1. Quantum Spirituality

Enjoy whatever life gives you. Wealth is energy, so are relationships. Be spiritual and blissful while being joyful in material comforts…. Let me lead you into Quantum Spirituality!

• 1. Quantum Spirituality
• 2. Choose Bliss, Wealth follows!
• 3. How to Rise in Love?
• 4. Enlightenment: The Goal and the Path
• 5. Beyond Karma
• 6. Meditation is the highest form of worship
• 7. Death is not final, it is but a passage
• 8. You are not just matter, you are energy!
• 9. Master: Keeper of the Key
• 10. Age of Enlightenment

This book provides meditation techniques for enlightenment, but this book is not about techniques.

This book contains compilation from discourses of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, but this book is not about intellectual understanding.

This book is about creating a psychological revolution within you that breaks down the deeply engrained pseudo-value systems and beliefs so that you may be liberated from the clutches of your mind. It is the mind that stores these things and plays with them.

The discourses provide the understanding that is needed to create the psychological revolution; the techniques that follow provide the tools to make the understanding experiential.

Life Bliss Foundation conducts meditation programs regularly in its centers all over the world. There are three levels of Life Bliss Programs. Some of the meditations in this book are taught in the various LBP courses. Teachers who conduct the programs are qualified to explain all the meditation techniques explained in this book. They can also clarify concepts covered in the contents.

This book comes with an audio CD that has the music to do the meditations with. These meditations can also be done without the music.

When I was just 12, I had a deep spiritual experience. I felt I was one with the universe and boundaryless. I was too young to fully understand what had happened. I spent the next 10 years seeking what I had already received.

Ten years later, I realized that I was complete. I was in eternal bliss, nithyananda.

I spent the last five years in expressing my experience so that others may experience the eternal bliss as I did. I have traveled extensively in the Western world, especially the United States, to communicate the truth that I have experienced.

This Truth is timeless. I do not own it. Many great masters have experienced similarly before. Their expressions may have been different, but the Truth remains the same.

However, you need a key to unlock and understand the Truth as the great masters have earlier expressed. The truth has been conveyed to close disciples so that it may not get distorted. To prevent miscommunication, this truth is coded in metaphors, stories and aphorisms.

I now provide you the key.

Intellectual readers are not satisfied with anything simple and direct. The logical, rational and intellectual mind needs complexity to be impressed. The Truth that I convey, however, is very simple and direct.

All that you need is to drop your logical mind to absorb this truth; this Truth of your life and your Being. This is the Truth that shall set you free if you allow it to.

It will also raise you in wealth, health, relationships and joy.

May you be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Master, I feel that this cyber age is all about negativities. Yet, all the greatest advances of mankind seem to have happened in the last 50–60 years. How can all this progress be negative? Why am I so confused? Why am I not focusing on the positive aspects of the progress?

In the last years of his life, Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest scientist ever, was in deep depression. His discoveries and concepts, which he had hoped would change the world for the better, had been used for developing weapons of mass destruction. Einstein became more and more spiritual.

One of his students asked him during this period, 'I know that you believe in reincarnation. What would you like to be reborn as?'

Einstein thought deeply and said, 'I would like to be reborn as a plumber.'

People around him were surprised. Here was a great scientist, perhaps the greatest ever born. They had expected him to say that he would want to be the President of the United States or some such thing, but a plumber…whatever for?

They asked him 'But why a plumber of all things? You could be anything you wanted!'

Einstein said 'from childhood, I had always wanted to be a plumber, but unfortunately I got sidetracked. At least in my next birth, I would like to be what I really wanted to be rather than what someone else wants me to be.'

A man who wanted to be a plumber, ended up being one of the greatest scientists of the world.

His unfulfilled desire was to be a plumber. He wanted to be reborn as a plumber!

In his last days, Einstein was a disillusioned man. His great scientific discoveries were being used for mass destruction. He turned away from science to spirituality. After reading the ancient scriptures of Bharat, he said 'now I know that the very last step of science is only the first gateway to spirituality'.

Einstein's awareness developed after his discoveries were put to destructive uses. Unaware acts cannot result in benefit to humanity. People build churches and temples; they work feverishly on philanthropic projects that they are convinced will benefit humanity. Most of the time, the focus will be on seeing their names in print. Why they do what they do is not understood, except within the limited framework of some selfish motive.

When a person who is aware does something, it will always benefit humanity and Existence. An aware person cannot do otherwise. When Krishna advises Arjuna to wage war against his own kinsmen, Krishna spoke from the awareness of the ultimate Truth, that the body as matter will always perish. It is only a matter of time and space. It is only a question of when.

An enlightened master benefits humanity even if he seemingly destroys. His act of destruction lays the seeds for regeneration and rejuvenation.

An unaware being destroys even when he is seemingly engaged in a beneficial activity.

In another context Einstein said, 'The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and forgotten the gift.'

The rational mind or intellect, the servant, is tuned outward. Its focus is acquisition, whether knowledge or material benefits. The sacred gift of the intuitive mind is the spiritual quest that is inherent in us. This gift drives us inward when unpacked. In general, it lies unopened, forgotten and dishonored.

You can use everything, whether it is mind or body, or energy or matter, in both constructive and destructive ways. You decide as the user how to deploy the energy, whether as a positive energy or as a negative power.

Energy is like a knife; in a surgeon's hand it saves lives; in the hands of the fanatic it kills.

When you attempt to use the mind, when you deploy the mind thinking that it is under your control, it is the mind that manipulates you; it plays games with you; it leads you in circles. You can never win when you try to control the mind.

You need to understand the mind and transcend the mind to become its master. When you realize the true potential of your mind and use your mind as a sacred gift, your mind stops using you. Then, you are in control.

When you are in control, your mind is always used as a positive and constructive energy.

Yes, there are many negativities in this age.

But then, in which age have there not been negativities?

If you study any mythology – Hindu, Egyptian or Greek – you will find that all of them refer to the greed and violence of man. Even their gods are violent gods; they are lusty, they are jealous, they plot against one another. They cast their gods in the image of man; they cast them in their own image!

In the tabloids recovered from the ruins of the ancient Sumerian civilization, it was written in cuneiform: the youth of this age are uncivilized, they do not respect elders, they are after only one thing – their own pleasure.

Nothing has changed in thousands of years!

Whatever Rama and Krishna, the great incarnations of Hindu mythology, did tens of thousands of years ago, we do even now; actually no more no less. Those days, fewer people knew about what others did. There was neither television nor Internet. The world was not yet a global village. It took years for Rama to travel from Ayodhya in the North of Bharat to Sri Lanka in the South, in the same way as it was for Krishna to travel from Brindavan in the middle of Bharat to Dwaraka in the West.

Today, you can do that in a couple of hours.

Throughout history, from the earliest days of mankind, from the days of mythology, mankind has been at war. Man has been killing other men and women. Probably, there has never been a decade in the entire history of mankind without a war in one part of this planet or another.

All that had changed was the way man killed another man. When he lived in caves, he perhaps killed with his bare hands; later with stone and wood. Today, he kills by pushing a button. The entire world can be destroyed if the deranged head of a powerful nation sets off nuclear missiles by pushing a switch.

That is all the difference there is really. Human nature has still remained the same more or less. There has been growth in the way man receives and enjoys sensual pleasures and enjoys material comforts. There has been a setback in areas like the intuitive power of human nature.

Otherwise, we remain essentially the same, with the same emotions and with the same basic abilities to think, to sense and to act.

It is our interpretation and perceptions that change. For one group of people, science can do no wrong. For another, science can do no right. There are communities still living in the United States who refuse to undergo professional medical treatment. They say that god will cure them.

There is no doubt that god will cure them, but you need to give Him a chance!

A small story:

A monk was bathing in a river. He suddenly slipped and a strong current carried him into the fast-flowing river.

'God, oh god! Please save me!' he pleaded.

A log of wood drifted past him. He ignored the log and kept shouting, 'God, oh god!'

A boat came toward him, and the boatman extended his oar so that the monk could grab it. The monk turned his back on him and kept shouting, 'God, oh god!'

A dolphin came up to him and nuzzled him and he shooed it away, still shouting, 'God, oh, god!'

Finally, the current proved too strong for him; he drowned and died.

His spirit rose to the heavens and cried out, 'God, you have failed me! I had such trust in you!'

A voice rang out: 'I sent you help thrice, not just once. What more did you need?'

Medical advances are also god's gift to us. What makes the difference is the use we put them to.

I always instruct our Nithya Spiritual Healers, who have been initiated by me, never to tell anyone to stop following their doctor's prescriptions. The energy of Nithya Spiritual Healing supplements the medical treatment. It is a different matter when the medical treatment fails you, and you come to me as a last resort.

I am there to help, always, but not as a replacement for whatever facility that is readily available. Of course, when supreme faith is there, healing can work miracles.

Millions of people live longer today than ever before. Many dreaded diseases have been eradicated. Sure, new ones have come about, but medical sciences have sufficient understanding today to develop new cures. Medical sciences need to understand, however, that the mind–body system is holistic. It is not a machine in which replacement of a part solves the problem. In the human body, each cell and limb is intrinsically linked to another, and the mind pervades all these parts.

A surgeon cannot think that by cutting off the tumor in the stomach, the problem gets solved.

Intelligent doctors have realized this and are integrating the mind and the body holistically in their treatment. This is what the ancient Hindu medical science of Ayurveda is all about. In Ayurveda, the physician tries to understand your psychology in addition to your physiology and only then starts to treat you.

Similarly, every other scientific advance has had great benefits. If I am here with you in the United States today, it is because of technology. What else is the alternative? I would have to either do astral travel or swim the Pacific Ocean!

I do know that in ages past our great sages – the inner scientists – had known the secret of flight. They talked about the celestial flying machine – pushpaka vimana – in our scriptures. It was not a myth. It was a fact. They used weapons such as the brahmastra, similar to nuclear weapons then. This again is no figment of imagination; it was true. Sushruta, a great surgeon who lived over a thousand years ago in Bharat, carried out plastic surgery, and records are available!

But then, we have lost the codes today. So, we cannot go back in time and say that we shall do what people did a few thousands of years ago. It is not practical. You need to live where you are today, with the knowledge and tools that you possess today. There is no other way to live.

Science and technology are tools of today. We must use them. After all, the human mind invented and discovered these things. There will be good and bad uses.

We cannot say, 'what have we achieved in the name of scientific progress? What have we achieved as the number of billionaires in the world increases year after year?' Every media you are in contact with, talks without rest about destruction of one kind or another. You may then ask, 'Is destruction progress?'

Yes, these too are true, no doubt. Once laser was invented, its most profitable use seems to be in guiding weapons of mass destruction. Only a smaller part of its use is outside weaponry. It is used for eye surgeries and so on.

Many things that we do are driven by fear and greed, and 'progress' is a label that is used to mask the fear and greed. But, this is not the fault of science.

The most powerful country in the world seems to stand paralyzed against terrorism. Its leaders use the fear of terrorism to sanction killing more people. This country already spends more than half its wealth on weapons of mass destruction in the name of maintaining peace. Is science responsible or the leadership responsible?

How can we ever achieve peace through the violence of killing people? Time and again, history has shown that this is impossible. Even in modern days of recorded history, from the Crusades to the World Wars, one war has always led to another.

The period between two wars can never be called peace. It is just a period of preparation for another war.

Thousands of people come to me in every country I visit. They say, 'master, we have everything; we have money, we have cars, we have houses; but we do not have stable relationships; we are not happy'.

We seem to have houses, but no home; we have beds, but no sleep; we have children, but no relationships. What can we do, what do we do?

Those who are more introspective say, 'we have achieved all that we wanted much earlier than what we thought it would take'. But now, we don't remember why we wanted, what we wanted in the first place. All our acquisitions have not brought us happiness. We are so used to acquiring that we cannot even stop now. We are like robots; we have become money-making and acquisition-seeking robots. What to do?

What to do?

We live in an age of contradictions. We classify those below 18 years as non-adults. If one is below 18 years, there are restrictions on what that person can do and what can be done to that person. A non-adult cannot drink, cannot smoke and cannot watch movies

that are rated adult-content movies. However, they can watch any amount of violence that is not rated. Violence is allowed but sex is not. Love is taboo but killing is ok.

There are countries that compulsorily enroll 18 year olds into the military forces. They are taught to kill. At 18 you can kill, but you cannot love! Society accepts this; it does not condemn forcing people to kill at 18. It is more concerned about whether birth control is ethical or not.

Understand, I am not recommending free sex. Sex is an energy that can be used productively. I am only saying, violence is a product of the unconscious.

Some people talk about collective consciousness at the mass level. You see, consciousness is always at the individual level. At the mass level, there is only collective unconsciousness. The collective individual consciousness is what is called collective consciousness.

When people make collective decisions, it can only be from their unconscious. That is why governments get away with wars in the name of patriotism. In the name of saving a country, other countries are annihilated; races and people are eliminated.

It is so easy to stir up the negative emotions of people. All you need is fear and greed. Hitler did it crudely. Today's leaders do it with democratic authority. But the destruction remains the same.

Every country in this world, however tiny, has its military forces. Many countries spend almost half their national wealth on their military forces. If you add up all the nuclear weapons in this world today, they are enough to destroy the world many times over. Yet, all weapons are declared as defensive. If all military forces are for defense only, then who is on the offensive? Will that country please stand up?

The entire planet lives on its lower energy centers of greed and fear. It has lived in this state for a long time now. It is time to change; it is time to be human once again.

The cyber age has made people richer; it has made people materially better off; it has made communication simpler, travel faster, life longer.

But why has it not made people happier? Many do not even understand what happiness means. They keep running behind things and then find themselves behind where they started. They succeed in getting whatever they want, and then start wondering why they wanted those things in the first place.

Our true nature is bliss. Why then do we end up unhappy?

Why should we feel disturbed at being wealthy?

Why do we feel spiritually bankrupt?

Spirituality is not a mystical word or concept. It is our total well-being. Being well materially with wealth is as important as being well emotionally in relationships and being well internally in self-awareness.

I tell you, 'you can be materially well off, enjoy your wealth and still be happy in all senses of that term, including spiritually

', I call this Quantum Spirituality.

It is the leap from materialism to spirituality, and handling both simultaneously.

The concept of Quantum Spirituality clearly defines the really spiritual person of the cyber age, as different from the traditional ideas of poverty and meekness being the hallmarks of a spiritual Being. It conveys that wealth and the right use of wealth are equally spiritual. It is time we stopped feeling guilty about being wealthy. It is time people stopped making us feel ashamed about our being well off.

It is also time we learnt how to use our wealth with awareness. It is time that we learnt to use our energies positively.

You cannot make others rich by making yourself poorer and by distributing your wealth; this will only make everyone poor, including yourself. This is the false logic on which many religious systems and a few political systems are based.

None of this will work for a simple reason: denial does not lead to happiness, only fulfillment does.

Denying something to the body–mind system while the mind hankers for it only leads to suppression and depression. Instead of leading to divinity as many religions may claim, it will lead to demonic behavior.

The way to make others also wealthy is to transform their mindset from a mode of failure to one of success.

True renunciation is renunciation of greed; it is renunciation of avarice and fear, as well as guilt and envy. True renunciation arises out of the genuine understanding that this entire universe is ours, so why be desperate to acquire this or that for selfish reasons?

True renunciation is the understanding that we are all a connected, integral system on this planet and that true happiness comes from sharing and not hoarding. It comes from the understanding that one must trust.

When one genuinely trusts that one cannot be exploited then there is nothing to exploit.

Spirituality is not about poverty; it is not about denial; it is not about meekness. It may require to turn the other cheek at times, but not out of anything but the courage to be crucified!

It should not come from the fear of getting hurt.

Spirituality is not about escaping into a monastery or a forest. You can be equally spiritual in a sprawling suburban home, living with your wife and kids.

A middle aged man came up to me after one of my discourses in the United States.

'Master', he said, 'I came to this country 20 years ago. I came with nothing. I came here to study and I had enough money for a one-way ticket. Today, I am a millionaire many times over. Yet, I feel only discontent.'

I asked him, 'Why, haven't you achieved what you wanted?'

He said, 'Everything, every single thing that I wanted, I have achieved, many times over. I have got what I wanted; at least, what I thought I wanted. But now, I am not able to understand why I wanted all that I wanted. Whatever I have acquired makes no sense to me. That is why I am discontent.'

He was an intelligent man! I looked at him closely. He was balding; his hair was grey. He looked older than what he probably was. His eyes were dull. He looked unhappy.

I asked him again, 'So, have you stopped seeking possessions then?'

He said sadly, 'No, that is the problem. I am programmed now to keep acquiring, whether it makes sense to me or not. To stop acquiring more money and more things makes no sense because at least that keeps me occupied. I am so occupied most of the time that I do not have time even to feel discontent. Otherwise that is all I will be thinking about.'

He kept talking. He apparently traveled a lot and spent very little time with his family. His role as a father and husband was to bring home money. His work and making money were his passion. One of the reasons he had come to see me was that he had heard I was a healer. He had a number of health problems, including diabetes and a heart ailment. He needed medical help.

I meet many people like this in the United States; immigrants who have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams after arriving here. They have acquired wealth, respect and possessions, and yet they are deeply unhappy. Because of their Hindu and other similar traditions, they have managed to retain their spousal and family relationships together but that is more to prove to the society than out of mutual respect and affection.

When their children especially daughters reach teenage, some of them run back to Bharat, because they wish to bring up their daughter in a country with some sort of cultural

heritage, like Bharat. They don't want to allow her to date and later allow her to make her own choices in life. They are prepared to give up all that they built here to retain what they think is control over their daughter.

I ask some of them when they come to me with their problems. I ask them, 'What is it that you are afraid of?'

They say, 'We want them to grow up amidst rich cultural heritage, with a sound value system. We do not want them to lose their culture.'

What is the point in talking about one's culture when your own priorities are so mixed up? This is a country that is steeped in personal freedom; it is to the extent, that a child can now divorce its parents! If you live in a culture like this and if you wish to make it your home, you need to accept that reality. Your children see what you do, and they do not care about what they hear you say. When they find time and again a serious contradiction and gap between what you say and what you do, they lose respect for you. That is natural, whether in Bharat or the United States.

When Westerners come to me for advice, their problems are no different. Their outward expressions may be somewhat different, but the underlying issues are similar.

These days, it is becoming casual to see people changing spouses, cars and houses every few years! Just like how the car manufacturer announces a new model and everyone wants to change their model car to that one, they have started to change their spouse too in the same fashion. On top of it, they say that they change their spouse every 3–5 years because they can no longer relate to her!

Change is in your very blood! I can understand that you want to change your car and even your house. You want to keep up with your neighbor and friends. You have no emotional attachment to these things. You wish to move up in life and so on. But why your spouse?

What are you looking for? The latest model? When you find that latest model, how sure are you that the latest model wants to stay with an outdated model like you?

A small story:

An old man was sitting on the beach day after day for hours on end. All he did was to watch all the women who passed by, with great interest. He would sit there till well past dusk, then get up and leave.

A young man working in the beach-side restaurant watched this old man for many days. One day, when the old man came in for a drink, this young man asked him, 'Sir, I am curious. May I ask you something?'

The old man smiled expansively and said with a wave of his hand, 'Sure, go ahead, ask me anything.'

The young man said, 'Sir, every day I see you watching the women. That is all you do. I can understand a younger guy doing this. But at your age, I am curious about what you might be looking for. How long have you been doing this? Why are you doing this?'

The old man sighed and said, 'I have been doing this for years now. I am looking for a woman of my dreams. That is why, day after day, I come to this busy stretch and look for that woman who will make me happy.'

'Oh, now I understand', said the young man, 'but, in all these years did you not find that woman?'

'Well, it is a long story', said the old man, 'I did find her.'

The young man asked, 'Then what was the problem?'

The old man replied, 'Well, you see, she too was searching for her dream mate!'

When you are an out of date model yourself, why look for the latest model?

In the Vedic culture of ancient Bharat, there was no concept of divorce. In fact in Sanskrit, there is no word for divorce. It is not that the Vedic sages were idealistic and felt that man and woman will live together happily ever after.

They did not believe in changing persons; they believed only in changing the personality.

The entire Vedic education system was about removing fantasies and instilling reality. They taught that as long as your inner man and woman are not expelled, you would never be satisfied and fulfilled. They taught techniques that helped bring about this inner change.

Whether it is a material possession or a human relationship, we no longer have time to stop and enjoy what we have acquired. We are far too busy acquiring and moving on. What for do we then acquire? Is it the thrill of the chase? Or as the person who came to me said, 'I do not know what else to do; at least this keeps me occupied.'

Is this a sufficient and valid reason?

I tell my followers that life as such has no purpose. Do not for a moment believe that you are born to achieve something. No, you are born so that you can live. Life has no other purpose. While on this planet, enjoy the journey; that's all you can do; that's all you need to do.

If you have wealth, enjoy it; if you have health, enjoy it; if your relationships are good, enjoy them. Do not hoard these energizing factors that you have in your possession, as if you will use them on a rainy day, and then go chasing after more.

When you keep running after what you think is your life's goal, it is always ephemeral. It is a mirage. Every other minute, no every second, it changes. That's why you can never be content as long as you are chasing a goal, an object or a possession. You do not end up possessing anything; the object ends up possessing you; it ends up destroying your happiness.

This is what I call 'Depression of Success'. Nothing depresses like success. It is like an addiction, the more you have of it, the less satisfactory it is. It follows the law of incremental dissatisfaction. You can never succeed with purely material success; that is a myth. You may succeed in material terms, but in emotional terms you will always fail.

You may acquire all that you wanted to. You will then wonder why you wanted all that you acquired!

In material societies, you value everything in terms of money – rupees or dollars or cents or pounds or pennies. Enjoyment is not based on emotional satisfaction, it is based on what the enjoyment costs. A painting is not celebrated because it is beautiful, it is enjoyed because of its price tag. You cannot even judge a wine by its taste, you need to look up your wine book to find out its year before you decide whether you can like it or not!

Someone told me that Imelda Marcos, wife of the former Philippine President, had thousands of shoes. It was said that she never had to wear a shoe a second time. It is nice that at least she did not dislike her own feet so much! Otherwise, she may have had an even more serious problem!

On the other hand, a poor farmer whether in Philippines or Bharat would be delighted to have even one sandal to protect his feet. He would wear it till it becomes unfit to wear again, and that would be the only reason he would need to acquire another pair of footwear.

A wealthy man rarely enjoys his food with fulfillment. He may pass comments and exclamations about how wonderful the dish is, but that pleasure remains a pleasure of the senses. We cannot call it a sign of fulfillment.

There are different kinds of people in this world. There are a few like me who have left all and walked out. People like me are rare in this day and age. I tell my disciples that when I left home, I left one home; in the process I gained this entire world as my home! Wherever I went, people welcomed me and let me make their homes my home. I am not talking about now, when people know me. I am talking about the time when I was a mere wandering monk, when the monk's saffron garb I wore was a passport to hospitality. I

may now and then wear these fancy clothes they put on me, but my comfort lies in the two-piece kavi (saffron) robes I wear.

In this day and age, in this cyber age, you do not need to live like a monk. In fact, in most cases, you cannot live like one and be happy. You leave everything because you read in some scriptures that renunciation and poverty alone lead to liberation. You will then find that what you thought you gave up, still bothers you in your mind; this puts you in deep depression instead of happiness.

