not able to escape from it. Again and again, whether it is physical pain or mental suffering or spiritual bondage, you keep exper-

In Existence, there is nothing such as a separate, individual identity.

iencing it. This is because you are not aware that you are part of the collective consciousness. Once you become aware and realize that you are a part of the collective consciousness, that you don't have an individual identity, that you don't have a separate ego, you don't suffer.

In Existence, there is nothing such as a separate, individual identity. Once you experience this, you go beyond pain, suffering, depression and disease. Please understand that as long as you have your own set of concepts, you remain as an individual consciousness, and you continue to suffer in some way.

Why do you think you continuously resist heat and cold, aspects of nature? Whatever nature offers, you resist. There is a beautiful saying:

Man as a rule is a fool

When it is hot, asking for cool

When it is cool, asking for hot

Always asking for what is not!

When it is cool, you resist the cold. This happens because you think you are different from Existence. I myself have

When you are in tune with the collective consciousness, Nature protects you.

lived in the extreme cold of the Himalayan mountains, with the bare

minimum of clothing. The body was never disturbed. I never had a problem. The reason is that I never thought that I was different from the atmosphere. I never had the feeling of separation from nature. I have seen many sannyasis in the Himalayas who do this same thing.

It is only when you start thinking that you are different from the atmosphere that you start resisting it. There is a very simple practice you can take up now. If you are feeling cold, just relax into yourself. Identify the area where you are feeling cold. Witness that area. In that area, don't resist the atmosphere. Don't resist the air. Don't resist the temperature. Just say to yourself, 'I am not going to resist nature. I am not going to resist the temperature. I am not going to resist Existence. Let me relax.' Make a conscious decision. You will see the body relaxing, and the idea of cold disappears! You become completely comfortable.

When I say this, people ask me, 'It is alright to practice it here, but what about in real extreme conditions?' The mind always likes to think of extremes, even if they are never going to happen. Be very clear that even in extremes, you can do this, if you put your effort into it with totality. The problem right now is that you don't have that much totality, that much clarity. If you can totally fall in tune with nature, you can surely be comfortable even in extreme conditions. There are many human beings who do that and so can you.

One more thing is that in the air, all possible bacteria and viruses are present. At any moment a single virus or bacteria can cause a disease in you. But if you are in total tune with nature, then even if the virus or bacteria goes inside you, you will not be disturbed! The moment you start thinking that you are somebody, some individual separate from Existence, then the whole of Existence becomes your enemy. Existence is not here to kill you or destroy you. It is your only trustworthy father, mother, friend and teacher.

When you are in tune with the collective consciousness, when you become a part of the collective consciousness, nature is with you. Nature becomes your friend, and it protects you.

Wherever you want to achieve success in the social or economical line, only when you feel in tune with the whole group, only when you fall in tune with the collective consciousness, will you be able to achieve what you want to achieve. As long as you feel you are an individual, as long as you want to keep a distinct place for yourself, as long as you want to have an idea that you are 'somebody', an 'identity', be very clear, you will be resisted and you will be resisting. Whether it is home or office or vacation, this will happen. If you disappear into the collective consciousness, you will again and again be protected and taken care of. You will attain complete success, not only socially and economically, but you will also experience it as a feeling of fulfillment. The feeling will be inexplicable. The moment you start resisting, you start making hell out of it.

A small story:

A man was told by a group of people that his wife had fallen in the river and he needed to jump and save her. He immediately jumped in and started swimming against the current.

Everybody was surprised and shouted out to him, 'Hey! Why are you swimming against the current? She would have obviously gone downward with the current.'

He replied, 'You guys don't know my wife. Even if she falls in the river, she will fight it like she fights everything else! She will move only against the current!'

As long as you resist the current, whether it is your workplace or your house or your company or any place for that matter, as long as you don't disappear into the collective consciousness, you will continuously create hell for yourself and for others. Even in the physical layer, if you think you are something separate, be very clear, you will be inviting diseases.

In the mental layer, if you think you are a separate individual, again and again, you will be sowing the seeds of violence. The seeds of violence will be created when you feel you are an individual. With collective consciousness you unify, but with individual consciousness you dissect, you cut things in pieces. Logic always breaks. Intuition always unites.

The moment you understand that you are deeply connected, totally connected, intensely connected to the whole group, to the whole universe, not only do you start experiencing the bliss, you also start living. You start opening up many dimensions of your being.

Right now you are stressed out, disturbed continuously, you have to think too much. With this one body, you have to think so much. You can enjoy so much. If you disappear into this collective consciousness, you will have so many dimensions, so many possibilities that you simply cannot imagine it! See, now with one body, there is a feeling of joy and you are able to enjoy so much. Imagine what you can do if you have two bodies? And just imagine what you can feel when you have many bodies! This is the experience

The minds that are ready and waiting for the ideas will tune in and convert that potentiality into reality!

you will get when you realize you are a part of the collective consciousness.

When you

experience the feeling of oneness or collective consciousness, you forget all the differences of your name, wealth, social status and prestige. Whatever you think of as you just disappears. What you are is revealed.

If you have observed a school of fish swimming or a flock of birds flying together, you will see a fleeting synchronicity in their motion. There may be hundreds of birds flying together in a V-shaped formation, but when they have to change direction, they will all do so at the same time, with no confusion or time delay! Scientists have been trying to understand how this is possible. Even studies of insects and animals have shown that when faced with threats, their responses are so fast that they cannot be explained by normal methods of communication.

An interesting experiment was done to study the power of thought on dogs. The dog owners were asked to leave the house with no intention of going to any particular place. After leaving the house, they were given instructions to go to specific places and then at random times, they were asked to come back. It was found that at the time the owner started back home, almost always at the same time, the dog would go to the door and wait for the owner.

In the huge tsunami that rocked the Andaman and Nicobar islands of Bharat, it was found that before the tsunami hit the islands, all the animals, including the huge ones like elephants, had all moved to higher grounds, safely away from the ocean. There have been a number of accounts of animals and insects being aware of upcoming earthquakes minutes before the earthquake actually strikes. What is the difference between these animals and us? It is their connection with nature! Being in tune with nature enables them to sense nature's signals. In the case of humans, because of our false sense of identity and ego, we have lost touch with nature and have become insensitive to the direct signals of nature.

You can see so many instances in history where the same discovery was made at about the same time by people in different parts of the globe and by people who did not even know each other. The reason is because the ideas are floating in the collective consciousness. It is like this: there are hundreds of electromagnetic waves in the air but your television set picks up only the waves of the frequency to which it is tuned. Similarly, the minds that are ready and waiting for the floating ideas will tune in and convert that potentiality into reality!

When we have repetitive thoughts, we emit and receive those thought waves that are of the same pattern. We are more or less stuck in our web of thoughts. This is how an average person leads most of his life. But intelligent people understand the law of the cosmos and tune into the higher intelligence to become the channels of creativity and innovation.

Just as the universe gives us so many hints of its existence as one being, we can find hints from nature about the nature of reality. In a series of experiments in the 1920s, it was found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain was removed, the rat still retained its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to the surgery. The rat's brain actually showed 'holographic' memory. Scientists proposed that memories are encoded not in neurons, but in the patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the brain, similar to how a hologram is formed by various patterns of laser light crisscrossing each other. This might explain how the human brain can store up to ten billion bits of information in the brain, which is the small size of two fists!

The universe is a hologram and we are a part of that hologram. In a hologram, every single part of the hologram, even if split, reflects the totality of that hologram. Likewise, we too reflect the totality of the universe. The universe is not an assortment of living and dead matter. It is a huge interconnected Whole. You are very much connected to your fellow beings around you - the trees, animals, birds and rocks on earth as well as the planets, stars and galaxies in the universe. Whether you perceive it or not depends on the plane of consciousness from which you perceive it all.

Q: According to science, vacuum is the absence of matter. But according to you, vacuum is energy. Matter is manifestation of energy. How would you define vacuum?

Please understand that science has changed its view. Now scientists are coming up with a clear-cut idea that no such thing as 'vacuum' can be created. Even in space, where you say vacuum exists, ether is present. Ether is the gross form of energy. Science is also coming up with the fact that ether is also matter. It can be measured and handled. Science has evolved to the extent that it can understand spiritual truths to a certain degree. They have started understanding that vacuum is not the absence of matter. It is the absence of certain parts of matter. There are five major elements – earth, fire, water, air, ether. Vacuum is the absence of four of these major elements – earth, water, fire, air. That's all. It is not the absence of matter, it is the absence of four elements.

Thousands of years ago the eastern rishis developed the science of Vastu Shastra* . It is the science that teaches one how to utilize the power of ether in daily life. It is the technique of building homes and houses in a way that the ether energy is enclosed in the space of the home in the best possible way. Today, scientists are working to understand methods of how to use ether!

So, according to me and according to science, vacuum is energy. Vacuum is not the absence of matter.

thought process? How can we control this and be liberated from anger and depression?

Nice question. Do you have control over your mind?

Questioner: Sometimes I find it difficult...

Alright. This is the answer that I get from almost everyone. The statement that an individual has control over the mind, is only said, never practiced and never experienced. Next, outside minds can influence the individual's mind and thought process.

Are you married?

Questioner: Yes!

Then you will agree that your husband can very well influence your thought process. This influence happens not only through words from him, but even otherwise it happens!

For example, let us say you want to come here for meditation. You tell him you want to go for meditation. He doesn't protest, but he puts on a long face. Just the memory of his face can influence your meditation here. When you are sitting here, you will be meditating on his long face! Even if he is not in town when you come here, just the memory of his long face, just the energy

Vastu Shastra - Vedic science of space, of how we interact with the space around us.

that he radiated when you asked for permission on an earlier occasion is enough - you will fall into a low mood here when you are meditating.

So understand, others can influence your mind without even expressing their thoughts.

Q: How do we control these influences of mind so as to avoid anger and depression?

Through meditation!

You are just like an onion. If you peel the onion layer by layer, what is there inside? Just emptiness! The onion thinks it has got something solid, but when it is opened layer by layer, it is empty. Similarly, man thinks that he is the individual consciousness, but if we peel the individual layers, he will experience he is the cosmic consciousness, the collective consciousness! This is the one and only way to prevent anger or depression that sneaks into your consciousness from others, through others, by others. As you meditate, your awareness will increase and you will start becoming a witness of the individual consciousness. Anything that you witness will dissolve into the cosmic consciousness.

Q: Why do we have to have to suffer? In childhood, we are trained to be

separate from others. In school, we are taught to be somebody. As adults, we are taught to compete with others. If the ultimate truth is that we are all one, that we are all bliss, then why can't mass consciousness also reflect this joy, peace and love?

This is a beautiful question. I shall answer this step by step. This question has a lot of potential meaning.

The people who created today's educational system are not enlightened. The ancient education system called the gurukul* was created by the rishis. Unfortunately, it is no longer alive.

Let me say a few things about the education system that was initiated by these enlightened masters. In this system, any child who belongs to the country belongs to the master! The master takes care of him. The parents hand over the child to the master a few years after his or her birth.

In this system of education, children were not compelled to wear clothes until a certain age. By not wearing clothes, the children did not develop the idea that they were individual bodies! They were straightaway allowed to relate with Existence, with ether. They were allowed to relate with flowers, forests, trees, earth. They were not given an idea that they were somebody.

Gurukul - Vedic educational institution.

Also, they were not given the idea that they were male or female. Actually, males are 51 percent male and 49 percent female. Females are 51 percent female and 49 percent male. But their lesser half is suppressed by society and they are made to think that they are purely male or purely female. This causes many repercussions in their consciousness.

These are some basic things you should follow while bringing up children. If you have to put clothes on them, put on single piece clothing covering both the upper and lower body, instead of putting on two piece clothing that separates the upper and lower body at the hip. Also, don't give them the continuous idea that they are somebody. Of course, it might be a bit difficult for you, as you need to send them to school, but at least try with your best effort.

In the gurukul system, children were first given a meditation technique. Even if they got the idea that they were male or female, they could use this meditation technique and dilute that imbibed feeling. This meditation technique helped them flush the feeling out, and again and again helped them tune to the collective consciousness. That technique is what we call the Gayatri mantra.

From seven to fourteen years of age, children practiced the Gayatri , through which they continuously tried to connect to the collective consciousness. By the age of fourteen, they would have had a glimpse of the collective consciousness. They would have had a glimpse of the blueprint of the collective consciousness. After they had a glimpse of the blueprint, depending on the intensity of it, they were given deeper techniques. By the age of 21, they became enlightened!

I tell you honestly, there was a time when 70 percent of the people were enlightened. The other 30 percent were working towards enlightenment. The social structure created by the enlightened masters was such that people were either already enlightened or working towards it. There was no other category. There were only enlightened people and seekers. Unfortunately, we have lost the system today. That is why we have to conduct these meditation programs every week all around the world.

We have a gurukul system in our ashram in Bharat. We are reviving the vedic system without disturbing the modern education, so that children can once again grow up connecting with the collective consciousness.

Gayatri mantra - Considered to be one of the most powerful mantras in the vedic tradition, Gayatri was the initiation mantra for all young students.

Question: We are all part of collective consciousness. Then how does god come into this?

The collective consciousness is what I call god. The Whole is what I call god. When you are Whole, you are holy.

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

When we realize our role in the Existential scheme of things, we can no longer feel separate from all those around us. We can only feel separated when we feel unconscious of our role, when we are unaware.

The time has come to create a critical mass of enlightened people on planet earth. Only by creating more and more people who are awakened, who are enlightened, can the collective influence of individual negativity be destroyed. All calamities around the world are created only by unconscious human beings. Global warming, HIV, religious terrorism, fanaticism, and piles of atomic weapons, are all because of this negativity. Today, we are facing so many dangers, that unless we create a peaceful, blissful, joyful, and enlightened society, we will not be able to preserve this beautiful planet earth.

My mission is to create a peaceful, joyful, blissful, conscious, enlightened society.

Self-contradictory thoughts

Actually, a majority of us are caught up in fighting with our own selves. We are caught in a web of selfcontradictory thoughts and desires. Our thoughts and words are so powerful, but we use them so casually.

My mission is to create a peaceful, joyful, blissful, conscious, enlightened society.

For example, say you have a headache, what do you do? You tell yourself, 'How I wish this headache would go away!' You don't realize that each of these words carries the power of desire and actualization within them. By uttering these words, you give as much power to the word 'headache' as you give to the words 'go away'. This is what I mean by selfcontradictory thoughts. By your very thought, you contradict your original desire. Even your positive intention is caught in the fight, the dilemma of your own thoughts and words. The nature of the mind is dilemma.

You will then ask, 'How do I get rid of this headache?' Just say, 'Let me be healed!' that's all. The mind is so used to thinking only negative words, that is the problem.

Our self-contradictory thoughts are the root cause of all our suffering. All our suffering arises from our ignorance of the truth that we are, by nature, bliss. We are a part of Existence, which is by nature bliss. Once we intellectually and

When we infuse healing thoughts into our system, we give power to positive words and thoughts.

experientially understand this, we will consciously and strongly see our self-

contradictory thoughts being replaced by self-healing thoughts.

When we infuse healing thoughts into our system again and again, we give power to positive words and thoughts. They get embedded in our very muscle memory. So at times of low mood and depression, these healing thoughts will automatically come up in our inner space and pull us out of the low mood. On our own, we can raise ourselves up from our low feelings and the negative play of the mind.

Individual peace by its nature touches the world

A beautiful story from the life of Buddha:

Devadatta, a cousin of Buddha, joined Buddha's order of monks. He was hungry for power and status. He wanted to become the head of the order of monks. But Buddha would not allow such an immature person, who was running after status instead of enlightenment, to lead his mission. So Devadatta harbored jealousy and ill feelings towards Buddha and even made several attempts to kill him.

Once Devadatta persuaded the royal elephant-keepers to release a fierce elephant on to Buddha's path. The elephant was intoxicated and let loose on the streets where Buddha used to walk regularly. The mad elephant ran wildly. People panicked and fled in all directions.

The elephant came upon Buddha. Buddha kept walking, radiating the same peace and calm even in the face of this danger. His bliss and peace was not at all affected by the threat of the wild elephant. The elephant came rushing towards Buddha in a mad fury. Once it reached Buddha, it immediately calmed down completely. Its wild nature simply dissolved in Buddha's enlightened presence. Buddha touched the elephant's forehead and stroked it gently. Calmed by the patting, the elephant bent on its knees and bowed down to Buddha.

The people watching the whole scene were simply shocked!

The effect of the peace radiated by a person who is fully satisfied and blissful within himself is similar to the waves that happen in a lake when you throw a stone into it. Everything in the lake is touched by the effect of the stone. The waves of bliss radiating from a peaceful person naturally and automatically touch the people, animals, trees, and rocks, affecting everything nearby.

To make the whole world blissful and happy, you don't have to do anything. Just change your center. When you are seeing a horror movie, your world will be filled with fear. But if you just change the channel to say a comedy movie, you can see how your whole world changes!

When the inner awakening happens, the higher emotions happen. It all finally boils down to your own experience of what is happening. If you want to save the world, all you need to do is save yourself!

Everything is actually happening in this world – great spiritual sessions where enlightenment is being shared and at the same time terrorist training camps where violence is being shared. According to what you tune with, the world that you attract and see will also appear to be. You will attract the same type of people and situations in your life.

Even one person struggling for enlightenment, seeking, raises the consciousness of at least a million people.

Collective Consciousness

Not only are we all connected to each other socially, the great Truth is that we are all part of the Whole, the Collective Consciousness.

We are not individual islands. Our thoughts, our emotions, and Each of us is a unique part of the grand orchestra of the universe.

our feelings not only affect us but they affect the rest of the world also.

We are all waves in the ocean of Existence. Existence itself is pure, intelligent energy. This loving Existence desires that each of us succeeds and experiences fulfillment in life. When we realize this, we can simply let go of our fears, desires, jealousies, pains, and depressions and relax into the loving arms of Existence.

If we realize this great Truth, we will see how each of us is a unique and irreplaceable part of the grand orchestra of the universe, of Existence.

Instead of looking at each other as enemies, if you start looking in, you will realize that the enemy within is causing all the trouble. As such, there is no enmity with others. The other is just a blissful part of Existence like you.

We think negatively because we are unaware. Our thoughts affect the people around us and also the whole world. Harsh words, angry feelings, suppressed emotions, and suffering all directly contribute to the creation of unrest in the world.

Individual stress, hatred, and violence cause an increase in the collective stress, hatred, and violence in society! This leads to a decrease in human awareness resulting in more acts of violence against nature. We need to break this cycle, otherwise it will cause more calamities, both natural and manmade, because the wheel of nature cannot sustain any more violence.

So global peace, as such, has no meaning. It is the peace and bliss inside the individual that will directly result in global peace. The individual's inner satisfaction, increase in awareness, creativity, and intelligence will automatically lead to global peace, prosperity and harmony.

First, we have to understand that every major decision taken at the higher level of power and governance is an expression of collective positivity or collective negativity, because it is the mass consciousness or collective consciousness that creates the leaders. So before blaming others like leaders, politicians, or officials, if we can put a little bit of energy towards ourselves and start working to create more positive consciousness in our inner space, we will be doing something really useful.

There are two ways to handle anything. One is just talking about things and the other is actually doing things.

If you are interested in just talking about things, then you will blame everybody around you, starting from your neighbor to the politicians, business and world leaders. Blaming and criticizing everybody is not going to be directly useful. Not only that, it will really pull down your own energy. This is one common, but ineffective way of working.

The second way is this: if you really don't like the situation, you will be sincere and do something to change it. You will work towards creating more collective positive energy, first within yourself, and then in the world.

It is time…

Let us create more positivity from our side.

Let us bring more love to our actions.

Let us increase the frequency of our individual consciousness.

Instead of getting upset or disturbed by negative decisions, just create positive energy so that the people around you and around the world are also affected by this positive consciousness. Then you will see that it radiates through the leaders also. When more and more people begin to transform themselves, the collective positivity has to express itself through the right politicians and the right leaders.

Realize that all leaders are channels of the collective positivity or negativity created by the masses. They are also guided by the masses.

There are two ways of looking at things: sitting and blaming things, or working to create more positive energy. A sincere person should start working towards creating more positive energy rather than blaming, criticizing, getting upset or disturbed.

If you get upset and disturbed, what is going to happen? Nothing will happen except that you will have a little more depression, a little more negativity. And because of that, you yourself will add more negativity to the world, you will add more mass to the negative consciousness.

So revolution is not the way. Evolution is the way.

Every revolution promised the truth or the ultimate solution. But what do we see if we look back? In the last 3000 years of the history of planet earth, we have had 5000 recorded wars! Researchers have estimated that in the last 3000 years of the history of planet earth, there have been at least 9000 peace treaties, and the average life span of these treaties was just 8 years!

It seems like human beings were not doing anything but waging war! The reason is, we believed in revolution. Now it is time to believe in individual evolution. You see, mass revolution becomes again one more system. Anybody who comes to power is again led by mass negativity or mass positivity. So it is now our responsibility to add more and more positivity. That is the only thing an individual can do.

Peace needs to be brought into the individual's heart. Then it will radiate like the fragrance of a flower and transform the whole planet earth. Let us all be honest with our being, and bring peace to ourselves and thus to the whole world. We will then add to the collective positive consciousness.

Just create positive energy so that the people around you and around the world are also affected by this positive consciousness. Then you will see that it radiates through the leaders as well.

Much of what is happening around us is the result of all our past actions. At least in this present moment, let us create more and more positive consciousness and energy so that we will avoid the same challenges and calamities in the future.

If we get agitated and disturbed, then we will create more violence and negativity in our efforts to try to stop the existing violence. Violence cannot stop violence. Blood cannot wash away blood.