That is why, the single biggest problem that celibate monks of all religious denominations face is lust and sex.

They can only suppress the desires; they cannot overcome them. They cannot transcend them.

The point is that you do not have to renounce anything. Enjoy whatever you have and whatever you have acquired. However, understand well what for you are acquiring all these things.

Most often, you do not have the time to enjoy what you have acquired. You are already chasing more acquisitions. You know that when you die, there is nothing you can carry with you.

However much you may love your spouse or children, you will have to leave them behind. However much you love your wealth and however hard you may have worked for it, you cannot carry a single dollar with you when you die.

You are going to leave everything behind. If you do not enjoy, if you do not have the time or mindset to enjoy what you have accumulated, then why accumulate? Why acquire?

You acquire not because you need what you acquire, but because you see others having it. Envy drives you into acquiring what others have and you don't have. You wish to feel that you are equal to them, that you are better than them. You do not feel you are worth anything till you have everything that someone else has.

You acquire because you have no respect for your own self, because you have no selfesteem, no fulfillment. Your entire measure of what you are worth is based on what you possess and what you can show as what you possess, and this has to be bigger, better, more beautiful, and more everything than all others you know. Understand that this can never happen. You may become the wealthiest man on Earth, you may become richer than Bill Gates, but does that make you better than everyone else on this globe. Will it make you happy?

This desperate need to acquire is like cancer. It spreads without cause and reason. It is worse than cancer, because it is infectious. You cannot rest till you have that.

Sit back and think about this: how much of what you have acquired, you really have the time to enjoy?

One of my disciples was telling me about the fund raising they did in Bangalore a while ago for my mission. They had what they called a garage sale. It was mostly the ladies who organized this. They are always more active, more useful and more practical than men.

So, they went around collecting all the stuff that people no longer used. This disciple told me that many of his clothes and shoes were just taken away for the sale. His wife told him that anything that was not useful in the present moment was to be given away. She had absorbed my teaching well.

He said he decided to stay away from Bangalore for a while. He said, 'Swami, it was very much possible that she would have put me also up for sale with a tag around my neck. So, I decided to travel out till the sale was over. It was safer.'

I did not want to tell him that the reason his wife may not consider putting him up for sale was that she knew no one would pay anything for him!

We acquire because we have no opinion of ourselves. It is our material possessions that seem to create our identity. They do not have to. Material acquisitions and possessions do not have to bind you. Enjoy what you have, enjoy every bit of your wealth and what it can bring you, without guilt. But, do not get bound by them.

You can use the power of your wealth, as well as your personality, power and beauty, to be happy yourself and to bring happiness to other people. Remember, unless you yourself are happy, you cannot make other people happy. Unless you are yourself rich, you cannot make others rich. Unless you are powerful yourself, you cannot make another person powerful. Unless you are yourself wise, you cannot impart wisdom to another person.

When you acquire, do it for your pleasure and for your enjoyment. Do not acquire to hoard and show others that you have exceptional possessions. It would be like buying a book and displaying it unread at a prominent place in your home, so that people can think you are well read.

Acquisitions should be for the here and now; they should bring you joy in the present moment. This is not merely about material possessions. I see so many parents who have no time to be with their young children in their formative years. That is the time you truly enjoy your children – their innocence and their joy.

Unfortunately, parents are too busy chasing careers and wealth to enjoy their time with their young ones.

When the children are older and are richer, parents find that they do not even know their own children. They are already alienated from their children. What is the point in giving birth to children if you cannot enjoy them? Is it to fulfill some sort of a timetable?

A lady asked me once whether she should have a child. She was in a hurry since she was already in her late thirties.

I asked her simply, 'Ma, are you happy yourself?'

Her face fell. She replied softly, 'No'.

I asked her, 'If you are unhappy yourself, what is the point in bringing another unhappy Being into this world?'

Planet Earth already has so many people who are unhappy. There is no need to add to the existing population of over 6 billion.

Those of you in corporate and business careers, especially have it engrained in you, embedded in you, that you must set and achieve goals. You entire life revolves around establishing goals, targets, milestones or whatever you may want to call them. They are not milestones; they are millstones around your spirit.

When you reach those goals, you are expected to set higher and bigger goals and achieve them. It is much like the acquisition addiction we talked about; but this will never be accepted as an addiction, because it is considered standard business practice.

What you do with business is bad enough, but then, you are so enamored by these concepts that you start applying them in your personal life. It is then truly disastrous. You start calculating: you will get married by such and such age, by which time you would have saved so much money; you will have so many children by this time; the children will do this and that and so on. You have a life plan, all documented and ready for execution as if you are executing a business plan.

This has spread even to Bharat.

A young couple with a small child had come to me. While talking to me, the father was outlining what he wants his daughter to be when she grows up, who she will marry, how much dowry he can afford to give her and so on. This daughter had just started walking. And he was planning some 20 years ahead instead of enjoying the simple innocence of the child!

This kind of goal setting is a pernicious invitation to suffering. It is not essential; it is purely speculative.

In corporate life, people ask me how they can exist if they do not plan. I do not say do not plan. Plan, if it is needed in your work. But once the planning is done, focus on what

needs to be done; focus on the process, the action, not on the goal. Do not get obsessed with the result that you are aiming for; it will only lead you astray.

I learnt from my disciples in business management field that during the eighties and nineties the Japanese overtook the Americans in manufacturing technology by learning from Hindu gurus. All that they did was to focus on the process. They focused on the action instead of the end result and end product.

They showed that even if you inspect your end product 100%, you will end up with defects of 1% or 2%. But, if you inspect the process, you can achieve zero defect.

I was told that this was the philosophy behind the six sigma movement or zero-defect movement. The philosophy was to be in the present moment.

If I tell you that this is what Krishna said in the Bhagavad Gita, you will probably say, 'Ok, tell me another one.'

Time and again, Krishna says in the Gita, 'do what you have to do, focus on your actions, but leave the results to Me, and surrender the fruits of your actions to Me'.

'Act without attachment', is the gist of the Bhagavad Gita.

When He says 'leave it to Me', Krishna is not telling you to transfer your salary to His bank account! He is merely asking you to trust Existence and leave the responsibility of the end result to Existence.

Think again: you cannot even be sure that you will wake up breathing tomorrow morning. It is not in your hands. Yet, you want to control everything, not only in your own life, but in the lives of everyone around you as well.

The power of Krishna's words, whether in your corporate life or your everyday life, is enormous. Once you let go the obsession with the result, you feel liberated and you have no stress. Without the stress, you are able to focus far better on what you are doing. You are not looking over your own shoulder. Your entire mind and body is on the work that needs doing. You are able to do better, faster and still be far more relaxed.

Living in the cyber age is mainly about two things: first, it is about how to manage the information that floods you and how to live harmoniously in spite of all the negativities that are being hurled at you every second, whether you like it or not.

Second, it is about how to manage relationships, parents to children, spouse to spouse and amongst friends.

All else is secondary. If you effectively manage these two, you will manage everything else that is material, quite successfully.

Both these issues, one of managing information and the other of managing people, are about managing your own self.

It may seem strange to you when I say this. But, how you manage your own self determines the way in which you interact with information and people. When I say information, it is not just what you hear on television or read in the newspaper, it is all what is there in your mind also.

The secret of success in this cyber age is to live without fantasies, to live in reality.

In this cyber age, the easiest thing is to lose yourself. You lose reality and immerse yourself in fantasies. It is so comforting to fantasize about what we should have been or what we could be rather than think about what we are. Fantasizing is not about liberation, it is about escaping. In life, there is nowhere to escape. You always come back to yourself.

When you find yourself, when you are centered, you can no longer fantasize; you get stabilized in reality. To be able to center yourself and to find yourself, you need to move out of the past and future into the present, into the here and now. When you are in the present, you are centered, you live in reality. You then learn who you are and what you are here for. There is no longer a purpose in life that drives, but there is a meaning for your life that makes you aware.

The cyber age is a very powerful age if you allow it to be. You can use all the technologies and scientific advances without being ruled by them. You can be connected to the whole world at the click of a button. Instead of using the power of these devices, I see people clinging on to their laptops and cell phones all day and night with no relief. Their companies have them on call 24 × 7.

Science and technology are powerful tools when we use them as effective servants. If we allow them to be our masters, we are making a big mistake.

We seem to have lost the power of discriminating between the two. In our search for materialism, we have succumbed to technology as slaves instead of being masters of them.

Stop wearing your watch for a few days. Stop carrying your cell phone for a few days. Stay out of touch with your email for a few days. See what happens.

Life will not end. It will not end either on planet Earth or for you. Both will continue. In fact both will continue in a better fashion once you have gained the awareness that you can be set free. If you are so afraid, try it over a weekend. Stay without your watch, phone and computer. You will get out of the clutches of the cyber age.

How you lead your life is in your hands. You are responsible for your own transformation. No one else is. No one else can be. Nor can you be responsible for someone else's transformation. You can change no one. You can inspire them to change. Ultimately, they have to change themselves. You can change yourself, that's all.

That is why I call this the Age of Enlightenment. We have gone so far down that we could only go up. Finally, we have realized that all the advances that we talk about cause as much if not more suffering as the comforts they provide. More factories means fewer trees; fewer trees means lesser oxygen and more toxic gases. This leads to Nature's violent response – be it in the form of cyclones, tsunamis or earthquakes.

We then ask, why god is not compassionate.

Give god a chance!

As I mentioned earlier, there is no need to give up any of your possessions. There is no need at all for you to renounce science and technology, wealth and power. Whatever you have, please enjoy without guilt. Forget about all that you may have read in various scriptures about renunciation, forget about all that.

Do not renounce anything that you have; just renounce your fantasies that are mere fantasies and which you don't have.

As long as you acquire and enjoy what you have acquired, you will have no suffering. You will live in the present in your enjoyment. In fact, the more you enjoy what you have, the richer you become.

Bliss brings fortune! This is a natural principle.

When you are in causeless bliss, your mind is focused on the positive aspects of wealth and automatically, more wealth comes to you. Therefore, if you have the wealth, spend the wealth so that it benefits you and others. Do not be afraid that indulging in sensual pleasures will make you a sinner. Suppression is far more dangerous than indulgence. Indulgence with awareness will surely lead you beyond the need for sensual pleasures.

Be comfortable with your uniqueness. Be comfortable with what you have, instead of worrying about what your neighbor has. It is when you fantasize about what you do not have that the problem starts. When you see what others have, you start thinking that you have to be better than what you are; then, you step into suffering. You are no longer in the present; you slip into the future, over which you have no control.

The ability to acquire, enjoy the acquisitions and be in the present moment is what I term Quantum Spirituality. When this happens, you make a quantum jump from the material plane into the spiritual plane. When this happens, you start handling both the planes with great joy! Then you know that you can enjoy all that you have and still be in a state of spiritual well-being of body, mind and spirit as I described earlier.

In Newtonian Physics, matter alone mattered. It was Einstein who linked matter to energy. Even then, many considered these two to be separate states. They said that something was either matter or energy, not both. Later, it was accepted that something could be matter at one time and energy at another time, that it could be matter in one space and energy in another space.

It is Quantum Physics that conclusively established that something could be matter and energy in the same time and space simultaneously. Today, this is commonly understood and accepted.

Yet, it is not yet understood and accepted that you can be wealthy and spiritually blissful at the same time. It is possible. People think that you can benefit from what science and technology offers and still feel the bliss of god.

Just be in the present moment and do what you have to do, in awareness. If what you wish to be is to be wealthy, I guarantee you that you will be wealthy, that you will have emotional fulfillment, you will have physical health, wellness and beauty and over and above everything, you will be spiritually blissful.

This is my promise of Quantum Spirituality!

Let me now tell you how to practice Quantum Spirituality.

Q: You speak of god and the bliss of god. I don't believe in god. What do I do?

A: You and I are in the same space!

In a village, there were two leaders. One of them implicitly believed in the will of god. From morning till night, he would pray and never do anything without a nod from supposedly god.

The other leader was just the opposite. He was proud of his intellect and declared openly that all this talk of god was hallucination.

The villagers were tired of the arguments between these two. They told them to argue in public and settle this matter once and for all, so that the rest of them could rest in peace.

Both the leaders readily agreed. They came on stage and argued for three days and two nights. Toward nightfall on the third day, neither of them had any more arguments to present. There was silence. The villagers eagerly waited for one of them to give up.

The unbelieving atheist was first. He said, 'I now do realize that there is a god and I have been ignorant all this while'.

The villagers let out a collective sigh of relief.

The other leader spoke, 'No, you are wrong. I am now convinced that all along I have been hallucinating. There is no god. I am convinced now!'

This question 'is there a god?' has no logical answer. The concept of god is an experience; it is beyond logic. There is no way you can prove or disprove the existence of god to another person.

You can only experience god for yourself, if you are open and willing.

However, you can use your logic to understand and prove to yourself that you are not in control of your own life, let alone lives of others. You can, if you are honest, understand that this world and this universe operate in spite of you and not because of you.

You will realize, if you are observant, that whatever is spoken of as truth is replaced by a differing truth sooner or later. The truth that the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around the Earth was replaced despite all the aggression and violence of religion. Newton's truths were replaced by Einstein's discoveries and sooner or later someone will replace Einstein's truth as well.

There is a natural law beyond the law of man. There is an existential energy beyond the power of humans. This is what we can call god.

God is not an old man with a flowing beard. He is not an idol, nor is he the absence of an idol. He or She is the energy beyond and behind all our existence.

We give names to gods and fight with others saying that our god is bigger and better than theirs. We kill one another in the name of god, who we say is compassion incarnate. It is better not to believe in such a concept of god. There will then be less violence and bloodshed in this world.

Whether you believe in the concept of an external god or not, it does not matter. Believe that you are divine. That is truly important. You are a part of this Existence and you share the energy of this Existence. The same energy that makes the planets revolve around the Sun and the universe flows inside you also.

Just believe this, that is enough.

I am told that there is something called Pareto's rule: that 20% of our efforts result in 80% of results, that 20% of people upon this planet Earth hold 80% of its wealth.

I think Pareto overstated the 20%. I believe that less than 5% of your efforts end up as 95% of worthwhile results; I know that less than 5% of the world's population holds 95% of its wealth. If one applies this rule to enlightened masters, I say that one master for every billion people is enough to raise the consciousness of this planet! What is needed is just a very small fraction of the fountain of awareness to seed, catalyze and grow awareness in others.

The universe is not a democracy. It has nothing to do with socialism or communism. Its true nature does not discriminate, but Nature also does not distribute equally; Nature is random.

The question is, how within this random distribution of wealth, power, health and enlightenment, 'you' the individual can become the chosen recipient. That is your million dollar quest, is it not?

You are not bothered about anyone else – not your spouse, not your children, not your parents, not your friends. Especially in materialistic Western countries, you are focused only on yourself.

There is nothing wrong in that.

Unless you take care of yourself first, you cannot take care of others. When you take care of yourself with awareness, you will automatically, without being told, extend your care to others with awareness. This is a spiritual Truth.

So let us come to how you can be one of the chosen 5% or 1%, or whatever that minority is; how you can be wealthy, healthy, powerful and happy, all together, in what I term spiritual happiness and Quantum Spirituality.

Let me tell you:

There is no mystery, and there is no secret. It is not my discovery; it is merely my experience of the spiritual Truth. Great masters from over tens of thousands of years ago have experienced and expressed this Truth. Unfortunately, they expressed them as metaphors and the codes that have been lost. I shall now provide you the key.

What matters is your intent, that is all.

Your intent attracts wealth, health, power and happiness.

You will say 'I intend that all the time'. Unfortunately you don't. Along with that intent, you also think of a million other things in direct contradiction. So, your intents do not work for you.

No intent can work powerfully in the conscious state to materialize wholly. It requires extraordinary will power that only the 1% possesses; that is their secret. They focus so well on what they intend, with total exclusion of everything else, that they succeed. That is their secret.

There are methods in which they teach you to use your unconscious. These methods are truly dangerous, so please stay away from them. By whatever name they are called, if someone tells you that you can achieve what you wish to, through subconscious methods of self-hypnosis, relaxation, mind control and so on, just ignore it.

The problem is not that they do not work, they do, but you have no idea of what your unconscious holds and you have no control whatsoever upon what it holds. Hence, subconscious techniques that promise to deliver the world to you are extremely dangerous. Mind control techniques, these so-called visualization techniques that work on the unconscious, hypnotism, regression, and all such processes, release suppressed memories that can cause havoc, because you don't even know what those memories are and what they can do.

The saying, 'Be careful what you wish for, for it may come true', is far more truthful than you can imagine. When the wish comes true, when that wish from your unconscious comes true, it comes out with a load of unknown material. You don't even have a clue as to what is happening. It is only when these wishes start getting answered, you realize that you never wished for many of them, but then they are part of the deal you made.

A small story:

A man went to a bar and ordered drinks. After a few drinks, he became very happy. He now started ordering drinks for all the people around him. When he felt he could not drink any more, he got up and started walking out. The barman ran after him with his bill. 'Sir, you need to pay this for all the drinks you ordered', he said

'Whatever for?' the man retorted, 'I only ordered drinks. Did I order a bill too?'

We are all often in the same state! We believe we can ask for anything and get away with it. Unfortunately, often, there is a huge baggage that follows these wishes, especially ones that are unconsciously driven.

Visualizations of all forms are very powerful. We are not talking about day dreaming or fantasizing here. We are talking about deliberately visualizing what we would like to achieve. Imagination and day dreaming happen when your mind controls you. Visualization happens when you control your mind.

Conscious visualization does not work for most people, since you do not focus well enough; unconscious visualizations are dangerous. Super conscious visualizations are the most effective and safest.

Visualization needs to follow your intent, and both intent and visualization need to be in a meditative and super conscious level. This is crucial and this is truly the code that we had lost. You need to be in inner awareness and in touch with yourself, before your intent can become reality.

Let me now outline the pathway.

First, go into deep meditation.

Throughout this book, I shall suggest to you some simple and effective meditation techniques that you can use. They have been used for thousands of years safely and effectively. They are simple to use, and in most cases fun to practice. They use no audio or visual aids, no mantra and no images. They have no religious significance. The music that you may choose to play in the background has no effect on the meditation.

The most powerful meditations are formless meditations. All meditations I teach are formless meditations. These meditations raise you to the highest level of energy.

To be effective, any meditation must be carried out for 21 minutes, no more, no less. Twenty-one minutes is an energy cycle. You may need an alarm or you may use meditation tapes designed for this purpose.

At the end of the active meditation, you need to be in silence, a witnessing silence for about 10 minutes. Do not follow your thoughts; do not suppress them as they arise; just witness them as if you are watching clouds in the sky.

Each meditation cycle will therefore be about 30 minutes.

You must continue with the meditation for 21 days, which is your full emotional cycle. Once you do 21 minutes each day for 21 days, you will see remarkable results.

You can practice the meditation any time of the day, but on an empty stomach; do not go into meditation for 2 hours after a meal. Do not also meditate within 2 hours of your sleep time; the energy will interfere with your sleep.

The ideal time for meditation is early mornings, if it works for you, or early evenings.

You can meditate in any place; it is better you do it in the same place regularly as far as possible, so that the place gets energized. Wear loose fitting clothes. It is most important that you are comfortable. You can sit in any position, as long as your back, neck and head are in a straight line. Your eyes must be always closed, since 90% of your sensory perception is through your eyes, and you must not be distracted.

Remember, however, that when you meditate, you rise in awareness; so you can hear all that happens around you although your eyes are closed. Meditation does not make you deaf!

It is important that you are completely comfortable during all meditations. You must be relaxed, without stressing yourself. If you have recently undergone surgery or you have any health issues or if you are pregnant, please consult your doctor first.

These meditations are completely safe for any age persons and people in any health condition.

We recommend that you attend our Life Bliss Program (LBP) meditation courses to fully internalize these meditations. These are taught in over a centers in countries, by ordained teachers.

These may be initial problems. Soon, within a week in most cases, you will find you can meditate any time, any place, any how.

Second, set your intent. This intent must be positive, focused and with no contradictions. You can state that your intent is to be wealthy. It can be wealth, health and happiness. You must believe fully that your intent is achievable. You should have no self-doubts. The intent is a silent statement following the meditation.

Third, visualize. Visualize whatever you intended, intensely, deeply, in real terms, in color and in 3D. Visualize what you will do when you have that wealth, health and

happiness; how you enjoy that state and how you help others enjoy. Visualization needs to be active and dynamic with action and movements. It must be real. Spend about 5 minutes in the visualization process or more as you need to.

Fourth, after visualization, let go the intent and visualization. Believe that what you intended and visualized has been achieved.

Fifth, thank the universe for listening to you and for having given you all that you asked for.

That is all you need to do.

This process is instant. But then, even instant noodles require you to buy it, open and heat it, and then eat it! Even instant food requires action from you.

This entire process needs about 45 minutes a day from you and for about a month to see results.

You spend so much time giving appointments to others. For a change, give yourself an appointment every day without fail and see what happens.

By doing this meditation, your entire energy becomes centered on yourself. This technique is designed to make your whole body vibrate with the meditation process. It elevates you to the state of no mind.

Sit in a relaxed way, cross-legged on the floor on a mat or on a chair, with your hands on your knees, palms facing upward. Remove your watch and jewelry, as they disturb the energy flow.

Keep your spine erect. Your head, neck and back should be in a straight line. Close your eyes. Really close your eyes. Usually, when you close your eyes, it is just like putting off the television outside and switching on the inner television. So don't just close your eyelids, close the television screen behind the eyelids also! There is a good way to do this: for a moment, just imagine that your eyeballs have turned to stone. Immediately, your thoughts will also stop or at least slow down.

Now, with your mouth closed, inhale deeply. When you inhale, your stomach should move out, filled with air. Then exhale, and as you exhale, start humming with your mouth closed as the breath leaves through your nostrils. Your stomach will move in.

Just create the vibration Mmmm, as if you are blowing into a closed vessel*.* Imagine your body as an empty vessel. If you put your mouth to it and hum, what sound do you hear? Create that same vibration inside yourself.

Don't chant any other mantra, do not chant Om.

This humming should come from deep inside your navel, not from your mouth, not from the throat, not from your heart, but from the navel. Your belly should rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale while humming.

Each hum should be as long as possible, as deep as possible and as loud as possible, with all your focus and effort but without straining. When you cannot hum any more, when your entire breath is exhaled, inhale as much as your body needs. Let your body decide, do not control your inhalation or exhalation. Watch your stomach rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale.

Allow the body to sway. If you feel that you need to cough or clear your throat, do that and continue to hum.

Do this for 21 minutes. If you are using the CD for the meditation, there will be music accompanying your humming. Else, you can hum without the music.

At the end of 21 minutes, the music stops and a gong sounds. Instantly stop your humming. A great silence floods your Being. For a moment, time stands still. Witness this silence. Experience the tremendous calmness in and around you. After a short while, thoughts will slowly start entering into this silence. Do not stop them, do not enter into them. Simply witness these thoughts. Focus on your heart region, your anahata chakra. You will feel completely centered and calm.

Stay in this state of silence for 10 minutes.

It is best to practice this meditation early in the morning. It generates a tremendous amount of energy in your body. If you practice it at night, it may interfere with your sleep.

This meditation is based on an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practice.

If you have any health issues, or have undergone recent surgery, or are pregnant, do not strain yourself. Please consult a doctor before you start the practice.

To summarize,

1. Practice the meditation for Quantum Spirituality.

2. Intend that you will be wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

3. Visualize this state of intent as present reality and that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships now.

4. Having achieved what you wished, let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you have received.

May you be in Quantum Spirituality and in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Beloved Master,

You have said often that it is possible to follow both the material path and the spiritual path and that there is no conflict between the two. I am confused. How can I focus on mammon and god at the same time? Jesus clearly said that this not possible.

A British lady and a gentleman were on a train traveling from London to Manchester. In the same compartment, there was a fellow passenger, an American.

The lady had brought her small dog with her. This dog kept making a nuisance of itself. It barked at the American and tried to bite him. Instead of correcting the dog, the lady was comforting the dog, 'Don't let that man worry you dear. He is not one of us!'

After a while of this trauma, the dog lifted its legs and soiled the American's trousers. Even for that, the lady comforted only the dog and did not utter a word of apology to the American. Next, the dog further soiled the American's trousers. This was more than what the American could bear. He lifted up the dog, opened the window and threw the dog out of the running train. The lady was too startled even to scream.

The Englishman who was in the compartment spoke for the first time, addressing the American. 'Sir, you Americans always do everything the wrong way; you drive on the wrong side of the road, you eat with the fork and knife using the wrong hands. Look at what you have done now. You have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window!'

All our choices in life create problems for us.

We suffer each time we make a choice. Each time we choose, we regret the choice. We feel we could have done better. Even if we benefit from the choice, we feel we would have benefited more had we made a different choice.

The grass is always greener on the other side. We are forever in confusion based on comparison.

If I ask you to choose between misery and happiness, you will say that I am crazy. Who will choose misery, you will wonder.

But your choice will always lead to misery, simply because you will never be fully satisfied. This is human nature.

There is no comparison in Existence. There are no conflicts and contradictions. Only humans perceive contradictions in Nature. The contradiction exists in us. We are unable to relate with Existence.

We are unhappy when we do not have a choice to make, we are even less happy when we do make a choice!

People ask me, 'Master, can we come and stay in the ashram?' Whatever I say, they will come up with an argument against it. If I say, 'Stay by all means', they will tell me why and how they cannot come to the ashram. The reasons will be they have their business, their family will suffer, their friends will miss them, ashram is too far and so on. There are a hundred reasons ready to be told. If I say, 'Please don't, you are not yet ready. When you are ready, I shall tell you, they feel hurt.'

I don't win either way. They make me a part of their dilemma. We always live in a dilemma. We live in a dilemma of choices that we do not wish to make.

It is true that life offers choices. There are many forks in the path of life, and we have the option to choose. That's the entire concept of free will and exercising our choice.

Though we are free, we rarely have the strong will.

We always think that no choice in life is without a cost. We feel, each decision to choose something necessarily costs us to lose something else. It is never so. It is just our understanding of 'choice' which causes us to think this way.

What happens is, in many cases, we choose wrongly and with the wrong perception of choice. Without the power of foresight, choice is a gamble. Also, combined with this, human nature is such that it remembers losses more clearly than the gains. As a result of the combined effect of these two points, we are mostly left with a feeling of discontent.

Why do we choose? Why don't we accept events as they happen? Why can't we accept the so-called contradictions as they exist in life?

Choices appear to give us freedom. In reality, however, they constrain us. They are not benefits. They are bondages.

We are like children in a candy store when it comes to exercising our choices in life. We get excited. We also get confused. The more options we have, the more complex our decision-making process becomes. If you have only two shirts or two dresses to choose from, the choice of selection is so easy. However, choosing a shirt or a dress in a specialty store becomes a nightmare.

The wisdom of the Tao is based on Yin and Yang – female and male, good and evil, light and dark, black and white. Interplay of these opposites is constant and certain. There can never be good without bad, no light is without shadow. We have no choice but to pick one without the other. That is the way life's cards are dealt to us.

It is our ability to work with the seemingly opposite qualities in life that leads to fulfillment and happiness, not the power to choose between one and another. There really is no choice.

Some people seek to give up material life in search of the spiritual Truth. They think that being with partners, children and possessions is what stops them from being spiritual and blissful. This is like some people giving up their jobs because they do not like their bosses. They move to another job and discover that they don't like their new boss as well! The problem is not with the boss but with that person.

If you have an inherent problem of getting along with people, wherever you go, the problem will follow you. The solution is not to change your jobs, but to change your attitude.

So it is with the spiritual aspirant who feels that he must give up worldly possessions to reach his spiritual goal. It is his attachment to material objects that causes him dissatisfaction. Even if he supposedly renounces the material world and becomes an ascetic, the attachment will follow him. It is the attachment that has to be dealt with, not the objects of attachment.

He will continue to have the same fantasies, except that now he may be wearing white, yellow or saffron robes instead of other colors. His real liberation lies in overcoming his attachment and desires. This can be done even while functioning as a husband and a father.

There is no need to choose between a material life of pleasure and spiritual satisfaction through renunciation. They are both perfectly possible to achieve together, as they can and do coexist. But of course, if married life does not pull you in any way, if it does not hold any fantasy for you, then you need not pursue it.

A story from the Hindu epic Mahabharata:

A young monk got up from under a tree after his morning prayers. A passing crane's droppings fouled him.

In anger, the monk looked up and the crane was burnt to ashes. Satisfied with his power, the monk walked to the nearest house and sought food. The lady of the house was serving her husband and made him wait. When she finally came out to give him food, he stared at her in irritation.

The lady saw him staring and asked, 'Do you think I am a crane that you can burn? My duty is to serve my husband first. I can feed you now.'

Startled, the monk asked her how she knew about the crane. She said she had no time to explain but that if he was really interested, he could go to a person in the nearby town, who would explain this to the monk.

After a long search for the person's house, the curious monk reached the town's butcher shop. Upon inquiry, he found out that the butcher was the person the lady was referring to. The butcher asked him if Kuppammal had sent him there.

The monk was startled again and asked the butcher how both he and the lady knew these things. In response, the butcher took the monk to his home, where he lived with his old parents, who he attended to with great love and respect. As the monk watched the butcher, he realized the sincerity with which he went about his daily chores.

The butcher explained to the chastened monk that he and the housewife both focused on their day to day duties, which they performed to the best of their abilities. They never sat for meditation, they did no rituals. Their work was their meditation. This they performed with no expectations. The mere performance of their own rightful work, their dharma, had made both of them enlightened.

To be enlightened, one does not have to choose between material and spiritual life. Leading a material life righteously and naturally leads to enlightenment.

All one has to do is to live in the present with no regrets about the past or speculations about the future.

Understand that there is no contradiction in Existence. Whatever is happening is always auspicious and according to the law of Nature. The contradiction is in our mind. If this is understood, you will realize that there is nothing called making a choice; automatically, the step you need to take is taken and you move on without getting caught with choices.

As I mentioned earlier, in science, before the concept of quantum was accepted, there was a conflict between matter and energy. Though Einstein had postulated the relationship between matter and energy clearly, that all matter possesses energy, one group said 'both energy and matter exist, but in different space and time'. Another group of scientists disagreed and said 'there is only time gap, no space gap; yet another had a different view: there is only space gap, no time gap'.

Once the quantum theory was accepted, which postulated the simultaneous existence of elemental particles as waves and packets of quanta, this conflict was resolved. It was agreed that matter and energy do exist together in time and space. There is now a concept of singularity of the simultaneous existence of matter and energy; that at the same time, it can be matter and energy, sometimes one and other times another, depending on perception. There are other theories such as string theory, which further confirm this nonduality of Existence.

The concept of singularity or non-duality is where the mind cannot penetrate.

In the spiritual zone, these controversies disappear; they dissolve in experience. Only when you play with words intellectually, you create conflicts and enter into a zone of confusion. When you enter into experience, you just know, that's all. Then, all conflict simply disappears.

As long as you feel you need to live two different lives, material and spiritual, you are only playing with words.

In material life, you are in search of satisfaction of desires. It is not just your basic needs, but also your wants that do not seem to end. While there is a way that your needs can be fulfilled, your wants keep rising even as they keep getting fulfilled and therefore never reach to a point of satisfaction.

Wants create regrets related to the past and greed creates dissatisfaction related to the future.

Spiritual life on the other hand is all about the present.

How can we link these two disparate lives and worlds, we wonder.

Let us think of normal material life as a horizontal line; let us think of leading a spiritual life, being in this present moment, as a vertical line. When we think of choosing between material and spiritual life, we are trying to choose between the horizontal and the vertical. Only when you understand that you can travel both horizontally and vertically, and even explode in all directions, will you understand that there are no contradictions. Till then, you will have the conflict.

This explosion in all directions is what I call Quantum Spirituality. By giving up the choice between one and another, between the material and the spiritual lives, with the understanding that you can travel both these paths and many other paths simultaneously, you enter into Quantum Spirituality.

Many people think that though material life represents all that they have in life, in terms of physical, emotional, economic and intellectual acquisitions, these also bring them

unhappiness. As I said earlier, one reaches a stage in life when one has acquired everything one wanted. The question then is, 'Why did I acquire all this?' This is the 'depression of success' I referred to.

On the other hand, spiritual life is the greener grass that beckons, one that seems to have all that is missing from the current material life. Because you wish to possess what others possess, you seek blindly and land up not knowing why you sought all those things. They are not your own desires, so once they are achieved, you are left wondering why you achieved them!

Your entire life is wasted this way. You run all the time while staying in the same place. The more you acquire, the more you feel the need to acquire, and lesser you are happy with what is.

Whatever you choose, if there is no basic understanding, if there is no awareness, there is no use. Awareness is the door that opens to bliss.

When you are aware, you are in the present. To be in the present, you need to move beyond the mind. Your mind disengages from you, when you rest in the present. Thoughts are nothing but the mind's constant movement between past and future.

It is not the appearing of thoughts that prevents us from being in the present. It is our conditioning that connects one thought to another to form a sequence, a shaft of thoughts. For example, the pain we had 10 years ago, the pain we had 5 years ago and the pain we have today are all totally different unconnected experiences. They have no connection whatsoever. Yet, we connect them to form a pain shaft. And when we experience pain now, that shaft starts happening and magnifies the pain that we feel now. What pains us is not the pain itself but the pain shaft that is not real. There may be pain, no doubt, but the pain that you feel is not wholly from the present pain. It is from the unconscious shaft of pain from previous incidents.

To be in the present, one needs to reach the state of 'unclutching', a state where one does not connect thoughts to form these unreal shafts. When this happens, the contradiction about spirituality and materialism disappears.

When you are in this state of mind, of the present, of the here and now, you are in an 'unclutched' zone. I call this the 'Zero TPS state' – zero thoughts per second state. This is the state of ultimate liberation*,* enlightenment, salvation or nithyanandam – the eternal bliss.

In this 'unclutched', no mind state, you will have complete awareness and total consciousness, and you will not have any inner chatter. You will not connect one thought with another to form either painful or pleasurable shafts. You will witness each thought as it arises objectively, non-judgmentally, set it aside and move on. You become nonattached to everything around you.

The mind conditions you to make you believe that you can only travel in one way – horizontally or vertically, spiritually or materially. That is why you do not grow in many of the spiritual practices called sadhana, which forces you to choose between these two seemingly separate conditions, material and spiritual.

Instead of two axes, you now have multiple axes, infinite axes that offer infinite possibilities in the past, present and future, as well as across all points in space. Being in the here and now helps transcend barriers of time and space so that one can be everywhere at all times.

This phenomenon of singularity is what Hindu scriptures call Brahman and Buddhists call 'akashic record'. This is the state of universal consciousness – where one is simultaneously in a state of past, present and future. This is the state where time and space disappear into one continuum.

This is also the state of enlightenment, as the ego or mind breaks down when this state is achieved. It is an explosion within one's mind that is multi-dimensional in time and space frame, in the total absence of thoughts.

To reach this state, all one has to do is to stay in the present and suspend thoughts of past and future. As for the present, just focus on what you are doing at that time.

Buddhism refers to this as the mindful state. Techniques such as vipassana meditation seek to introduce us to this state of mindfulness.

Most of us, when we eat, do everything else but focus on the food. We talk, watch television or read books, paying little attention to the food that we eat. The food energy in turn pays little attention to us. It turns into garbage and sits on our waist and hips instead of being the energy it could have been.

And then what happens? Instead of being energized after a meal, you want to take a nap!

Stay in the present whatever you may do, when you take the next step, when you brush your teeth, when you smile at some one, just focus on what you are doing at that point in time. If other thoughts intrude, witness them as an observer without getting involved. Do not link one thought to another. Each thought is independent.

When you function in this way, there is no past; therefore no baggage of the past can be accumulated; you can be free from karma if you are in this state! Also, in this state, you will have an intuition about the future; therefore even as you focus only on the present, you are aware of the future and what you decide to do in the present is with complete precognition of what the future entails.

You are what the scriptures call a trikala jnani – one who knows the past, present and future, one for whom the universe holds no secrets. You are indeed a master of the universe.

This is the best meditation you can ever do. All other meditation techniques you can do once in a while to further cleanse yourself in many ways. People tell me after our LBP that they wish to do all the seven meditations taught in the program everyday. I tell them to do one to start with and slowly move to the next. They insist that they want to do all, I agree. After a few months I find that they have not even started with one! When I ask them, they say that they have a problem in finding time.

You have no problem giving appointments to other people for your time. However, when it comes to giving yourself an appointment with your own Self, you have a big problem with time.

Whenever you are in prayer or meditation, you are in a hurry to finish. Even when you are praying or chanting, you are constantly peering at your watch.

People come to me with guilt. I give them some ideas. They insist on learning meditation. Just to console them, I give them some meditation technique. After a month if I ask them, they would just have an added guilt feeling of not doing meditation!

We only wish to try to transform; we really do not wish to transform. You see, it is easy to keep saying that you are trying, because then there is no commitment from your side to show a transformation; trial has no commitment; you just keep proclaiming your wish to transform, that's all.

This is what is called holiday religion. We go to a discourse or a temple when we feel like relaxing. We practice part-time spirituality. As far as we are concerned, it is only skin deep. This fills us with hypocrisy and guilt. Understand that even meditation becomes a ritual if it is restricted to one part of your life at one time in a given space. The moment you associate meditation with a particular time and space in your house, it becomes a mere ritual, there is nothing spiritual about it. At least, that kind of meditation can never bring about the real transformation in you. In true spirituality, your life itself becomes meditation.

Meditation is not a quantity that is to be added to your life; it is a quality that needs to be built into your life.

Concept of Singularity in Quantum Physics is beyond matter and energy. Similarly Quantum Spirituality is beyond material and spiritual lives. You need to be in both the horizontal and the vertical lines simultaneously. What I wish to give you is an understanding, not a mere technique or an empty idea. If you go beyond mind, when you go beyond thoughts, you explode in all directions – vertically, horizontally and in all directions.

There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to enlightenment than the technique of being in the present. You just need to be to be enlightened.

This may be hard to grasp for your mind. Your mind is accustomed to thinking that everything worthwhile is in the future or in speculating the past.

Don't blame your upbringing or your past for you being like this now. Anything that you ever did or that was done to you in the past cannot prevent you from saying yes to what is now. Take your attention deeply into the Now. Now never happened before; it will not happen again.

You do it now or not at all.

There is no starting point to worldly life; there is no end point to spiritual life. Enlightenment is not an end, it is a new beginning. An ultimate experience is not the last experience. It is just the greatest experience till that point in time, that's all.

Someone asked me, 'How can I retain the bliss of your meditation program?'

The moment you wish to retain something, be sure, it will escape from you. If you choose to have bliss, bliss will escape. Like how water flowing in a river stays in your open palms but escapes when you try to close your palms to catch it, when you are in bliss just enjoy the bliss without trying to hold it.

You can never possess nithyananda, eternal bliss. It has to possess you.

Perfectionists like to choose. Life is not perfect, only death is. One who does not make mistakes, or believes he or she makes no mistakes, does not respect others. Do not try to be perfect; do not choose.

People ask what they have to renounce to be spiritual.

I say, 'please do not renounce anything. Do not renounce what you have; renounce what you do not have; renounce the fantasies that you do not have'.

When you are with your wife, do not allow your fantasies to come in between her and you. When you have a home, do not allow a fantasy home to come in between. Enjoy what you have.

Living in the present moment is the missing link that helps you traverse the horizontal and vertical lines at the same time and space. Every moment is a possibility in which you can explode in all directions. In Quantum Spirituality, there is no attachment or detachment. If you are not in awareness, you detach and attach. If you are in awareness, you are just blissfully immersed in the moment with neither attachment nor detachment.

Be aware of what you are and where you are. When we are in one place and one time, we always think about another time and another place. Our body is never where our mind is. When we are in the office physically, our mind is having a vacation; when we are at home physically, our mind worries about work in the office. We invite maya, illusion,

into our lives. We invite suffering into our lives. When we learn to live in the present, our mind stays where our body is. Yet, we find that there are no boundaries; time and space are no longer constraints.

As in the story of the American and the dog, in life we constantly make wrong choices and throw the wrong things out of the window. We do not have the intelligence and awareness to flow with the right choices most of the time. Decisions we make are made by our unconscious mind. That is the problem.

This unconscious mind absorbs almost 90% of all our sensory inputs and takes 90% of the decisions. The unconscious mind can operate at lightning speed. Biologists say that while the conscious mind can only operate at about 60 bytes per second, the unconscious can process 60 million bytes of data every second.

One part of our brain is called the reptilian brain. Biologists say that this is the carry over from our evolution. It is a carry over from the time we were aquatic and amphibian creatures. Nature stores our prehistoric memories in this part of the brain so that we can survive. This reptilian brain is all about our life and death decisions.

Nature programs us in such a way that all life and death decisions are made by the unconscious. Whether to run away from a life-threatening situation or whether one should stay and fight is a decision that is always made unconsciously. The conscious mind, the conscious brain is too slow to react to such emergencies.

Unfortunately, this programming extends to non-emergency situations by default. The unconscious mind is full of past experiences and memories, value systems and beliefs that interfere with our thinking process and our decision-making process. It is these embedded or engraved memories that decide for us, almost always unconsciously.

All the talk about 'I think, therefore I am' is just talk, not reality. Most of the time, you do not even know what you think. Most of your mind is a black box to you; as I have said before, in fact it is the Pandora's box.

People come to me and say that things are not working for them. They give their own reasons as well. They would say that what happens is destiny; that it was meant to happen. Please understand as far as you are concerned that there is no destiny at work. What works for you is pure and simple free will. What you think, what you say and what you do have an effect. That effect arises out of free will.

The problem, however, is that while you are truly free you have no will to speak of. Your will, your thoughts about what you wish to happen keep changing all the time. Very often they are self-contradictory.

Take a very simple example. If you wish to rid yourself of a headache, you keep thinking that you should not have a headache. How will this work? As long as you think of a

headache, the ache will continue. If you wish to be rid of headache, visualize good health, comfort and so on, not headache.

As long as our expression and desires are contradictory, visualization cannot work. They need to be in convergence. We teach simple visualization techniques in our various programs. You have been introduced to one already. People marvel at how effective they are. They are amazingly powerful. All that you need to ensure is that there is no selfcontradiction.

This contradiction is what happens when you try to combine materialistic benefits with spirituality, based on understanding through your past conditioning.

Most people see spirituality and materialism as mutually exclusive and contradictory. When you try to meet two contradictory qualities, you will always land in trouble; you will be in dilemma. Either you feel you need to sacrifice or compromise and neither of these appeals to you.

What matters is whether you are happy, by being spiritual or material. The state of mind within you is what matters, not the external milestones of your spiritual or material accomplishments. Your inner happiness is not dependent and should not be dependent on what the external states are.

The contradictions that you perceive will automatically resolve themselves once you are able to integrate them into inner happiness.

If your inner nature is one of happiness, you will be happy in whatever state you are. You do not need company, you do not need relationships, you do not need status and you do not need possessions to make you happy. Wherever you go, in whatever situation you are in, you carry your happiness with you. Your happiness is not dependent on external factors, you are liberated.

People who think they are spiritual, get dependent too. Instead of name, fame, wealth and relationships, they get hooked on to aspirations of salvation, sacrifice, renunciation and enlightenment. Sometimes, they seek all – enlightenment as well as wealth, name and fame.

No problem at all, but then when you have inner contradictions based on your past conditioning that all these do not go together, you create problems for yourself. Things become difficult to cope with.

You asked, 'How can I focus on god and mammon at the same time?'

The only reason you cannot is that you have been taught you cannot, that is all.

People who wish to control you through fear and greed have dinned it into you that you cannot be wealthy and spiritual at the same time. Jesus is reported to have said, 'It is

easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to go to heaven.'

What Jesus said has to be viewed in context of having to drop your baggage, your samskara – deeply engraved past memories – before you can be liberated. Wealth is energy, and not a burden, when it is appropriately used.

Once you believe that you can be wealthy and happy, rich and spiritual, and there is no inner self-contradiction, you will become wealthy and happy. Your belief will generate your thought, your thoughts will generate your actions and your actions will generate wealth and happiness. This is a spiritual truth.

Nature sees no contradictions. To man, Nature is full of apparent contradictions: good and bad, pleasure and pain, loss and gain, name and shame, all these are man-made contradictions.

Your ability to live with, and enjoy opposites, makes you comfortable with choices. If you are the kind of person who lives amidst great material comfort and can afford to demand the best of everything and yet can do with two simple meals a day, by choice, then, you can carry that comfort with you anywhere!

But, however, you may be someone who has decided to renounce material comforts for the sake of renouncing. So, instead of Mumbai or Delhi, you decide you will go to the mountains, the Himalayas perhaps. Perhaps, you have heard me say that there is something in the Himalayan environment, the very air, which inculcates spiritual evolution. So, you go there hoping, expecting that something will happen. You sit crosslegged with your eyes closed for hours. You do pranayama and asana.

Only time will pass. Nothing else will happen. So, you get bored with the mountains and return to Mumbai or Delhi. Again, you are unhappy.

This cycle continues because of your expectation with which you make the choices. Sitting with just your eyes closed makes you only dull, not enlightened. Even with eyes closed, you can have a television running within the closed eyes. All that you refuse to see outside will be playing inside. Instead of reality, you will live in fantasy, that's all. Consciously, you may refrain from seeing something. But unconsciously, there will be so many things surfacing which you will not be able to control.

When we operate in the unconscious zone, we operate out of our instinct. The reptilian and some other parts of our brain control our emotions and autonomous nervous systems without even a conscious effort from our side. If they do so, we will not survive. Our system will shut down when we sleep.

The problem that arises is one of our wanting to be in control. The truth is we cannot, as long as we work through our mind. At the very best, we can try and activate our conscious brain as much as we can and hope for the best to take what we believe would

be rational decisions. Since the conscious part of the brain is a mere 10% of the total brain, this possibility is limited.

In order to move beyond this dilemma, we need to understand how our mind works. How do we get out of this dilemma? How do we regain our freedom?