Buddha says beautifully that if we start thinking in the line of 'an eye for an eye', the whole world will become blind! If we start working with the logic of 'an eye for an eye', then a person from this group will take an eye from a person in the other group, and a person from that group will take an eye from a person in this group. Then the whole world will become blind!

The only thing you can do is start creating more and more positive and peaceful ambience inside your being, and continuously work to create peace and love outside your field. That is the only possible solution.

Just decide, 'Yes, in this moment, with the power that I have, I will do a little service with whatever I have available to me. I will send out peaceful prayers, thoughts, and positive energy. Whatever I have under the control of my body and mind, I will make it positive.'

Getting agitated is not going to be productive in any way. It is agitated people who create wars. If we also get agitated, how do you think we are going to solve the problem? We are only going to add more problems. When you get agitated, you have already lost the game. The only way is to do whatever we can without getting agitated.

The only way is by being 'here and now', adding more and more joy, bliss, and silence to the whole consciousness.

Anybody who tried the way of revolution only created one more system, one more tradition, and one more power game. It ended up in one more war. So, the only way is the way of Buddha, the way of peace, the way of silence, the way of Shiva.

Working with ourselves, becoming masters of ourselves, doing things that need to be done without getting agitated, is the right way. We should become productive people, not agitated people. We should do as much as we can towards peace, silence, and bliss, and help people who are stranded by wars and conflicts. We should try to bring more and more peace into the consciousness of the leaders by bringing it into ourselves.

We should show compassion to help the person. But the important thing is we shouldn't start suffering ourselves.

For example, if a rich person distributes all his wealth to poor people, what will happen? We will have one more poor person! Because he would have given away all his wealth. Not only that, the people receiving also might not have the intelligence to maintain and increase the wealth received. Like this, many times, instead of lifting the other person, you actually start suffering. Express love and compassion but don't start suffering yourself. If you start sharing true love, you will actually start giving better choices to others. Give the intelligence to others to make better choices, that is the real help you can give.

If you decrease the temperature of a system, the chaos and agitation in that physical system is reduced. For example, if you reduce the temperature, liquid water becomes solid ice. Also, the impurities in the system are removed. If you freeze salt water, you can see that the salt remains at the bottom while only the water becomes ice. In the same way, when the collective consciousness of society is transformed, the chaos reduces and the system begins to clean itself.

Various studies have been done to measure the effects of group meditation on communities. Some observed the effect of a critical mass of people who meditated using the technique of * Transcendental Meditation™. These studies showed a decrease in the crime rate in the cities where group meditation was conducted. Other reports showed a reduction in acts of violence and an increase in cooperative, helpful acts. In war-stricken areas there was a drop in daily war deaths and a drop in war injuries. The overall statistics showed with group meditation, reduced crime rates, fewer hospital admissions, and reduced violence, leading to an increase in the overall quality of life.

21 September is observed as the International Peace Day. Millions of people worldwide come together in prayer, meditation, celebration and collaboration for world peace and global harmony.

On this occasion every year, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Mission's centers conduct collective group meditations worldwide. The collective consciousness is raised in a much more powerful way when meditation is done as a group.

When matter is shared, it reduces in size. For example, if an apple has to be shared by four people, it has to be cut into four pieces. It reduces in size.

When it comes to electrical energy, when the voltage is shared, it does not reduce, it remains the same. For example, if we have 10 volts of electricity in a wire, one person touching the wire will feel 10 volts, and four people touching the same wire will also feel 10 volts.

But it is different in the case of the powerful, subtle energy of meditation. When meditation is done by a group of people, it multiplies! Rather than diminishing or staying the same, the benefit is shared and amplified among the entire group and beyond. If one person meditating generates 10 'volts' of energy, then 100 people sitting together in a collective meditation generates 10 x 100 or 1000 'volts' of energy. Just imagine! The strength of energy that is generated will simply cleanse the entire space where the meditation is done.

That is why collective, group meditation is encouraged.

This can also be compared with the difference in intensity between an ordinary light and a laser. The coherence in the laser, the group effect, causes the intensity to be magnified.

A story from the life of enlightened master Buddha:

There was a bandit by the name of Angulimala. He used to live in a forest that many people had to cross. He used to ambush the people and rob them of their valuables. Then he would cut off the little finger of the person and make a garland of all the fingers. That is why he was called Angulimala or garland of fingers.

Once when traveling, Buddha was about to cross the forest. People warned him about the terrifying Angulimala. But Buddha was unperturbed and continued walking. Deep inside the forest, Angulimala jumped out of the bushes and shouted threateningly at Buddha, 'Stand still!'

Buddha stopped and replied, 'I am still. May you be still.'

Angulimala for the first time in his life was shaken to his very being. Something about Buddha touched him deeply. He could not even force himself to attack Buddha. His hands froze. He just fell at the feet of Buddha crying and begging for forgiveness!

This story illustrates one of the truths of the impact of enlightened beings. Without effort or intention, an enlightened being simply radiates tremendous peace and compassion which has the power to simply transform others.

This effect is not limited just to human beings. Even animals are touched by the pure love and compassion radiated by an enlightened being. Everything is changed when it is exposed to that high frequency energy field.

This is a beautiful story from the life of Adi Shankara, an enlightened master from ancient Bharat:

Shankara was wandering in South Bharat in the town of Shringeri. One day, a strange and beautiful scene happened in front of him: two frogs were sitting on a rock. It became very hot, so the frogs were about to jump into the water. Just then a cobra raised its hood and spread it over the two frogs giving them shade. The frogs enjoyed the cool shade

Without effort or intention, an enlightened being simply radiates tremendous peace and compassion.

Shankara was watching this and was amazed. He was a very sharp intellectual person. He did not leave the incident at that. His intellect immediately recognized that unless the place was sanctified in some way by some higher energy, it was not possible for animals to forget their enmity and co-exist in such a beautiful fashion. He went around and asked for details about the place. He learned that some time in the past, a great enlightened sage had established and maintained his ashram there for many years!*

Shankara was so moved by the whole incident that he decided that someday he too would set up his mission in that very place. Years later when he was passing by the same place, he stopped and established his first ashram there, called the Shringeri Math. To this day it stands as one of the key seats of spiritual wisdom in the world!*

and sat back for sometime. After some time, they plunged into the water. The cobra also folded back its hood and went away.

Ashram - A monastery for Hindu or Buddhist monks.

An enlightened being effortlessly radiates his all-encompassing inner space, which creates a collective positivism.

As Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, 'In the presence of an enlightened being even natural enemies lose their enmity.'

The fire that is full of its own light consumes everything, but it is not contaminated by anything. In the heat of the fire, what goes into it is purified, but the fire is untouched by the qualities of what it consumes. In the same way, enlightened beings are untouched by the qualities, good or bad that they come in contact with. Their presence is so intense that everybody and everything is touched by the love and compassion that is their very nature.

The direct and only way to global peace is to generate more of this enlightened Consciousness. This is what my whole mission is all about.

My advent on planet earth is to create a new cycle of individual consciousness causing Collective Consciousness to enter the Superconscious zone.

To achieve this,

One hundred thousand people will be initiated to live as Jeevan Muktas – liberated beings experiencing 'living enlightenment'

&

One billion people will be initiated into Nithya Dhyaan – Life Bliss Meditation – designed to cause a positive shift in the individual consciousness on planet earth.

The way to achieve global peace is to create individual peace. The meditation for global peace is a collective meditation. This is a very simple but very powerful meditation.

Sit in one circle or concentric circles, holding hands so that you hold the hand of the person on your right with your right hand palm facing down, signifying 'giving' peace and bliss, while you offer your left hand palm facing up to 'receive' peace and bliss from the person on your left. This connected circle of people generates a powerful energy cycle. The meditative energy of one person is shared by all others. This meditation can be done for at least 21 minutes.

Our ability to be in tune with others and Existence depends entirely upon how we conduct ourselves. It depends on the priorities we choose in life. What if we do not choose? What if we accept things as they happen to us?

It is time to talk about renunciation. Renunciation is not running away from life. Renunciation is flowing with life without resistance. The Sanskrit word sannyas refers to this state of trust with Existence that allows us to let go all other things in life.

There is a beautiful story from the life of Buddha:

After enlightenment, Buddha visited many places preaching his dhamma or teachings, and initiating people into spiritual life.

On his way, he entered Kapilavastu, his birth place. He walked on the streets with his disciples wearing the saffron robe. Everyone watched them with great wonder.

Buddha's wife, Yashodhara, heard the noise in the street and asked what it was. Her maids told her that it was none other than her own husband who had returned as the Buddha, the enlightened soul. She did not go to meet him. Instead,

she called for her son Rahul. Rahul was born the night that Buddha left home in search of enlightenment.

She asked Rahul, 'Do you see that radiant figure there who holds a begging bowl and yet looks like a king? He is your father. Go and ask him for your inheritance.'

The young boy ran downstairs and pushed his way through to where Buddha stood. He fell at Buddha's feet and boldly repeated what his mother had told him.

Buddha lifted him up gently with a smile and looked at him. He simply removed the gold hemmed cloth the boy was wearing and replaced it with a saffron one.

The boy, seven years of age, was given his inheritance. He was the first and only child allowed into the monastic order of the Buddha.

Someone asked me, 'If everything in life is evolving naturally by the process of evolution like monkey into man, and bad into good, would man not ultimately evolve into god? Where then is the need for meditation, sannyas…where then is the need for inspiration?'

I replied, 'It took five thousand years for the monkey to become man, and it would take equally long for man to become god. If you are willing to wait that long, it is

The right revolution leads to evolution. Sannyas is the greatest revolution of an individual.

alright with me!'

On the other hand, you can decide to live consciously

with a clear understanding about life, the laws and structure of the universe, and meditation. You can revolutionize the process of your evolution. The right revolution leads to evolution or enlightenment. That is sannyas, the greatest revolution of an individual. It is to live like a Paramahamsa, to live like an enlightened being.

Adi Shankara, the enlightened master from Bharat, beautifully says in his work Vivekachoodamani* :

For all living creatures, a human birth is rare,

and even rarer is to have a sattvic (goodness) attitude,

and more so to have steadfastness on the path of spiritual activity

as explained in the Vedas...

These words had a very powerful effect on the life of Vivekananda, an enlightened master from Bharat who lived thousands of years after Shankara. When Vivekananda was preparing for his law examination, these very words landed on him like a thunderbolt. He could not read further. He left his books and started running along the road. He was running to his master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. While he was running, the truth of Shankara's words was ringing in his very being. He thought to himself, 'I have gained all these three: I have been born as a human being. I have gained the desire for liberation. I have got a great master….then why am I still wasting my life? Why am I still wasting my life?' Again and again, these words were haunting him. Vivekananda went on to become enlightened and spread Ramakrishna's mission worldwide.

Sannyas is the path for those who want to win over themselves, who want to be free from the clutches of jealousy, anger, stress and depression forever. People think sannyas is chosen by losers. No. Of course, sometimes those who don't know what to do with their lives take up sannyas. But that is not the spirit of sannyas.

Sannyas is the effort to become conscious for the first time, conscious of the mechanism that surrounds you as a human being. You are part of Existence. Existence moves with its own mechanism, with its own music. Falling in tune with it is the science of sannyas. Sannyas is a being level relationship, being in tune with the whole

Vivekachoodamani - Adi Shankara's philosophical work.

of Existence. That is the shortest path to success in life.

To hear the song of Existence, you need to start moving in the right space. To find that space, you need to first drop any other thing you know, and listen to the song with deep awareness. You will find it. In that space, life will flow like a river moving towards the sea. Any other path will take longer.

When life becomes a flowing river, it has to merge with the sea. There is no other way. Sannyas is the science of flowing with the natural course of Existence and finally merging with it.

The river heads only towards the sea. It does not stagnate anywhere. A sannyasi heads only towards his goal of enlightenment. He knows no distractions. The river flows blissfully, whatever be the things thrown into it on its way. So many things are thrown into the river – flowers, twigs, food, animals, birds, dead bodies, etc. But the river flows, not bothering about anything.

Similarly, a sannyasi moves blissfully, untouched by anything that comes his way. The current pulls the river over its obstacles, and it gurgles, with

When life becomes a flowing river, it has to merge with the sea.

a constant music, moving towards the sea. The cosmic intelligence pulls the sannyasi over obstacles as he moves towards the ultimate goal. He knows not what obstacles are. For him, they are all stepping stones on the path to bliss.

During my days of spiritual wandering, I spent nine months between two locations – on the banks of the sacred river Ganga and on the banks of the sacred river Narmada in North Bharat. During this time, everyday, I would wake up before the break of dawn, have a bath in the river and sit on its banks. I would just watch it flow. The sun would be rising. As I watched the river flow, the mind would calm down, thoughts would progressively reduce, and the verbalization would get arrested. I would be one with the flowing river for hours together.

Not only that, when you watch the river continuously, you go on dropping fear. There will be so many things floating in the river. When you see dead bodies floating, you will clearly see that one day

you also will float like that. The deeply embedded fears will disappear when merging Sannyas is a conscious decision to live the truth immediately in your life.

with the flow of the river.

One Zen master was asked, 'What is Zen?'

He replied, 'Walk on!'

Zen Buddhism beautifully says, life is like the river that flows and fills each form, and bursts its own limitations to expand its capacity. This is the essence of life, and sannyas. Sannyas is learning in action as life moves, not philosophizing. It is a force, not a dogma. For a real sannyasi, life simply moves in the right direction. The learning happens during the movement, not as a separate thing.

A small story:

Once there lived a thief who had a son. The son asked him to teach the secrets of the trade. The father agreed and that night he took him to steal from a big house. After everyone went to sleep, he silently led his son into a room that contained a clothes closet. He told him to go into the closet to steal some clothes. As soon as the son went inside, he quickly shut the door and locked him in. Then he went outside the house and knocked loudly on the front door. The whole household woke up. He quickly ran away before anyone saw him.

Hours later, his son returned home and angrily shouted at him, 'Why did you lock me in that closet?'

The father just smiled and replied, 'If I had not done that, you would not have had your first lesson in the art of burglary!'

Sannyas is nothing but straightaway practicing the truths every moment. There is enough philosophy in the world but no one to follow it. Sannyas is simply a conscious decision to live the truth immediately in your life.

A Zen master tells his disciple very beautifully, 'Studying the truth as a philosophy is just collecting preaching material. Remember that unless you practice constantly, your light of truth may go out.'

Practice is nothing but continuously flowing in the right direction without stagnating. Even in stagnation, there will be movement around the obstacle, trying to find the flow again. There is no stopping.

A great Japanese warrior decided to attack his enemy. His army was only one tenth of his enemy's army, but he was very sure he would win. His soldiers, however, did not believe so.

On the way to the war, he went to a temple and told his men, 'I will toss a coin inside the temple. If heads appears, we will win. If tails appears, we will lose. Destiny holds us in Her hands.'

The soldiers agreed. He entered the temple, offered a silent prayer and tossed the coin. Heads appeared.

His soldiers were so excited, they went forward and fought with all their courage and won the battle.

After the battle, one of his assistants told him, 'No one can change the hand of destiny!'

The warrior said, 'I suppose not', and showed him a coin having heads on both sides.

A sannyasi continuously moves with the intelligence of Existence. There is no stopping. He lives in the moment, spontaneously and according to the need of the moment, which is what is called fluidity.

Just as the river has surrendered to the flow of Existence, the sannyasi moves with the intelligence of Existence, and Existence takes him along with the birds and animals to the sea. By surrender, I don't mean inaction. I mean action with an attitude of surrender. Then, the results are driven by the law of Existence and you simply relax into the flow.

When you relax, you start responding with responsibility towards life and

Sannyas is the first conscious step towards responsibility – towards oneself and to the world.

people. Until then, you only react, you never respond. Reaction is the expression of the unconscious. Response is the expression of consciousness, and that is what is called responsibility. Reaction is never responsibility. Sannyas is the first conscious step towards responsibility towards oneself and to the world. This is a little known fact about sannyas. People think sannyasis have shrugged the responsibilities of life. No! They have taken up more responsibility in life. Their family is virtually the whole world. They take up responsibility for every individual.

Sannyas has always been wrongly associated with renunciation. You don't have to renounce anything. You just need to understand that you are a temporary custodian of some wealth, which is a part of Existence, just as you are as well. Then you won't need to renounce because you never possessed anything in the first place! Even if you have to part with wealth, you will not feel that you are giving away or losing your possessions. The problem starts with the attitude of possessing, the feeling of 'mine'.

I read a beautiful line in a Zen book. It said, 'Mentally give away everything that you think belongs to you. Then one day, if it is really not there, you will not suffer.' This can be done as a beautiful 10-minute meditation everyday. It can have a powerful impact on the attitude of possessing.

Just sit by yourself as soon as you wake up in the morning. Close your eyes and visualize that all your things belong to Existence. None of it is yours. Existence is so graceful that it has allowed you to have it. Feel the gratitude flowing in you towards Existence. Experience this strongly and clearly. You will see, suddenly, the whole thing takes a 180 degree turn. You will wonder what is really yours in the first place. Sannyasstarts with gratitude.

Neither does a sannyasi need to renounce the world nor does a samsari* need to be afraid of renouncing. Just the plain understanding that Existence gives and takes at the right moment is enough. Then you know that what is happening is the right thing for the moment and life is flowing as it should. This creates a mental gap between you and your wealth and that gap is called renunciation! It is just a gap, a break in the attitude of possessing, nothing else. It has been wrongly used in the context of sannyas.

Two monks were traveling together. One of them strongly believed in acquiring wealth. He practiced spirituality through it. The other strongly followed the path of renunciation. They were discussing the two ways of life. As they were discussing, it became nighttime and they reached a river that they had to cross.

The one who believed in renunciation did not have money with him. He said, 'We don't have money to cross the river. Let us spend the night here and some one will take us across the river tomorrow morning.'

The other one replied, 'That is not possible. We will be eaten by wild animals if we spend the night here. I have money with me. Let us pay the boatman and cross the river.'

Once they crossed the river safely, he asked his companion, 'Now do you understand the value of money? If I too had been a man of renunciation, what would have happened to us?'

Samsari - One who is caught in samsara or cycle of birth and death.

The first one replied, 'It was your renunciation that brought us across safely. You parted with your money to cross the river!'

Renouncing is 'having' without the idea of having, and 'parting' without the idea of parting. Otherwise, by merely renouncing outer wealth, you will not gain anything. You will only feel the pain of sacrificing the 'mine'. Sannyas is not escaping from the 'mine'. It is going beyond the 'mine'. That is possible only through a proper understanding. If you renounce with understanding, it is okay. Otherwise, the 'mine' will simply persist wherever you go. Not only that, if you renounce with the idea that you are renouncing 'yours', it becomes the right action but for the wrong reason! By merely renouncing outer wealth, you can never be a sannyasi. Sannyas is a change in the inner mental setup, not a change in the outer material setup. Renouncing outer wealth to be a sannyasi is like doing the right action but for the wrong reason.

A small story:

There were three men in a mental asylum. One day, they went to the doctor and said that they were ready to be discharged.

The doctor was surprised! He said, 'Alright, come with me. We will have a small test to see if you are well enough to leave and live safely in the world.'

He took them to a swimming pool that had no water. He told the Renouncing is 'having' without the idea of having, and 'parting' without the idea of parting.

first man to

jump into the pool and swim. The man jumped and sprained his ankle.

The doctor told him he was not ready to be discharged.

Next he told the second man to jump. The second man also jumped and sprained his wrist. The doctor told him he too was not ready to be discharged.

Then he told the third man to jump. The third man refused to jump, saying 'No, I will not do it!'

The doctor was very happy and declared that the third man was cured and could go home. When the man was signing his papers to leave, the doctor was curious and asked him, 'Tell me, how did you decide that you would not jump?'

The man replied, 'How can I jump? I don't know how to swim!'

Understand: right action, but for the wrong reason!

Renouncing wealth to become a sannyasi is doing the right action but for the wrong

Sannyas is living in tremendous beauty – inside and outside you.

reason. Wealth and sannyas are not mutually

exclusive. In fact, sannyas is the art and science of creating wealth flawlessly.

You should know one fact, the highest percentage of Bharat's gold is sitting inside temples and monasteries! In South Bharat alone there are so many temples with golden towers. Just imagine! When you understand the reality or truth of sannyas, you will not escape from wealth. You will have honest respect for wealth. The only thing is that you will never be caught in it. You will never internalize it. There will be no space for wealth in your inner space. So you will never suffer for it. You will never suffer because of it.

If you read the vedic scriptures you will see that they always talk only about the abundance of life. They never teach escaping from it. They teach loosening the attachment over possessions, not renouncing or hating it. Sannyas is seeing the vast abundance of life as one whole, and therefore not being attached to your own small possessions. It is knowing that wealth is also a manifestation of Existence and not the essence of life itself. Once this is known it doesn't matter how much wealth is lying with you. You remain untouched by it. Remaining unattached to wealth has been described as 'renouncing' in the ancient years.

The sannyasi who renounces wealth physically may do so as a choice, not because it is any definition of a sannyasi. A real sannyasi is the one who lives beyond wealth. When he has gone beyond wealth, it does not matter whether he has it or not. If at all he physically renounces, it is out of a deep understanding of the whole thing, not out of failure or compulsion.

Sannyas is not suicide. It is life. Sannyas is living in tremendous beauty – inside and outside you.

The Persian mystic poet Jalaluddin Rumi* tells a story:

A sage once went outside to plough his field and saw a peacock busily destroying his own plumage with his beak. The sage could not bear to see this self-destruction, and that too of the most beautiful of birds. He told the peacock to stop what he was doing.

The peacock told him, 'I will not stop. My plumage that you admire so much is a source of danger to my owner. Hunters follow me all the time because of this, and my owner has trouble keeping me because of this. So it is better that I remove my feathers with

Jalaluddin Rumi - 13th century Persian Sufi poet.

my own beak and make myself ugly so that they will not pursue me.'

Outer beauty and wealth are not enemies to the path of sannyas. They are complementary. Sannyas adds inner wealth and beauty to your outer wealth and beauty. It gives us the intelligence to handle the outer wealth and beauty without any suffering related to it.

Sannyas is not a game of one world against another, of material versus spiritual.

First thing you need to understand is there are no two worlds like material and spiritual. There is only one world. Second thing is sannyas is not a doctrine. It is a certain attitude of living in the world without suffering. It is an understanding of how to live in the best possible way. It is a conscious decision to live life as close to reality as possible, because living in reality is living in the most optimum way.

What is living in reality?

One person asked me a question, 'You say that currently our waking state is not reality, it is also a dream. But how can it be? Whenever we sleep and come back to the waking state, we find the things around us to be the same – house, belongings, people etc. But when we go to the dream state,

things in the dream are not the same. So obviously, we can conclude that the dream is a dream and waking state is reality.' is a certain attitude of living in the world without suffering.

Carefully understand what I am going to say now…

Sometimes, in one night's dream itself, you will dream ten to twelve years of your life. Am I right? You will start with your college and by the time you come out of sleep, you would have finished your marriage, kids, everything! You would have lived something like one decade overnight!

What does it mean?

It means you have lived ten years of your life in ten hours. Am I right? But when you are dreaming the dream, you don't feel that you are doing a fast forward. You are very clear that you are living your ten years of life in its own pace. But when you wake up suddenly, you realize you have spent only ten hours in sleep!

In the very same way, at any moment, you may wake up and feel you have not spent seventy years on planet earth, but that you spent only seven hours!

Let me explain.

Let us imagine that between 9th May and 10th May you dream as if you lived for one decade. In the ten hours of sleep, you dream that you are studying in your college, and that you fall asleep for a few hours everyday, and come back. For the whole ten years, you can't be without falling asleep, right? So you dream that you are falling asleep as well, and living a regular life.

Now understand an important thing. In these ten years of life, in one continuous dream, from the 9th night to the 10th morning, you lived ten years of your life. Many times you would have fallen asleep and come back as part of the life in the dream itself. Within this dream, whenever you came back from sleep, you were with the same identity as you were before going in to sleep. Am I right? That is, in your dream, if you went to sleep as a college student, you woke up also as the same college student. That is why starting with college, you moved to the next step…the next step…the next step and so on without any confusion.

What does this mean? Just like in the waking state, you came back to the same identity every time. So, coming back to the same identity every time as you said, the same belongings, the same place, etc. is not the scale to prove it is a permanent reality! Am I right?

What does it mean? It means that just falling asleep and coming back to find the same bank balance, car, house and wife, also does not mean you are in reality!

This is a very important understanding. This understanding can lead to such a sharp analysis of your life. You will get clarity in so many things.

If you understand this one concept, that everything is maya or illusion, you will not renounce anything. You will live with everything without being disturbed by it.

Now, just like how this ten year dream happens in ten hours, there may be a different calendar where your 70 years, for example 1950 to 2020, may be just seven hours for somebody who is in a different space!

If the number of thoughts per second is more, you will feel as if you are living for a longer time. For example, if you are sitting with someone who you are completely in tune with, you will feel that time is moving very fast because your thoughts per second at that time will be very low. But if you are sitting with somebody with whom you don't feel connected, what will you do every five minutes? You will keep looking at the watch. Your thoughts per second will be high. You will be restless. So you will feel as though a lot of time has passed.

That is why in the vedic tradition, the unit of time is called kshana. It is not measured as a chronological second. According to Western understanding, the chronological time is calculated with the unit of second. It means that one unit of time is equal to one second. In the vedic tradition, the unit of time is called kshana. Kshana means the gap between one thought and the next thought. According to the Western calendar, your one second and my one second are one and the same. But according to the vedic calendar, your one kshana and my one kshana will be different! This is because the gap between one thought and the next thought for me will be different from the gap for you. Here, time is not chronological, it is psychological.

We refer to Thoughts Per Second as TPS.

Now, in the dream state, you have too many thoughts or a high TPS. That is why you feel as if you have lived for a long time. In the waking state, there is a medium number of TPS. That is why it seems like time is moving fast. For the celestial beings, the TPS is very less, and that is why their one day will be one year for us! You can see this in the vedic calendars.

If you bring down your TPS considerably, you can enter into samadhi or turiya, merging with the divine consciousness, which is 'reality'. So understand that it is only when you bring your TPS down, that you will understand reality.

Now, let us come back to our dream and waking states. In the waking state, when your TPS is lower than in the dream state, you realized that It is only when you bring your TPS down, that you will understand reality.

the dream state was not reality. Am I right? But when you were in the dream state, did you realize you were not in reality? No! You felt it was real because you were going through everything realistically. You responded to everything. You had nightmares, you had all the regular problems. Only when your TPS was brought down in the waking state, did you realize that the dream state was an illusion. Now… in the same way, to understand that your waking state itself is an illusion, you need to bring down your TPS further! Come down… come to the turiya state. Suddenly, you will realize that this waking state is also an illusion!

In the dream state, if your TPS was, let us say 1000, then in the waking state it might be say 100. In the samadhi state, it is zero. Because of a reduced TPS in the waking state, you understand that the dream state was an illusion. In the same way, only in the samadhi state, you will understand that the waking state is an illusion! As of now, your inner space is occupied with all that you experience in the waking state. That is why you never enter into the samadhi state.

As long as you are enjoying the dream, you will never get out of it. As long as you are enjoying the waking state, you will never understand it is an illusion!

One more thing to realize is that this whole situation is like a vicious circle. As long as you are enjoying the dream, you will never get out

of it. Only when you get out will you realize it is just a dream. Similarly, as long as you are enjoying the waking state, you will never understand it is an illusion!

Here is where Shiva comes to help us.

He gives a technique or method to get us out of the illusory waking state. This is a very subtle and important point. Whether you are in the dream state or in the waking state or samadhi state, the dreamer is the same, am I right? Whether you are seeing a 1000 TPS dream, or a 100 TPS dream, or you are in 0 TPS, the dreamer is the same. But what caused you to wake up from the illusion was the shift in attention from the seen to the seer. Am I right?

Whenever your attention moved from the seen to the seer, that is from the object that you were seeing to the person seeing it, you came to the next state, you woke up! So understand, whenever your attention is diverted from the seen to the seer, you wake up.

This is the technique. This is the key: turn your awareness from the seen to the seer. You will wake up!

Sannyas is nothing but nurturing the awareness towards the seer. All the techniques of renunciation and meditation are methods to pull the awareness from the seen towards the seer.

Once you become the seer, you start experiencing your aloneness. Aloneness is your original nature. You experienced it in your mother's womb when you were by yourself. Aloneness is different from loneliness. Society teaches you to always be with people at home or any club or party or at least with the television. It weakens you by giving you these supports. When these are not there, you feel lonely. Loneliness always brings suffering. Aloneness on the other hand is the causeless bliss that is in you all the time, the bliss that all great enlightened masters have spoken of again and again. Aloneness gives you strength.

Sannyas is all about rediscovering that aloneness and relaxing into it.

Samsar literally means the 'world' or the 'path'. It refers to the worldly life that causes endless cycles of birth and death.

There are two ways to move in any path: either with baggage and people or by yourself. In the first case, you may have to wait for a longer time. In the second case you can reach, even this very minute.

Sannyas is the decision not to carry any baggage while moving. You can have everything, but you don't have to carry it. When you don't carry anything, Existence brings to you what you need for the moment. That is sannyas!

There is a beautiful story from the life of Buddha.

Buddha's disciples gathered around him one day and asked him to teach them the essence of sannyas. He told them a small story:

One man was living on an island by himself. Suddenly he got the feeling it was time to move from the island. He did not have a boat. So he made one with whatever he could find – some twigs, branches, leaves. It was a difficult journey but somehow he crossed and reached the other side.

Buddha asked the disciples, 'After reaching the other side, should the man

continued, 'The man of sannyas discards the boat knowing that he will be provided for as needed in the future. The man of samsar keeps it so that his effort doesn't go waste if he wants to journey back!

A sannyasi walks with his thoughts on Existence. A samsari walks with his thoughts on how to exist. A sannyasi uses the boat to cross the ocean of life. A samsari carries the boat even beyond the time it is needed, not knowing he can drop it. That is the difference. There is nothing right or wrong in this. It is just two different ways to live.

Let me explain sannyas in the context of karma because sannyas is the shortcut to exhausting karma.

Karma is nothing but the unfulfilled actions of your past that pull you again and again to take birth to fulfill them. It is the very cause of the cycle of birth and death. It makes you take birth again and again in this world until it is exhausted.

There are three types of karma – sanchita, prarabdha and agamya. Sanchita karma is your entire bank balance of unfulfilled actions (karma) accumulated over many lives. Prarabdha karma is that portion of sanchita that you bring and come to exhaust in this one birth. Every time you take birth, you bring with you a small portion of sanchita as your prarabdha to exhaust. It includes all your unfulfilled desires, lust, anger, fear, and such things. The third karma, agamya karma, is the fresh karma that you create in this birth because of fresh, unfulfilled actions.

Ultimately, these three things need to be done in order to exhaust all karma completely. First, the fresh agamya should not get created because it only adds to the bank balance or sanchita at the end of the lifetime. Second, the prarabdha with which you came should get exhausted, or fulfilled, in this life completely without a trace. Third, the volume of the sanchita itself should somehow be burnt so that the number of times you take birth reduces. This happens by fulfilling the prarabdha without accumulating the agamya in a lifetime.

If the prarabdha is exhausted in the right way, agamya will not get created. The same intelligence that properly exhausts the prarabdha will take care of not creating new agamya. The sanchita itself can be exhausted only by the grace of an enlightened master.

Now understand clearly: if the fantasy of your prarabdha is greater than your intelligence, then samsar (marriage) is the path for you. If the fantasy of your prarabdha is lesser than your intelligence, then sannyas is the path for you! In the path of sannyas, your intelligence wins over your prarabdha and brings it to control and exhaust it. In the path of samsar, life teaches you in different ways and you exhaust your prarabdha through millions of births.

In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, there is an eightfold path to enlightenment. All eight parts have to be followed simultaneously. Three of the parts are pratyahara, dharana and dhyana. Pratyahara is drawing the mind inwards, away from the five senses. The next is dharana or the merging of the mind with the inner Self. The third is dhyana, meditation.

Sanchita karma - Bank of accumulated karma from which we choose to bring into this birth a few as prarabdha karma.

Prarabdha karma - Mindset and desires that we bring into this world when we are born.

Agamya karma - The actions one constantly does out of free will after taking birth on planet earth.These are not born out of true desires but from desires borrowed from society, by looking at others.

Yoga Sutras - The book on yoga authored by enlightened master Patanjali.

Withdrawing the mind from the five senses itself can happen only when the mind merges with the inner Self! For example, you can release the foot from the lower rung of the ladder only after establishing yourself in the higher rung, is it not? You can let go of the lower branch of the tree only after clinging to the higher branch. We all think that only after renouncing worldly attachments, we can attain god. No! The truth is, only after attaining god can you really shake off the worldly things. Only after you experience THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM or eternal bliss, you can shake off mithyananda or worldly fantasies.

If you can become aware of and hold on more firmly to the higher rung you may let go of the lower rung more easily. That awareness is called sannyas. It is the process of understanding and moving to the higher rung and leaving the lower rung. As you move, renunciation happens as a byproduct. Because you realize that to climb higher you don't need anything but yourself! Anything you take with you is only going to make it more difficult to climb.

A small Zen story:

Having renounced his kingdom, a king requested a Zen master to accept him as his disciple.

The master told him, 'I will accept you, but I feel you have to wait until you gain more maturity.'

The king was too impatient to wait. He pleaded with the master. The master finally agreed on the condition that the king would move to another forest and live there. The king followed the master's words.

After a few days in the forest, the king was unable to bear the mosquitoes in the forest. He bought a mosquito net and protected himself. A few days after that he felt it would be better to have a cot to sit on for meditation, so he went and bought a cot.

Then he found that the rain was spoiling the cot. To protect the cot from rain, he built a small room and kept the cot inside it. A short time later he felt the need for someone to clean the room everyday, so he brought in a helper. Then, to keep the helper occupied, he brought in one more person.

This went on and on and eventually, he created a kingdom in the forest!

Understand, a king creates a kingdom even in the forest.

Sannyas is the search to answer the question 'Who am I?'

A samsari goes to places to see the beauty of Existence.

A sannyasi sees everything around him as already divine and beautiful. When the samsari starts turning inward, he becomes a sannyasi. Until he finds the burning need for that, it is better for him to continue with what he is doing. For a sannyasi, the mind is happy all the time. What he gets is what he wants. He is always living in the mood of grateful and welcome acceptance. For a samsari, the mind is occupied with too many conflicts. He keeps trying to get what he wants. With intelligence, the samsari can awaken to the truth that what he is getting is what he needs for that moment and for his ultimate fulfillment.

There was a sannyasi who lived in a mountain area. The animals and birds would talk to him and he would respond. They would spend the whole day near his hut and at night would go back to their homes. Three times a week the sannyasi would go to the market place and preach. He spoke a lot about how to share what one has with others without the fear of becoming poor. He taught that Existence would shower abundantly if one trusts and does this.

One day, he found three men approaching his hut in the mountains. They came and asked him, 'You have always told us to share what we have and how good it is to do it. Now, we are in need of money for business. Can you give us some money which we will return to you as soon business picks up?'

The sannyasi was surprised. He took them into his hut and showed them. He had a mat, one set of clothes and a jug of water. He said, 'Take these if you wish to. I don't have any gold or silver to give you.'

The men became angry and shouted at him, 'So you teach and preach what you yourself don't follow!'

The samsari is concerned with material things and living life in a limited way. The sannyasi is concerned about death – death of all that is not him: ego, possessiveness, lust, anger, fear, jealousy and discontent. He knows he is something beyond all this. His whole quest is to find this, because once he finds it, he has found the higher rung of the ladder and he can leave the lower rung where the constant push and pull of all these emotions and material things reside.

Sannyas is the search to answer the question 'Who am I?' A sannyasi puts his whole energy into discovering the answer to this question. If people ask you, 'Who are you?' you will generally reply, 'I am so-and-so's son, I am an engineer, I am a professor.' But those words describe who you are in your relationships with the world. If there were no world, then who are you?

The great enlightened masters who founded the world religions have said one thing repeatedly: Aham Brahmasmi or 'I am That' in the Hindu tradition, or 'Be still and know that I am god' in the Christian tradition, or Anal-Haq or 'I am the Truth' in the Islam tradition. Experiencing that you are god is the purpose of human life.

Once this purpose is experienced, the inner bliss that all these great masters talk about starts happening. Then you understand that the outer world is a beautiful stage where the divine play is happening. There is ultimate freedom from all worldly difficulties. You do, and yet you don't do, you speak and yet you don't speak. You cry and yet you don't cry. Your inner Self remains untouched. You are in 'eternal bliss' or nithya ananda.

The problem is that people generally think sannyas is a hindrance to worldly life. They think sannyas is seriousness. No! Sannyas is a certain quality for living life to its optimum. Seriousness will never help one live life to its full potential. Only sincerity and laughter will help. Laughter is the greatest spiritual quality.

A master was seated with his disciples. He was in an expansive mood and his disciples decided to ask him about the various stages he passed through to reach the Divine. With the energy of sannyas, you are ready for the challenges of life. Sannyas is strength.

The master beautifully started explaining…

'God held me by the hand and first took me to the Land of Action. I stayed there for several years. Then god returned and took me to the Land of Sorrow. I fell into deep sorrows but eventually went beyond them. I felt happy. Then, suddenly I found that god put me in the Land of Love. I went through burning emotions and found myself cleansed thoroughly. Then, he took me to the Land of Silence. There I learned the mysteries of life and death.'

The disciples asked, 'Was that the final stage of your quest?'

The master said, 'No. One day god said, Today I will take you to my very heart… and he led me to the Land of Laughter.'

So understand, sannyas is your very energy. How can it be a hindrance to anything? Not only that, with the energy of sannyas, you are always young. With the energy of sannyas, you are ready for the challenges of life.

Sannyas is strength. It is the quality of supreme self-discipline in this fantasy With sannyas, you will continue to do what you are doing but in a much better way.

world. Someone asked Mahavira, the great enlightened Jain

master, 'Who is more superior, the samsari or the sannyasi?'

He replied, 'Self-discipline is the most superior! A samsari can sometimes be more self-disciplined than a sannyasi.' Please understand that self-discipline is not self torture. It is a beautiful resting that happens within you. It happens out of a deep understanding of the nature of your mind and the world. That's all. It happens from inside you.

When I share this idea, people ask me, 'Then why can't we continue in samsar and live with the consciousness of a sannyasi?' You see, the nature of man is such that unless a conscious decision is taken, it is difficult to bring about a permanent transformation in the consciousness. Sannyas is a conscious decision to transform the consciousness. Sannyas is a conscious decision. That is why sannyas needs to be taken. With a conscious decision, there is continued awareness. Continued awareness decreases the chance of slipping back. Without it, there is nothing binding one to keep on the path. It becomes easy to slip.

With sannyas, you will continue to do what you are doing but in a much better way, in a more confident way, in a more creative way, in a way that is closer to god. Creation is the quality of god or Existence. Existence continuously creates. Sannyas is imbibing the very qualities of Existence, and knowing that everything is the creation of Existence.

A small story:

A woman was walking from her village to the neighboring village. While walking, she came to a field of golden pumpkins. She saw a huge oak tree in one corner of the field.

As she was very tired, she sat under the oak tree for some rest.

Suddenly she looked up and saw tiny acorns all over the huge branches of the oak tree. Ahead of her, she also saw big pumpkins on tiny vines in the fields.

She thought to herself, 'Even god makes blunders with his creations. He should have put the small acorns on the tiny vines and the big pumpkins on the branches of the big oak trees.'

After some time, she stretched out and decided to take a nap under the oak tree. She fell asleep.

There was a heavy wind blowing. She was awakened by a tiny acorn that fell and bounced off her cheek. She rubbed her cheek and thought, 'Maybe god is right after all!'

Sannyas is about seeing the wonderful coexistence of everything in Existence. Sannyas is existing in relationships like a water drop on the lotus leaf. If you see the lotus leaf, the water droplet will be on the leaf but will be untouched by it. Sannyas is living in relationships while being untouched by them. A common misconception is that sannyas is renouncing relationships. No. Sannyas enriches relationships.

So many of my disciples who have embraced the path of sannyas come and tell me, 'Swamiji, after initiation, the husbandwife understanding has flowered so beautifully. Now we are really living in tune with each other and with everything around us.'

With sannyas, you start watching everything. You become a witness. Because of this witnessing, a gap is created between you and the other person. That gap is misunderstood as 'renunciation'. If you notice, the gap was not there earlier. Each one was suffocating the other. Now the gap is there. The gap is not a gap of distance but a gap of awareness.

Awareness is bringing your consciousness to your mind and watching nonjudgmentally. It is a very subtle action. Soon it becomes continuous in you. That is sannyas! Bringing awareness to the moment continuously is sannyas. With awareness, the very root of suffering is addressed before it takes root. The suffering is addressed because you are watching. Without awareness, there is bound to be suffering.

Sannyas is also living without the burden of the inner woman or inner man. What is meant by inner woman or inner man? It is nothing but the lust hidden in your mind, the fantasies that you have created in your mind. Shiva says beautifully in the Tantra* , a man who has abandoned the woman in his inner mind is a sannyasi, even if he is still in the family. On the contrary, if thoughts of a woman persist in a sannyasi's mind, he cannot be called a sannyasi. This is the scale to measure if a man is a sannyasi.

In Buddha's teaching, the Four Noble Truths, the second truth deals with the cause of suffering. He beautifully says that suffering is because of the demands we make on life every moment. It is like asking a banana tree to bear mangoes! We will understand this habit only when we bring in awareness.

Not only that, when you watch, you start seeing exactly how transactions are happening in relationships. You see how

Tantra - Ancient vedic tradition of achieving enlightenment through spiritual techniques or practices, meditations and ritual worship.

A sannyasi takes responsibility for the whole of Existence. He doesn't know the difference between his family and the rest of the world.

expectations are driving the whole thing. You see the ulterior motives in everything. I remember

an incident that happened when I was around twelve years of age. One of my grandmothers was about 104 when she passed away. She had no more children of her own. She was looked after by one of my uncles. My uncle and his wife were not happy looking after her. They would complain about her and not take care of her properly. She was also a difficult and unpleasant person. She was very miserly even though she was wealthy. She would often ask me to buy her tobacco. When I asked for money, she would tell me to ask my father for it! She would not even give water from her well to her neighbors during summer.

When she died, no one in the family wept. But the women in the household changed into cheap saris* , removed their jewelry and got ready to receive friends and neighbors who arrived to offer condolences. As soon as the guests arrived, the women would start wailing. Every time a new set of relatives arrived, the wailing would start all over again. I was shocked at the hypocrisy of the situation.

When the dead body was still in the house and relatives were still coming, the immediate family went into the dead lady's room where her box of jewelry was kept under her bed. They all laid their individual claim to her jewelry and started negotiating and bargaining even before her body had grown cold! They called in a goldsmith to estimate the worth of the jewelry.

At that moment, I lost all respect for family and its social conditioning. I started laughing loudly at their behavior. An uncle tried to hit me to stop my laughter. I held his hand and told him that if he tried to hit me again, I would tell the entire crowd what they were up to – trying to loot even before the body was cremated. My mother knew me well and told the uncle to be careful. She knew I was quite capable of doing what I threatened to do!