Our thoughts are the constant movement of our mind from past to future and future to past. This is the constant inner chatter that manifests itself as worries, desires, anxieties and so on. There is nothing we can do with the past, it is history. Often, we cannot even learn from it. Yet, we constantly dwell in the past, in regrets and guilt. We spend hours rehearsing how we could have done better by having said what we forgot to say.

Of what use is it? The moving finger never returns having written.

The future is even more uncertain. We don't know a thing about what can or will happen and we have no control either. We do not even know whether we will breathe the next breath. How then can we determine the future? Trying to determine the future by trying to learn from the past is as foolish as trying to drive a car by looking at the rearview mirror. We just cannot do it.

The only way we can accomplish anything is by doing whatever we can in this present moment. What is the present moment now is the future. By doing things correctly now in the present moment, we can certainly influence our future.

The interesting thing is that once we focus on the present moment, once we focus on what we are doing at this moment in time, our thoughts reduce and stop. When we are totally in the present, in what I call the time shaft zone, thoughts cease. One falls into a no mind zone. In this zone, one sees the past, present and future, all as one; one sees the future clearly.

This zone is the zone of intuition. Many of you would have experienced the feeling of having been in a place before. You may have identified the caller just as the phone rings, without knowing who it is. You would have at that moment unknowingly fallen into the time shaft zone. You become intuitive. You foresee the future.

You can develop this faculty knowingly. You can learn how to do it. The process to achieve this is 'meditation'. Meditation is turning inward, becoming aware, touching your consciousness; touching it at the point where thoughts cease and you reach the no mind zone. Then, you are in a state of intuition.

Getting into the state of intuition need not be a spiritual exercise. You will benefit enormously through this skill in the material plane. You will be able to decide rapidly and rightly and above all, intuitively. As your intuition grows, you evolve spiritually.

Spirituality is the integration of all your physical, mental, emotional, material and relational well-being, taking into account the well-being of others also. That's all. As

Part 2: Quantum Spirituality_English_part_2.md

long as you wish well for others while you wish well for yourself you are in a spiritual plane. There is therefore no need to separate spirituality from materialism. There is no conflict.

The conflict arises when greed overwhelms you to the extent that you are ready to harm others. The conflict arises when mammon blinds you to the suffering of others and you rush to acquire. The rich man that Jesus refers to who He says has less chance of entering heaven than a camel passing through the eye of a needle, is one who gains through the suffering of his fellowmen.

I say, 'Do not renounce what you have; just renounce whatever you do not have!'

Do not worry about the evils of materialism or whether a rich man can enter the gates of heaven or not. First of all, heaven and hell are states of your mind, not locations that you will be dispatched to when you die. You live in hell in this life when you live in sorrow, and you live in heaven when you know how to live in bliss.

If you have the attitude of a miser who acquires ceaselessly but does not know how to enjoy, you will be in hell even when you are living.

As long as you are satisfied with what you have and do not keep wanting more out of fear and greed, you are alright. You need not renounce anything that you have today. Be happy with life that you have, your spouse, your children, your house, your car, your career and whatever else that you have. Enjoy what you have acquired, fully.

The problem that all of us have is that we chase acquisitions; but once we acquire, we lose interest in what we have acquired and we are off to acquire something else. This attitude truly lands us in hell, even as we live.

Ramana Maharishi says that till the moment we acquire something, what we wish to acquire looks like a mountain; but once we acquire it, it shrinks to the size of a mustard seed!

We are forever running; we are never comfortable being still. Look at everything that you have achieved in life. Just look back and consider whether any of it made you truly happy. If it had, you would have stayed where you were and enjoyed what you acquired. You would not have reason to keep running to acquire more and more.

People, especially those on corporate or business life, believe that they should set goals only to exceed them. You set a goal, achieve it and set a higher goal, and so it goes on, never ending. You call it ambition. But along with this ambition, comes fear. Fear is what drives the greed. Fear of the fact that you may lose all that you have acquired drives you to acquire more and more. That is the problem with your ambition. It is driven by fear.

When you know that your own life is impermanent and that when you die there is nothing that you can take with you, where from do you get the idea that what you acquire is permanent?

We keep acquiring, and then move on, as though what we have acquired is of no further use. This is what leads to the contradiction of forever being dissatisfied with what we have while constantly fantasizing about what we do not have.

That is why I keep saying: do not renounce what you have. Enjoy what you have. Enjoy your wealth, enjoy your health and enjoy tour relationships. You don't have to have a whole load of these things to enjoy. You may not even have some of these things, but that is not the point. The point is, whatever you have, just enjoy it with deep fulfillment.

Being fulfilled with what you have is the corner stone of all your happiness; your possessions, your relationships and what you do day to day should fulfill you. When that happens, you are in the present moment of being happy with what you have here and now.

Once you have developed the mindset for being happy with what you have and what you have finished acquiring, you will stop reaching out for more acquisitions.

But this should happen in you as a natural happening, not as a compulsion. Without conviction, if you adopt this attitude, you will continue to suffer with suppressed fantasies. If you give yourself time, it will happen. And you won't even know when it happened.

A monk who sits with closed eyes and still visualizes women in lust is in far worse a state than the playboy who lusts openly. The monk has renounced whatever material possessions he had but is yet to renounce his fantasies!

You may have seen old pictures of heavenly damsels dancing in front of meditating sages. At one time, especially in South Bharat, every single calendar used to have these kinds of pictures. The sage will have one hand raised as if to drive the woman away and another hand across his eyes as if he is peeping through his fingers at the woman! The woman would be highly sensual, and it was believed that Lord Indra sent these women to test the meditating sages. One can see this especially of sage Vishwamitra.

If this were to be true, if Indra would be sending celestial maidens, apsara, to disturb meditators, then all men will start meditating right away! Actually, no such thing really happens. The celestial maidens are nothing but the depiction of the fantasy within the sage. The fantasy thoughts that arise while practicing austerities such as meditation are depicted by these celestial maidens. It shows that while the sage thinks that he has conquered lust and sex, his fantasies are still to leave him completely.

When you renounce all that you do not have, you no longer live in fear and greed. You can no longer be fuelled by fear and greed because you have renounced all the fantasies! You live a fulfilled life. You live a liberated life. You become a true renunciate without having to renounce anything that you have. You are at ease. You reach the cross roads of both the material and spiritual planes. From this point, you can explode in any direction. You have infinite choices.

In fact, you reach a point of choicelessness.

When you decide to be choiceless, when you renounce all that you do not have and you live in the present moment, the universe showers upon you all that you need. You do not have to ask, it will be given. The mere decision to be content with what you have and the awareness in not grasping through fear and greed ensures that you live in bliss.

This state is what Krishna constantly refers to as the state of being non-attached. He says again and again, 'Do whatever you have to do with no expectation of what is likely to happen, with no expectation of and with no attachment to the result of your actions. Surrender the results of your actions to Me, to Existence. You will be liberated; you will be in bliss.'

The greatest master of them all, Krishna, the Jagat Guru – master of the world – says this, time and time again. The renunciation we talk about here is not of actions, but of desires, expectations and results.

When I say renounce what you do not have, many of you ask me, 'How can I pay my bills, especially in a country like the United States where there is no one to support me?'

Understand that I am not saying that you should sleep all day doing nothing. You need to do what you need to do in the material plane. But, you can do this without getting obsessed about the end result, without worrying and planning again and again about the outcome of every passing minute. You can do things without asking for more and more. That is what I am trying to say.

The problem is, you have needs as well as wants. Needs are basic to you. you need them to live your life. On the other hand, wants are not your needs nor are they your own desires. They are borrowed from a thousand other people, sometimes many whom who have not even met, about whom you have learnt from the media, from magazines, television, movies and so on. Their possessions become your obsessions. Their beauty becomes your inferiority complex. Their possessions spur your greed and make you unhappy.

The minute your neighbor centrally air conditions his house, the temperature in your house goes up, you start sweating from jealousy.

The renunciation I have talked about is what Krishna talks about. It is nothing but giving up jealousy, greed, fear and lust and to continue to do what you need to do to carry on with life blissfully, with no concern about whether your efforts will succeed or fail; in

fact without even knowing what success and failure are, with just the knowing of doing and being.

It is only when you become goal centric, you have the problems of success and failure. When you do not have any specific goals, any thing specific to achieve, how does one define success or failure? Whatever happens is ok. You live life as it is, as it happens. It is a state of being comfortable with whatever happens. In that state, whatever that is good for you happens.

This is the state of renunciation, where the past and the future are renounced in favor of the present. In this state, when you live in awareness of the present without having to choose the past or future, when you live in the knowledge that whatever you do will result in material, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being bliss automatically happens in you.

You need not ask for anything; when you are in the present moment of awareness, Existence showers upon you!

This is a 30-minute meditation, with three parts of 10 minutes each. Use the instruction tape if you have one, or else use an alarm clock, or have someone monitor the timings.

This meditation brings out all the suppressed emotions in you. Many masters have employed this technique before.

Breathing is the bridge to the universe. It is the system with which you are living your mind. If your thinking is calm, your breath will be relaxed. If your thinking is aggressive, your breathing will also be aggressive. You first need to control your breathing in order to control your mind.

Presently, in our repressed state, most of us are half-alive and half-dead. In the first part of this meditation, deep breathing is carried out in order to create a churning in your repressed system. Your mental system is made fully alive by the increased intake of oxygen, it becomes more vital. Your cells will get more energy and will create more bioelectricity or bioenergy. This energy will melt all the repressed emotions like melting ice.

You may practice this technique on an empty stomach, preferably in the morning. Twenty-one days of this meditation will transform your Being and bring a glow to your face and body. This is like taking a psychological bath. You will be able to experience the silence in you. When you kill sorrow, ananda or bliss flowers in you and sends forth a beautiful fragrance from you.

What is chaotic breathing?

In chaotic breathing, there is no definite rhythm. Just breathe as deeply as you can. Forget everything else, just breathe, breathe deeply. Become the breathing!

During chaotic breathing, when the body intelligence is allowed to take over, the body will take in however much oxygen is needed. There is no need to control your breath – this is not pranayama.

If you have a heart problem, or you have had recent surgery, or you are pregnant, or you have any health issues, consult a doctor first; then, do this without straining yourself, and as much as you can without discomfort. Otherwise, if you are fit, put your whole energy into it!

The vibrations generated in these 10 minutes will melt all your solidified negative energies. The unconscious will be thrown open. All conditioned memories or samskara will be dissolved.

There is no particular way to keep your body. You have to be standing, that's all. Let your body behave as it wants to.

Stand with your eyes closed. Breathe deeply and rhythmically from the depths of your body, with your mouth closed and through your nose. Move your hands, flex your knees and bend to a semi-squatting position and then rise up. Move as if you are a bird in flight, up and down, knees moving up and down, arms moving up and down, all rhythmic in line with your breathing.

Do the movements gently and synchronize your inhalation with upward movement and exhalation with downward movement. If you have a heart problem, do only as much as you can. Similarly, pregnant women and others with physical ailments – do only as much as you can. Do this for 10 minutes.

For the next 10 minutes, keep your eyes closed and tense each part of your body, part by part, limb by limb, then let it relax; tense and relax one limb and then move to the next. Start with your feet, move to the legs, then to the thighs, next to the hips, then to the stomach and lower back, next to the chest and upper back, then to your arms from finger tips to shoulder, next to the neck and shoulders, next to your face and finally to the top of the head. Relax each part of your entire body before you move to the next part. When you move to the next part, keep the earlier part relaxed. For instance, while tensing your thighs, keep your legs and feet relaxed.

This is like an isometric exercise with each part of your body.

During this part of the meditation, all the energy pathways in your body, all the 72,000 of them, get energized.

At the end of these 10 minutes, you will become vacant inside; you will become cool, calm and composed.

For the next 10 minutes, sit down keeping your eyes closed and chant the 'hoo' sound, just the word 'hoo'. There is no need to chant it deeply and loudly. Just chant it in a relaxed manner. As you chant, simply witness whatever happens inside or outside your Being.

The first two parts of this technique are actually a preparation for this third part that is the actual meditation. When you come to the third part, you will see that the mind becomes silent effortlessly, by itself. Silence cannot be forced upon you; it can only happen by itself.

Breathe normally, and with each exhalation, produce a 'hoo' sound with your mouth. Focus completely on this sound and become one with this sound.

After a few seconds, you will see that thoughts are again rising in you. Then just sit down, in a pleasant mood, and slowly start witnessing those thoughts. Breathe normally.

Remain in this relaxed state with a smiling face and blissful mood. During this time, there may be many experiences, just watch them as you would watch the television. Watch your mind thought by thought.

Don't concentrate on anything. Meditation is not concentration. Meditation is awareness.

So just be aware of your thoughts, witness what happens inside your body and outside your body.

Slowly, very slowly, open your eyes. Carry this energy and silence with you.

If you want to test the efficiency of this technique, go and have your picture taken today.

After 21 days of practicing this technique, have another picture taken and compare the two. I assure you, your face will look completely different! Your eyes would have become more pleasing. You will look blossomed. You will feel grounded in reality.

To summarize,

1. Practice the meditation for grounding yourself in reality.

2. Intend that you will be in tune with reality, with no fantasies.

3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize being in the here and now. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be grounded in reality and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Beloved Master,

My husband says that he understands what you say, but does not accept what you say, and does not like to come to listen to you. He is not happy that I come to listen to you. What do I do with him?

Let me tell you a small story:

An elderly couple was dining at the local restaurant.

The person in the next booth watched them curiously as they ordered one hamburger and extra forks and knives. As he watched, the man gently cut the burger in half and placed half in his wife's plate.

He picked the fries one by one and split them equally. He then poured half his soda into his wife's glass.

He then began to eat, and his wife sat watching, with a smile on her face.

The man across the booth felt drawn toward them and asked, 'Ma'am, can I buy you another burger?'

She said, 'No, don't worry. We've been married 50 years, and everything has always been and will always be shared, half and half.'

'Aren't you going to eat then', he asked.

She replied, 'I will wait. It is his turn today to use our teeth first.'

Your question appears simple, but in reality, it is complicated and has many implications to be understood.

The first thing: this is not an issue that is true only with your husband. It is with many couples and many spouses. What one accepts, the other finds it difficult to accept.

The most basic thing is the structure of the mind; the mind is full of contradictions.

You see, today, the world is being educated more in rationalism. People are getting centered in logic and rationalism. Anything that they are unable to comprehend with their logic, they start fearing; they start feeling that they are losing control; it is as if they are losing their own identity. When I talk, they get this same feeling because an enlightened talks the truth straightaway and truth is beyond logic. So, they fear to come near me.

Man falls into depression while searching for happiness. The truth is, he searches for happiness, but in the wrong direction. He changes cars every year, houses every second year and sometimes spouses every third year. But, none of these changes produce the expected result for him; he goes on and on searching, looking for some avenue where permanent happiness surfaces. Permanent happiness lies beyond your logic.

Please understand that there are two things in you: hardware and software. Your mind is the software and your brain is the hardware. In the mind itself, within the software itself, there are two parts: conscious zone and unconscious zone. The conscious zone is the actual operating system; the unconscious zone is the virus!

The conscious zone can be cleansed by teachings. The unconscious zone can only be cleansed by meditation. Now, the hardware, the brain itself, needs to be then tuned to hold the changes in the software, the new experience that is created through the changed software. This can only happen through the blessings of the master, by initiation from him.

When you clean the conscious and unconscious and create an effect, the hardware may not be able to hold and sustain that effect from day 1. But if the master's initiation happens, the hardware also changes to hold that effect.

In the absence of a living master, constant meditation and teaching can change the hardware. Hardware is like grooves created out of samskara – stored memories – in the brain. Once the new software happens, the hardware will slowly change. But if you wish to immediately change the hardware, the master's presence is the right thing. He will straight away change the hardware.

Sometimes, without even changing the software, the hardware can be changed and the person will start radiating the correct software's quality!

That can happen when a disciple is completely open to the master; if he is in love with the master for no reason.

Sometimes, a disciple falls in love with the master for no reason. He may not be attracted to his teachings or to his meditation techniques; he simply falls in love, that's all. In that case, straightaway, the master can change the hardware.

Those kinds of disciples will simply radiate the quality of the teachings and meditation without even going through all of them. They would not have gone through all these techniques, but straightaway the result will be seen.

As on now, both the hardware and the software are outgoing, toward the outer world. If you do our chakra meditation camp, suddenly you will realize that the software becomes in-going. It leads into spirituality. It acts as a cleansing process of the conscious mind by the teachings and the unconscious portion by meditation. It is an inner transformation.

But even if the software turns inside, the hardware will not be able to handle it. Then naturally, the hardware will try its best to retain its grooves. If the software is very strong and stays in the same tune, the hardware will slowly change.

If immediately after this teaching and meditation, the initiation from the master also happens, then the hardware will also change. It will start accepting the new software. It will start to hold the new experience; transformation then settles within that person.

"Sometimes the disciple

Some people are afraid that this transformation may happen to them. They do not wish to transform because they do not know what they will transform into. The problem is that they do not even know where they are now, but they don't know that! They only think that they know that.

When they do not know where and what they are transforming from, how can they understand what they will transform into?

Anyhow, they are afraid!

Master

They are in deep uncertainty of knowing who they are, where they are, and why they are where they are. When they see someone happy, changed from the unhappy person that they used to know, they are terrified; their logic fails and fear of some unknown force grips them.

In your case, from seeing you, from an understanding of what he sees as your experience, your husband starts fearing that the same might happen to him. Understand that he may not be unhappy with what is happening to you. He now knows that you have become non-attached, you are no longer nagging him and you do not care about what he does. He sees the joy in your face, the grace in your stride, how well you are handling anger, the absence of fear; he sees everything and might even feel happy about it.

But on the other hand, he is worried that he no longer has a hold on you. Moreover, he is afraid that this non-attachment may happen to him as well. The uncertainty of what it holds for him makes him behave in the fashion you are talking about.

The fear, deep in his soul, is that he may agree with what I am saying! If that happens, he is afraid he has lost himself. Therefore, he feels that it is better not to listen to me, not to come close, not to open his heart. This fear is very real; and this is not only with your husband, it is with thousands of other people too.

If you ask them what they know about me, if you ask them what my approach to life is, what my philosophy is and what my attitude toward religion is, they will not be able to say a single negative thing about it. First of all, they know very little and second, the little that they know also, they would be secretly agreeing with. But to protect their pretense of knowing, which is important to them, it is better not to hear me, because hearing me holds a danger for them: they may have to change their ideas about me.

Because of this hypocrisy and self-contradiction within, your husband is behaving in this fashion.

People who are worried because of me are people who don't know me. At least, they can be honest with themselves and with me. Before criticizing me or not accepting me, they can at least give me an opportunity to explain myself to them. Then they are free to be worried; there is nothing to stop them. But they are afraid of listening, they are afraid of coming close, they are afraid of entering the gates of the ashram. What is it that can be done?

The reason is that they know very well, deep in their hearts, that if they listen to me, if they come inside the ashram, they will have drop their worry and irritation and fall in

tune with me. They will drop their negativity and their ego also. That is what they are afraid of. They are afraid of getting hurt!

Without coming close to me, they can remain annoyed, irritated and angry; that is simple. But, coming close to me, it is almost impossible to remain annoyed. Have you not experienced yourself? You cannot be annoyed, you cannot be an enemy. Am I right?

Change is the greatest fear in everyone's minds, especially, when the change concerns one's own self. We are all happy if others change, especially when they change according to how we wish them to change! That is no problem at all. We are happy if another person loses his ego and becomes humble and detached.

It is like this: every family can accept that their neighbor's son becomes a monk, if their neighbor's son becomes a Vivekananda. They will fall at his feet without any problem. But they can't take it if their own son becomes one! It becomes totally unacceptable. They start a war with their own son for it.

Your husband does not like to come to listen to me. In some cases, it is the wife that does not like her husband coming to me! It seems a general rule that if one spouse finds me acceptable, the other must find me unacceptable. Sometimes, they come separately and when they come, each one complains about the other! I left home to avoid these kinds of problems, and now these problems are chasing me! Anyhow, I am just joking.

I don't know your husband, and he obviously doesn't know me. There are some fundamental rules before you can make somebody your enemy. First, you have to be a friend, without friendship you cannot create enmity. He is absolutely ignorant about me; just provoke him, ask him what he is annoyed about? You might discover that he is my secret friend!

The Hindu husband thinks that the wife is only a possession. He does not give respect to the woman as a human being. He feels he is her owner, her possessor, that the wife is only a private property; that he has purchased her. The very institution of marriage in Bharat needs to refer its roots and iron out its distortions.

During the Hindu marriage ceremony, the entire concept of the Vedic rite of honoring each other is done as a ritual. But it is not even understood, because no one understands what is being chanted during the ceremony! Only the priests follow what is being done. And quite often, the priests who utter the mantra themselves do not understand what the mantras mean. Where then is the sanctity of the marriage?

Your husband is annoyed with you because you have proved to be more intelligent and more daring than him. You have risked your relationship and you have risked your future. You have gone ahead of him and you have proved him to be slower in comparison to you. Naturally, he will be annoyed with you.

Husbands, particularly those who have lived in Eastern countries, have the idea that the woman is inferior, their arrogance and ego are such that they even go to the extent of telling women, 'Your husband is your god; there is no other god for you.'

Millions of women had to be ready to be burned with their dead husbands, because the husband suspected that after he dies, his woman may fall in love with somebody else. He wanted to dominate her even after he dies, and the only way was to have the wife also jump into funeral pyre.

And those women who refused to be burnt lost all their dignity in the society, because the rules of society are made by men, by the husbands. They were then treated as corrupt, because if they had loved their husbands they would have jumped into the funeral pyre. It would have been proof that they loved their husbands.

Nobody questioned why the husband never followed the wife into the funeral pyre when she died leaving him. In fact, when the wife's dead body is burning in the fire, most often, the husband was planning for a new marriage. Just on the funeral ground, people start talking about where to find a girl for him. Even the body of the present wife is not yet fully burnt!

Also, the woman has to prove her loyalty, her faithfulness to the man, whereas the man is not asked to prove anything.

All these age-old customs somehow get into the bloodstream of society and what women undergo today is a direct result of this. So your husband is bound to be annoyed with you because you have proven to be more intelligent than him. Your courage to follow me must be annoying him because it is not what has been taught to him by society.

But it is now your task to challenge him. If he is annoyed with me, ask him, 'What are the reasons?' And tell him, 'If you have the courage, then come to the ashram and ask your questions. Unless you prove that your thinking is right, you have no authority to be annoyed!'

In Bharat especially, men live in their muladhara chakra – root energy center – and women live in their swadhishtana chakra – spleen energy center. Men live in lust, anger and greed. Muladhara is the highest energy center of animals and the lowest of men. That is where 95% of men live. They live in a survival mode and operate out of instinct. Women on the other hand, live in fear and uncertainty. They feel that they have to please certain people in order to live with a feeling of security.

Each manipulates the other through the other's uncertainty. Man exploits the woman's fear and insecurity. The woman manipulates the lust and ego of the man. Instead of strengthening each other, they try to control each other by exploiting the weakness of each other.