Then the relatives started arguing about who would pay for the funeral expenses. My father, a mild and innocent man who hated arguments, immediately agreed to take care of all expenses.

Completely disgusted, I took my Bhagavad Gita book and started chanting its verses in front of the dead body. It is said that

Sari - One piece garment worn by Hindu women.

merely reading the Gita in front of a dead body can liberate the soul.

Given my age, this was the best I could do in that situation. A sannyasi takes responsibility for the whole of Existence. He doesn't know the difference between his family and the rest of the world. All are the same. He wishes for the liberation of anyone who comes his way. On the other hand, a samsari takes responsibility for one family or maybe for a few organizations. This taking of responsibility is always towards a definite cause. It is either to accumulate the credit of serving, to fulfill some obligation, or to co-exist easily with the people around him.

The nature of a sannyasi's responsibility is completely different. For him, the whole world is his family. There is no obligation driving him. Responsibility happens completely out of the quality of his inner space. Also, a samsari can rest after fulfilling every duty at that stage in life. A sannyasi continuously works, because people are constantly in need of truths in their life.

A sannyasi is established in rich relationships. People think sannyasis run away from relationships. A young girl asked me while I was addressing a college gathering, 'Was it failure in love that caused you to become a sannyasi?' I told her, 'It was success in love that

Sannyas is the ultimate royalty, because it is rich without any paraphernalia!

caused me to become a sannyasi!' Actually, sannyas is what softens you into real love, love towards not just one person but towards the whole of Existence.

Ordinary love comes with a reason, or with lust. Real love knows no reason. It is just a causeless overflowing energy towards everything in Existence.

In reality, sannyas is living like a king. Sannyas is the beginning of a kingly life because when you have cleaned yourself of all your suffering, then you have gained everything you can ever gain! You gain far more than mere wealth can give you.

When I was born, the family astrologer was called to cast my horoscope as per family tradition. The astrologer studied it and said I would be a raja sannyasi* , a kingly sannyasi. If sannyas is adapted in its right spirit, it gives a kingly stature. Sannyas is the ultimate royalty, because it is rich without any paraphernalia! A king is rich because of his outer wealth. A sannyasi is rich because of his inner wealth. With outer wealth, there is the danger that any time you may become a pauper. With inner

Raja Sannyasi - King amongst monks.

The rich person is the one who is enjoying everything around him continuously.

wealth, you remain rich forever.

It is said that when Buddha

went begging, he would look like a king, and the person who gave him alms would look like a beggar! That is the hallmark of the sannyas quality. Of course Buddha was enlightened at that time. But the sannyas dimension itself has this quality in it. It will simply radiate a kingly energy.

Not only that, the inner richness causes everything outside to be experienced with richness. A sannyasi recognizes the unending abundance of Existence. His vision is oceanic. He is not stuck in narrow perceptions. He perceives the whole of Existence as one. He feels part of the whole. That is why he is rich. A rich man who feels he owns a few acres is not really the rich one. The man who feels the abundance of Existence is really the rich one.

A small story:

One day a rich man took his son on a trip to the country with the purpose of showing his son how poor people live. They spent a few days with a farmer's family.

On their return from their trip, he asked his son, 'How was the trip?'

The son replied, 'It was very good, Dad.'

The father asked, 'Did you see how poor people live?'

The son replied, 'Yes I saw.'

The father asked, 'Can you tell me what you learned from the trip?'

The son answered, 'I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden, whereas they have a river that has no end. We have imported lights in our garden, but they have the stars at night. Our courtyard reaches to the front yard, and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on, whereas they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others. We buy our food, but they grow their own food. We have walls around our property to protect us, whereas they are protected by friends.'

The father was shocked! The son finally said, 'Thank you, Dad, for showing me how poor we are.'

Understand that the very word 'rich' has been misinterpreted. How can a person who is enjoying just a few bungalows be rich? He cannot be! The rich person is the one who is enjoying everything around him continuously. His richness is the richness of the whole Existence. He enjoys everything with no attachment to anything.

(This section contains words spoken by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM while briefly elucidating the poem 'Song of a Sanyasin' by Vivekananda, a great enlightened master from Bharat. He delivered this to a small group of ashramites in the Bidadi ashram, spiritual headquarters of the Mission at Bangalore, Bharat. He spoke little, but with an overflow that overwhelmed the group into dazed silence. He stopped abruptly, saying He would continue later. Parts in bold are words from the verses.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM explained how he works on the brahmacharis and brahmacharinis (young boys and girls training on the path of sannyas) and how they can accelerate the process by understanding the process.)

Whether you are caressed or whipped, a slave is a slave.

Understand: currently, your ego is settled in a few places. Your ego is settled in pride, lust, anger, wealth, social importance, personal freedom and such things. As long as you live according to those things, whether you fulfill your desires or not, depression will be your base. Any manifestation of ego causes depression, either in a subtle way or in a big way. Do you understand? I think we are discussing this poem for all of you...!

dual throng…caressed or whipped….

Whether you are shown love by the master, or whether you are whipped by him, as long as you follow your ego based routine, your ego based lifestyle, you will remain a slave.

for fetters, though of gold

Understand, there is something called 'immediate freedom'. It is like this: when you wake up, you conduct your life according to how you feel. You wake up at whatever time you feel like, do things according to how you think they should be done, spend money the way you want to spend it. All this is immediate freedom. Only when you shake that immediate freedom, will the cognitive shift happen in you. The feelings of 'I' and 'mine' will be jolted. The shift will happen.

If you watch what I do, you will see that I am simply shaking your immediate freedom all the time! Nothing else. Presently, you have invested your entire personality in whatever you think as your immediate freedom. I will simply shake that!

Let me explain this so you can understand it in the context of your own life.

Presently, you may be following the ashram routine from five AM until midnight. Starting tomorrow, if I give you ten days off as a holiday, saying you don't have to follow the ashram routine, what will you do? For the first four days you will sleep long hours, tossing around in the bed! After that what will happen? Your own desires will take over, and you will start functioning according to your ways.

The routine that is set for you by me is there to raise your consciousness, but it will be boring for you. When you are given a break, you will feel free for a few days. But after that, what will happen? The weeds inside you, your unconscious desires, will pull you and take you over. Without your knowledge, once again, you will be a slave, but to your own desires.

Presently what do you feel? You wonder if there is a need to work like a slave all the time from morning until night everyday following the same routine. But what will you be doing after four days of freedom from that routine? You will be a slave to your own desires! That's all.

When you follow your own desires, you will simply be postponing and relaxing your routine. Your eating time, your sleeping time, your whole routine will relax. While you are doing this, a thick layer of depression will start developing in your being. When your own whim starts guiding your routine, without your knowledge, the depression develops in you. But in the lifestyle that I give, that thick depression layer will not develop. Day by day, beyond your logic, a lighter and lighter mood will start enveloping you! This is the big difference between these two paths.

With blinking light to pile more gloom on gloom.

And never yield, Sannyasin bold! Say –

Understand carefully: in the period between death and the next birth, the one who says, 'Aha, I have done a good job and come away,' that one is a sannyasi. In the period between birth and death, which is life, the one who thinks, 'Aha, I am doing something great,' that one is a samsari! Do you understand?

It is in the gap between death and the next birth that the soul reviews its past actions. The soul feels good when it has lived the previous life closest to reality. The soul feels regret when it has lived in illusion. The sannyasi is the one, who during this time between death and the next birth, feels he did a good job of life and came away because he would have lived closest to reality.

The samsari, on the other hand, is the one who during the time between birth and death, which is life, prides himself with illusory achievements, and concludes he is doing a good job! Understand: when I say samsari, I don't mean married people. I mean the 'mindset' that is of the illusory world. This has to be clearly understood.

thirst for life, forever quench; it drags

The thirst for life never dies. It keeps on happening forever. After having taken many lives, and getting bored, 'settling down' is what I call anubhava, the ultimate experience of life. The enlightened master is one who, after having taken millions of lives and feeling bored, finally settles down and radiates such an energy that a person who just sees him, holds on to him for life! That is the mark of the enlightened master. That is how the relationship between the

By applying the deep life solutions inside you, within your being, a freedom will awaken.

master and disciple happens. The disciple simply sees the master in a way that is

beyond the disciple's logic and so holds on to the master!

Understand, all the experiences that can happen through many, many lives, I have gone through and have come here now. I am what you call a 'senior soul'. Otherwise, can you see any correlation between my 31 years of age and the soul that is inside here? No! There is no connection here!

In the moment of seeing the senior soul, capturing that experience and raising oneself is what is called sannyas! That is what Vivekananda is saying here. Sannyas is seeing the enlightened one and holding on to him to raise oneself.

Just by escaping a law or a situation, never think you have really escaped. If any problem surfaces, just go into your being. Heal yourself by saying, 'I am ātman***** ', and feel the response to that problem happening within you, however difficult it may be. Act according to that response. That alone is freedom. Presently, when you have a problem, what do you do? You simply escape from that situation or from that person or from that place. Am I right? By escaping, you think you have freedom. That is what Vivekananda is denying here!

Ātman - Soul, Spirit, Consciousness etc as referring to the individual imperishable energy that is a holographic image of the Cosmic Consciousness.

By applying the deep life solutions inside you, within your being, a freedom will awaken. That freedom that comes from deep within is the real freedom. Only that will take you to the ultimate freedom. Other than that, through any other way, if you try to move towards freedom, it will take you only towards more and more bondage.

'Who sows must reap,' they say, 'and cause must bring

See: as soon as you take a form, as soon as you take birth, whatever you try to do to attain freedom, either by escaping from something or by resisting something, freedom never happens. Just like when you remove one chain that binds you, you tie another chain around yourself! If you want to heal a wound, you need to apply medicine to it. Can you heal it by digging into it continuously? No! Likewise, when you want freedom, the effort you make in the outside will only put you in more and more depression. From that depression, whatever work you do, will only take you to further depression. Anything you do from bondage will take you only to further bondage. Working Anything you do from bondage will take you only to further bondage. Working on the inside is the only thing that will help you.

on the inside is the only thing that will help you.

For example, when you people do something wrong, to escape from it, you alter some situation or people in the outer world, right? You simply rearrange a few things to cover up. After that, only a worse sorrow happens to you! Once that sorrow comes, you think, 'What will I tell people who enquire about this? What answer will I give them?' Your ego will not permit you to tell that you brought the sorrow upon yourself. So what do you do? Without exposing your mistakes, without allowing the suffering of the sorrow to show, without exposing that you are in deeper sorrow now, you say, 'Ah…I did everything right. Leave it. Everything is going the way it should go.'

Am I right? This is the way life goes on now!

Take life here in the ashram. When the boiling starts happening here, when I start causing trouble for the ego, for the builtup identity, you escape from here and go to Pondicherry* ashram. When you go to Pondicherry* ashram, there is a greater sorrow waiting for you there! You escape from there to Salem* ashram. From Salem* you run to Tiruvannamalai ashram. If none of these work out, you go out of the organization itself ! You escape somewhere, right? Understand that by escaping, only a greater sorrow will come your way. But even after that comes, what do you do? You save your face! You say, 'Nothing is wrong. Everything is just fine.' Even if you know that the suffering came only because your ego was unable to bear the boiling, you will console yourself and continue doing what you were doing. If this cycle continues, you block the chances of being liberated from it.

Know thou art That

What is the solution? Again and again, Vivekananda says, 'Know 'thou art That'. Inside yourself, again and again, stand up and experience the freedom of the inner world through acceptance. Whatever happens in the outer world, experience it as a happening in Existence. Know about the inevitability of the 'moment'. Understand that you are the atman or soul. Actually, you don't even need to understand. Just think that you are the soul; that is enough. Just think that you are the pure soul, not bonded to the body and mind. Experience whatever is happening to you in the outer world as a divine play happening within you. Know that what you see are mere reflections. By reminding yourself of these truths, a freedom will awaken. That is the real freedom. That is the ultimate freedom.

The sexless Self ! whose father He? Whose child?

Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One?

Pondicherry - A state in South Bharat neighboring Tamilnadu. Salem - A city in Tamilnadu.

Aye…!

The sexless Self ! whose father He? whose child?

Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One?

Thousands of thoughts cross your mind every moment. Thoughts are nothing but vacant dreams, illusions created by your mind. All relationships and all emotions are but illusions. You came into this world to exhaust your karma and leave as an enlightened soul. But after coming here, you got caught in vacant dreams like relationships, emotions and such things. As these vacant dreams pass through your mind, suddenly you feel that the most torturous things are happening to you. You feel you can't bear it any more. Understand, if you feel this suffocation, it means that the time has come to stand up! The time has come to shake off the illusions and see reality. But what do you do? You alter the dream! You alter the situation! Then what happens? You continue the dream on a milder note. You miss the opportunity to awaken and see the Truth.

When I boil you again and again, understand that I am awakening you!

When I boil you again and again, when I make the dreams terrible for you, understand that I am awakening you! When the potato is being boiled, if it jumps out, what will happen to it? It will go for waste! Similarly, when I increase the boiling, if you don't jump out, if you stay inside and make up your mind to see what is going to happen, it is enough! That is the becoming of a siddha* , one who attains spiritual wisdom.

The sexless Self ! whose father He? whose child?

Whose friend, whose foe is He who is but One?

Siddha - One who is a practitioner of the spiritual techniques.

Understand that by jumping out, you only extend the dream. See, unless it is a wild dream, you will not wake up! If it is just a mild dream, you will not wake up. If I am changing your life into a wild dream, please understand that I am waking you up! I am doing the job of waking you up. At that time, if you shout, 'No! Leave me, Swamiji!' and you alter your situation, what will happen? It will become a mild dream. Then what will you do? You will keep continuing the dream. You can continue for as many days as you wish. It is each one's preference.…mmm?

There is but One – The Free, The Knower – Self !

Have thou no home. What home can hold thee, friend?

What chance may bring, well cooked or ill, judge not.

Vivekananda says, 'Live every day like it is a possibility for awakening.'

But what do you do? Even though you come to me with this strong inspiration, after some time, you forget that every day is only for me to boil you and awaken you. You forget that every day is only for the purpose of boiling you. Then what do you do? You just settle down with a mundane attitude. You think, 'Ah…all this is just business. What is there in this? What is there in that?' You settle down with these thoughts and get diluted. You start taking me for granted.

Has All become, the All is 'I' and Bliss.

nor he Whom anger chains, can ever pass thro' Maya's gates.

You can't create enlightenment in a being by teaching. You can only reproduce enlightenment by inspiring.

In those that lowly creep, I am the Self in all.

All heavens and earths and hells, all hopes and fears.'

Let go thy hold, Sannyasin bold! Say –

Vivekananda says, 'Books or temples do not give you the right wisdom. It is the hands of the Guru who lives the Truth that give you wisdom. Hold onto those hands. Don't let go of them. After that, there is no sorrow for you.'

Vivekananda was a true sannyasi! He sacrificed his very life for the sake of the goal. He lived to show how a Paramahamsa lives on planet earth! Understand, these verses are expressions of a great Consciousness. They spur one to bring clarity within oneself, again and again, to stand up and make the right decisions. Out of that, he says, emerges the freedom that we seek.

So understand, to come out of depression, don't change the situation. When you change the situation, you will only go into further depression. Whatever decisions you make during depression will set the next stage for a scene of worse depression. Just imagine, when you are in depression, will you have enough clarity to make a good decision? Will you have the clarity to properly handle anything? No! You will not. Whatever you do at that time will be like hooking on to four or five more keys and entangling yourself with them. When a drunk man gets a rope, he will unconsciously bind himself more and more with it, thinking he is undoing it! All the decisions taken during depression are like this.

The only way to come out of depression is to bring clarity within yourself. Watch and stand up with courage. Then the real freedom will start happening.

***** Namo Arihanta!

What is the role of the master in sannyas?

Mahavir Jain was a great Jain master who compiled the teachings of Jainism known as the Jain Sutras. The verse begins, 'namo arihantana* '. 'Namo arihantana* means, 'I bow in reverence to the arihantas who achieved the highest truths.' He is talking about the great enlightened masters.

Namo arihanta - 'I bow down to Arihanta', the Jain master and deity.

These masters not only achieve, but they radiate the truths so much that those who go near them are also inspired to achieve!

Arihanta does not mean a person who teaches. No! Arihanta is a person who inspires. You can't reproduce enlightenment by teaching. If we could, we would have started selling it long ago! We would have created stores like www.enlightenment.com. 'Please visit our website to get enlightened!' We would have created 'Enlightenment Guaranteed' shops. No! Fortunately or unfortunately, you can't create enlightenment in a being by teaching. You can only reproduce enlightenment by inspiring.

Arihanta is the person who is radiating the truth very powerfully, very strongly. His presence is so intense that anybody who comes near him, even if they spend a few minutes around him, they get inspired. The fire is ignited. The transmission of light happens. They start feeling that this is the best state to live in. This is the best space in which to exist. This is the best thing that can happen to me in my life. Please understand that if you go near an enlightened being, even if you spend just two to three minutes around him, suddenly you will feel that this experience is the best thing that can happen to you.

Through just his mere presence, you will feel god. He will become a fantasy in you. He will inspire you so much. He will occupy your inner space so much that either you start working towards achieving that Arihanta is the person who is radiating the truth very powerfully, very strongly.

state or you feel you are not able to. Even if you feel you are not able to, it's okay. At least you have taken the first step. You have begun.

Respect towards an enlightened being is the first step towards enlightenment. It means that you want that state. Normally, you will not respect anything unless you agree with the ideology. Unless you have a little bit of attachment or feeling towards that ideology, at least a subtle feeling that you should be the same, you will not have respect for it. For example, if you are respecting somebody who is physically beautiful or handsome, be very clear, you have a subtle desire to be in that state, to have that quality. In the same way, if you respect a rich person, there is a subtle desire in you to have wealth. Anything you respect shows that it has entered your inner space.

When you say, 'I bow in reverence to enlightened beings,' it means you are paying your respect to enlightenment. Here you are not bowing down to someone who will help you when you are in fear. No. You are not bowing down to a king. You are not bowing down to a rich person who will give you money. No. You are not bowing down to a person who will give you logic or philosophy, mere words. No. You are not following any person here. You are merely bowing down to a person who inspires, who drops the seed of enlightenment in you, who helps you achieve enlightenment! Somewhere you feel that just being with that person is enough. Enlightenment will happen. Such is the nature of the arihanta!

There is a beautiful commentary that says when you sit in front of an arihanta, the ultimate conscious being, without your knowledge, without even your conscious understanding, your whole being integrates towards that one goal, towards enlightenment. As of now you are not one being as you think. Your head is pulling, calling you in one direction. Your eyes are pulling you in the other direction. Your ears are pulling you in a different direction. A conscious decision to integrate these different fragments and direct the being towards enlightenment is sannyas! Sannyas is the determination to transform. Then the enlightened being can help you.

When you attain sannyas, you cannot explain it to anyone! You can experience it. You can radiate it, and they will catch it in the way you walk, in the way you talk and move around. You will become a spontaneous crowd puller. You will radiate an incomprehensible charm and energy. Grace happens naturally with sannyas, because sannyas is nothing but revealing your inner beauty. The very fragrance of sannyasis grace and bliss.

The word 'penance' means nothing but integrating yourself, making yourself a single entity. You may ask, 'Are we not like that now?' If you look closely, you will see that we exist as different entities, never as one. There is everything else in our life, except integration.

If you look deeply inside, you will understand, there are hundreds of voices continuously talking inside you. The moment the mind says, 'Let us do this,' the very next moment the thought will arise, 'No. Let us not do it!' After thinking of the side effects and after effects, the mind starts oscillating.

Integrating the fragmented parts of the mind is the very essence of life. Integrating the feelings and the mind, integrating your face and your mind, ensuring that your face shows the same thing as what your mind thinks, is the essence of life.

If you study the lives of great masters and try to search for one basic essence in all of their lives, you will find, it is not knowledge or devotion. It is integrity! What they believed in, they lived. That's all! Their integrity was solid. They were ready to lose even their very lives, but not their integrity.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the great enlightened master from Bharat, used to move around on the streets just singing devotional songs. He never bothered about what others said about him. What he felt, he expressed. He was thrown into the sea because of the way he walked the streets, but it didn't stop him. To be like this requires a deep sense of sacrifice. It takes the courage to sacrifice anything to live with integrity!

That is why anything that these great masters did in their lives always culminated in eternal auspiciousness! Everything they did was an effort to integrate themselves with deep sincerity and devotion. The intense effort to integrate oneself completely is what is called penance. Penance always ends in auspiciousness. There will be innumerable things happening in your life all the time. Enduring all those things and intensifying your integrity with them - that is called penance. On the other hand, if you allow life's happenings to shake you, then you land in disgrace. Which ever way you wish to go, is up to you.

Everything master did was an effort to integrate themselves with deep sincerity and devotion.

Adi Shankara was a great enlightened master from Bharat. As a young boy, he was caught in a dilemma when he wanted to pursue the path of sannyas. He wanted to leave home with the permission of his mother, but she was unwilling to let go of him.

One day, he went to bathe in the river. Suddenly, his mother heard him crying out loud for help. She ran out and saw that a crocodile had caught his leg. He was struggling to be free.

Suddenly, by a flash of thought, he cried to her, 'Mother, if you give me permission to become a sannyasi, I will be freed from this crocodile now to continue with my life.'

The mother was surprised and asked how. He explained, 'According to the Vedas, if I enter a new ashrama (stage of life), it is equal to being born again. So, if you give me permission to enter into sannyas, then maybe god will give me a fresh lease of life!' Once you integrate, you know who you really are.

The mother was totally helpless. She quickly made up her mind. It was better to have her son as a sannyasi than see him dead. She agreed.

Immediately the crocodile released the grip! Sankara ran to his mother with great joy. He had lived the truth he sought at that moment… and it worked.

See, there are three things:

Thinking the Truth

Speaking the Truth

Living the Truth

The first two are easy to follow. But the third, living the Truth all the time, is difficult. It is very rare. Sannyas is the courage to live what we think is the Truth. We give importance to speaking the Truth. But living the Truth is most important. If you start living your Truth, your respect for yourself will increase. That is the beauty of it.

When you come to me with a problem, I sometimes give you consolation and tell you that it is alright. You see, the very fact that you are coming to me with the problem shows you don't have the integrity to live with it and solve it! So, I have to console you. Anything can be lost, but not integrity. With integrity, your own evaluation of yourself goes up. When your own unconscious mind starts to believe you it is the most auspicious thing that can happen in your life. The gates of heaven are then open!

When you integrate, you drop hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is pretending to be what you are not. Hypocrisy is hiding in many places so people can't see who you really are. The fragments in you dominate over each other and make you hypocritical. When you fight with your own fragments and win, you are a dheera, a courageous one! It is easy to fight with others and win. When you fight with others and win, you are a veera, a warrior. But fighting with yourself requires more courage. You don't fight unless you are tired of yourself. Only when you are tired, you accept that you need to start the fight.

Once you integrate, for the first time, you know who you really are. All the masks drop. You are ready to expose yourself in relationships. You become more authentic. You suddenly realize that you were missing things because of you! Sannyas is all about becoming more authentic. When I say authentic, I mean that you will radiate your individuality instead of your personality. With fragments, you are a personality. With integrity, you are individuality. Individuality is seeing your authenticity through your own eyes. Personality is a built up image in the eyes of society. The master's work is to create a space in you where you don't have to guard your personality, where you can be free, where just understanding can cause transformation.

Buddha used to tell his disciples, 'Count your life only after you have taken sannyas.'

Someone asked me if taking the vow of brahmacharya or sannyas will lead to enlightenment. Whether taking the vow leads to enlightenment or not is secondary. But if you observe the vows strictly for one month, successfully, the respect you have for yourself will tremendously increase. That is enough! It is called asaadhya sadhana – doing the seemingly impossible task successfully. It is making you do whatever your mind says you cannot do! Techniques like fire walking are in this category. Ordinarily, the mind will say that you cannot walk on a fire bed. Once you do it, the respect you have for yourself will increase! Then you will come into integrity.

Integrity needs to be understood in two ways.

The first part is integrating the fighting parts of the mind into one. See, the very life gets wasted in the oscillation of the mind. If you can follow any one path, you will attain it. For example, let us suppose there are two paths to reach Bangalore. One path is 30 kilometers while the other is 30,000 kilometers. You are oscillating between which path to choose. If you choose any one path and proceed, you will reach Bangalore.

But if you keep oscillating, if you go on one path for half hour, and then change your mind and go on the other path for the next half hour, what will happen? You will never reach Bangalore! At least if you decide and take the 30,000 kilometer path, you will reach Bangalore, even if it takes you one year! But if you keep oscillating between these two paths, even if it takes thirty years, you will not reach Bangalore.

Even if the chosen path is wrong, the one who moves with integrity automatically comes to the correct path. He achieves what needs to be achieved. Understand clearly: there are only two types of people on planet earth, those who live with integrity and those who live without integrity, that's all! The scale to measure a person is not the path on which he went but whether he lived with integrity or not.

Integrity is the strength to live your belief, come what may.

Second, not getting diluted by external influences, is also integrity. It is the ability to not alter our integrity or dilute ourselves due to inner confusions or outer influences. The person who lives with integrity, even if he dies on the train platform, will die with the satisfaction that he lived completely. The person who lives without integrity, even if he dies in the best hospital, will die with dissatisfaction. The scale to measure the quality of a person's life is to see how much he lived in tune with what he felt was life. For example, if he is an aethist, if he lived as a strong atheist and died as a strong atheist, there is nothing wrong. He will attain! That very strength, when it goes deeper and deeper in him and searches, will show him the truth!

Integrating the mind is the essence of life. Decide you will always say and do only what you feel is right. Then, you will come to tremendous clarity and conviction in the inner and outer worlds.

Vivekananda recounts in his life that his master, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, died leaving him the responsibility of the mission. At the same time, Vivekananda's father died leaving behind a family of utter poverty. Vivekananda was the only hope for his family. He stood between saving his family and saving the world. No one recognized the mission he spoke of. He says beautifully, 'Who will sympathize with the imaginations of a boy?' He was, after all, a young boy!

He describes those few days as 'unimaginable hell'. He was with a small group of boys, with no money, with only one thing: the integrity to live the life they believed in, the life taught by their master. Ten years later, he says, 'Ten years ago, I could not get one hundred people to celebrate master's birth anniversary. Today there are fifty thousand!' Sannyas is taking a strong decision not to allow the unconscious to hinder the consciousness and to establish consciousness firmly on the master and his words.

Vivekananda was questioned as to how he could desert his family at that time. Vivekananda beautifully replied, 'I believed that Ramakrishna's teachings could rationalize Bharat and many foreign races. With that belief came the realization that it is better that a few persons suffer than for such ideas to die out of the world. What if a mother or two brothers die? It is a sacrifice. Let it be done. No great thing can be done without sacrifice. The heart must be plucked and the bleeding heart placed upon the altar. Then, great things are done!'

Such was his integrity.

Not only that, those who spoke that Vivekananda deserted his family do not know the correct facts. He continued to fulfill his duty by giving them the bare minimum requirements. He also went to the court of Law to attend to some legal issues they faced.

A small story:

During the civil wars in Japan, an invading army entered a town and took control of the whole town. Before the army arrived in one particular village, everyone fled except a Zen master.

Curious about this master, the general went to the temple to see what kind of a man the master was. The master did not even acknowledge the general. The general became very angry when he was not treated in the usual respectful way to which he was accustomed.

He took out his sword and shouted, 'You fool! Don't you realize you are standing before a man who could run you through without blinking an eye?'

The master remained calm and asked, 'And do you realize that you are standing before a man who can be run through without blinking an eye?'

With the strength of integrity comes utter freedom and bliss. With freedom and bliss there is no fear in the inner or outer world!

The very goal of life is enlightenment. You may have other goals, but knowingly or unknowingly, they are just different names that we give to the goal of enlightenment. In the same way, whatever else you may seek, what you actually seek is sannyas itself. But you don't know it. That is the problem!

You may think your goals are to have more money and more relationships. The truth is that even the one who searches for money actually searches only for enlightenment! See, there are only two things. One is money, and the other is name and fame. Name and fame mean nothing but to have more relationships. Whatever experience you feel you are going to get through money or relationships, you will only get through enlightenment!

That is why the soul never rests until enlightenment happens. No amount of money satisfies the soul. No relationship satisfies the soul. When money and relationships don't give satisfaction, it is called the 'depression of success'. This is what happens after reaching the peak of our career. People come to me and say, 'I have achieved all that I wanted to achieve, but what for I wanted to achieve, I have not achieved. I feel incomplete.' Understand that this is the call of your being that seeks no other goal except

The freedom to keep the consciousness either at a high or low level is available to you for a span of 70 to 80 years.

enlightenment. The response to it is sannyas.

Not properly understanding the goal of life is the root cause of all problems. Sannyas is recognizing the goal properly and integrating to achieve it. Whatever goal you may be running behind in your life – money or relationship or whatever, your end goal is only bliss. There is no other separate goal in life!

There are only two types of people. One group knows the word bliss or enlightenment, and the path to it. They live their life according to that. The other group does not know the word or the path, so it comes around in circles. That's all! The former is sannyasi, the latter is samsari.

If you stand in Mysore Road and decide to go to Bangalore, you can take the shortcut and reach after thirty kilometers. Without knowing the shortcut, you can go around and reach after 30,000 kilometers. The people who don't know the shortcut keep going around.

Any goal other than enlightenment will leave you half way through the process. Any other goal will not fulfill you completely. Only the goal of enlightenment has the energy to stay with you until the end and fulfill you when it is achieved.

You are going to live for maybe 70 or 80 years in this body. Am I right? In those years, you can keep your consciousness either in a high state or in a low state. You can play with it either way. The freedom to keep the consciousness either at a high or low level is available to you for a span of 70 to 80 years. Understand deeply, if you get any other gift and waste it, it is okay. But if you get the gift of consciousness and waste it, it is the greatest loss ever.

There are many glass pieces. But only a few are positioned in such a way as to receive the sun's reflection. Similarly, there are millions of living creatures. Not all of them are in the state to receive the cosmic consciousness and reflect it themselves. Only man has the power to reflect the cosmic consciousness in himself as the 'I'. For the mere reflection to fall on us, we are highly blessed souls. It is the highest possibility on planet earth.

If the direction of the glass changes, or if the glass breaks, the possibility no longer exists. The greatest loss is losing the possibility of the glass reflecting the sun in itself. Man is the glass that has been blessed with the reflecting capacity and given the right orientation to receive the reflection of the cosmic consciousness. Only human consciousness has the highest possibility of flowering into enlightenment.

Generally I don't force or impose anything on anyone. But when I see humans wasting the highest possibility of their birth, I feel bad for them. Everyone is moving around like people who have been led into the forest blindfolded. You move around in circles to fulfill the ego of other people. You are not even running to satisfy your own ego. You are running to satisfy someone else's ego! Your life itself is moving in this fashion. You don't know why you are running.

You have achieved the human body which gives you the highest possibility to take the jump in consciousness. The glass is already reflecting the sunlight. Now all that the glass needs to do is to see the source of the reflection. That's all! Merging with the Source is what I call enlightenment, merging of the individual consciousness with the cosmic consciousness.

If this happens, then the goal of life, the purpose for which the glass was created, is achieved. Then, even if the glass breaks, there is no problem. But without achieving that, if the glass is broken, it is the greatest loss ever. If the human body perishes before enlightenment, there cannot be a greater loss than that.

Sannyas is the means to this achievement. Sannyas is not the end of life. It is the beginning of life. Sannyas is moving towards enlightenment, the only and permanent purpose of life. You have achieved the human body which gives you the highest possibility to take the jump in consciousness.

If the purpose of life itself is enlightenment, where are we stuck right now? In what areas of our lives are we moving in the wrong direction? Understand that the problem is in recognizing the correct goal. If the goal is right, you have achieved it. If your goal is right, it means you are already living it.

Sannyas is nothing but creating clarity about the right goal. People miss because they don't have clarity about the goal. Jeevan mukta, a person who lives a liberated life, is a person who has clarity about the goal and pours his consciousness only on that goal every moment of life.

'Conditioning' is the reason that you miss the goal. When you were born, you came as a free bird, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM or the supreme swan, to flit and fly blissfully around and enjoy the whole of Existence. But after coming, not only did you fly around, unknowingly you also landed on

A sannyasi moves in synchronicity with the whole of

Existence and learns through it. planet earth. That was the problem. There are many people

waiting to catch such birds that land! Society waits to fit you into the frame of country, religion, caste, community and creed.

You were a sweet soul when you landed on planet earth. You were not a Hindu, or an engineer or a worker. But understand that society wants engineers and workers. It is not bothered about your consciousness. Actually, neither your parents nor society are aware that there is something called consciousness. They themselves don't have that intelligence. They teach you what they were taught. That's all. Their conditioning is not a deliberate attempt to restrict or condition you.

Conditioning is the unwanted dowry that has been handed over for generations and lives, from person to person. First, there is parental conditioning. Then there is societal conditioning. Based on these two, you create certain ethics for yourself. This is the self imposed conditioning, your own dharma, your own path of righteousness.

Because we create so many layers of conditioning, we are unable to see the Truth directly. We are not able to perceive the goal directly. We are not able to live the goal directly. We are caught in the conditioning and forget who we truly are. The conditioning creates certain limitations in us, and we start thinking that the limitations are the real us. Even the clothes that we wear condition us to believe we are the clothes!

Many of the conditionings are created in society in order to peacefully co-exist. For example, for easy communication, many languages are taught. There is nothing wrong in learning a language, but taking it up as a conditioning and making the language your very life, and creating sorrow for yourself and others is wrong. That mental attitude is wrong. So many people have sacrificed their lives for the sake of language. If the conditioning were not there, so many deaths would not have happened! The very history of mankind would have been written differently. Conditioning is the reason for terrorism among human beings. Today, conditioningbased-divisions goes right down to the level of belonging to specific political parties!

Let me tell you, the moment conditioning is sown in you, that moment itself, the noose of Yama or the lord of Death falls on you. Don't think it falls on you only at the time of death. When conditioning reaches its peak, it comes as the final death of the body, that's all. Death is the peak point of conditioning. Those who are caught in conditioning move towards death every minute of their lives. Those who are under the guidance of an enlightened master are the ones who move towards freedom every minute of their lives. One group moves towards Yama, while the other group moves towards Shiva! If the coil of conditioning increases day by day, you are moving towards Yama. If the coil loosens day by day, you are moving towards Shiva. You are freeing yourself more and more from the conditioning.

By taking sannyas, you are taking the first conscious step to drop the past and enter a new world. The past is familiar, so you like to carry it. The mind always likes familiar patterns. Also, society teaches you to carry the past so that it can put guilt and fear in you that are based upon the past incidents. The past is unwanted baggage. Sannyas is disconnecting from the past. When you disconnect from the past and move to a new future, initially, there is utter insecurity. Sannyas is utter insecurity. In utter insecurity, there is nothing else to hold on to you, so you will find god!

Why do you think I give you a spiritual name? I give you a spiritual name to help you more easily disconnect from the past. When somebody calls out your name, immediately your awareness grips you and you respond. This is how deeply your name is embedded in your unconscious. Your name brings immediate awareness into you. If you are sitting in a big classroom, and suddenly the teacher calls out your name, whether you were dozing off or listening to him, you will be jolted from that thought pattern, and come to the present. Do you agree? Your name is that significant in centering you.

The new name that I give you will constantly remind you of the psychological revolution that has happened in you, the new understanding that has happened in you. The name also indicates your individual spiritual path, according to your own innate nature, which will lead to the ultimate flowering of your consciousness.

A sannyasi works for the present moment. He works to give his whole life to Existence and doesn't care about the results. The results take care of themselves. That is his way. He knows only the moment, nothing else. Therefore, he learns directly from Existence every moment. That is why he has no doctrine, no religion. He moves in synchronicity with the whole of Existence and learns through it.

There is a Sufi saying, 'The Sufi is the child of the moment.' In Sufi texts, every moment is called a breath. The Sufis are called 'the folks of the breaths,' because they live in full awareness of every breath, of every instant. According to them, every moment, a new Self arrives. That is the

Sannyas is the joyful awareness that the 'moment' is guiding you closer to your enlightenment.

spirit of sannyas, fresh every moment. A person of the moment learns from the moment. For

him, Existence is his teacher.

When the great Sufi mystic Hasan, was dying, somebody asked, 'Hasan, who was your master?'

He said, 'I had many masters. If I relate their names it will take months or even years, and it is too late now. I am going to die any time. I will tell you about three masters.

The first one was a thief. Once I got lost in a desert, and when I reached a nearby village, it was late and everything was closed. At last I found a man who was trying to make a hole in the wall of a house. I asked him where I could stay and spend the night. He said, 'At this time of night it will be difficult. If you don't mind staying with a thief, you are welcome to stay with me.'

I stayed with this man for one month. Each night he would tell me, 'Now I am going for my work. You take rest and pray for me.' When he came back, I would ask him, 'Did you get anything?' He would say, 'Not tonight. But tomorrow, god willing, I will try again.' He was always happy and hopeful, never in a state of hopelessness!

When I was meditating for many years, and nothing was happening, many times the moment came when I was so desperate, so hopeless, that I thought I should stop all this nonsense. Suddenly I would remember the thief who would say every night, 'God willing, tomorrow it is going to happen'

My second master was a dog. One day, I was going to the river to quench my thirst. A dog came and he was also thirsty. He looked into the river, and saw another dog there, which was his own image. He became afraid. He would bark and run away, but his thirst was so much that he would come back. Finally, despite his fear, he jumped into the water and his own image disappeared. I realized that the message had come from god to me: one has to jump in spite of the fear.

The third master was a small child. I went to a town where a child was carrying a lit candle. He was going to the mosque to put the candle there.

I asked the boy, 'Have you lit the candle by yourself?' He said, 'Yes.' Then I asked him, 'There was a moment when the candle was unlit, and then there was a moment when the candle was lit. Can you show me the source from which the light came?'

The boy laughed, blew out the candle, and said, 'Now you have seen the light going. Where has it gone? You tell me!'

My ego was shattered and my whole knowledge was also shattered.

It is true that I had no master. That does not mean that I was not a disciple. I accepted the whole of Existence as my master. I trusted the clouds, the trees. I learned from every possible source.

Sannyas is the joyful awareness that the 'moment' is guiding you closer to your enlightenment. All you have to do is be vulnerable, that's all.

A sannyasi is utterly relaxed in the moment.

A warrior from Japan was captured by his enemies and was kept inside a prison. He feared that the next day he would be tortured, questioned and executed. He was not able to sleep at all.

Suddenly he remembered his Zen master's words, 'Tomorrow is not real. It is an illusion. The only reality is now.' Remembering these words, the warrior became calm, peaceful and fell asleep.

Tomorrow also comes in the form of today. So why not focus on just today? When you are in the moment, there is no space for pain or suffering. Only

You are in love with everything and everyone for no reason at all. That is sannyas.

when you live in the past or future, you create the space for suffering. When you live in the moment, you automatically create a space where everything is beautiful. Life itself becomes a romance with Existence! You resonate with the whole thing. You are in love with everything and everyone for no reason at all. That is sannyas. Then, you don't amass. You don't fear. You don't worry. Things happen around you like a beautiful dream.

A sannyasi is an eternal wanderer in spirit. Even if he is in one place, his spirit wanders without any pattern, touching so many things far away. He doesn't care to accumulate anything. He gives away whatever comes his way. He receives much more than he needs. He lives like a king.

A small story:

There was a rich man who owned a cellar with lots of wine flowing in it.

He had one jug of special wine that he guarded, unopened.

Once, the Governor of the State visited him. He said to himself, 'This wine is too special for him. I will open some other bottle.' After some time, members of the royal family visited him. He thought, 'I don't think even these people deserve this wine. I shall keep it for more special persons.' He served ordinary wine.

Then there was a family wedding, and he would not serve the wine, even to his near and dear ones. Finally one day he died and the wine was brought out along with the other jugs and served to the peasants of the neighborhood. No one knew that it was special.

When you don't hoard, you flow. Life is designed to flow. Sannyas is flowing with the awareness that Existence is the current pulling it along. This very attitude will attract the benevolence of Existence.

In a certain kingdom, the practice was that the royal elephant would pick the next ruler. The elephant would place him on its back and return to the palace where he would be unanimously crowned as the ruler.

On this occasion, the elephant started making its way towards the forest. Puzzled, the people followed. The elephant went to a place where a saint lived. It promptly picked him up and brought him to the palace! The saint was unwilling to be the ruler. However, after much persuasion he agreed and ascended the throne.

Being a saint, he was driven by neither greed nor fear. By the sheer strength of his state, he caused the country to prosper. The ministers and people were thrown back into themselves with no scope for manipulation.

The neighboring king heard about the kingdom and decided to invade it.

But the saint could not be moved to respond to the cry of war. He sat firmly, not mobilizing an army. The offending king arrived in the battlefield with his army and found no one there. Surprised and curious, he entered the kingdom to meet the king. He told him, 'I want to wage a war with you.'

The saint asked, 'What for?'

The king replied, 'I want to have your kingdom.'

The saint replied, 'Take it.'

The king was shocked! He cried, 'What do you mean? Without a fight?'

The saint replied, 'Of course!'

The king fell at his feet and declared, 'I am not fit to rule even my kingdom. Please take it.'

Sannyas is the understanding of the transient nature of everything. All desires, possessions, and emotions are moving and changing. Everything is changing and moving. Nothing is permanent. If you analyze your own desires before one is fulfilled, it looks like a mountain, a huge goal. After being fulfilled, the same desire looks like a molehill. Before being fulfilled, it will seem like your very life. After fulfilling one desire, you simply move to the next desire! Understand that the process itself shows that desires are neither solid nor permanent. They are just changing fantasies of the mind.

Sannyas helps you see the temporary nature of desires. Slowly, desires stop getting created. Then, all the energy that was locked up in desires is freely available to you. Automatically, your potential will take a jump. You are ready to do anything. Although you live in it, nothing in the material world really pulls you. Even if you see something beautiful, you don't wish to possess it. You just enjoy it and move on. That's all. That is sannyas.

Sannyas works like the log of wood that is used to burn the dead body and finally gets thrown into the same pyre. It burns out all the fantasies in you and finally gives itself to the same fire. It is a tool.

Adi Shankara beautifully says in his famous song, Bhaja Govindam :

Even when days and nights, winters and springs have gone,

and life almost comes to an end,

the grip of desire is still there!

Desire has such a pull at the unconscious level that liberating oneself from it is the greatest liberation.

A small story:

Once there lived a stone cutter. He was not satisfied with his position in life. One day he was passing through a wealthy merchant's house. Through the gate which was open, he noticed many possessions and important visitors in the merchant's house. He thought that the merchant must be very powerful. He became jealous and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, the stone cutter suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined.

One day, he was standing on the road when he saw a high official pass by. He was carried in a beautiful chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs.

Bhaja Govindam - Collection of 32 (sometimes 34) devotional verses composed by enlightened master Adi Shankara. This is considered to be the essence of Vedanta and Advaita, non-duality.

A sannyasi is one who clearly sees that everything is changing all the time, everything is beautiful.

Eve-ryone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow down before the procession.

He thought, 'How powerful that official is! I wish I could be a high official!'

Immediately, he became the high official, and he was carried everywhere in his beautiful chair.