When you come to the master and with his grace learn to energize your energy centers, the lust, insecurity and ego dissolve. You start understanding your true nature. You start realizing that you are meant to love each other, not manipulate each other. However, if you have not reached the level of maturity to understand this, you get caught in it.

The ashram is not a place of entertainment. Once you get in here, you are going in for surgery without knowing it. My whole effort is to cut people from the past – the dead, the shadows of the dead – and to open them up in the present to create awareness.

I don't give any belief. I give you only a deep longing and thirst for the Truth so that you can seek and find it on your own. Unless you find the Truth by your own self, all your knowledge is simply a burden, a poison, a force which destroys your intelligence and your very soul.

When you seek a master, when you come to a master, be very clear about what is at stake. You will experience death; you will experience the death of your old identity; you will experience the demise of your ego. From that destruction, your new identity will be created. The destruction of your ego will be painful, for it is a process of giving birth; giving birth to yourself, to your divine nature.

Please understand as well, that spirituality is a path of aloneness. You traverse that path alone, not even with your spouse. Ramakrishna has said that if you decide to follow the spiritual path and follow a master, you can disobey even your parents. Therefore, you can, if you wish, disobey your spouse!

However, It is better that you do not come in if you are afraid. It is far more dangerous if you start running away half way through the process. Your husband may be a lot smarter than you think! Maybe he knows what the danger is!

Another issue here is the relationship between the two of you. In any human relationship, especially in this age, it is the fantasies that determine what each person thinks of the other, not the reality of the other person. We have no time to look at the real person. We already have a judgment about that person, a hurried preconceived notion about that person. Then, we collect all evidences that go toward supporting that judgment and conclusion. Anything contrary will be rejected outright.

If you think I am exaggerating, please watch your own response to your husband's words and actions. It is not what he says or does but what you have made up in your mind about him that makes you respond to him. You may accept many things from other people, even criticism from who you think are your friends; but, when it comes to your husband, almost always, you will react negatively to anything that he says. You have already decided that he is no good, and so everything he says or does is no good too.

This is true of our behavior with everyone around us. We respond to the person, who we think the person is and not to the issues, their actions or words. Our perception, our

mental image, colors all their actions. Because of this, whatever your husband or wife does it does not seem right to you.

Just try to change your approach toward your husband or wife. You can change, and in the process, he too may change. Irrespective of what he says and how he reacts, from whichever emotional level he interacts with you, whether irritation, anger, fear or attention need, respond to him with love, with unconditional love. This is not easy, but it is possible.

Many of my disciples have told me how this one technique, this one trick had changed their relationships and lives. You do need to practice meditation so that you are in touch with your inner self. Many of them had energized their heart center, their anāhata chakra, through meditation and were also practicing the ānanda gandha meditation as THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spiritual Healers. Even then, it is not always easy especially with your spouses.

You tend to expect too much of your life partners. You wish to possess them. You wish to control them. They must do as you wish them to. Let me tell you that your expectations are unrealistic.

Just think: do you behave the same way as your husband wants you to? It is nearly impossible. How can you then expect him to behave the way you wish him to?

Drop your expectations about others, how you wish them to act, speak and think. No expectations means no disappointments and no suffering. Once you have no expectations, you can look at the person for what he or she is, very objectively, and respond with unconditional love and compassion. You will see miracles happening in your relationship.

The very dissolution of negativities in your mind about the other person conditions you to express love. You then rise in love!

The heart is the portal through which you can enter reality. This meditation is especially useful if you are a head-oriented person, if you are based more in the intellect than in the emotions.

Actually, almost all of us are head-oriented. Heart-oriented people can't survive very long in today's world. So we have all made our minds strong. Our heart center is weak, because we don't give it enough exercise. We don't operate from the heart, we don't act from the heart.

Try looking at the world from your heart, and you will discover a unity in the world. The mind sets up barriers, the heart dissolves barriers. Activating the heart center naturally creates a gushing of love in your life.

It is simple, though you may find it a little strange!

The only thing you have to do is imagine yourself as headless!

Walk, sit down, do all your work, feeling as if you are headless.

Feel that your head has disappeared.

All your focus is now on your heart.

In the beginning it will be just pretence; you might feel disoriented and awkward.

What happens to all my sense organs? How will I see, hear and speak? you may ask'.

Your sense organs have not disappeared – they have simply slipped into your heart region!

Just like how blind men use their hands to 'see', you will be using your heart to relate with everything around you. You will be seeing with your heart, from your heart.

Try it. You can do it.

Stand before a mirror and look deeply into your eyes. Feel as if you are looking from your heart.

Allow every act to be controlled by the heart. Feel the love in your actions.

By and by, you will feel the heart center flowering, actually flowering. You will feel a blossoming inside.

And then you will feel the onrush of love.

You will find your every act becoming more loving. That is why, when someone is in love, we say he has lost his head!

When you are flowing with love, when your heart center is overflowing, you actually lose your head. Your actions are no longer controlled by the head.

There is no specific duration for this meditation. Just do it whenever you feel you need to. And you will keep feeling the need. As you keep practicing this meditation, you will find yourself growing more and more loving. Your relationships will improve dramatically. You will start perceiving the harmony in the world. You will move a step closer to god.

1. Practice the meditation for rising in love

2. Intend that you will be in love with everyone.

3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize love pouring through you unconditionally. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive every moment.

May you rise in love and be in eternal bliss, nithyananda!

Beloved Master,

You say that nithyanandam or eternal bliss is our true nature. You say that enlightenment cannot be a goal, it just happens. If I make no effort toward enlightenment how will I attain it? How will I attain bliss, nithyanandam?

In the Hindu epic Mahabharata*, this beautiful story is told.*

A monk aspiring to become enlightened lived across the street from a prostitute.

This monk had only contempt for this woman who he considered to be the source of all moral corruption. Every time a man visited her, this monk would set a stone aside and soon there was a huge pile of stones that signified her dissolute nature.

The woman on the other hand spent all her time in the worship of Krishna, even when she was with her clients. Whatever her body may have been doing, her mind was focused on Krishna and in her love for Krishna.

The monk and the prostitute died at the same time. Their spirits went in front of Lord Yama – Lord of Death and Justice. Yama sent the woman to the highest level of heaven and cast the monk to hell. In fury, the monk screamed that there was no justice in the land of Yama.

Yama said, 'it is not what you did with your body that matters to me. It is the intent with which you lead your life that determines what happens to you at the time of death. The woman spent her life with her mind focused on god. You pretended to focus on god while lusting after her body!

Yes, enlightenment just happens. It happens when your life is led in the path of awareness, not because you strive toward enlightenment.

Be very clear, whether you believe it or not, whether you understand it or not, whether you accept it or not, nithyanandam – eternal bliss – is your true nature.

Bliss happens in you all the time; it is just that you keep doing things to stop it all the time. You are enlightened even now. It is just that you are not aware of it. So, there is no need to work toward enlightenment. How can you work toward something that you already are?

That is the nature you were born with. Somewhere along the way, you lost that ability to continue to experience the state of bliss and the state of enlightenment you were born with.

If you see an innocent child, a child as yet uncorrupted by its elders, environment and society, you cannot but be awed by its ability to flow with Nature. The child is curious all the time about what is happening around it. It is open to receive all that is showered upon it.

Until adults teach it otherwise, the child is not afraid to experience at all. A child can stand at the edge of a cliff looking down without fear. A child does not have blocked energy centers. It is without fear and greed. It is in eternal bliss.

We lose this bliss through not our worldly experiences but from the conclusions that we create out of these. We create deeply biased memories about every single event in our life. We absorb a set of value systems and beliefs from others around us. We are constantly bombarded by 'do this', 'don't do this' from all sides and however strong we are we get influenced.

A small story:

Two dogs were walking with their owners in a park. One asked the other, 'My name is Jack, what's your name?'

'They call me no no Harry', replied the second dog!

'What kind of a name is that!' exclaimed Jack.

'I don't know. I am always told that. So I think that's my name!'

Each one of us is brought up as a 'don't do it' whoever! Quite soon, we lose the curiosity, the adventure attitude, the innocent rebellion which is part of our childhood. We believe that we have grown up. It is actually growing down! It is growing down because you go downhill from a state of bliss into one of sorrow.

Our system of education is not one of imparting wisdom. It is at best imparting knowledge. Knowledge is about facts; it is about what exists outside of us. Because of this, our present day understanding is very limited. Also, knowledge keeps changing. It does not merely expand, it contracts as well. Many things we believed in before, we do not believe and accept any more.

Not very long ago, people were killed for believing that the Earth was round or that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Whereas today, if you do not accept that the Earth is round, you will be committing a mistake! In the same way, many things we believe as gospel, as god-given truth today, will probably be disproven in the future as being superstitious!

Wisdom on the other hand is solid truth. It is the truth about your own self. It is the truth of knowing who you are, where you are going and why you are going. No education system teaches that today. If it did, there will be no takers, because it is not considered relevant.

What is relevant today seems to be to project yourself as someone else, something to others so that they will do what you want them to. It has nothing to do with what you yourself wish to be. It has nothing to do with your innate happiness.

In Sanskrit, there are two words that describe ego or your identity: these are aha�…kār and mamakār. Aha�…kār is the outwardly expressed ego, outer ego, your external identity. It is what you would like others to see you as. It is your projection of yourself to the external world.

Mamakār is the inwardly expressed identity or inner ego. It is what you internally believe you are, what you are worth. It is as if you see yourself, when you give yourself the time to see yourself.

Aha�…kār is always more than what you really are. Mamakār is always less than what you really are! Aha�…kār, your outer ego or pride or self-esteem, whatever word you wish to use, is about projecting yourself bigger than what you really are. It is about exaggerating your strengths to others and hiding your weaknesses from them.

Mamakār is your internal assessment of yourself. It is the expression of all your insecurities and fears. Aha�…kār is the expression of all your greed and expectations. Mamakār is always a lesser esteem than aha�…kār because you are always internally downgrading yourself.

You do not wish others to see you as you are. You would like to present a picture that makes you look pretty, but then you know you are not!

It is this conflict between your aha�…kār and mamakār that leads to stress and suffering. No one else causes your suffering, it is purely this internal conflict that causes it.

Remember this: you may say that you think very highly of yourself. You may say that you have no self-doubts about your capability. However highly you may think of yourself, you are still lower than who you are, what you really are, because you are divine. Any assessment that you have of yourself that is lower than this is a degraded assessment.

In management training, they talk about a concept called Jo Harry's window. They say, we all live in four quadrants. In one of them you live openly, it is all about what you know of yourself and what others also know of you. There are no surprises here. You can interact within these limits without attracting any great pain or pleasure.

In another quadrant, you live with what you know of yourself but what others do not know. It is your projections, which are far in excess of your reality. You could be a celebrity by day and a maniac by night. You could be a Jekyll and Hyde character.

In the third quadrant, you live unaware of many of your characteristics that others are aware of about you. Your actions are driven by your unconscious, so you do not know where they are coming from. But others deduce who you are from those actions. Others may think far more positively or negatively of you than what you take credit for.

There is yet another quadrant, where you hide your own self from yourself and do not let others also see that part of us. This is the completely dark part of us. This is the completely closed window.

Do we need to be completely open? Do we need to hide part of our own self from others? Do others need to see us as we are? Will they take advantage of us if they see us as we are? How can we play our games if all our windows are open? All these questions will arise within us.

All our lives, we are constantly hiding from ourselves and others. We cannot trust anyone, not even ourselves. When you delve deep into yourself, you will find that you are one with everyone else. At that instant you realize that there is no need to hide; in fact there is no place to hide.

When people come to me with their problems, I tell them two things: I can very well see their being and make out where their problems are coming from, but I respect their privacy and I have no desire to interfere unless they expressly wish me to.

Second, I tell them that they must articulate their problems as they understand them. I don't need them to do that for my understanding. They have been hiding from their own problems for so long that they need to face up to them. Only then can I help them. I cannot solve your problems. I can only help you to solve your own problems by making you understand who you really are and what your so-called problems really are. I can do that by opening up the windows that you have shut so tightly.

In the story of Creation, the apple was the fruit of the tree of knowledge. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of knowledge instead of staying in the awareness of their divine nature, they became aware of their individual identities, their nakedness and their attraction for each other. As a result, they lost the awareness of their own divine identity. The loss of awareness of their true nature is considered the original sin committed by Adam and Eve.

It is now believed by many that this sin of Adam made all humans sinners. This belief is unfortunate. We are all born with the imprint of our own divinity. It is possible to be born in conscious birth when such awareness remains in conscious memory. But in most cases, it is reflected in the true innocence and bliss of the young child, till that awareness is destroyed by education.

In the gurukul system of education that was developed in Bharat by the ancient Masters, this awareness was retained through a formal process. The young child was left in the care of a spiritual master who initiated the child between five and 7 years of age through the sacred gayatri mantra. This mantra ignited the child's intelligence and kept its purity and awareness alive.

These children were trained based on their aptitude and not based on their birth. Out of the classification of their aptitudes arose the varna system, which degenerated into the caste system as it exists today. In the varna system, by gauging the aptitude of a child, the master educated them as scholars, warriors, businessmen or workers. This classification

was not based on the social background of the child. The greed of humans took over this original classification based on aptitude and corrupted it into one of hereditary status.

The young child was initiated as a brahmachari, a word that means 'one who moves in reality, in tune with Existence'. This differentiates between the student who follows the path of awareness and truth and others who are immersed in fantasies and unreality. The children were taught all the great scriptures and their progress was monitored. Those who showed signs of spiritual awareness were directed toward the scriptures and those who did not were taught alternative skills that would guarantee them livelihood as grihasta, householders.

Those who followed the spiritual path and experienced spiritual awareness eventually became sanyasis or monks. The rest became grihasta or householders who married and led a family life. These householders too renounced family life after 40 while still staying in the household as vanaprastha. The couple lived together as true friends in companionship without physical relationships after this. Later, if they so chose to, they left home as wandering monks, into ashrams or forests or mountains, in pursuit of deeper truths.

The entire path from childhood to old age and death was based on preserving the awareness of one's true nature. Even if one was unable to accept that true nature and be enlightened, no one carried any guilt of being born as sinners.

This concept of sinners and sin is a creation of social and political organizations, of various faiths and cultures. Just like any other organization, commercial or military or civil, these organizations too rule through fear and greed.

Enlightened masters established most great religions. However, many religious organizations have been developed and nurtured by business savvy human beings who compromised all spiritual principles for commercial principles.

These organizations developed the concept of sin into a fine art of control. Their tools are fear and greed. They teach based on the concept of hell and heaven. The fear of hell threatens if one does not compensate for the sin and the greed of heaven pulls those who do. Just like how governments use legal weapons to control the masses, religions use fear and greed in a subtle but effective way to control.

I always say that guilt, carrying guilt for what one did, is the greatest sin one can commit. It is a sin that one commits against oneself. More than the act of sin, it is the guilt associated with that sin that makes one live in hell. To go to hell, you do not have to wait for retribution Just living with guilt is enough. It will be living in hell everyday of your life on Earth.

Drop your guilt and move on in awareness. Understand that when you are aware of your true nature and your interconnectivity with other beings, it is impossible for you to commit any crime or sin against them. It would be the same as hurting yourself.

At the highest spiritual level, there is no concept of sin. However, for day to day living, one does have to follow societal norms of truthfulness, non-violence, not coveting someone else's possession and so on. These are not scriptural laws but sensible social and religious regulations that allow us to live in peace with one another. If we are truly responsible and aware humans, we should be able to abide by these implicit regulations without being policed by a governmental or religious authority. Punishment does not reduce violation of human principles, only awareness does. Pure awareness alone can bring a human being to a peaceful and non-violent life.

The essence of terrorism lies in the non-acceptance of the interconnection of one being with another. If one group considers itself exclusive and considers all those who do not belong to the group to be enemies, be very clear that such groups are not founded on spiritual principles. Terrorists do not have the right to call themselves followers of any enlightened master.

Terrorism is a result of mass unconsciousness, a complete absence of awareness that is founded on external elimination but which will eventually result in self-destruction. It is the opposite phase of enlightenment, which is the outcome of individual consciousness.

Masters after masters have spoken of enlightenment. Many enlightened masters have chosen not to speak. Expression of the experiences of various enlightened masters differs, but the experience is the same.

Enlightenment is just the awareness of one's true nature. Therefore, enlightenment always IS, it cannot be made to happen, it happens. You do not have to go to the mountains or forests or dark caves to discover who you are. If you are not able to discover yourself wherever you are, you will have the same problem discovering elsewhere also.

Enlightenment is a spontaneous and instantaneous phenomenon. It is not a gradual or evolutionary process. Every one of you is at the same distance from enlightenment irrespective of wherever you may think you are now.

A sinner and a saint, a priest and a prostitute have the same chances of enlightenment!

There are those who believe that no master is necessary for enlightenment. They are correct. I had no master, but I could have progressed faster if I had had a master. Those who want to follow their own path to enlightenment will also succeed but they will take longer time and may be a harder path to follow. Those who follow such a path out of ego may never reach there, because ego is the biggest block to enlightenment.

As long as you are engaged in a gradual path and you believe that your efforts are leading you to enlightenment, it is a self-defeating exercise. It is an exercise played by your ego. The ego conditions you to follow past experiences. It is when you drop the ego that the real process starts.

Your ego has to die before you can be reborn, before you can be enlightened. That is what a master is qualified to do. He is the master surgeon who operates to remove your ego, as if it is a cancer. He neatly cuts and throws it out. The process may be painful. After all it is an identity that you have carefully built since infancy. The younger you are the easier it is.

So, when you choose a master and decide to accept him as your master, decide carefully.

Statutory warning! It is dangerous to run away when the operation is in progress!

The process of the real reflection and realization is instantaneous. However, you need to walk the path, which leads to that moment of realization.

In the Zen tradition, Zen masters believed in harsh methods to enlighten. In one incident, the master cuts off the hand of a disciple! The disciple bears it with the trust that whatever the master does is good for him, and he is enlightened.

The other disciples who watched the whole thing tell the master that it was too harsh a method.

The master says: nothing is too harsh if enlightenment results!

It is believed that the Hindu yoga system is a gradual path leading to samadhi, enlightenment, through eight steps. Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali refers to eight limbs or paths, not eight steps. These paths can be simultaneous, and any one path can lead to enlightenment.

In the modern age, meditation or dhyana is the most effective route to enlightenment.

You need courage to drop your identity. You need to develop the understanding that ego is connected to the past and the future and not to the present moment. Ego is an accumulation of your past memories and experiences – what you are to other people, what other people are to you, why you need them, why they need you and so on. Ego is also the future – your expectations, your fears, your greed and all that you wish to be and don't wish to be.

Losing the ego is the only way to reach enlightenment. How does one lose ego? Existence is continuously changing. If you trust that Existence changes and you also change, you can never get settled with your ego. Your ego is nothing but a rigid mechanism, a definite pattern.

Only a person who is egoless can trust that the universe is changing and he is also changing. The man who sells his time by doing work all the time will never understand that the universe is changing because he is caught in a routine.

Not being caught in a routine is a basic discipline for enlightenment!

If you are in a routine, you become so unaware that you stop believing, you stop realizing that Existence is changing. I have seen some government servants working for 30 years in the same office. They would not even have moved their table from one place to another and will eventually forget that their table can be moved!

Even in your house, don't live with the same kind of furniture arrangement for more than two years together. Shuffle it so that your mind does not get stuck with a single attitude. Once in a few months, change the order; create a little bit of chaos! Otherwise, you will become dead.

I have seen people, they will have 10 rooms and because of their habit, they will follow a certain track in their own house and as a result would not have stepped foot in eight rooms for even months together! Be very clear: the most certain location on planet Earth is your tomb, your graveyard!

The more you live with definition and security, the more you are dying. That is why, when you live with a definite track in your house, your house will have the vibration of a graveyard. Once in a while, dance in the main hall of your house; the space will be purified. If you live with the same things, you will create a track of memory. You will then have very little access to your own being.

Your mind and your house are one and the same. Your being and your house are one and the same. If you don't live in your whole house, be very clear, you are not living with your whole memory. Drop your rigid ego, break free from your mental patterns, understand change and discover the reservoir that you have within yourself. Learn to explode in all directions and realize your unlimited potential!

Ego is never the present, because in the present moment you just are, you are nobody. You do not become any one. That's why the Upanishad says tat tvam asi, thou art that. It does not say you were that, you will be that or you will become that; just, you are that.

You just are. In that state, the ego disappears, as there are no memories of the past, no expectations of the future. In that moment, you are both complete and you are empty.

You are complete because that is all that there is. There is nothing more, there needs to be nothing more. Once you are established in the present, you are automatically established in the future as well. Understand that it is the present that brings in the future.

When you are enlightened, you are empty, because you are empty of thoughts, you are empty of ego; you are complete and empty. That's why Sankara called this state purna – complete – and Buddha called it shunya – empty – and both were right.

The surest way to enlightenment is surrender to the master. The master represents the Truth or Existence.

Many of my disciples ask me, 'we have already surrendered to you, why then are we not enlightened?' The problem is, when you surrender to the master, you never surrender totally because you think that the master may not have experienced the situation you are in, that he is not married and what he knows about your problems, that he does not have the same background as you to understand, that this particular situation may not have risen in his life and so you need to use your own discretion. You think that after all, he only has said that humans work on the freedom of choice and therefore there is nothing wrong if you use your discretion.

Understand that the master may or may not have experienced the same situation that you are now experiencing, but the master certainly knows your mind. He knows that you have a monkey mind. His injunctions are not based on a complete knowledge of all experiences you are going to have in your lifetime. But his teachings and guidelines are based on a perfect understanding of how your mind and all the human minds work.

Either you follow blindly, mindlessly, senselessly or do not follow the master at all. When you follow in part and do not follow in part, you become schizophrenic. You split yourself. You disintegrate. You lose out.

There are masters who have said not to follow anyone, not even them. Yet, people follow them! J. Krishnamurthy denied that he was a guru all his life; he denied being a master; he denied masters. Yet, there were hundreds who followed him as a master. They accepted his theory that they should not follow any master, any master's path; yet, they followed him. They chose to follow the part of his teachings they accepted. They chose not to follow anything that they found not acceptable or difficult to follow. This is not the way to follow.

All his life Buddha denied that there was god. For a few hundred years after Buddha's death, his followers followed his teachings. Then they made him a god. They framed and hung his picture on the wall. They cast him in stone and solidified him. This is actually something like taking revenge on the master. It is a subtle technique to take revenge. It is not obvious when people build golden temples for the master, but it is the truth.

This is what followers do when they partly follow a master and partly don't. They take revenge upon him for trying to transform them. Masters try to destroy your ego. Your ego does not like it one bit. So, it tries to destroy him and waits for an opportunity. It rebels. It refuses to follow. Instead of making its resistance in an obvious fashion, it chooses its time and place not to follow.

Jesus was crucified in his lifetime. Now they hang him on the wall to remember Him. Hindus hang Krishna on the wall but don't follow his teachings! What and who you do not wish to follow and you want to destroy, you frame and hang on the wall!

You have no choice once you choose to follow a master. Either you are in or you are out. You cannot be in the threshold. Surrender to the master is not an option. It is a compulsion if you are choosing to be in.