One day it was extremely hot, and he felt very uncomfortable in the sticky chair. He looked up at the sun. It was so bright and beautiful in the sky. He thought, 'How powerful the sun is! I wish that I could be the sun!'

He became the sun! He enjoyed his powerful position over everything.

One day, a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. He was surprised. He thought, 'How powerful that huge black storm cloud is! How I wish I could be a cloud!

He became the storm cloud, flooding the fields and villages.

Soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. He thought, 'How powerful the wind is! I wish to become the wind!'

He became the wind and powerfully blew over the roofs of houses and through forests.

One day, he came across something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it. It was a huge and towering rock. He thought, 'How powerful that rock is! I wish to become the rock!'

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. He thought, 'What could be more powerful than a rock?'

He looked down and saw a stone cutter far below him!

This story clearly illustrates how the mind always thinks that which has not yet been achieved is greater than that which has been achieved. The grass on the other side is always greener. But when we go to the other side, what happens? We feel the grass on the opposite side is greener! We jump from one thing to the other, from one desire to the next, from one point of view to the next, but we are seldom happy.

The truth is, we are already enough unto ourselves. We just need to awaken to it. That's all. If we awaken to that truth, our beauty will be enhanced. Otherwise, we only waste time moving and searching.

A sannyasi is one who clearly sees that everything is changing all the time, and everything is beautiful just the way it is. He also knows that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. That is why he sets out first to clean his eyes. Eyes are the windows of the soul, so his work is at the core level. If you see the world through a red colored lens, everything appears red. If you see with a green colored lens, everything is green. If you see with clear eyes, everything looks clear and beautiful. Existence has always been beautiful, but we missed seeing it. Sannyas is the decision to see with clear eyes.

If life itself is changing all the time, then why are we trying to frame it? Buddha says in his Dhammapada, 'Life is like a flash of lightning in the sky.' Life is transient. Then what are we trying to do? We are trying to do an impossible job. Our job is to see, enjoy, and move on. If everything is a passing manifestation of Existence, then where is the scope for ego or fear or greed? Sannyas, as such, doesn't change anything. Everything remains the same. But it changes the way you see things. Sannyas happens in you. Sannyas has nothing to do with the outer world.

A small story:

Once a spiritual teacher came to visit the king. Nobody

Sannyas is awakening the charioteer. Man's body is like a chariot and his consciousness is the charioteer.

stopped the teacher and he entered the court where the king was sitting on his throne.

The king asked him, 'What do you want? The teacher replied, 'I would like to have a place to sleep in this hotel.'

The king said, 'This is my palace, it is not a hotel.' The teacher asked him, 'Who owned this palace before you?'

The king replied, 'My father owned this palace, but now he is dead.' The teacher asked, 'Who owned it before him?'

The king replied, 'My grandfather. He, too, is dead.' The teacher said, 'This is a place where people live for a short time and move on. Yet you are saying this is not a hotel!'

Sannyas is awakening the charioteer. Man's body is like a chariot and his consciousness is the charioteer. The charioteer is fast asleep, and the chariot is moving according to the horses. The five horses are the five senses, each with its own different idea. Not one of them is the truth. They are just transient ideas!

The master waits many lives for you. But you have to say 'yes'. Remember, the master is a gentleman.

Even in the most difficult times, a sannyasi remains with the awareness that life is a fleeting dream!

He carries a completely different definition for success and failure. He doesn't carry success or failure itself. A samsari on the other hand carries success and failure with him wherever he goes. There starts the problem.

Sannyas is saying 'yes' to Existence. Saying 'Yes' is surrender. Saying 'yes' is love and compassion.

The human mind is trained to always say 'no'. Saying 'no' boosts the ego. 'Yes' makes the ego vulnerable, so the mind continues to say 'no.' Sannyas is saying 'yes' to Existence. Existence created you. It is waiting to express its divine play through you. By saying 'yes,' you allow the divine play to happen through you. When the divine play happens, things happen exactly according to the flow of Existence. Then, everything becomes auspiciousness! That is the meaning of dropping the mind, becoming sensitive to the flow of Existence and working in tune with it. That is surrender. That is obedience to Existence.

In the effort to say 'yes,' you start softening. Sannyas is about becoming soft. As long as you say 'no,' you remain hard. When you make an effort to say 'yes,' you start softening. When you make a conscious decision to say 'yes,' it starts. That is where the master plays a role. Sannyas is saying 'yes' to the master without asking for an explanation. When you start trusting the master completely, sannyas starts happening in you. Somewhere you get the click that the master knows better than you. Then you start letting go of your hold over your mind and start holding the hands of the master. The master's hands are always stretched out, but you were not ready to hold them. Once the 'yes' starts happening, you hold his hands.

Then a space is created where love starts happening. Love happens only when you start saying 'yes.' By saying 'yes,' not only do you start loving, you allow the other person to love you as well. Then your inner space that was like a rock earlier, starts becoming like cotton! It becomes soaked with love. The love is not just towards one person or for any reason. It is an overflowing energy. It is towards the whole of Existence for no reason. You start communing with the trees, with everything around you. You feel that life is a song, the song of Existence of which you are a part. You are in a deeply resonant mood with everything and everyone around you, including yourself. Your actions simply become an outpouring of the joy and ecstasy that is enveloping you all the time.

A small story:

A Zen master arrived at the meeting place of the Cambridge Buddhist Society. He found everyone dusting and cleaning the whole place in anticipation of his visit.

They were surprised to see him because he was not supposed to arrive until the following day.

He simply tied back the sleeves of his robe and joined the preparations. They could not believe that he wanted to help. He asked, 'Why can't I also prepare for the grand day of my arrival!'

When you are resonating with Existence, you enjoy everything, including yourself. You don't see yourself as separate from anything else. You see no separate reason for anything. There are people who commune with nature but fail miserably when it comes to people. Then, even their communion with nature is not real communion. Feeling only for nature is not a scale by which to measure love.

People tell me that they are already communing with Existence. Trees and animals don't create trouble for you. That is why you claim to commune with them! They keep quiet. You can simply express anything to them. You can thrust your feeling on them, pull it out, and feel good, that's all. It is just an ego trip. The essence is in the ability to always commune with the whole of Existence. If you can create that space of love under those conditions, then you are communing.

A poet once wrote a love song and sent it to his friends. A few days later, he received a letter from a lady to whom he had sent the poem.

She wrote to him saying, 'I am so touched by your poem. Please come home, meet my parents, and ask them if you can marry me.'

The poet was surprised. He wrote back to her, 'That was a poem of love from my heart that I wanted to sing to a few souls. It was nothing more than that!'

She replied, 'You are a hypocrite. Because of you, I will never again entertain a poet in my life.'

The problem is, everything happens with the reason of the intellect. Love has been reduced to mere lust for the other person's body. That is the problem. Real love is an expression of the overflowing energy that starts happening in you when you start saying 'yes' to Existence.

The master happens in your life with just one intention to destroy your ego and allow the attitude of sannyas to flower in you.

The famous poet Kabir says that when love possesses you, don't even think twice. Just dive into it. If you start

thinking, it is like arranging your pillows when deep sleep of rest has come to your eyes. He says, 'Even though the head itself must be given, why should you weep over it!'

The master waits many lives for you. But you have to say 'yes'. Remember: the master is a gentleman. He gives you the freedom to remain in bondage. He waits. Once you say 'yes,' he takes you in his arms. The master is the only one who can show you the power of love.

A small story:

Sadashiva Brahmendra was a great saint from South Bharat. He lived just like a child. He never wore clothes. He was always in ecstasy.*

One day he was walking in deep ecstasy when the Nawab , the Muslim ruler of that territory, went riding past* him. He was in such deep ecstasy that he did not notice or pay respect to the Nawab . The angry Nawab* cut off his hand with his sword. Sadashiva Brahmendra* continued to walk, not reacting in any way to what had happened.*

One of his devotees saw the scene and was struck very deeply. She started weeping, 'O master! You have lost your hand for not showing courtesy to the Nawab!'

He was surprised and asked the devotee to bring the severed hand. He then put it back on, and it became whole again. The devotee was dumbstruck when she saw this.

Sadashiva Brahmendra explained, 'The Nawab's hatred destroyed my hand, your love healed it!'*

An enlightened being's love and compassion is boundless. Sannyas is living like an enlightened being. It is living enlightenment.

A sannyasi is one who is established in love and compassion in the inner world, while being established in concentration and precision in the outer world. A real sannyasi has the precision of a sword. When he closes his eyes, the outer world

is no more. When he opens his eyes, his work is perfection, perfection not only in work, but in relationships also! He is a father, a mother, a brother and a friend, all at the same time.

He moves guided by inner intelligence. That is why he is in the present moment all the time. He responds to the moment. That is the ultimate sense of responsibility, responding to the moment spontaneously. True love and compassion are spontaneous responses to the moment. That is why they surface irrespective of people or situations.

A small story:

One man went to a Zen monastery and told the master, 'Master, I wish to practice Zen for the rest of my life but I have never stuck with anything for very long. I always look for shortcuts to everything. Is there a shortcut to enlightenment?'

The master told him, 'You are accepted into this monastery for two days. In these two days, you will be taught the shortcut to enlightenment. Is there anything that you like to do in particular?'

The man said, 'Since I don't stick to anything for a long time, I am unable to tell what I like to do most. But I like to play chess.'

The master called for a young disciple who was supposed to be a good chess player. He asked the two of them to sit down The master moves, guided by inner intelligence.

and placed a chess board between them. He then took out his sword and placed it in front of the two of them and said, 'Both of you have to play. The moment one of you loses, the loser will have his head cut off.'

They were shocked at the master's words! They started the game and played.

They concentrated on the game like they had never done before.

Initially, the young monk made good moves, and it looked like he was going to win. Then suddenly he made a mistake. The man took the opportunity and took over the game. Soon, he was clearly on the way to winning.

Suddenly, he looked at the young monk and thought with what dedication and devotion the monk lived his life with the master at that young age. Then he thought about his own life and how he had wasted it. Suddenly he decided, if at all anyone should die, it should be himself. He deliberately made a wrong move. The young monk saw that and took over the game again.

The master was watching the whole thing. At that point, he took the board away, and the coins fell in the air. He said, 'Nobody wins. Nobody loses. The game is over. There are only two things needed for enlightenment:

concentration and compassion. Today, you learned both. Stay with me and study the way you have played chess today. Enlightenment will be yours!'

Sannyas is bringing together concentration and compassion. With concentration, you never forget the goal of life, enlightenment. With compassion, you are ready to sacrifice your very life so that the other may reach the goal! When both are there, both you and the other will reach! That is the greatness of sannyas. That is the space of sannyas.

The greatest quality of a sannyasi is his immense trust in Existence. Society trains you to always protect yourself from everything. That is the problem. You are made to believe Existence is the enemy from which you have to protect yourself. You apply the same rule and protect yourself from the master also. The master happens in your life with just one intention - to destroy your ego and allow the attitude of sannyas to flower in you.

Sannyas is nothing but finding out exactly where you are going wrong. That exact place is known as nothing but the ego. If you understand this, you will simply open up to the master and allow him to strike the ego. You will simply drop all your defenses and open up. Being closed to the master's presence is like closing your nose with your fingers when there is a fragrant breeze blowing. When you open up to him with trust, you will see miracles happen all around you.

A small story:

There was a man with a few disciples. He was not enlightened. He was just guiding the boys. A new disciple joined the group one day. He was so humble, so pure and authentic, that the other disciples became jealous of him. They felt he would be the master's successor. There was a lot of politics and they tried to kill him.

One day they said to him, 'If you really believe in the master, can you jump off the cliff? If your trust is true, no harm can happen to you.' The disciple readily jumped off the cliff.

The rest of them rushed down almost three thousand feet below into the valley. They went to pick up his scattered bones. But he was sitting there in lotus posture looking very happy.

He opened his eyes and said, 'You are right, trust saves!'

They thought it must be some coincidence and they created another plot to kill him. A house caught fire one day and people were trying to rescue those who were trapped inside the house. They told him, 'If you love our master with trust, go in and save the woman and child who are trapped inside.'

The disciple rushed in and after a few minutes came out with the woman and child.

They still did not give up. One day they were going somewhere, and they had to cross a river. They told him, 'You need not go in the boat. You have such great trust, you can walk on the river.'

The disciple entered and started walking on the river! They were simply shocked.

That was the first time the master saw him. He was not aware that he had been told to jump into the valley and told to go into the burning house. He saw him walking on the river and asked him, 'What are you doing? It is impossible!'

The disciple replied, 'It is not impossible at all! I am doing it by your power, master!'

The master thought, 'If my name and my power can do this to this ignorant man, then imagine what I can do!' He got up and tried to walk on the river and drowned!

Trust has amazing power. It works beyond logic. Anything that works beyond logic is the direct truth. It never fails. When you trust the master, when you surrender to the master, you are giving him the responsibility of you. He never fails! It does not mean you can surrender to him and then do foolish things. No! The first thing to realize is that when real surrender happens, it will never prompt you to do foolish things. Only surrender in the name of surrender will attempt to do foolish things. Real surrender is a consciousness, not a concept for trial.

Sannyas is a consciousness that flowers in groups of people in the presence of the master. Over the years, sannyas has always happened in groups. All the great masters have ordained groups of sannyasins. When a group of people start dissolving in love, when a group of people start melting, sannyas starts happening. Suddenly, so much beauty radiates. Suddenly, Existence appears to be profoundly mystical and beautiful. The power of coincidence becomes a way of life. Tremendous energy starts flowing. For no reason, life looks tremendously beautiful. Everything seems to be perfect. There is an inexplicable Sannyas is moving one step closer to god, and god is the ultimate creator. The very energy of sannyas is creation.

feeling of blossoming all round.

It is not that Existence has become more beautiful. Existence is

always the same. You have started responding to it, that's all. Your own human qualities have enriched tremendously. That is sannyas! When you start responding to Existence with enriched qualities, when you start melting into Existence, when you start yearning for it, sannyas starts happening to you.

When sannyas happens, you automatically add more beauty to Existence. You become a creator. People think sannyas is renouncing creativity. No! Sannyas is moving one step closer to god, and god is the ultimate creator. The very energy of sannyas is creation. This is a little known fact about sannyas.

A small story:

One day a young man approached Socrates, the Greek philosopher, and said, 'O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge.' Socrates took the man to the sea and pressed his head down into the water for a few seconds.

When he released him, the man came up gasping for breath. Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted. The man said, 'I want knowledge.'

Socrates put him under the water again, this time for a longer period. Then he released him and asked, 'What do you want?' The man replied, 'Knowledge.'

Socrates repeated this a few times.

After a few times, Socrates asked again, 'What do you want?' The man gasped, 'Air. I want air!'

Socrates said, 'Good. When you want knowledge as much as you wanted air, you shall have it.'

Sannyas is a deep urge that rises from within you. It is a deep yearning. Even if the longing is not completely consistent over time and space, it is alright. You can take the jump. It may not become consistent. But becoming consistent is not the criterion needed. When it takes root, that alone is enough. You are ready. Once you jump in, everything takes care of itself.

One man was walking towards the Himalayan mountains in the winter months. An old man saw him and asked, 'It is so cold in the mountains. Are you

sure you can make it?' The man replied, 'My heart is already there. So it is easy for the rest of me to reach there.'

The initiation itself will trigger the process. The outer adornments of sannyas will take care of the inner adornment. That is why, with the initiation, a new name and saffron clothing are given. They will do most of the job for you. They will keep the awareness alive every moment.

But if you start analyzing the decision to take the jump, you will miss it. Sannyas is linked to your energy. Just by seeing your energy, I can tell you are ready for sannyas! You cannot analyze energy with logic. Energy is beyond logic. When you take sannyas, the moment is right, that's all. Even if you drop it later, have no regrets. The seed has been sown. Once a sannyasi, always a sannyasi. It will happen again at the right time. That time may be the final time.

Sannyas is a decision taken by intelligent people. When life comes to the boiling point, to a peak of depression, to a point where you feel the outer world is of no use, when there is nothing further that can be done to help your situation, there are three choices you can make.

The first choice you could make is suicide. Suicide appears to be immediate freedom but actually it creates terrible suffering. People think that suicide takes courage. Courage is a beautiful word wrongly used here. Do you need courage to rub chili powder in your own eyes? No! Energy is beyond logic. When you take sannyas, the moment is right, that's all. Even if you drop it later, have no regrets.

It is simple foolishness. In the same way, it does not require courage to commit suicide. It is simply foolishness. There is nothing courageous about it.

Understand the science behind suicide. Suppose your normal life span this birth is ninety years of age and you commit suicide when you are forty-five. For the remaining forty-five years, you have to wait as a spirit. Only at the end of ninety years can you choose the next body to take birth. These forty-five years will be the worst hell you can ever experience, worse than the struggle that happened when you were in the body. Suicide is not the relief you think it is.

The second choice is to resort to some sort of addiction, like drugs or alcohol, and slowly poison the system until it dies. This is equally as foolish because you are knowingly abusing the body.

The third and most intelligent path is to look into yourself. When the outer world seems to be over in your mind, the time has come to look inwards. Sannyas happens when you decide to look in and introspect.

Sannyas allows you to play any number of roles without identifying with any of them.

Sannyas is the alchemy of transforming your entire lifestyle, directing your whole energy

towards enlightenment. When the first thought to look in comes, when the first thought to embrace spirituality happens, the intelligent one takes the jump into sannyas. Sannyas is the shortcut.

A small story:

A fifty year old student of enlightenment approached a Zen master and said, 'I have been studying spiritual studies since I was a small boy. I have learnt that even the grass and trees will become enlightened. This seems very strange to me.'

The master asked, 'Of what use is it to discuss how grass and trees become enlightened? The question is how you can become enlightened. Have you ever considered that?'

The old man answered, 'I never thought of it in that way.'

The master said, 'Then go home and think it over.'

Sannyas is a focused appointment with yourself. It is a conscious commitment to yourself that you are going to destroy 'all that you are not', and cleanse yourself completely.

Once you make the commitment, your seeing, hearing, talking and feeling will start being different. The same things will cause a new understanding in you. That is what commitment to sannyas does to you. When you take on sannyas, with just the energy level concurrence, bypassing your logic, you will see that there will be magic in your life. Sannyas needs only to be sown, the seed planted within you. The rest will happen automatically. Its very nature is transformation within and without.

Sannyas is going to be the only solution for the future, because it is the only thing that teaches you to be established in yourself and yet learn to act in the outer world in a playful, joyful, ecstatic way. Sannyas allows you to play any number of roles without identifying with any of them. It keeps you in continuous excitement and ecstasy all the time. It makes you experience the very essence of taking birth on planet earth.

(This section is an extract from the narrations of a childhood friend of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

Deeply associated with THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM before his enlightenment, Sampath describes the indescribable yearning for enlightenment that he saw in THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM as a child.)

Towards the end of his polytechnic years, Swami* reached a stage when he felt there was something that had to be achieved, but all the activities of the present were a waste in that context. Then he became like a child. If we get the thought that we have to achieve something, we will reject all other things and be focused only on that, just like an obstinate child. Until we get what we want, we refuse to eat or sleep. He became like that.

Our hometown Tiruvannamalai, a spiritual incubator, is home to many wandering mendicants. They were all over the place, pursuing their path in different ways. At that time of his life, he started begging the sannyasis that used to pass by us. He would go up to them and tell them, 'Please do something for me. I will come away with you. Please take me with you.'

There was one such person who had just entered Tiruvannamalai from outside. If you saw him, you would see that he appeared to be just like Shiva, the Hindu god! He might have been between 28 or 30 years of age. He had a shaven head, with a rudraksh* string tied in his hair. He wore gold earrings and a grand rudraksh* necklace. He appeared to be just like Shiva. If you looked at him, you would feel like falling at his feet. There was so much radiance in him. He beautifully sang verses from ancient lore. People would melt with tears as he sang.

He was just an ordinary wandering mendicant with no intensity of seeking whatsoever. But his outward appearance, which was like Shiva, kindled a deep yearning in Swami* that was beyond his control. He saw only Shiva in him! As soon as he saw this mendicant, he fell at his feet and tears poured from his eyes.

He pleaded with him, 'Swami* , I am not able to….Please take me with you and go. Please take me with you. I will come away with you. Please do something for me.' I was surprised.

Since he had gone to the peak of yearning, any wandering mendicant who he saw, he started begging, 'Do something for me. Do something for me.' Those wandering mendicants clearly saw that they were not qualified to guide him in any way. They clearly saw that he came from a different space altogether. They told him that they would not be able to guide him, and moved on.

Swami - An honorific term used for a sannyasi, a monk.

Rudraksh- Seed of a tree used for Hindu rituals and for wearing. Retains energy of meditation.

When I saw his struggles, I understood his state of inexplicable yearning from my own level. When I saw how he sobbed to those wandering mendicants to take him with them, I realized the extent to which he was yearning to merge with the Infinite. If I imitate him for you, you will not be able to digest it.

Those few incidents are deeply engraved in my memory. I can never forget them. I often wondered, 'Why is he crying like this? What is spirituality? Why does he do all these things? Only now am I able to understand. I must have been a real wooden head in those days. Even to understand such things, we need the grace of the masters. When they share an idea with us, even for that idea to go inside us and work, we need their grace. I often think to myself, only because I was with Him am I able to understand such things.

I frequently asked him, 'Why are you doing this?'

He would say, 'I am unable to. . . . I am not able to concentrate on anything. I don't know if I will be here much longer. Time is up. I need to move.'

At that time, I didn't know there was a life different from this life. I didn't know that enlightenment is the purpose of life and that is why we have been born.

Also, he was struggling as if no one was there to support him. In that condition, I didn't always feel that I should go with him. Many times I felt I should go, but there was no courage or conviction on my part.