Surrender comes in three phases. In the first phase, there is intellectual surrender. It is the surrender of all that the master stands for and says. It is about belief and faith. Always, there is never total faith initially; faith and doubt appear alternately till both disappear and the surrender happens. This happens with many who are true seekers and who have come to the right master.

The next phase is one of emotional surrender. The heart belongs to the master. You cannot forget the master. Gradually you move from the attachment to the form to carrying the formless energy in you. Your heart and soul are filled with thoughts of the master's presence. Devotees who reach this state become disciples. They no longer come to the master with their pains as they did when they were devotees. They appreciate the immense responsibility and compassion of the master and are willing to share it.

There is a final stage that very few reach: one of surrender of senses. You may ask: what is the difference?

You see, senses belong to the mind. So does the intellect and emotion. In the grand Hindu epic Mahabharata, there is an incident.

Lord Krishna walks with Arjuna after the war in a forest. Suddenly Krishna tells Arjuna, 'Look, Arjuna! There is a green crow in that tree. Can you see it?'

Arjuna responds, 'Yes, Krishna, I see that green crow.'

They walk a little further. Krishna again says, 'Arjuna, look! Look at that black crow on this tree.'

Arjuna looks and says, 'Yes, Krishna, I do see that black crow.'

Krishna turns to Arjuna and says, 'Arjuna, are you blind? No crow can be green. When I asked you to look at the first crow, why did you say you saw a green crow? That too was a black crow.'

Arjuna said, 'Krishna, when you told me it was a green crow, I saw a green crow. That is the truth.'

The truth is as the master says. This is the final stage of surrender. It is the ultimate surrender of one's ego to the master. Such surrender, total surrender of the senses, leads to enlightenment.

Surrender brings true liberation. It brings out the awareness in you that there is nothing in this life you are in control of, however much your logical mind may wish you to believe

otherwise. When you realize this truth, it is not that you stop doing work. You continue to work, in fact with far greater efficiency and effectiveness, because you surrender the results of the action to Existence and focus on the work of action alone.

A small story:

A man was walking in the desert completely lost. He was thirsty and hungry and desperate.

He called out 'god, where are you? Please help me! Come and support me!'

He then lost consciousness. When he regained consciousness, he found that he had almost crossed the desert. He was jubilant. He then remembered his desperate call to god. He also remembered that god had accompanied him on his journey to begin with but he could not remember after that. He went back and saw the footprints in the sand. He saw that at the toughest times of his journey, only one set of footprints were to be found. He was upset that god had left him during those toughest parts. He asked god, 'Why did you leave me when I needed you most?' He heard a voice from above, 'Son! It was then that I carried you!'

Remember that Existence carries you, whether you are aware of it or not. In relation to the mighty intelligence that takes of us, what are we trying to control? Do what you need to, and what you must do; then let go! The rest will happen automatically and the way it should.

Watching the breath continuously is the very essence of meditation. It has led more people to enlightenment than any other meditation.

The vipassana meditation technique, taught by Buddha to his disciples just before he left planet Earth, works with the simplest and toughest of methods: increasing awareness.

There are three ways in which you can do vipassana:

(a) Deep awareness of your body, your actions, your mind, your heart.

When you walk, when you move your hand, when you smile, do it with deep awareness. Know perfectly well that it is you who is doing that action. Be alert. Not a single moment should pass in an unconscious state. Not a single action of yours should happen without your own awareness.

Just like your body, watch your heart and mind. Be aware of every emotion that rises in your heart. Be aware of every thought that passes in and out of your mind. Don't have any opinions about the thoughts, don't evaluate anything – just be a witness.

(b) The second way is to watch your breath. Feel your belly rise and fall with every inhalation and exhalation. The navel, the source of your life energy, is in the region of the belly. So when you pay attention to the navel, you become aware of the flow of life energy in your body. As you become more aware of the belly, you will see that your heart and mind fall silent.

This is the natural and relaxed way of breathing – from the belly. We have forgotten how to breathe like this. Babies breathe from the belly. Sometimes in deep sleep, we also go back to belly breathing.

(c) The third form of vipassana is to watch the breath as it enters your body – at the nostrils. Be aware of the cool air in the nostrils. Feel the ease with which the breath enters and leaves the nostrils.

You can combine two forms, or even all three forms. But do only whatever happens effortlessly for you.

Vipassana can be practiced both while sitting and walking.

Sitting Duration: 45 minutes + 15 minutes rest

Sit in a comfortable position, spine erect, facing straight ahead. Keep your eyes closed and breathe normally. Stay still without shifting positions.

Watch the rise and fall of the belly when breathing in and out. Don't concentrate on the breath, just watch it. If you find other thoughts, feelings or physical sensations coming up, allow them. Witness those also and continue watching the breath.

It is the process of watching that is important, not what you are watching. Witness everything.

(After 45 minutes, drop even the watching. Simply drop everything. Relax and let go.)

Walking Duration: 20 minutes + 10 minutes rest

Here, your awareness is totally on your feet, as they touch the ground. You can walk in a circle, or in a straight line of about 15 steps, going back or forth. You can practice this meditation simply going from room to room in your house, or out in your garden.

Eyes should be lowered, and focused on the ground a few steps ahead. Just as you watch the belly in sitting meditation, watch and be aware of the contact of each foot with the ground. If other thoughts and sensations come up, allow them. Nothing is to be seen as a distraction. When you have finished witnessing the sensation or the thought, go back to watching your feet.

• 1. Practice the meditation for awareness
• 2. Intend that you will be aware in everything you do.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total awareness in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.
• 4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive every moment.

May you be aware and in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Beloved Master,

One usually understands karma as the cause and effect phenomenon. We have heard you say that karma is unfulfilled desires. You have also said not to worry about karma*. Does this mean what we do now does not affect us at all?*

A young initiate was under training by the older monks in the monastery.

One day, two older monks accompanied him into the meditation hall, which was just across a small lake from their living quarters. They walked all the way around the lake to reach the hall and were about to sit down.

'Oh, no', said one monk, 'I forgot my meditation mat. Let me go fetch it.'

He walked to the lake, and as the initiate looked with disbelief, walked over the water! He disappeared into the living area, came out and again calmly and walked across the lake again. He then sat down quietly on his mat.

Just then, the second monk said, 'Oh, no, I forgot my rosary. Let me go and fetch it.'

He too walked across the lake as if it was solid ground, picked up his rosary and walked back into the meditation hall.

They meditated for some time. At the end of the session, the initiate rushed out of the meditation hall and ran straight toward the water. He couldn't wait to walk on the water like how the other two monks had walked. He stepped into the water and promptly went under water. Embarrassed and wet, he stepped out of water and looked at the older monks accusingly.

One monk said to the other, 'We should have told him where the stones are!'

An interesting question on karma.

Cause and effect. Science tells you that cause causes the effect. Let me tell you, it is actually the effect that causes the cause.

According to scientific laws, whatever you see as the final effect is created by a set of events called causes. According to spiritual law, the desire of the effect, the effect itself in a subtle form is what causes the effect. In other words, effect produces the causes, which in turn produces the effect.

If you have deep desire, a very deep desire, that desire carries its own energy for fulfillment. You need to do nothing. The desire will fulfill itself!

When we are born, the universe ensures that we are born with all our needs provided for, that we shall not suffer because our needs go unfulfilled. This is a promise of the universe. All that we need to do is to believe this truth and we will see that the universe is fulfilling it every moment of our life on planet Earth.

The problem is that the needs we are born with become inflated as we grow up. We watch others, we learn from others, we imitate others and we want what others have. Our needs then turn into wants. Needs are what we are born with. Wants are what we acquire after being born.

Bhagwan Ramana Maharishi has said, 'The Earth can fulfill the needs of all its children, but it cannot fulfill the wants of even one person.'

Our greed is such that the wants of one person can become greater than the needs of billions of people. There is no end to greed. Greed does not know the sufferings of others; it only knows the burning desire to possess all, at all costs and at any cost.

When I say that you are born with needs that the universe will fulfill, I mean that you bring with you these needs. These needs are called your prārabda karma. Throughout your life you live through experiences, which have a common thread of desire. This desire may be of many types. It can be for money, for name or fame, for health, for

physical beauty, for intelligence, for sensual pleasures, for spiritual awakening and many other things. There is one core thread to all your desires.

If you are in politics, your desire is for power. That rules over everything else for you. You believe that once you have political power, all else will come to you – name, fame, wealth and so on. will automatically follow. If you don't have power, you believe that nothing has happened in your life.

If you are a business person, by and large, money will be the driving force behind you. You will use money to build name, fame and power. Without money you will feel impotent and unimportant.

If you are an actor, physical appearance may be the most important factor. I heard that a famous actress insured her legs for millions of dollars! For actors, no beauty means no success, and therefore life without physical attractiveness is filled with suffering.

This deep driving desire that you have is what determines your life. That's why the Upaniṣad says, as is your desire, so is your will; as is your will so are your actions; as are your actions, so your life becomes.

Your intent is what you become.

The truth is that not only do these desires make your life now, but they also determine your life for your future births.

Your intent is what you become, now and forever.

Krishna explains this so beautifully in the Bhagavad Gita. He says that your body is like a garment that the spirit leaves behind, changing it for another body. The spirit is indestructible, it cannot be destroyed by a weapon, it cannot be burnt by fire, it cannot be wetted by water and it cannot be dried by air. The spirit lives on, it moves on.

Krishna further says: this indestructible spirit seeks another body based on the last desires carried by it. These desires at the point of death determine what body it occupies next and what life it leads next.

You may ask, 'What it is this? Krishna has said that the spirit is pure, nothing can affect it, and nothing can harm it. Then, how can desires hang on to the spirit, and influence the next birth?'

What hangs on to the spirit is the subtle essence of the mindset caused by the desires in you. These are termed vāsanā. The vāsanā tinges the spirit. A spirit with no desires, in which all desires have been extinguished, as that of an enlightened master, has no vāsanā, not even for any spiritual growth.

Some people tell me, 'I too can say, "Hey Ram," as Mahatma Gandhi said before he died, when he was shot dead.' Understand that Mahatma Gandhi had the word 'Hey Ram' on his lips and heart all through his life and this was articulated when he died. If all through your life you had only the thought of money, your last thoughts would be on who owed you how much. If your mind was possessed by lust throughout your life, you last thoughts would certainly be focused on men or women for sensual pleasures. If it had been a focus on power, your thoughts and desires would center around power as you died.

It is impossible to break that thread that runs through your life at the last moment of your life. That thread carries on with your spirit into your next birth. That thread is the vasana.

This vasana or mindset that carries forward as a subtle mental attitude into the next body is the prarabda karma or the starting balance that manifests itself as the basic needs you are born with. These needs carry their own energy for fulfillment.

For the intellectually minded, let me explain the different types of karma. There are three types of karma: sanchita, prarabda and agamya karmas. Sanchita karma is like your opening bank balance, the karmic account credited to you at birth. Of this, is a certain amount that is meant for this life and that is prarabda karma. This is your current account balance, with no overdraft facility. Agamya karma is what you can do in this life to make changes to your account, which in turn affects your sanchita and prarabda karma. So each part affects the other, and all together, these three determine what your life is.

Your current account balance, the prarabda karma, is what determines all that you do in this lifetime. You may not believe in rebirth or incarnation. Your religion may deny this, but not biological sciences.

There is in your brain a part today accepted as the R Complex or reptilian brain. No scientist can explain how this functions, but they all agree that this part of the brain is a carry over from our pre-human days, not just from primates and monkeys but from the very beginning of evolution, from the reptiles, according to the term. The term reptiles is just a term. There is no distinction that can be made about whether this came from the single cellular living system or the fish or reptiles. At that level it is all guess work.

What is known, however, is that this part of our human brain is driven instinctively from deep memories of our distant past. It is known that this part of the brain dictates what is called the flight or fight responses, survival instinct, mating instinct, xenophobic response to strangers and so on. Biologists believe that these are animal instincts that operate from our unconscious and determine our behavior.

Just try to understand this: if I speak about the Dasavatara, the 10 incarnations of Vishnu as Hindu mythology explains evolution, you will laugh, but scientists are not laughing. The Hindu concept of dasavatara is a brilliant exposition of evolution from the simplest form of life, matsya, the fish, to the enlightened human being. This model was developed some 10 thousand years ago, with no modern scientific tools whatsoever.

Here, we are talking not merely about reincarnation and rebirth within one species, but over millions of years through variegated species. Throughout this evolution, there is one part that has continued without change and which still drives us as human beings. What does religion have to say about this? Can any one explain rationally how the woman was created from the rib of man? It is a metaphor and without understanding the basis of the metaphor, people believe it without doubt because someone's scriptures say so. However, when it comes from a culture that they do not understand and accept, one quotes science and laughs.

It is known today scientifically that the woman is the default species and that man is the modification. So, do we rewrite that part of the Old Testament? Or do we try and understand what the story of Adam and Eve meant metaphorically instead of believing it as factual?

All scriptural truths of ancient religions and cultures, whether Hindu or Judaic, the truly ancient religions which came far before Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, like the Veda and the Old Testament, reflect incidents not as mere history but as major shifts in human consciousness. These truths are the expressions of enlightened masters who actually had these experiences; experiences of these incidents.

These masters conveyed these truths in a form that only equally enlightened masters can understand. Otherwise, every other person who has access to this knowledge can corrupt and convert the truth to suit his needs. So these truths were initially passed on personally. That is why some of the Vedic scriptures are called Upanishad, which in Sanskrit literally means sitting beside (the master). These truths were passed by master to disciple, mouth to ear, so in other cultures too.

Masters wanted to ensure that general public had no chance to corrupt these truths and coded them as metaphors, metaphors that only another trained disciple or another enlightened being could understand. A personally trained disciple could pass it down his lineage without corruption. An enlightened master, who becomes one with Existence, understands it without having to be told.

The rest read these scriptures like bedtime stories, with no understanding of what they mean. So, sex becomes the original sin. What is pure, what can be pure becomes a sin. You need to pay someone to be absolved of that sin. This was the first and most successful religious business model.

Science accepts today that something carries over from birth to birth, from species to species. Molecular biologists like Bruce Lipton categorically state that it is our conditioning that defines our cellular structure, not the other way around.

According to recent scientific studies, our cells and constituent DNA do not genetically program us; our experiences, memories and conditioning program our genes. Scientific truths have been made to stand on their head, not giving a chance for religion to meddle. Vedic scriptures had said the same things tens of thousands of years earlier. Your mindset, your vasana, carries on. The body perishes no doubt, but the thin veneer of mindset based on conditioning lingers on. This vasana determines who you will be in your next birth, based on who you are today. Krishna said this in the Gita, thousands of years ago.

To some religious beliefs, this may not be acceptable, but not to scientists.

We are born with our needs, based on vasana or prarabda karma, the opening balance. As we grow, we accumulate wants. These wants are imposed on us based on our experiences and get embedded in our unconscious as samskara – memories lacking fulfillment. These unfulfilled desires, samskara, drive all our decisions and actions unconsciously, with no control on our part. They result in the karma that we accumulate during this birth, which in turn forms the common thread, the mental attitude that determines the last desires, the vasana, that we die with.

So, the vicious cycle continues: vasana, prarabda karma, samskara, karma, mindset, opening balance, conditioned memories and action, resulting from unfulfilled desires.

Vasana, mindset, is like a seed. Samskara, conditioned memories, is like a growing plant. Karma, action resulting from unfulfilled desires, is the tree that finally happens.

Imagine yourself in a mall, idly window shopping. You see a tie or a shoe. The first time you see it, perhaps you have no reaction. You see it again and again on the window, for the second or third time, and a seed of desire sprouts within you. You must possess the tie or shoe. This is vasana.

Soon, when you keep seeing it repeatedly, you start visualizing scenarios that make you strongly want to buy the tie. You imagine yourself in a job interview wearing that tie or at a party wearing the shoe and being the center of attention. You bask in that attention and the desire grows stronger. This is samskara.

Finally, you end up buying that tie or shoe. This is karma, action. For the first week or two, you almost constantly wear the tie or shoe. Then the frequency reduces to once in a while. After a few months you stop wearing it completely. After 6 months, it gets stored in an attic or you don't even know where it is.

Then, one day you see a tie or a shoe on the window as you shop in the mall. The story repeats! The desire repeats till it is fulfilled completely.

What do I mean by saying fulfilled completely?

Look at a poor man who has just one pair of footwear. He will wear it till it completely wears out. He cannot afford to do anything else. It is his basic need. It is not a want.

When that footwear is no longer wearable, he will buy another, till then he has no desire to buy another pair.

World famous actors accumulate thousands of shoes, many that they wear once. For them, the purchase is a status symbol, a symbol of their ability to buy and display. Indulging in that want can never fulfill such a want. It will never die; it becomes an addiction.

All addictions are wants that are unfulfilled. Some are driven by physiological impulses, but most are driven by psychological play.

A young man starts drinking or smoking or using drugs to prove his independence from his parents and elders and to gain what he thinks is peer respect. He gets addicted. More he drinks or smokes, less and less is the enjoyment. He needs to consume more and more to get less and less pleasure. In the end, the cigarette smokes him, the liquor consumes him.

A young man came to me saying that he smoked and he wanted to quit. I asked him why and how he started smoking in the first place.

He said that once, many years ago, his father saw him with friends who were smoking. Though he himself was not smoking his father refused to believe him and scolded him. In retaliation, he decided to teach his father a lesson and started smoking in earnest.

This was a need to prove himself. I explained to him that this was a long time ago and that there was no longer a need to prove anything to anyone. He was successful on his own. He knew that smoking was harmful.

He said he knew all this intellectually but still found it difficult to give up. So, I told him, 'smoke as much as you wish, and as much as you can. But, finish each cigarette that you light. Another thing, be completely aware of what is happening to you when you inhale and exhale the smoke.'

He came back to me after two days and said he had given up smoking completely. I asked him what happened that was now different. He said 'when I became aware of the smoking, each inhalation and exhalation burnt my windpipe and lungs. I could feel the damage that the smoke was causing inside me. Why would I want to continue?'

A rich man addicted to liquor approached Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. This man was also a great devotee of Goddess Kali. He sought help. Ramakrishna told him 'drink as much as you want, but before you take a sip, offer it to Kali and then drink'.

Ramakrishna's disciples were horrified. They asked their master, 'What are you saying? How can you advise him to offer liquor to Kali? It is a sacrilege.'

Ramakrishna just smiled and kept quiet. After a few days, this man came to Ramakrishna and fell at his feet crying. I thought I could keep doing it, but I found there was no way I could abuse Mother Kali with the poison I was consuming myself. I have now stopped completely.

When such people come to THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, I tell them to smoke or drink as much as they want but to do it with utmost awareness. Smoke, I tell them, smoke as much as you want, but smoke each cigarette completely, to inhale fully and taste the smoke. Within a day or two they stop smoking. It is impossible to inhale all that destructive smoke into your lungs without the body crying out to stop it.

Any addiction that you are plagued by can be dissolved if you become aware of its control over you and the destruction that it is causing to you.

The cycle of karma continues only till desires are unfulfilled. Once the desire is truly fulfilled, it leaves you, it is dissolved.

Sitting in a forest or a mountain, far from other people and material possessions may reduce the wants, but cannot dissolve the wants. When the myths say that the sage Viswamitra was diverted by the celestial maiden Menaka, it is only metaphorical. If that were true, and tapas or penance can attract celestial nymphs, most of the men will go into deep meditation immediately! It was Viswamitra's fantasies, his unfulfilled desires, which had been suppressed, that burst forth as he meditated and diverted him, not any real-time maiden! Many of you do not need meditation for the maidens to appear. You can day dream and fantasize about celestial or earthly nymphs without a problem!

You need to understand the futility of continuing with such desires, such wants which carry you again and again into the cycle of birth and death. This is what Buddha meant when he said that desires cause suffering. Desires have no logical end, no finish line. Since they cannot be fulfilled unless dropped, any expectation of fulfillment causes sorrow when it fails to materialize.

Listen to Krishna to learn the first step to dropping desires. He says, do whatever you have to do but do not get attached to the result of your actions. He says, carry on with what you do, what you need to do, without thought of success or failure, without happiness in achievement or sorrow in non-achievement. He says, do your duty and leave the rest to me; sacrifice the result of your action to me.

If these words are burnt deep into your psyche, you will never suffer another moment in your life. Once you drop your attachment to the results of your actions, you will feel liberated. You just do, that is all.

You are in the present moment, focused on what you do at that point in time, without any worries about the outcome. The work continues; there is no pressure on you and you are in bliss.

People tell me: master, it is easy for you to say all this. How can we, people working in corporate jobs, not be worried about what we have to achieve. Our entire life, our career depends on how successfully we produce results. How can we let go?'

I ask them: does worrying about the result and being obsessed with the result, guarantee success?'

If that were so, there would be no failures in corporate life, because everyone is obsessed.

What is important is how you do your job and your being focused on the process of what you do, not constantly worrying about whether results are happening or not. If the process is right, results would be right.

The so-called quarterly result syndrome of Western corporations is what would kill them eventually. They are driven by greed, the greed of the stock market. When you are so obsessed with such a goal, you cannot focus on the present; you cannot focus on what you need. Instead, you resort to manipulation. The result is your corporate scandals of Enron, Tyco and others.

In fact, modern management theory reinforces the truth of Krishna. Celebrated and successful management techniques such as Six Sigma are based on controlling the process, the present moment, and not the end product. If you wish to achieve quality, you need to control the process. It is through this approach that they have reach such minuscular defect levels of products.

If the path is right, the destination will be right. In fact, if you follow the right path, whatever destination you reach will be the right destination for you!

When you lead a material life, whether corporate or otherwise, you will need to plan. I call this chronological planning. You need to decide when you will do what and how. You may set some directional end results. All this is essential since you interact with so many people and so many events and you need to interconnect. You are not living isolated in a forest. However, there is no need to get obsessed with such directional end results as if they are matters of life and death, or even if they are matters of life and death, there is no need to be stressed about them all the time. People get so stressed and they keep reviewing their plans all the time, without doing what needs to be done to achieve the results!

You are only one person in the system, even if you are the Chairman or CEO. Results depend upon so many people, not just one. Even if it depended on one person, what is the guarantee that this one person will still be breathing after an hour?

Of course, thinking that results are uncertain, you cannot stop planning and acting. Just understand the thread: instead of planning and worrying about execution, plan and be in deep awareness and do the work. The very quality of the awareness will make you do things without bothering about the end results and not only that, the awareness itself will never allow you to sit idle. It will constantly keep you moving to do things. The energy within you will be so bubbling and powerful that it will not allow you to laze around. You will intuitively know how to move and you will.

In the same way, never use karma as an excuse. Karma is not destiny as you imagine. It is not a frozen path that you must follow. As a human being, you have the freedom and will to make your own decisions. When you make a decision, results follow. As long as you do not judge the result to be good or bad, whatever you do is ok.

It is only when you start judging, for example, when you say: , 'when I make money it is right and when I lose money it is wrong', then problems arise. When you make money, if someone else loses, is it right for him? If what is right for you is wrong for another person, is that still ok and so on.

You rise in spiritual awareness when you face gains and losses with equanimity, when you are no longer disturbed by what you consider to be a success or failure. You become aware that all that happens, happens for a cause, even if it is a cause that you do not understand.