In those days, he included me in everything just because I was his friend. That's all. He finally told me one day, 'I am thinking of going away now.' I just said, 'Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.' Nothing stirred in me to even venture into a discussion.

A true mother is one who lets go of her child when the time is right. A mother who is too possessive of her child should probably hesitate to give birth in the first place! Even giving birth is a form of letting go, she is allowing the child to leave her body! Only a mother who is ready to allow the next level of explosion to happen, a mother who is ready to let go, a mother who is ready to give inspiration only can be a real mother.

If you are possessive, if you feel sad just thinking about separating from the child, then you should not even give birth to the child! You should continuously feed him through the umbilical cord. The umbilical cord connection should be continuously kept alive! Just as the child grows physically only after you deliver him into the outside world after nine months, likewise, he can grow psychologically only if you allow him to break from you.

Physical disconnection is birth. Psychological disconnection is sannyas.

In that way I am very fortunate. When I went and told my mother that I wanted to leave home for sannyas, it was late at night, around eleven o'clock. I went to the temple, spent some time as usual, and came home at my regular time. I opened the door with my key and walked in. I wore wooden sandals, normally worn by wandering ascetics. They made a loud noise on that granite floor! My mother's usual custom was to wake up, prepare the food of my choice, and serve me the moment I entered. If I had finished my dinner at the temple, I would tell her and both of us would go to sleep.

That particular night, she got up and was about to prepare food. I called her and told her, 'I have decided that I am leaving home for sannyas. You can give me food tonight, even though I have already eaten. I will eat now because tomorrow I will be leaving.'

It was a very casual annou-ncement from my side. Of course, she was shocked, but she did not say anything. One thing is that all of my family knew from the beginning that talking and trying to convince me to do otherwise would never work. They knew that before saying anything, I would be very clear about it inside. Only after knowing Physical disconnection is birth. Psychological disconnection is sannyas.

what to do, would I say it out loud. When I say something, it means it is going to be done, that's all!

Tears started pouring from her eyes. I looked at her and asked, 'What do you mean by crying? Do you mean that I should not go?'

She shook her head and said, 'No, I am not saying you should not go. I am crying because I am not able to control myself. I am not able to accept it. That's all. I can't say that you cannot go.'

She knew all along that one day this would happen. One day or the other I would leave. It was predicted through my horoscope. The beauty of it was, she never said 'No!' Not only did she not tell me I couldn't go, she broke the news to my father as well. My father thought she had shouted at me and created some problem and that was the reason I had decided to go. He asked her, 'Did you shout at him? Did you create any problem? You know how he is!'

My mother said, 'No, I did not shout or say anything. He came of his own accord and told me this.' Then my father calmed down.

It was a straight and simple declaration. My father came to me, sat down and asked, 'Swami, your mother is saying a few things as your words. Are these things true?'

Funnily, they used to call me 'Swami' even in those days!

I told him, 'Yes. I have decided to leave home to pursue sannyas and become enlightened.'

It was a shock to him. But he saw that I was very clear, balanced, cool and relaxed. He made only one statement. He said, 'If you fall sick, please inform us. We want to take care of you.' That's all. He simply said, 'If you ever fall sick anywhere during your travels, please inform us. We want to take care of you. That is the only thing we want, nothing else. Otherwise, do what you want.'

My parents never stood in my way. Understand, any relationship, including the parental relationship, is a healthy relationship, only when the person is ready to allow the next phase to happen. I have seen thousands of youngsters who are so inspired, who are bold enough, who are courageous enough to take up this path of seeking. However, they don't even give themselves a chance to explore because of their parents.

Parents simply fall into the regular way of life, living to satisfy other people's ego, and bringing up children. Very rarely, a few souls get the inspiration and courage to explore. Try to understand that I am not asking you to train your kids or force your kids to become Swamis. No! I am saying that if at all they feel that click towards sannyas, do not stand in their way. You will be blessed if you do not stand in their way.

Have the intelligence to see the path the child has chosen. He has chosen the ultimate path. Even if he cries and struggles and becomes a failure, there is nothing wrong, if that is your fear. I might have been a failure in my previous ten births. That is why this time I am successful! One thing: when the struggle is for sannyas, even if enlightenment does not happen, it is not a failure. It is a great success because you lived with integrity, and that too, in the conscious field. In the conscious field, Existence watches over you completely. You are taken care of at every step. So understand that any exploration, any research, any adventure in the conscious field should be encouraged, allowed, and supported.

I feel eternally grateful to my parents for not standing in the way.

We now reach the ultimate, or what I call the peak experience. Realization of who we are and our role in this universe is the ultimate knowledge and experience that we can have. From the darkness of ignorance we move into the light of truth. We become enlightened.

When you see somebody swimming, you understand three things. The first thing is that swimming is possible, that a man can float on water. Secondly, you have a tremendous urge, 'If he can do it, why not me? Why can't I? I can too.' The third thing is, 'Let me jump in!' You get inspiration and courage!

In the same way, when you see an enlightened being walking on planet earth, when you live around him, you also understand three things. The first thing is that enlightenment is possible. You can live like god on this planet earth. The next thing is, 'If he can attain enlightenment, why not me?' because he radiates such simplicity and ordinariness, which is close to your own human nature. You naturally get confidence that it is possible for you too. The third thing is courage, 'Let me jump in!' All these three will happen only if you live around an enlightened master and continuously watch his body language. Nothing else can trigger this in you.

There are five universal actions called pancha kriyas. They are creation, protection, destruction, creating illusion or maya, and pulling a soul out of the illusion with grace. God is said to perform these five actions.

Nataraja* , the dancing form of Shiva, has four hands. His upper right hand holds a drum, symbolizing Creation. The whole of

Nataraja - Enlightened master Shiva in the dancing form in the temple of Chidambaram in south Bharat.

Creation is believed to have evolved from sound vibration. The gestures of the lower right and left hands symbolize protection. The upper left hand holds fire, symbolizing destruction. The snake around his neck symbolizes 'illusion', into which man enters before liberation. Caught under his foot is the demon who symbolizes coming out of this illusion. Shiva symbolically destroys the illusion under his feet. Performing all these five actions simultaneously, Shiva remains utterly blissful and peaceful!

Shiva carries out these five activities while he performs what is called the Shiva Tandava, Shiva's Cosmic Dance! The energy that performs all these five activities is the cosmic energy. Shiva performs the first four actions, creation, protection, destruction, and putting one into illusion, from his nirvanic layer or bliss body, which is the innermost body of the seven bodies. The Divine energy can perform all these four actions from the nirvanic layer itself. There is no need to take a physical form to perform them. It can be done by the energy level body itself.

However, to perform the fifth action of pulling souls out of illusion, the energy has to take a human form! The Divine energy does not need your cooperation to perform the first four actions of creation, protection, destruction, and putting you in maya, but when it comes to pulling you out of maya, it needs your consent and cooperation!

Creation is not done with your consent. Protection is also not dependent on you. Similarly, destruction takes place without your consent, and the fourth act of putting you in illusion also does not require your support.

However, the divine energy needs your support to pull you out of illusion and make you enlightened. It is like god asking you to fill out a visa application in order to issue the visa for liberation. You need to fill it out and sign it! The problem is that you may not complete the application or you may delay the process. In order to get your confirmed support for your own enlightenment, god assumes the human body and visits planet earth as an enlightened master.

God assumes all seven layers or bodies when he descends on earth as an enlightened master. When performing the first four actions, He only had the nirvanic body, but when He comes to give you enlightenment, He assumes all seven bodies. When god comes down as the master, He lifts you up!

Quantum leap

People ask me during meditation programs, 'I felt a deep peace and a strong energy during the meditation. Does that mean my enlightenment is near?'

First I want you to understand, we are always near enlightenment. That is the important thing. We are always near to enlightenment. It is a very foolish and wrong idea to think that one person is closer to enlightenment than another. There are only two categories, either you are enlightened or not, that's all. If you are not yet enlightened, then be very clear, you are as close to enlightenment as all others in your category.

Even if you are 99.9 percent enlightened, you are not! Enlightenment is a complete and total change. It is just as water becomes steam only at 100 degrees Celsius, even at 99 degrees it is still only water, never steam. Only at the 100th degree does it become steam. At any point in time, it is either water or steam, never both. Even hot water can put out a fire. That means it still carries the quality of water, not steam. Can you put out a fire with steam? No. So even though it is hot water, it can only have the quality of water. In the same way, at any point in time, you can be either enlightened or not, never both and never 'nearly'.

Understand, enlightenment is not a continuity of yourself. It can never be a development of yourself. It is a quantum leap, not a continuity. If you feel some growth, some development, clarity, inner healing etc. during the spiritual process, We are always near to enlightenment.

it is okay. All these just give you the indication that you are on the right track, that's all. When you see a road sign saying 'Los Angeles, 100 miles', it is a helpful sign always. You know you are on the right track, that's all. But it does not mean you have arrived.

We always want somebody to give us some consoling words. You seek their support and give your support to them in return. But the master does not need your support, so he will straightway tell you the actual truth.

There is no such thing as 99.9 percent enlightened or very close to enlightenment or very near to enlightenment. Either you are enlightened or you are not.

Enlightenment is like a complete 'yes' or a complete 'no'. There are no steps in between. Enlightenment itself is not a step-by-step process happening in stages. Enlightenment is like replacing a gas cylinder, the old one is completely removed and a new one is put in its place!

After the evolution from monkey to human being, it is now time we take the quantum leap to the next level, to the ultimate level. A quantum leap in consciousness is the real goal of enlightenment.

A quantum leap in consciousness is the real goal of enlightenment.

When you are on the path, you don't have to stop and make records about your past. As long as you are stopping and taking record or accounts about your past, be very clear, the breakthrough has still not happened.

When a clear breakthrough, a quantum leap happens, you don't need to and you will not be able to check whether you have grown and how much you have grown. The jump will be beyond your logic.

After the quantum leap, you will be a totally different species, a totally different being. Your body may look like a human body, but your whole inner space will be totally different. Your way of living will become totally different.

Living with the limitless continuum is enlightenment. The limitless continuum will happen when you relax from the identities you hold of yourself in the outer and inner worlds.

If you are settled in that limitless continuum and are able to be active, you are living enlightenment. If you are not able to settle down in it, but you had at least one experience of it, then you have experienced satori.

The basic thing needed for enlightenment is a 'psychological revolution', a new clarity about the self (jeeva* ), world (jagat* ), and god (Ishwara* ).

How you think, why you think, how you are driven, what is your inspiration, what motivates you in life - this understanding is the clarity about the self or jeeva* .

How to achieve your desires in the world, how you avoid fears and other things forced upon you by the world - this understanding is the clarity about the world or jagat* .

Clarity about Ishwara* or god means understanding the source of both the individual self and the world. Achieving

Jeeva- Usually the imperishable spirit that dwells in all living beings.

Jagat - Universe.

Ishwara - Supreme.

the source, knowing all these three, is enlightenment.

When you have a clear understanding about why you think and how you think, this very understanding gives you the clear experience of the self. When you understand how to connect with the world through your fear or greed, achieving what you want, and avoiding what is not needed, you gain a clear experience of the world. The third is experiencing god, Ishwara* , the source of the self and the world.

Gaining a true understanding of the self, world, and god is enlightenment.

People ask me, 'After enlightenment, can enlightened beings enjoy?' I tell you, only after enlightenment can you enjoy! Before that, you can only think or imagine you are enjoying.

After enligh-tenment, you don't even need sense objects to enjoy. You will simply be enjoying all the time. There will be such an intense excitement for no reason.

If I have to define enlightenment in two words, I will say it is 'intense excitement' for no reason, intense passion directed towards no object. There is no object, but there is intense passion. There Enlightenment is intense passion directed towards no object.

is no reason, but there is intense excitement. That is what I call enlightenment.

People ask me, 'How can we be happy without a reason?' I tell them, most of you know only one secret, how to be sad without a reason. You have mastered that habit. You have a doctorate in that line! Just change it a little, that's all. When we know that, why can't we learn this?

Many times, you will be in a low mood, but you will be searching for a reason why you are in a low mood! You will not be able to identify the reason, but you will be sad. Your chemistry itself is trained to fall into low moods without any reason, because so many times you have trained yourself to fall into low moods with a reason. After some time, your chemistry learns this habit. Then you don't need a reason. Just by the chemistry, just through the in-built system, you fall into low moods.

Enlightenment does not mean escaping somewhere. Tasting life here and now is what I call enlightenment.

Ishwara - Supreme.

You are alive in every cell in the cosmos.

you see yourself

What I call enlightenment is experiencing the same intensity of life that you feel inside yourself, outside your skin also. You are not alive just inside your body. You are also alive inside every other individual, tree, and rock. Your hold over your physical body is transformed into a hold over the cosmic body! You are alive in every cell in the cosmos. Every cell is a complete, fulfilled part of the cosmos.

There is a beautiful verse at the start of the devotional hymn, Purusha Suktam* , in the Vedas,

Om sahasra sheersha purushaha sahasraaksha sahasrapaat

sa bhoomim vishwato vrutva atyatishtha dashaangulam

This verse beautifully describes the whole of the cosmos as a beautiful human form called Purusha* - having a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet. The form encompasses the whole earth and exceeds that by ten times! This is the experience of enlightenment.

Understand, I am alive as much outside as I am inside my skin. So I am alive in all the millions of heads, eyes, and feet and all the millions of beings in the cosmos.

To achieve this, start seeing everything as if you are seeing it for the first time, without bringing in your engrams, your past engraved memories. Then, you will start experiencing the same life and intensity that you experience inside your skin, outside also. Try this for ten days. Once you get a glimpse, you will never miss it! You will see you are in ecstasy for no reason. You are in excitement for no reason. You will never take things for granted again. You will always be in joy.

5. Being unclutched

As of now you connect all the past experiences of your life and create a shaft. All your future experiences depend on how you have created this shaft. They depend on which words from the past you have picked, and how you have formed the shaft. Your future emotions, reactions, thoughts, and words depend entirely on this shaft. But after enlightenment, life is very different from this. Thoughts arise, and if they want to work, the body pursues the

Purusha Suktam - A vedic chant dedicated to Purusha or the Supreme.

Purusha - In Sankhya philosophy it is the male principle, pure passive consciousness, as different from the active female principle Prakriti.

thoughts. Once the work is done, the thoughts disappear. Then the next time something needs to be done, thoughts arise again, and the process continues. The whole thing happens beautifully by itself. There is no shaft at all.

Currently we all carry constant irritation from the moment we get out of the bed until the minute we go back to bed. Constantly we carry some irritation or other. We are waiting to jump on people. We only need some excuse. After enlightenment, the constant fear or guilt or desire or something that constantly irritates, is not there. When you unclutch from the shaft for even one moment, you get a glimpse of enlightenment.

The shift from the shaft happens in a fraction of a second. If you are deeply aware, you can catch that precious moment when the unclutching happens. All our tapas, spiritual training, is only preparing us to catch that shift. The shift happens many times. You just need to be really aware and you can catch it. When you permanently unclutch from the shaft, you are enlightened.

6. The four permanent changes

I can say that a few changes happened permanently in me when I became enlightened.

After

The first thing was that all inner chatter disappeared. By inner chatter, I mean the constant chatter of words that enlightenment, the constant fear or guilt or desire or something that constantly irritates is not there.

goes on inside us normally. In the gap between my words as I talk now, even in those few seconds, there is no chatter inside. It is simply pure space, silence.

The second thing is that the idea that my boundary ends here at this body, and there starts the rest of the world disappeared. Border consciousness dissolved. I don't feel I am just this six foot form. I see and feel myself in everything. If you watch me, I will be the first one to enjoy all my photographs after a photo shoot or on the book covers! I will just play with them for four or five days.

People ask me, 'What is this, Swamiji? You are sitting and enjoying your own photographs!' I tell them, 'How does it matter? I don't feel I am this six-foot form. Just like you see this form, I too see this form and enjoy it! I enjoy it as a part of Existence, just like you do!' In fact, you feel embarrassed when you see your own photographs only because you feel the boundary of your own body strongly! For me that separate feeling is not there about my form, so I just enjoy it like everything else.

The third thing is that even though the body is a male body, the inner identity of male or female disappeared. The psychological idea that 'I am male' or 'I am female' doesn't exist in me anymore.

The fourth thing is that there is a constant excitement within, everything excites. Even small things give big excitement. Even a simple thing creates intense excitement and joy.

Any small thing, some statue – a small Shiva, a small Buddha or just a soft toy, will trigger great excitement! Every small thing gives great excitement. The most important thing is that I don't feel bored with anything. Over the past five years, I have conducted hundreds of sessions of meditation programs. I have never felt bored because for me, there is no solidifying of the past. You feel bored only when you solidify the past. You feel you have seen everything already. Any face that I see, I feel excited, that's all. The constant excitement is there.

I can say that these four changes are permanent things that happened in me after enlightenment.

7. Ultimate but not final

Be very clear, enlightenment is not the end. It is the ultimate experience, but not the final experience.

You need to understand these two words 'final' and 'ultimate', they are very different. For example, after the first day of discourse in this series, one person came to me and said, 'You have said everything. Why do we need one more class?' Yesterday another person said, 'THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, on the first day, I thought you could not take us any deeper, it is over. Today, suddenly I felt that you have taken us deeper than yesterday, and you cannot take us any deeper than this. Every day I feel that you cannot take us much deeper than this, but we do keep going deeper.' Every day the person felt that the experience was the ultimate.

Ultimate means living every moment totally, completely. Ultimate is not final. It can be updated.

There is a big difference between these two words, ultimate and final. If it is ultimate, it is happening every moment, it is not final.

People think that after enlightenment masters don't grow. I tell you, after enlightenment, not only are they constantly updated, every moment growth is happening, expansion is happening. God grows. Only god grows! Nothing else grows.

In your space you may think you are growing. But the actual growth or expansion happens only in the cosmic energy.

When a being becomes enlightened, not only does he experience his potentiality, but he also starts creating more enlightened beings. He starts creating the possibility of more enlightened beings.

When you are enlightened, there will not be any movement of letter or word or thought between your navel and throat. Words will come only from the throat. I can say this is one of the precise descriptions of enlightenment. There will not be any word, thought, syllable, or sound movement between the navel and the throat.

Words will be there only when you are talking. When you are not talking, there will not be any words inside. Only the energy movement will be there. There will be no thought, no verbalization, no continuous inner chattering.

Your inner chattering is the only thing that disturbs your whole life. This is very difficult for most people to understand. They always think, 'Unless I have inner chatter, how If it is ultimate, it is happening every moment, it is not final.

will I ever plan my everyday life? How will I be able to run my business? How will I be able to live?'

Understand, when you don't have inner chatter, it is not dead silence. It is intense energy! From that energy, whatever needs to be done will come out as a complete visualization. If you have inner chattering, it will come line by line – 'Morning, I have to wake up. Then, I have to go to my office. There I will work on the new project. In the evening I will come back. Then I may go out for dinner…' In a linear manner, one by one, thoughts and words come out.

When you don't have inner chatter, when you are just with yourself, the whole visualization comes out as one package, one piece of information. That is what we call intuition. When you go through the logical process, it is called inner chatter, it is intellect. But when you don't have that inner chatter, things start expressing in you intuitively, straightaway you know.

Enlightenment does not lead to the absence of troubles. It leads to the presence of courage to handle troubles.

The person who has removed hypocrisy from his inner space will experience enlightenment.

When the intellect ripens and reaches its peak, it becomes intelligence. When emotion ripens and reaches its peak, it becomes trust. When the being ripens and reaches its peak, it becomes enlightenment.

The person who has removed hypocrisy from his inner space will experience enlightenment.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the enlightened master from Bharat, says beautifully, 'Integrating your inner chatter and your spoken words is enlightenment.' He says, just integrate your inner chatter and the words that you utter. Let both of them be integrated and you are enlightened.

I tell you, to live in a body in which inner chatter and outer words are connected is heaven. Nothing else can give you more joy than living in a body where the inner chatter and the spoken words are integrated. It is just pure ecstasy! This constant ecstasy is what I call nithyananda or eternal bliss. If you can live inside a body in which the inner chatter and the spoken words are integrated, in tune, suddenly you will see that you are living inside a hollow bamboo. You are living with such a vast inner space!

Enlightenment is nothing but feeling yourself as the mahakaasha, the cosmic space. It means that you feel that you are the cosmic space instead of the chittakasha, the individual space.

When you relax from the identity that you project to the outer world, to show who you are to others, it is called the 'first experience' or satori. Relaxing from the second identity that you carry in your inner world, to prove who you are to yourself, is what I call enlightenment!

After someone achieves enlightenment he or she has a very sharp superconscious awareness. With that superconscious awareness, it is easy to do research, experiments and analysis. Even after enlightenment, I have been doing so many experiments, so many practices along with scientists and researchers of the outer world and inner world, and by myself.

Understand, when an enlightened being does spiritual practices it is not just for him. It is to create the right formulas for the disciples, so that he can reproduce the same experience in them.

Someone asked me, 'Is enlightenment the natural human state or is it a transcendence of the human state?'

Surely, enlightenment is the transcendence of the human state. Whatever you think of as the human state is not complete. You are only a seed, a potential, a possibility. You are not a tree. You are not actuality. Your actuality is enlightenment.

You are called a human being in your potential state. In your actual state, realized state, you are called an enlightened being. Be very clear, you are not a human being with a spiritual experience, you are a spiritual being with a human experience!

When you meditate, you can get various yogic powers or siddhis. But enlightenment happens when you go beyond these powers also. Enlightenment is having the capacity to handle the powers, as well as the intelligence to drop them when necessary.