Nothing is accidental, nothing is coincidental, everything happens for a cause and with a meaning.

People get locked up in karma. They say, 'What can I do, this is my karma. I have to bear what happens. I am helpless.'

Part of this is true. You have to bear what happens if that is a result of your actions. However, you are not helpless. You have freedom to act; you have the freewill to act.

Act with awareness. It is time. Act with consciousness.

Everyone talks about conscience and want to act in accordance with conscience. Conscience is just your social conditioning. It is what society wants you to do. You must differentiate between conscience and consciousness. Consciousness is your inner voice. You need to shut all your outer noise to hear this inner voice. You need to meditate in order to hear it.

Awaken your consciousness. Only then you are truly awake. When you are awake, you are in bliss, nithyananda!

This technique energizes the brow chakra (energy center), located on your forehead between the two eyebrows. This chakra is known as the ajna, which literally translates as command. This is the master chakra. This chakra is the seat of will. When it is activated, you will experience intense clarity of understanding. Your reasoning and decisionmaking capabilities are enhanced.

Above all, the third eye is the eye with which you look inward. You begin to see within for the first time. You begin to see beyond your karmic bondage.

Sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed. Bring both your palms up to your eyes and place them very gently on the eyeballs. Your touch should be like a feather; apply no pressure on the eyeballs.

In the beginning, you may be pressing without realizing. Slowly, put less and less pressure on the eyeballs.

There is energy flowing outward through the eyes all the time. It is a very subtle energy. You are touching your eyeballs to turn the flow of the energy back in, into yourself. If you press into the eyeballs, the eye will begin to resist. Touch as if you are not touching!

When you touch gently, your thoughts also fall still. When your eye movements increase, your thoughts are also racing. When the eyes are still, your thoughts also freeze. Have you noticed?

With the gentlest of touches, you will soon start to feel the energy moving back inward. When the energy falls back, you will immediately feel freshness, lightness, moving all over your face, your head. The energy hits your ajna chakra. In a few minutes, you feel clear and refreshed.

When you continue the meditation for up to half an hour, the energy moves downward into your heart. Your heartbeat slows down. Your whole body will feel relaxed. This is an excellent technique for instant relaxation. You don't even have to enter into meditation. Simply by placing your palms gently upon your eyeballs, you can rest your eyes.

Whenever your eyes are feeling tired, if you have spent too many hours before the television or the computer, try this technique.

When you continue to practice this meditation for months, you will start feeling a permanent energy in your ajna and heart areas. In the beginning, it will be just a trickle of energy, but in a year's time you will feel a flood of energy inside you at all times.

With the awakening of the ajna, you will experience clarity of your meaning in life. You will begin to see into your own reality. And with the activation of the heart chakra, you will feel immense love flowing out of you. You will feel connected to Existence.

• 1. Practice the meditation for moving beyond karma.
• 2. Intend that you will be fulfilled in all that you do.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total fulfillment in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.
• 4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be fulfilled and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Q: Master, you have often said that meditation is the highest form of worship. You also promote ritual worship in temples and through homa (fire rituals). I am confused by the contradiction. Please explain.

The pastor was standing by the doors of his church greeting everyone in.

When John strolled in, the Pastor looked him sternly in the eye and said, 'John, it is about time you joined the Army of Our Lord!'

John smiled and said, 'But I am already in the Army, Pastor.'

The Pastor said, 'John, how come then I see you only twice a year, at Christmas and Easter. This is no way to be serving the Army.'

John replied, 'No, Pastor, please understand, I am in the Secret Service.'

There are many forms of worship. Each form of worship suits a particular need and a particular person. It also depends on one's conditioning, spiritually, emotionally, physically or intellectually.

You do not need an enlightened master to become enlightened yourself. I have said this many times. You can remain next to an enlightened master all your life and yet remain a stone, and many do. On the other hand, a stone can transform you to enlightenment, and again many have been enlightened in this manner!

The difference is not whether the master is an enlightened being or a stone, but the extent of trust that you have in that master and the mode of surrender. Many hundreds, no, many thousands of devotees, have melted into enlightenment by surrendering to images of clay, stone, metal and timber. So, can one say that temples and idols are a low form of worship?

No, that will not be true at all.

We need to understand the function of worship. What is worship, how do we worship and why do we worship what we worship?

Worship, by dictionary meaning, is the extraordinary respect that we show and shower upon those whom we consider distinctly superior to ourselves and who we think can in turn shower gifts upon us. The second condition is not always true but mostly true.

As human beings, we rarely do things without a reason and unconditionally.

Men and women worshipped Nature and natural phenomena since the beginning of mankind. They worshipped lightning, wind, oceans, fire, water and even earth. They worshipped these elemental forces of Nature because of two reasons: fear and greed.

Part 3: Quantum Spirituality

They feared the elements as these elements could and did wreak havoc upon them. They desired them because they could not live without them.

These reasons have not changed in the many tens of thousands of years through which mankind has evolved. These reasons have become more sophisticated, but essentially they remain the same.

Man fears Nature because he cannot control Nature. However much science advances, it can never control Nature. Science may help in mitigating the risks of Nature, to run away before a volcano erupts and an earthquake sinks, but thousands and millions would still be affected by what Nature does.

Many animals have a better instinct in escaping from the ravages of Nature than man does. There are documented incidents about how animals and birds have fled before volcanic eruptions, tsunami strikes and earthquakes while humans slept on with no sensitivity.

Man deified what he could not control and what he could not understand.

This is how the Vedic and other early deities came about. Not from ignorance but from a need to protect oneself from natural calamities. So, men and women of all cultures offered prayers of protection and thanksgiving including various sacrifices to these deities. Agni was the Vedic god of fire, Vayu of wind, Varuna of the oceans and so on. Indra became the chief god.

A pantheon of gods was created to suit various needs and to fulfill various prayers. So it was with many other early religions and cultures, whether Egyptian, Sumerian, Mayan, Greek, Minoan or Roman.

Some individuals turned within themselves to understand the why of what was happening without. Their focus on the externals turned them inward and they found that they could get many answers to their questions by looking inward. They chose to shut their sensory perceptions to the external world and deprive their senses of the food in order to go inward.

These intelligent few focused inward and found a strange truth.

They found that that they were no different from Nature. They found that when they accepted that they were part of Nature, their entire life transformed. Nothing troubled them any more. There was neither fear nor greed. There was neither pleasure nor sorrow. They realized that they, the microcosm of Existence, a puny living being, were an inherent part and an integral part of the macrocosm, the infinite universe.

This realization, tat tvam asi, Thou art That, You are Existence, made them enlightened.

That is all that enlightenment means. It just means that you are Existence, that you are God, that you are divine, that you are what you have been worshipping out of fear and greed.

Once you realize this truth, there is no need to worship externally. But till then, human nature demands that you find some tangible form that you can worship. Even those religions that claim worshipping the form to be sinful do worship form in another manner. There is nothing wrong at all in worshipping a form, because that is how we start. We are so attached to our own form, to our own body, and so we need a form to start with.

Many educated Hindus come to me and ask, 'Isn't it foolish to waste so much money on temples and decorate the deities with jewelry?'

Isn't it foolish to decorate your body and that of your wife with jewelry when you know fully well that you will either be burnt to ashes one? Here you are deifying yourself; in the case of a temple you are deifying Existence in a form, that's all.

No one can come to you, pray to you and be comforted or healed. At least by going to a place of worship, whether a temple, a church or a mosque, millions of people get comforted and healed. So, which is more foolish?

Whether Hindus or Christians or Buddhists, when we worship a form, be it an idol, a cross or Buddha, what we worship is the energy behind that form; it is not the form itself. Hindus do not worship what you consider to be the terrifying image of Kali or the sweet innocence of Krishna. Through that form they worship the energy inherent in that form. This awareness may not happen to everyone, but it is the truth. When this awareness happen, the transition from idol worship to meditation begins.

Traditional temple architecture in the Vedic culture dates back to thousands of years. The construction of a temple is a labor of love, and the artisans who are engaged in this scientific art are a special breed. One of the objectives of our mission is to strengthen this art, which is in danger of being lost.

Those of you who have seen the Anandeshwara temple being built in our ashram in Bidadi would know that the stone pieces, the pillars, columns and beams were all fitted together without any need for cement or mortar bonding. The sanctum sanctorum, the garba graham of the temple where the main idol, the mula vigraha, is installed, is built with extreme care accompanied by Vedic rituals to energize the idol.

Many famous temples in Bharat, especially in South Bharat, are also the burial spots, jiva samadhi, of enlightened masters. They are doubly energized so to speak. Temples such as the ones in Tirupati, Palani, Tiruvannamalai, Srirangam, Nerur and others even today carry the energies of the great masters who are buried there. When people talk about miracles that happen in these temples, it is not unscientific and idle talk. It is just that science has not evolved yet to be able to explain these miracles.

There are legends associated with many of these temples. In the temple at Madurai, the idol of the dancing Shiva is seen as Nataraja (king of dance) depicted with His left foot placed on the ground and the right foot in the air in dancing posture. Traditionally, in most temples and bronze statues, Shiva while dancing his tandava – cosmic dance – has His right foot on the ground and His left leg raised high.

It is said that one of the Kings of Madurai in distant past was concerned about how much pain Shiva must be enduring during His eternal dance and requested Him to at least shift the position of His leg. Legend has it that Shiva obliged, and so, rested his left foot, raising His right leg high!

You may say that this is a myth; who knows what happened some thousand years ago? But here is an incident that happened just over a hundred years ago and well documented.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is one of the greatest enlightened masters of recent times. He officiated as the priest in the Dakshineswar temple of Kali not far from the city of Kolkata. The Kali idol has four hands. Two of Her hands are in the abhaya (protection) and varada (giving) postures. The third hand holds a sword that can be removed, and on the fourth She holds the head of the demon whom She conquered. This head cannot be removed from the hand.

When Ramakrishna first came to this temple as a junior priest, a devotee offered four conch bangles to the deity. This is a traditional offer amongst the local people and the priests would normally fit three of the bangles on Kali's hands. The fourth would be placed at Her feet as it cannot be fitted on the fourth hand without breaking the bangle. Ramakrishna took the four bangles inside to fit them. He was done and when another priest went near the idol, he could not believe his eyes; all four bangles were on Kali's four hands!

The priest asked Ramakrishna whether he had broken Kali's hand or the bangle while fitting the fourth bangle on Her hand holding the skull.

Bemused, Ramakrishna said, 'No. I asked Mother to put the skull down so that I could fit the bangle on her wrist. She did and I fitted the bangle. What is wrong?'

What is wrong?

An idol, what is believed to be a lifeless statue, came to life at the bidding of an ardent devotee. You need not believe this story from just what I have said. You can go to Dakshineswar and see for yourself as I did. I also did not believe the story the first time. I was a skeptic when I went there. The priest allowed me to go to the idol and verify. I found the bangle to be intact; it was a seamless bangle without a break. The hand holding the skull was made in one piece. Records show that the idol was not built with the bangle on that hand.

Now I know the truth of Ramakrishna's feat. I know how He did it. It can indeed be done by a devotee with the kind of faith Ramakrishna had. Often Ramakrishna used to say that he would check whether Mother was breathing, by holding a thread under the Kali idol's nostrils, and he would offer Her food only when She was breathing!

Idols are not mere statues; they are energy and their living energy can be demonstrated if one has the trust and faith.

This is an incident that happened to me, when I was on my monastic wandering days, the parivarajaka, before my Self-realization.

I was traveling in Western Bharat, in Gujarat, and was on my way to the ancient temple town of Dwaraka, where Krishna had ruled. I stopped at a village and stayed with an old widow. This lady had meager possessions. Other than the small hut she lived in, she had a cow, that's all. She sold the milk and survived. Most of what she earned went to feed the cow. She had a small statue of infant Krishna. She spent hours talking to the idol. She would complain to him about all her troubles and also tell him all her joys.

I stayed with her for a few days. She was a very generous lady who shared the little she had with me with great joy. When I was ready to leave after a few days, she wanted me to stay on. She said, 'I am so happy to have you. Krishna is also so happy that you are here. Please don't go. Stay on with me. You don't have to do anything. I shall take care of you baba.'

Because I wore saffron clothes, she called me baba, the traditional term that actually meant 'father', though I was so much younger than her. When I told her that as a monk I needed to move on, she started complaining to Krishna, 'Krishna, this baba does not care about us. He is leaving us. Please make him stay.'

I was getting irritated. It was bad enough that she talked non-stop with the Krishna idol, but now she was complaining about me to the idol. I had no belief that the idol was anything more than what it seemed to me, an idol, though she claimed that Krishna talked to her through it. I thought she was a little crazy. I went near her to take her leave and she held out her hand and held mine.

At that moment, as her hand held mine, I saw Krishna alive in that idol. Just as alive and real as any of you in front of me now. I promise you that this is true. I saw Krishna talking to her as she talked to Him. I saw Him in flesh and blood. After a few minutes she let go of my hand, and all I saw again was a plain idol.

To me she was an enlightened being who could converse with the Almighty. Her trust was so much that not only could she visualize Him in reality, but she could also make me see Him in flesh and blood! Such was her faith.

So please understand that idols are not mere idols. They are living energy.

When millions of people come to pray at these temples, the collective faith builds up the energy of these places of worship. They are no longer mere buildings, however big and grandiose they may be; they are in fact power stations, energy stations, far more powerful than nuclear reactors. One day, science would have the wherewithal to measure this energy and prove what I say.

In the days of the British rule in Bharat, the Britishers used to arrive in Kolkata (at that time it was called Calcutta) by ship. They used to carry water which they had to change at the Suez Canal on their way into Bharat, as it became undrinkable. However, on the return trip, they found that water from the Hooghly River, which is a tributary of the sacred Hindu river Ganga, remained unspoiled even after they reached England!

They were completely taken aback at the observation and decided to research the water. They researched and found that the Ganga water could remain pure and unspoiled, unaffected by bacteria for a long time. The Ganga river is worshipped as the Divine Mother – Ganga Ma – to millions of Hindus. She is their life-giving Mother. They believe that Her waters would liberate them forever, and they long to die in Her arms. They bathe in Her and pray to wash their sins off. Imagine the power of millions of people praying every day to Her. Imagine how energized Her waters would be.

Your education, or rather the lack of it, may prevent you from accepting the truth of this, but this is recorded. Many scientific experiments have been done on the waters of Ganga and these verified what the British soldiers experienced 200 years earlier.

Idols as well as waters are energy. So are the other three energy bodies: fire, air and ether. Air and fire you may even accept as being sources of energy, even if you are not sure how this works at the individual level. But ether, what is ether?

If I tell you that ether is the stuff of space, you will have a problem in accepting it. Space is vacuum, you would say. Understand that science today understands that the entire expanse that is called space, which is what occupies almost 99% of the entire universe, is not vacuum, it is energy. We may not yet know what form of energy this is or even how to use it for our needs, but surely it is known that this is energy.

If you go deeper and deeper into matter, you will find that almost all of it is space, not matter as we would imagine it to be. When you look into any material body through a high-powered microscope, what you find is space; what you may consider empty space.

How can it be empty, when you now know that matter is energy? So, this space too has to be energy.

From time immemorial, Vedic culture developed ways of tapping into these elemental energies. At the level of the earth, elemental energy was worshipped and tapped through temples and idols. At the level of water, the energy was tapped by ritual bathing using sacred mantra syllables. Fire was a major medium of worship in rituals such as homa and yagna and was the main visible form of individual worship. The energy of air was

invoked through the sounds and vibrations of mantra (chants). The energy of ether was tapped through meditation.

At each level from earth to ether, the energy form becomes more subtle and more intense. The earth level energy is associated with the root center or the muladhara chakra, water with the spleen center or swadhishtana chakra, fire with the navel center or manipuraka chakra, air with the heart or anahata chakra and ether with the throat center or vishuddhi chakra.

Each of these elemental energies is also associated with our senses, gyanaendriya, and actions, karmendriya, in this manner. Smell and elimination are associated with the muladhara, taste and procreation with the swadhishtana, sight and locomotion with the manipuraka, touch with the anahata and finally, hearing and speaking with the vishuddhi. So, every single thing that we sense and act upon is driven by one of these energy forces.

When one is not aware of these facts, worship is merely driven by fear and greed alone. That is why over time, without understanding and awareness, rituals become superstitions.

A small story:

An abbot had a pet cat that was allowed complete freedom of the monastery. But at the time of worship alone, because it was sure to disturb the prayers, the abbot instructed his disciples to cover the cat in a basket during prayer time. This became a ritual. Everyday at prayer time, the cat would be in a basket near the abbot.

When the abbot died and another disciple took over, this practice continued. It continued till the cat died. When the cat died, it was a big problem; no prayer could be held till a substitute cat was brought; but substitute cats were not as patient as the original cat was. They all ran away at the first opportunity.

Soon, all prayers stopped at the monastery for want of a cat!

This is how rituals become superstitions and rule our lives. With awareness and understanding, these rituals have meaning, very relevant meaning. However, shorn of that understanding, they become mechanical and robotic. That is how most rituals are practiced today and that is why those who try to analyze these rituals find them meaningless and superstitious.

This takes us back into where we started. What is worship and why worship? If worship is about seeking that superior being or state, why so many methods and why is that many of them do not seem to be logical?

Understand that each one of us is driven unconsciously to find the source we come from.

You may realize this or not, you may understand this or not, you may accept it or not, but it is the truth and it is happening in every one of us every moment. This is why whatever else we achieve, materially, relationship wise, intellectually and in every which way, we feel dissatisfied. We feel that we have not reached, that we have not come home.

One of my devotees told me when I was giving him energy darshan, 'Swami, for the first time in my life I feel I am home!'

During the energy darshan, I am pure energy, pure existential energy. What he felt was that oneness with his source, the very Existence he has sprung from, and he felt he was home.

The same thing happens when you relate with other energy forms that we described earlier, that are earth, water, fire, air and ether. With each of these energy forms, when you embrace them with an open mind and an open heart, you merge into that energy form and become one with Existence. It is not difficult. It requires a deep longing, a deep seeking, utter honesty in seeking.

It is that or nothing. It is at that stage that the merger happens. It is at that stage that you realize where you came from. Worship is the process that leads you to this stage.

As I said earlier, any of the techniques relating to any one of the energy forms can take you there. Going to a temple and praying to the deity, bathing in a sacred river that millions have prayed before, worshipping the fire, chanting mantra and meditation, each of these techniques separately or combined will help you reach that stage and state.

All you need are two things: the desperate desire and the unflinching commitment.

In ancient times, people were less complex. Their brains were differently configured. Their entire mindset was more intuitive and less intellectual. Logic and reason occupied less importance than faith and trust.

Today, we are intellectually arrogant. We are in a state of what I call 'cerebral pollution'. So much intellectual knowledge bombards us from all around, all seeking to secure a mind space, all competing with facts of logic and science, that our mind becomes paralyzed.

Physical and grosser forms of worship are no longer understood by us and so seem illogical. The purpose of these techniques is no longer understood. Whenever I do a homa, a fire ritual, I explain it in this fashion:

The fire absorbs the energy of ether, akasha, through the energy of air. This is done with the help of the vibrational energy of the sacred mantra that are chanted. The energy that is absorbed in the fire, in the fire pit or homa kunda, is then transferred into the water stored around in pots. This water when sprinkled on people or deities or the ground delivers that energy to the earth.

The Taittreya Upanishad explains this process clearly. First there is the energy of the Existence, brahman, from which the energy of ether arose. From the energy of akasa, ether, arises the energy of air, vayu. From the energy of air arises the energy of fire, agni. From the energy of fire arises the energy of water, apu. From the energy of water rises the energy of earth, prithvi. From the energy of earth arise plants and herbs; from the energy of plants arise energy of food; and from the energy of food arise man and woman. The energy of man and woman is atman, Existence. The cycle is complete.

When people attend the fire rituals I conduct, they say that it is the first time they understood what it was all about. What was a superstitious and meaningless ritual that they had tolerated or walked away from in the past had become alive and energizing now!

I can tell you this: when done with sincerity, when done by an enlightened master, the energy of the deities automatically descends into the fire pit of the ritual.

The same is true of a puja, the ritual Hindu prayer. It is now obligatory for all our healers and teachers to do the Nithya Dhyan or the Life Bliss Meditation. All those who do it have shared so many experiences about its energizing power.

The end point of the Nithya Dhyan is the Guru Puja, homage to the master. It is a ritual, where one offers various things, such as water, incense, perfume, light, food and so on to the formless form of the master. It is almost like bathing, purifying, beautifying, feeding and worshipping the vision of the master. In this case, the master is Existence; the Existence is you. You are worshipping yourself; you are paying homage to yourself. Ultimately, you are the master; the ultimate master resides in you.

That is why all Vedic prayers, end with the statement namaha, which means I am not.

When one chants achutaya namaha, anantaya namaha, govindaya namaha and so on., one denies one's ego. You say, I am not what I seem to be. I surrender to the real me, the true form of mine, which is Existence.

Any worship, if carried out sincerely, results in surrender of one's physical identity and realization of one's true spiritual identity. In the case of meditation, dhyana, this happens directly by putting us in touch with the energy of ether. This is the largest and subtlest energy body in Existence and closest to the existential energy.

Meditation is the most powerful form of worship as it is the most direct route to Existence.

The most powerful forms of meditation are those that are formless; meditations that do not use a verbal or visual trigger, without any accompanying mantra or mandala, audio or visual aid. It is a different matter that when a powerful formless meditation is used, a sound, vibration or vision may be created which is the effect of that meditation. But no

triggering device such as repeated chanting of a mantra or focusing on a visual entity is used in formless meditation. Such formless meditations take us directly into the seventh and final nirvanic layer of energy, of which I have talked elsewhere.

In our first-level meditation courses, which are now taught by our ordained acharyas (teachers), we have a meditation to energize the heart center, the anahata chakra. This is a formless meditation that involves deep breathing and humming; no visual or verbal triggers are used. This meditation is called mahamantra, or the great sacred syllable. When this meditation is done regularly, the sound of 'om' automatically arises from inside the anahata chakra. No amount of chanting 'om' will produce this effect; but the regular practice of this mantra will make it happen.

Dropping the form is very important at an advanced level of worship. For most people it may not be possible to start without form in any worship. When one is forced to do this, it is like skipping kindergarten and primary schools and enrolling directly into a post graduate program. It can cause harm. It can make people prejudiced.

Religions that force people into formless worship without an underpinning of the understanding can only do that out of fear and greed; not out of love, devotion, faith and trust. It may be called surrender but it is forcible surrender, not willing surrender.

Such worship leads to hatred and contempt for others who do not share your views. True spirituality has no place for hatred and contempt. True spirituality is about understanding and compassion. True spirituality is about embracing Existence and all its creatures as a Whole. True spirituality is not about saying that if you do not share my belief and accept my god as your god, you are an outcaste; that you are an enemy who I can kill. True spirituality is not about killing, it is about transformation.

At our advanced meditation courses leading to initiation as Nithya Spiritual Healers, the disciples are warned not to meditate on my form. The Nithya Healer's meditation requires them to focus on my form for a few seconds in order that their scattered thoughts and inner chatter can be controlled into one focal point. Once that is done, they are taught to drop that form. Only when they do that can the healing process begin.

Only when all form is extinguished can one move into existential energy.