The other day I read an interesting article about a book 'Occult Chemistry' based on research done by the theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater on the molecular structure of various elements. It said that even long before physics discovered that an atom has a nucleus, the theosophists had determined the atomic structure of many elements, and that too down to the 'quark', the most fundamental particle known today in quantum physics!

How did they find this out with no modern scientific equipment, before even quantum physics was born? The report says it was through the siddhi, or mystical power, known as anima that has been described in the Yoga Sutras by the sage Patanjali, an enlightened master from Bharat and father of the science of Yoga. Patanjali described Enlightenment is having such a strong and clear sense of peace inside you even your thoughts cannot disturb.

anima as 'the ability to acquire knowledge of the small, the hidden, or the distant, by directing the light of superphysical

faculty.'

With yogic training, they could experience visual images of minute objects too small to be seen by the normal eye. They found five new elements through these yogic powers. They even went beyond the quark as well as its detailed structure, into the sub-quark, which science is yet to find. These very same findings have also been made by at least three other people from different places in the world at different times, through such occult capacities.

They concluded that all matter is like bubbles in space, just like pearls on an invisible string. The report says that the researchers not only 'saw' the subatomic particles, but they could also see inside the atom down to the sub-quark, for which science needs a very powerful particle accelerator that costs billions of dollars!

There are many yogis who have these kinds of siddhis or powers that come about as a result of meditation. They are good as long as you don't get caught in them. Otherwise, you will lose sight of the ultimate goal of enlightenment.

17. Clear, undisturbed peace

Enlightenment is having such a strong and clear sense of peace inside you that even your thoughts cannot disturb you.

Do not think enlightened masters don't have thoughts. It is just that their inner space is so big that the mind is a negligible part. For you, if you have a ten-acre mind, all ten acres are like a zoo. With an enlightened being there are a million acres, but still only a ten acre zoo. In a million acres, if there is some movement in ten acres, can you consider it as something disturbing? No! It is negligible. It is practically not there. That is why an average person feels 'I am the body' but an enlightened being feels, 'I am the body also.'

It is not that the idea 'I am body' disappears. It just expands to 'I am also the body.'

18. Allowing the natural flow of energy through your body

Enlightenment means simply allowing that natural flow of energy through your body without creating conflicts. The moment you start choosing and prioritizing, you have already created conflict. Enlightenment never happens to a person who chooses enlightenment. It happens to a person who chooses choicelessness. This is an important understanding.

For thousands of years, millions of seekers have been struggling. Very few have achieved the ultimate experience of enlightenment. The reason is that you have some idea about enlightenment and you choose what you think is the right action based upon that idea.

When you see living masters, you always see only the side-effect of enlightenment or the byproduct of enlightenment. Your idea and greed about enlightenment is built upon seeing the quality and energy of the enlightened master's lifestyle.

This is not attachment to enlightenment. This is attachment to the idea about enlightenment. For example, you may think that the moment you become enlightened, suddenly somebody will give you a golden throne. You only get attached to that golden throne. You cannot get attached to enlightenment itself.

How will you get attached to enlightenment? Whatever idea you have now about enlightenment is not enlightenment, it is about enlightenment. The more your idea about enlightenment

It is not that the idea 'I am body' disappears. It just expands - 'I am also the body.'

gets purified, the more you will go towards enlightenment, you can never get attached to it.

If you are attached to it, be very clear, your idea about enlightenment is neither pure nor clear. You need to purify and have a clearer understanding about enlightenment. Read spiritual literature, listen to the master's words and get a clear idea about enlightenment.

The clear idea about enlightenment IS enlightenment! Because after some time once you stop fighting with the master, all the clarity that he gave you until then will become a solid experience. When the inner space is very loving, connected to the master, every word he expresses will straightaway become an experience in you. So try to create a clearer understanding. It will automatically take you to enlightenment, and the attachment will disappear.

Being aware, doing the right things, and surrendering to the Divine - enlightenment

When you are aware, you are already surrendered to the Divine.

means all these three. As long as you think all these three are different

things, you are not enlightened. When you realize all these three are one, all three happen simultaneously and spontaneously. You are enlightened. When you are aware, you are already surrendered to the Divine, and you will always be doing the right thing!

20. Beyond bliss

'Always being intense' is the main mark of an enlightened master. When you see that, you understand it as 'bliss' or 'happiness'. To tell you honestly, I myself do not feel that I am a separate blissful being. All I know is that something extraordinary is constantly happening in me, very intensely. Only an outsider feels it is 'bliss'. Actually it is not even 'bliss'. It is the quality that cannot be described, that cannot be conceived by the mind.

21. Merging of the experience, experiencer, and experienced

As of now, you see three separate things: the experiencer, the experience, and the experienced. For example, you are reading this book now. You are the experiencer that is the reader, the experience is of reading, and the thing being experienced is the book. When you get enlightened, all these three – experiencer, experience, and the experienced, become one. You are only the experiencer having the experience of you, who is also the experienced!

Living Enlightenment

1. Enjoying the chaos of the cosmos within the frame of the body

As of now, you are not mature enough to hold the chaos, the cosmos, inside the frame of your body. You need to put the chaos in order because you are not capable of handling the cosmos as is. The six feet frame of your body is not mature enough to hold the chaos as is, to experience and enjoy the cosmos as is.

Being with a body, mind and brain that are awakened and tuned to experience the cosmos as is, is what is living enlightenment.

For this, the body, mind and brain need to be prepared. The body can be prepared with techniques like Nithya Yoga.

The mind is like the software. It consists of the conscious mind and unconscious mind. The conscious mind can be cleared by the right teachings, by removing the wrong ideas and taking in clear and correct ideas. The unconscious mind can be cleared by meditation techniques.

But ultimately, for the software change to be permanent, the hardware also has to change. Your very brain grooves have to change to hold and radiate the experience of living enlightenment. This can happen through initiation, the touch of the master. Initiation is directly transmitting the energy after which different dimensions of you will start getting awakened.

2. Living a conflict-free life

Living enlightenment has nothing to do with married life or celibacy. It is just living a conflict-free life where your actions and knowledge are in tune with your desires.

3. Reduced number of thoughts

Not being in the extremes of anything, not being caught in the extremes of emotions is what is called the Middle Path. Being in the middle path, the madhyapantha , suddenly you see a reduction in the number of thoughts that arise before any action starts. That is the period called 'living enlightenment'. When thoughts completely drop and you are able to do all your activity without thoughts, you are enlightened.

4. Centered in sattva

Centered in sattva, positive energy, you will be able to perform all your activities, your profession, your business, your relationships, your whole life in a beautiful, effortless way. You will be able to manage everything just centered on positive energy. That is what I call 'living enlightenment' or jeevan mukti even while you are living, you are liberated.

When you are centered in sattva, positive energy, you have a clear understanding of the jeeva , the self. You have the clear understanding of how to relate with the jagat , the world. Because of the clarity of the self and the world, naturally you will fall into the source, Ishwara, god.

Madhyapantha - 'Middle Path' prescribed by enlightened master Buddha. It represents the power of witnessing that causes one to be in moderation without being pushed and pulled into extremes of emotions.

Jeeva- Usually the imperishable spirit that dwells in all living beings.

Jagat - Universe.

The very understanding will give you clarity. That clarity will automatically awaken the non-mechanical parts of your brain. When that awakening happens, a chaos will start happening in your routine. Your routine will start getting re-arranged by itself. Just cooperate with it. That is what I call 'living enlightenment'.

If you don't cooperate with the new ecstasy that is happening, with the new awakening that is happening, and if you force your same old dull routine on yourself, you may forget, or you may bring yourself back to the same old person, the same old dullness. Cooperating with the awakening that happens in you is what I call being a disciple or living enlightenment.

'Living enlightenment' is the right word. When you are living these great truths you are enlightened, that's all.

People think that having enlightenment means all responsibilities are taken away and that you don't need to do anything. They think it is a long vacation and you can just lie down on a beach, and that nothing needs to be done.

You have a fantasy about what you want to have and all that you never had in your life. You project these and see them as enlightenment. You project your own concept of heaven and think that it is enlightenment. 'Having' enlightenment is a wrong word. 'Living' enlightenment is the right word.

You are supposed to live the truths. Living the great truths in your life is enlightenment. The master cannot hand over enlightenment to you. It is not something separate that he can give. He can only give you the tools for you to experience your enlightenment. He can only give the path. He can only give the truths. You need to start living these truths and experiencing them in your life.

Enlightenment does not mean you will leave your body and die. No! You will live in a center that is beyond the five senses, but with the five senses. Only your center will be shifted. The cognitive shift will happen within you. This is what I call jeevan mukti, living enlightenment.

Your ego is not powerful enough to take away your enlightenment! Understand that your ego is not so powerful that it can take away your enlightenment.

You need to stop thinking that you have an ego. Even your ego is not as big as you think. You are not as big as you always think! So even your ego cannot take away your enlightenment.

Whether you believe it or not, experience it or not, you are eternal Consciousness.

Your logic is also not as strong as you think. I always tell people, your ignorance is not so strong as to take enlightenment away from you. Even in your ignorance or ego you are not that big a person, and that is the truth!

There is a beautiful Zen saying, 'Before enlightenment, a mountain was mountain, a river was river, a forest was forest. When you start seeking, when you start searching, a mountain is not a mountain, a river is not a river, a forest is not a forest. Everything is chaos. When you achieve what you are seeking – enlightenment again, a mountain is a mountain, a river is a river, a forest is a forest.'

It is very difficult to understand this statement. What they mean is, before you started seeking and after you achieved enlightenment, things are clear. But during the process of seeking itself, things are not clear. Although before seeking and after enlightenment, things appear to be clear, the clarity before seeking is not the same clarity as after enlightenment.

Before seeking, the clarity that you have can be confused very easily by anything! It is not the ultimate clarity. It is just a vague idea. But after enlightenment, the clarity that you get cannot be confused by anything. It is the ultimate truth as it is. That is the difference. The clarity that cannot be confused by anything is the clarity of enlightenment. After enlightenment, the very frequency of seeing things will be totally different. So although a mountain is a mountain, a river is a river, and a forest is a forest, the very frequency of seeing will be completely different. During seeking, since it is a transformational process, things will only be in confusion! Don't bother much about it.

People ask me, 'If a master wants, whether a disciple is qualified or not, can he give him enlightenment?'

An enlightened master can enlighten anybody just by one touch – not even touch, just a thought is enough. Nothing else is necessary. He can liberate anybody.

The greatest happening on planet earth is an unenlightened being sitting with an

The master can simply download the software of an enlightened physiology into anyone.

enlightened being and becoming enlightened. The master

can simply download

the software of an enlightened physiology into anyone. When you are completely open, the software of an enlightened physiology can be downloaded into your system. Your body learns that it can be better than what it is now. Your biomemory learns the lesson of the possibility for a better existence.

A small story from the life of the enlightened master, Buddha:

Buddha was once asked, 'Why don't you give enlightenment to everybody?' He said, 'Please ask in the village who wants enlightenment. Bring them to me and I shall give.'

The man went through the whole village that day asking who wanted enlightenment. He came back to Buddha in the evening with a low face. Buddha asked him, 'What happened? Nobody wants enlightenment, is it?'

The man replied a little cheerfully, 'No, no, two people want enlightenment.' Buddha replied, 'Ok, get them right now. I will give them enlightenment.'

The man replied in a low voice, 'No, they don't want to come here. If you send it to where they are, they will take it!'

Nobody really wants enlightenment in the real sense! They just want it as a utility or to keep in their showcase!

Understand, god gives you the freedom to be in bondage also. Enlightenment can never be forced on you. If it is forced, even freedom will become bondage.

There are two things, qualification and wanting.

There is no qualification needed for enlightenment, but the deep feeling, the deep wanting that 'I want it', should be there.

Please be very clear, I also had ALL the problems that you are having like not being able to trust Existence or not being able to trust myself, I had everything. All I can say is, there is no qualification for enlightenment. For somebody to become enlightened, they do not need any qualification.

It is like winning a lottery ticket! Can anybody say, 'I worked for the lottery ticket, I went and bought it and deserve to win the lottery. My effort is equal to the prize!'? No! What is the qualification for the 100 million dollar lottery? You just need to buy a ticket, that's all! The work that you do is too small for the result that you get. Your effort is not equal to the result. It is the same with enlightenment. So enlightenment is always like a lottery. The experience is always so much more than any and all effort you make on the spiritual path.

Once the experience happens, you will understand that it is a blessing. Whatever you do until then is nothing more than buying a lottery ticket. The person who bought a lottery ticket cannot say he won the lottery because of his hard work.

Ramana Maharishi sings a beautiful poem to Arunachala, the sacred hill manifestation of Shiva in the temple town of Tiruvannamalai in South Bharat. In it he sings, 'I gave me and got You. So who is the winner? Who is more intelligent!'

Enlightenment can be had by giving yourself to Existence. Giving yourself is not an equal thing for what you receive. Even if you give your life, it is nothing more in effort or value than buying a lottery ticket.

After it happens, you will understand that the whole thing is nothing but the pure grace and blessing of Existence. The result or the transformation will be so big, so great that you can't think of a reason why you were chosen for it, why it was showered on you! No qualification is necessary, but the deep need, the seeking is necessary. Fulfillment is always a gift. To receive a gift, there is no such thing as being worthy.

Once the experience happens, you will understand that it is a blessing.

Seeking is feeling the void, the emptiness, because you don't have the spiritual clarity and enlightenment as yet. The urge should become urgent.

The enlightened master, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, used to say, 'Suppose you are living in poverty, dying with no food and no clothes. But somehow you know that there is a lot of wealth kept locked in the next room. Even if you take it nobody will know. Will you be able to sleep restfully now? Either you will try to open the door or you will break down the door. Unless you have that wealth under your control, you will not be able to sleep.'

In the same way, you should know you are in spiritual poverty right now. You should know that inside you there is a room in which there is immense wealth that is kept under lock and key. That knowledge, that attitude, that intensity, that mood is a basic necessity. With that, the seeking can simply transform your whole life.

Your dedication is powerful enough to lead you to enlightenment.

Actually, enlightenment is practically like cooking. Something has to be added, something has to be removed. You have to add the intense seeking. Whatever is unnecessary, like restlessness, etc., will come out automatically, and enlightenment will happen!

I can say all major spiritual traditions can be classified into two major categories. One is the category that gives gradual progress. There will be a clear-cut, defined path, like the five disciplines prescribed by the father of yoga, Patanjali – yama (discipline), niyama (personal conduct), asana (sequence of postures), prayanama (breathing), and pratyahara (withdrawal). It will appeal to the common mind. You can start and slowly continue to progress. It is easy to start but difficult to end, difficult to achieve.

The other tradition will give you the experience directly, especially the Shiva Sutras delivered by Shiva. It is all about techniques that straightaway give you enlightenment. But starting will be a little difficult because logically you cannot feel connected.

Shiva says very clearly that simple things can lead you to enlightenment. For example, there is a technique where you are to be intensely aware when sneezing happens to you and you can become enlightened! Practically He says that just a sneeze can lead you to enlightenment! How can you believe this? Logically you can't be convinced, logically you can't understand.

There are some methods, some techniques that give you sudden enlightenment, like those prescribed in the Shiva Sutras. One important thing you need with these sudden enlightenment techniques is the courage and the feeling of connectedness with Existence or your master.

Enlightenment can happen at any moment. Even in Tibetan Buddhism, they have the concept of 'bardos' – the intermediate states between death and rebirth, the states where the possibility of enlightenment is very high.

The traditions that teach us gradual enlightenment have really contributed a lot. For new seekers, they can be a really inspiring way to start. But these gradual paths have a danger. They may not give you the ultimate breakthrough, the ultimate opening, because the modern mind may get tired very soon. The modern mind is very impatient. It wants everything instantly, like instant coffee!

Sudden enlightenment methods are good because they give you a glimpse of the experience and a conviction about the possibility of the experience. Then you will not have many doubts and problems. All your problems are nothing but doubts like, 'Is it really available? Will I be able to have it? Will I be successful? I don't know what will happen to me. What will happen to my husband or wife?'

All these doubts are the problems. When you have at least one glimpse of sudden enlightenment, all these problems and doubts will disappear. It will be a lot easier for you to travel on your spiritual journey.

One more thing: Relax from judging the master's words. Stop choosing what you want to follow from the master's words and only following those ones. Then you will see, the final enlightenment happens to you.

Understand that only a person who has exhausted all the three states of waking, dream, and sleep states, can become enlightened. One who is able to unclutch from all these three states can achieve enlightenment.

Anything that comes out of enlightenment will take you to enlightenment. If you imbibe the expression, it will lead you to the same

experience. If a piece of music comes from an enlightened Consciousness, if you just imbibe it with deep receptivity, it will put you in Anything that comes out of enlightenment will take you to enlightenment. If you imbibe the expression, it will lead you to the experience.

the same enlightenment experience!

The other day I was reading an article about art therapy. They say that if mentally unsound people are asked to paint, they paint wildly. They pour the paint on the canvas and do all kinds of things with it. More than just painting on the canvas, they paint on their body. If they are allowed to do this for a week to a month, slowly the madness comes down and they get healed.

You will be surprised, like a catharsis they throw everything away. The second discovery was a more important one: all those who became mad because of money paint in a similar way. All those who became mad because of women or name and fame paint in a similar way.

If they are allowed to paint, they do the catharsis and whatever is inside comes out. The reason for their madness is expressed clearly in their painting.

The third most important thing that happened was that the doctor who studied all those paintings extensively and gave conclusions became mad!

Be very clear, when someone expresses something intensely, and if somebody studies that expression deeply, then he gets into that same experience as the person who expressed it. That is why the doctor became mad.

Now understand, if you deeply imbibe the expressions of an enlightened master, you can get the experience of enlightenment itself! Blessed are the ones who live around an enlightened master.

The musical magic

When the great musical saints like Tyagaraja, Annamacharya and Manickavasagar from South Bharat sang spontaneous verses, they expressed their own experience of enlightenment.

Traditional Hindu music is designed for meditation, for enlightenment. Classical Hindu dance is designed for enlightenment. That is why the person who performs and the person who sits and experiences, both experience the same meditative state.

You can enter the very space from which any music is created. If it comes out of the space of the heart, you too will fall into the heart. If it comes out of lust, you too will experience lust. The state of mind of the musician plays an important role in impacting your mind.

When you listen to any music, be receptive. Don't bother about the words or the notes. Go to the core of it, just relax with that music and try to see the thread, the backbone, the composite central sound. Suddenly you will see you are experiencing the same thing from where the expression came out.

Understand, if the expression comes from enlightenment, it will lead to enlightenment.

Understand that if your family completely supports you and gives you the courage and confidence that you are a leader, you will be successful in your professional life or social life. The right family is really important to be successful in society because only that will give you the courage and confidence to take major decisions in your life.

In the same way, only your body can give you the confidence for you to achieve enlightenment. That is why yoga plays such an important role in the path of enlightenment. It works on the body and mind and gives you the confidence and courage that you can execute whatever you think.

During the vedic times in Bharat, the whole life, the whole society was based on enlightenment. 70 percent of the people were enlightened and the remaining 30 percent were seeking, working towards enlightenment.

Arts, sciences, education, lifestyle – every sphere of life, every action was directed towards the ultimate experience of enlightenment. Classical dances like Bharatanatyam, traditional vocal and instrumental music, traditional architecture of temples and sculptures, classical paintings and art forms, the science of languages like Sanskrit, the sciences of astrology and vaastu, the unique gurukul system of education, traditional ceremonies right from birth through marriage to death – every single activity in every dimension of life was an expression of the enlightenment of the great seers, as well as a means to get enlightened.

Bharat – the spiritual incubator

Bharat is the spiritual incubator that produces enlightened masters. For a premature baby you need an incubator where you can maintain the correct atmosphere, oxygen, food, Yoga works on the body and mind and gives you confidence and courage that you can execute what you think.

heat, and take care of the baby until it can survive on its own.

In the same way, for an enlightened being to land on planet earth and completely express his enlightenment and share it with the world, he needs an incubator. Bharat is that spiritual incubator that nurtures the enlightened being because the very societal structure of ancient Bharat was created only for the inner science research and enlightenment.

Every sphere of life, personal or professional, was only to experience the ultimate state that is enlightenment. To this day, the society of Bharat is best suited to nourish the seeds of enlightenment and grow enlightened beings.

There can be nothing more than the enlightenment experience on planet earth. No philosophy, no system, no theory, no ideology, stands, survives, or thrives for more than one generation if it does not have an enlightened base, the base or inspiration from an enlightened being.

In ancient Bharat, there were at least 3000 kings ruling at different times. Not a single king or kingdom that was not guided by an enlightened master was able to flourish.

Even today if you go to South Hindu villages, you will see huge temples built of stone, installed by enlightened masters. But the palaces that were constructed by the same kings for themselves no longer exist.

Understand, the same king and the same architect who built the temples to hold the enlightened energy, also built the palaces for the king to stay. One might think the king would have used better material for his own palace! But today, if you see, the temples are still standing while the palaces have disappeared with time.

In my own village Tiruvannamalai in South Bharat, the village in which I was born and brought up, we have a temple that has twenty-five acres of built up area. The palace built by the same king is not there. It is just ruins. But the temple built by him is still alive because the enlightened master's energy is there.

The biggest service you can do in your life, the best use you can make of your life is to keep this science of enlightenment alive on planet earth. Planet earth is alive today in spite of all the atomic weapons we have piled up, all the depletion of forests, minerals, and natural resources. It is so because of the presence of enlightened masters. As long as there are enlightened masters on planet earth, planet earth can never be destroyed!

LIVING ENLIGHTENMENT

In the following four chapters as well as those on meditation techniques that follow in a later section, I give you the pathways to experience the truths we talked about. By now, you have the intellectual understanding: what needs to be done and why?

We now come to the part of how. All the understanding will remain only theoretical if it is not converted into experience.