Meditation is being in touch with oneself, one's deepest self. This state can only be reached by cutting off contact with the senses and putting the mind at rest. Meditation does not imply that you become deaf and dumb.

When you are deep in meditation, your awareness becomes acute. Some people make a lot of noise before going into meditation. They need to disconnect the phone, tell their children and spouse to be quiet, and still the slightest external noise can disturb them. This is not the way meditation is done.

You can be in meditation when you are active. Meditation is being in the present moment. Just to be aware of who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are doing in the present moment, in the here and now is meditation. Watching the sun set, watching a flower bloom, hearing a bird sing, watching a child at play, any one of these events can be a meditation. When you are in meditation, you just are.

In the advanced form of Healer's meditation, the meditation occurs as a result of the Ananda Gandha chakra (Fragrant Bliss Center) being opened at the time of initiation. Only an enlightened master can do this.

Ananda Gandha is the convergence point of all the seven chakras, the seven energy centers of the body mind system. Meditating on this Ananda Gandha chakra for the initiated is an easy and continuous process. One can meditate on a 24 × 7 mode, along with whatever else one is doing. The meditation keeps one in constant awareness and in the present moment.

Such meditation is worship of the highest order.

When you meditate on light, you fall in tune with an all-pervading, powerful energy. You become part of the current that sustains life.

Duration: 21 minutes

Practice this meditation in the morning. With sunrise, all living things turn to the sun for energy. Become part of this great tide.

As soon as you wake up in the morning, you can practice this. Just lying in bed, close your eyes and inhale. As you inhale, imagine golden light pouring into you through your head. The light is pouring into you, right down to your toes. It is flowing out through your toes! Don't think that this is something you are just imagining. As you imagine, so it happens. The energy actually flows into you.

When you exhale, imagine the opposite. Imagine a great darkness climbing into you from your toes, and traveling up to your head. The darkness escapes through your head.

The golden light is male energy – strengthening and sustaining. The darkness is female energy – calming. You can also practice this at night, just before going to bed.

If you fall asleep doing it, it can be a beautiful experience.

Continue this for 2 or 3 months, and you will see great changes in yourself. This technique is excellent for moving your sex energy (muladhara energy) upward. Your lower back will feel free of the heaviness that is always there. Your energy moves up to the higher centers.

1. Practice the meditation for imbibing light energy.

2. Intend that you will be energized in all that you do.

3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total energization in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be energized and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Master, I know that death is inevitable and that I shall die one day. But, I would like to die in peace not with pain. I also do not want to see my children die before me. Are these unreasonable and unrealizable expectations?

Three persons died at the same time and their spirits went up to the pearly gates.

The kindly person at the gate said, 'you have just won a lottery, all three of you. Whatever you wish that the people around your coffins now should think will actually happen. So, tell me.'

The first person said, 'I wish they would think, this person was such a wonderful person and she would certainly go to heaven.'

The second person said, 'I wish they would think that this guy did so much in his lifetime and he should be remembered forever.'

The third person said, 'I wish that they would look at my body and say: hey, this guy is moving, he is alive!'

No death, no religion.

Had it not been for death, there would have been no need for religions. Man would have had to invent another need then; perhaps boredom, which is what endless life would entail.

Human kind has wondered about what lay beyond death since time immemorial. It was the mystery of the unknown rather than any fear that made our ancestors meditate upon death, an event that at the closure of a breath took a person away, an event that made an animate being inanimate.

This made no sense. Birth at least made sense. Over time, just as animals did instinctively, humans too made the connection between the activity of the male and female mating and the creation of new life. Creation always made more sense. You rarely hear about senseless creation.

Yet, people constantly talk about senseless destruction. Birth, men and women could understand. They at least understood the process, though there may be no understanding of the miracle of life, and the mystery of the spirit underlying the mind body.

Man could watch a woman growing the baby in her womb and the baby being born. Arrival of the new life was a time of celebration, just like a harvest is, signifying the arrival of the new crop. There is something inherently wired in the reptilian brain of human kind that welcomed birth and feared death.

According to humans, death is ugly, mysterious and fearsome.

When the human evolved into a social creature with a family structure and along with it possessions, death truly became feared. No one wanted to die. To die was to leave one's loved ones; to die meant losing one's possessions, to die meant losing one's sensual pleasures, this is how it all seemed, since there was an opaque veil that lay between life and death.

Society was about structure and control. Death became a tool in the hands of leaders of societies. They used the mystery of death to control their subjects. It was difficult and impractical to try and convince anybody that they could survive death and live forever; all tangible evidences against this statement were in front of every one's eyes.

So, the next best attempt was to promise them a wonderful vista beyond death. This was, however, conditional. If you abided by the rules laid down by society and religion and did what you were commanded, this wonderful life after death would be yours; if not, you would suffer.

So were born the concepts of hell and heaven, and commandments, which guided one to heaven upon observance and trashed one into hell if violated. Tremendous ingenuity and creativity went into designing heaven and hell, angels and devils, nectar and brimstone.

Untold pleasures awaited those who obeyed, and unimaginable suffering lurked ahead for those who wandered from the straight and narrow path.

Sins were invented. Sex was the single biggest sin. Poor Adam and Eve became the original sinners and they passed their sins on to all humans. Even an infant became a sinner and purification rites were needed to dissolve the sins. Those who confessed to their sins and accepted redemption from appointed leaders would be redeemed, while others would suffer in hell.

Strange, but no enlightened master speaks of eternal hell, they all spoke of bliss, they all lived in bliss. And they also said that bliss was open to all. Knock and you shall enter, said the master; any one who believed in the truth of His statement could achieve it.

When followers spread the words of their masters, they did not have the experience of their masters. They did not have the truth of their master's experience behind them and therefore did not have the power of that truth. To make people believe and follow, they needed support. So, they developed rules and regulations, the Commandments.

The Ten Commandments were the direct experience and truth of Moses; similarly the Vedic scriptures were the truth of enlightened Vedic masters. But when the truth of the Ten Commandments and the Vedas needed to be conveyed to the general public, what resulted were the regulations, what we call smruti in the Vedic system.

In the Vedic system, it is accepted that these regulations need to change with times and that they are not infallible. However, in many cultures, these regulations too became scriptural and violating such regulations became a sin. They became tools to keep people in line.

Our mind is in constant contradiction all the time. We want to be healthy, but we keep thinking of the ailment. We keep saying I want to be free of this headache, this cancer, this ulcer and so on. One part of your mind firmly holds on to the image of the ailment, and however much another part of the mind may seek a cure, the ailment will stay. To be rid of a headache or some other ailment, you need to focus on well-being and health, not on the headache.

So it is with sins. You cannot stop sinning when someone one is dinning into your ears that you are a sinner and these are the sins you should not commit. Your unconscious mind will simply follow the easier path of sinning.

That is why you will never find Buddha, the enlightened one, speaking about sins and hell. He talks about dhamma, righteous living, and the middle path. He does not even say be good all the time. He knows human nature. He knows that it is a near impossible task. He was there truly to transform people. He was practical.

In a spiritual sense, one cannot talk about redemption, since this presupposes that you are a sinner. One should talk about transformation. You are not a sinner. You never were and you never will be. You are cast in the mould of divinity. Understand that.

I keep saying this again and again: you are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience; you are a spiritual being experiencing a human form.

When you focus on your spirituality and your innate God nature, your spiritual centers open up. Your energy centers awaken. You blossom into divinity. That should be the process of transformation; that is the process of transformation.

Can you reform a criminal by constantly telling him that he is no good, that he will always resort to crimes, and give him a list of crimes? This won't work and does not work as we see with our judicial system. We need to provide the criminal mind with alternatives; with transformational alternatives that will move the mind away from the very thought of criminality. So it is with sins. By constantly reminding a person that he is a sinner, you can only make sure that he remains one.

Spiritually this is wrong.

This behavior is not unique to any one religion. When I take my disciples on a pilgrimage to the holy spots in the Himalayan Mountains, we visit a number of temples. All these temples have official priests who are the only people authorized to conduct the ritual prayers. But, because of my saffron robes, they let me into the sanctum and I do the offering myself.

I tell my disciples that it is enough if they accompany me and join me in the prayers. Some of them won't listen. Their parents and well wishers back home would have told them that their trip would not be effective unless they get the rituals done by the temple priests. So, they are not satisfied with their master's prayers, they need the priest to endorse!

Then I see them sitting in a corner in front of the panda, the temple priest, who for every prayer he utters demands money. Suddenly, he will tell them that to propitiate the spirit of their ancestors, they must donate a cow. These priests are better psychologists than any of your qualified doctors. They can see through you in a minute and manipulate you; unfortunately this is the only way they can survive. This, however, is not the Vedic ideology or philosophy.

In Sanatana Dharma – the Vedic culture that is now called Hinduism – there was no emphasis on sins and redemption. The focus of the great masters who exemplified this culture and philosophy was to turn inward and understand who we are. It was a gentle and peaceful process that was internal.

Not only did Sanatana Dharma not classify us all as sinners, but it also promised us a great future to look forward to. Depending on the way you live your life you will be

reborn was the scriptural pronouncement. Two important issues are to be understood here.

First, it is that you will be reborn. Second, you will be reborn based on how you have lived your life.

In fact, Krishna says with His stamp of authority in the Bhagavad Gita that your last desire in this life is what determines your next life. However, the Judaic religions, whatever may have been the convictions of the founding masters, do not believe in rebirth now.

Recently, I saw in Los Angeles some beautiful locations situated on hill tops overlooking the ocean with new constructions coming up. I was told that these were not for people to live in but for their dead bodies. They were cemeteries overlooking the ocean. Depending on the view was the price! These cemetery locations or crypts where the coffins will be placed were all sold out before construction. I was told that rich people booked them so that after death, their dead bodies could enjoy the serene view. I was also told that some of these locations had been bought for pet cats and dogs to be buried.

A religion that does not have the option of a rebirth forces the follower into believing that in this life you have to do all you have to. Your entire mindset is conditioned to achieve no matter what. All your actions will be materially driven, possession driven and pleasure driven. You will be forever making targets and setting goals. More you achieve more you will drive yourself to achieve more.

You cannot stop. You are too wound up to stop and enjoy life.

Such conditioning does produce results in a material sense. Fear and greed do drive you, no doubt about that, but they also drive you into suffering. The end result is depression and stress-related ailments that destroy your being. Even that one life you have either ends fast or gets spent in mental turmoil. You have all the possessions you craved for, not knowing why, but retained none that matter, especially in relationships.

Yes, great scientific advances have been possible as a result of this desperation of limited life time. When you are pressurized by the grim knowledge of one life time and simultaneous ignorance of where you are headed next, all you can do is focus externally. All that you are able to perceive and absorb are through your senses.

Your senses do not tell you the truth, however much you wish to believe them.

First of all, your conscious brain receives less than 5% of what your senses perceive. Second, your unconscious brain drives 90% of your actions. As a result, you are driven not from awareness or even logic much as you would like to believe, but by the dark spaces of your unconscious and instinctive brain.

Look around you and see how elderly people live in Western countries, especially the United States. See how they live in relatively poorer countries like Bharat. Here in the United States, children leave home at 18 at the very latest and there is limited or no contact between parents and children. As people get older and they cannot manage on their own, they need to find old people's homes for them to be taken care of. Children may visit them, with appointment, once in a while.

These people wait for death, while at the same time fearing it.

It was not like this in Bharat even a generation ago, although things are changing there too. The joint family system ensured that old and young of many generations lived together. It was holistic not fragmented like the present day nuclear family system. There is nothing nuclear about these families except disaster! People criticize the joint family system on mainly one account, that they lack privacy.

Just think deeply about where privacy and independence have taken you.

Is the old people's home an alternative to the joint family system? Is this the right way to wait for death, in loneliness, boredom and fear? Won't what we do to our elder generation await us in our old age?

The concern for our selfish comfort has overtaken our cultures so strongly that we now mask this selfishness in the name of privacy and individual rights. There is no birth right. You had no right to your birth. You were just born, that is all. No one owes anybody in this life, let alone the universe.

In the name of privacy, we have caged ourselves. We have built defensive barriers all around and still talk about freedom. What freedom can one have within walls that one has erected around one self? It is only when we realize that our true nature encompasses everyone around us and together we all form this universe that we can truly be free. It is the fear of losing our identity that makes us build these walls. Ultimately this is the fear of death.

The hope of rebirth, the understanding of the truth of rebirth, takes away a huge burden from our shoulders. It takes away this fear of losing one's identity. The burden of fear and insecurity arising out of the lack of understanding of what awaits us after death, or the fear that as a sinner our fate is only hell, gets lifted.

One of the most frequent questions asked of me is about death – what happens at death, what happens after death? Can we predict death? and so on.

Krishna explains so beautifully in the Bhagavad Gita that your spirit changes bodies just the same way as you change your clothes. That is all. The spirit moves from one body which no longer functions into another. From matter, energy moves out, leaving behind inert matter. It then enters another matter and enlivens it. That is all that happens at death. One body, one person, one identity dies and another is born, it is that simple.

Krishna says that the spirit is immortal; it does not get destroyed. He says that fire cannot burn it, wind cannot dry it, sword cannot cleave it, water cannot wet it, it is pure, untouched and unchangeable. Again and again He makes this point and affirms that the spirit within you lives on even though the body perishes. Spirit is undying energy.

Visualize a white sheet of paper on which you have drawn circles with a colored pen. The circles are your body. Outside the body is the universal energy, what we call Brahman. Inside the body is also a white space, the same as the white space you see outside. It is the same energy as outside. This is the atman, the holographic part inside you of that universal energy.

When you die, the perimeter of the circle gets wiped out; the body disappears. The energy inside, atman, merges with the universal energy outside, Brahman, once the circle dissolves.

This is all that happens. This is what should happen.

There is also something else that happens. The white space inside does not remain white. It gets tinted and it gets tainted with our conditioning, with our samskara; these are the cumulative experiences that we have in our lifetime, all the memories, all the conditioning that takes place in that lifetime. Some circles get tinted with anger, some with greed, some with lust, some with fear and so on.

So, when the perimeter dissolves as the body perishes at death, the tinted space inside does not and cannot fully merge with the white space outside, because it is no longer pure white. This tint is what Krishna says is our last desire, which is the cumulative mindset based on all our lifetime experiences. This is termed as vasana.

So, this body with tinted energy waits for another envelope, another circle with a capacity to hold that same conditioning. The spirit waits for another body which will allow its vasana, the mindset; another body in an environment of parents and culture that will foster this mindset, vasana.

The new body is born with this vasana and this mindset becomes its opening current account balance, which is called its prarabda karma. The new body is the soil that will allow the spirit's vasana, which is its prarabda karma now to take root and grow.

This is what Krishna means when He says that your next birth will be based on your last desire. The last desire is the accumulation of all your individual desires through life and the collective vasana.

This vasana, this tint, determines where and how you are born again.

You take birth in a country, in a culture, in a family and in an environment that reflects the collective desires, the collective unfulfilled desires of your past birth and allows them the chance to be fulfilled. You determine, you choose where you are going to be reborn and to whom.

This is what we call your prarabda karma. This is why you are born in a rich or poor family, in the United States or Bharat, as man or a woman and whatever else are the factors that would work toward the fulfillment. You are born with a promise that your desires will be fulfilled. This is why Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion says that when you are born in this planet, all your needs have been anticipated and provided for.

You will then ask, 'I do not know what my prarabda karma is. No one told me! I have no memory of why I am here. This is not my fault. What can I do?'

This is the original sin. Your ignorance, your loss of memory of who you are, the ignorance of your divine origin and what unfulfilled desires you are bringing into this world so that they can be fulfilled and you can be dissolved of all your samskara, is the original sin.

Over time, with degeneration of our consciousness, we have lost the ability to remember the reason why we were born and we have lost the ability to remember our prarabda karma. But it is possible to recover this information.

In our second level program LBP 2, earlier called THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program (NSP), this is what we teach you. We help you recover your prarabda karma, your account balance at birth. We help you finally focus on what you are here for, what is the meaning of your life.

Simultaneously, we help you unload and dissolve your additional samskara, the agamya karma, additional credits and debits to your account in this birth. These are the additional desires and experiences that you have further accumulated in this life. This program helps dissolve all these unfulfilled desires and acquired conditioning, so that you can focus on what your real meaning in life is.

When we arrive upon this planet Earth, we come with the imprint of our basic needs, the prarabda karma. That is all that we need to fulfill, to cleanse our vasanas and end the cycle of life and death. We carry the energy within us to fulfill these vasanas.

However, through conditioning, we start accumulating the needs of other people which are in no way related to us. We start building wants, in addition to our needs. Needs can be fulfilled and will be fulfilled. That is the promise of the universe as Mahavira says. But our wants can never be fulfilled.

Ramana Maharishi says, 'this universe can fulfill the needs of everyone who lives here; but it cannot fulfill the wants of even one individual'.

Dissolution of our samskara, our conditioned and embedded memories that lead to unfulfilled desires, liberates us. It releases us of our suffering.

People often tell me that they are not afraid of death, but they are afraid of dying painfully. Their main request to me is about how I can help them toward a painless departure. It will be so wonderful to die peacefully in sleep, they will say; they express to be guided into this mode of death.

There are two issues involved here. You do not know how you will die and when you will die. So, you are imagining an event that has no basis and wondering how to change that. Second, you have an inadequate understanding about death. Both these issues are addressed in our courses; in fact even in our first-level program called LBP 1 or Ananda Spurana Program (ASP), we teach you how to face death and overcome fear.

The fear of death, whether painless or painful, has been established as the single most common fear amongst all races. No one wants to die. They are always quartered and dragged against their will. But death is inevitable.

Death is not final; it is a passage.

It is a separation of your mind–body system from your spirit, and it can be painless once you understand that however much pain your body may undergo, you need not suffer.

I have said this many times. When you feel pain, focus on the pain. We are taught by many to distract ourselves from pain. That will never work. Once the distraction ends, the pain returns. Instead, focus on the pain, the region, the spot where the pain is, without using the word pain. Just watch and witness. The pain may seem to become more intense for a while but it will gradually start disappearing. Pain is a sign that your body needs attention, whatever the cause of it is. When you focus on that body part and shower attention, the concept of pain disappears. And you will find that you do not suffer as a result.

In the meditations that we take you through in LBP 1 and LBP 2 programs, we help you dissolve your saṃskāra and experience the mind–body separation from the spirit. We make you rehearse your death, in controlled conditions as it were, so that at your deepest level you are rid of that primal fear of death. Understanding that death is not final and that it is a temporary separation of your spirit from one mind–body system as it moves from matter form into energy takes away the dark mystery of death.

Dissolution of your saṃskāra liberates you from the pain that you will otherwise experience when your spirit leaves the mind body, when the mind–body system tries to hold back and experience all the desires, pains, joy and guilt that it had experienced in that life time. It has been said that death can be as painful as a thousand scorpions stinging at the same time. It is true. But with understanding, you need not suffer.

The idea of this LBP 2 course came to me when I had watched people suffer while dying. In my days of wandering, before Self-realization, I had sat beside a dying man. I could feel the terrible pain that the body mind spirit system was undergoing, as the spirit was departing from his mind–body system. It was unbearable for me to even witness this.

Later, after my Self-realization, I was in a similar situation of being beside a dying man. This time, I braced myself for what was to come. To my surprise, the spirit departed with no pain at all. I asked the relatives of the dead man whether he was very spiritual; they said no, not at all. It occurred to me suddenly that it was my presence – the presence of an enlightened being – that helped the spirit depart painlessly! Just the presence was sufficient to dissolve that person's saṃskāra and make his journey painless.

Based on this understanding, I developed the LBP 2 course and many thousands have benefited from the knowledge of how they can lead their lives better through the understanding of the death process.

Unless you learn how to die, you can never understand how to live.

In a sense, now, you are dying every second just thinking of the impending death.

Biologists will tell you that out of many trillions of cells within you, billions die every day and millions die every second. Cells die and new cells get created. Even at the moment before you die, even at old age, this process continues. Once every 6 months or so, you have a new kidney; once every two years, you are a new model. You can compete with car makers! Every single part of your mind–body system has new cells within 2 years.

You are being renewed constantly. You are being rejuvenated every moment.

Yet, your diseases continues. Why? While every living part in you is renewed, what is that which allows the memory, the intangible memory of your diseases to continue? This is the result of your saṃskāras, the engraved and embedded memories. The same way that the vāsanā, your mindset, continues with your spirit even after death, your saṃskāras pursue your regenerated cells. But you can dissolve them, you can eliminate them and rid yourself of the so-called incurable diseases.

You cannot do that by the Western medical method of looking at each body part separately and trying to cure the ailment by attacking the symptoms and effects of the ailment. The mind–body system is not put together as a mechanical toy by assembling parts together. Cells are not produced that way.

From your high school biology, you know that the first cell that is formed by the union of sperm and egg develops through mitosis; it develops holistically. To cure diseases, we need to look at the mind–body system holistically. That is what the Hindu medical system of Āyurveda, knowledge of life, does. The Āyurveda physician makes as much effort to understand your mental condition as he does your physical condition before he attempts a cure. If you have a headache, he does not attack your head; the cause may be elsewhere in the body or it may not even be located in the physical body. It may be in another energy layer. Western medicine and its practitioners need to understand this so that they can serve patients more effectively.

Once this understanding happens, people will become focused on wellness instead of just curing diseases.

When we understand that the process of death and regeneration is something that happens within us naturally, every living second, a new understanding can dawn on us in our approach to death. Then, death is no longer our enemy.

Death is a friend. Death is not destruction; it is merely regeneration.

In the Hindu theology, Shiva is considered the God of destruction. The word Shiva in Sanskrit denotes auspiciousness, causeless auspiciousness. How inappropriate, you may think. Not at all. Death is not destruction as you know it. Shiva's destruction is what gives rise to continuous creation! Without destruction, there can never be creation.

It is the cycle of Nature: death and birth; one is not possible without the other. This is the cycle of saṃsāra, creation and destruction. Shiva is not the God of destruction, He is the God responsible for rejuvenation; He is the rejuvenator, not the destroyer. The rejuvenation is random and auspicious, it is not planned.

That is why there is no answer possible when people ask why so many people have perished in this disaster and that accident and so on, or why a young innocent child should die when so many older not so innocent people are still flourishing.

There are answers, but none that your logic can understand. The answers to these questions are available in another frequency.

Let us say you drive over an anthill and kill thousands of ants. It is a humongous disaster to the ants, but you don't even notice it! Even if you did, what will you do? You will drive on. That is what Nature does when thousands of people die; it just moves on. It does not stop to weep. Even as destruction takes place in one place, there is creation happening elsewhere. For every black hole, there is a big bang.

Our logic and our science have no answers yet. But if we look inward, we can find answers.

I have talked about this before. In one of my earlier visits to the United States, I was requested to heal an autistic child, perhaps about 6 years old. His parents were from Bharat but not Tamilians. They did not speak the language. When I laid my hand on this child, he said to me in crude Tamil to take my hands off. Get away from me, he said.

I then started a dialogue with his being and asked why. His spirit told me that it purposely chose this autistic state for it did not want any responsibility in life. 'That is fine', I said, 'but you are making these good people unhappy. Don't you see?' The spirit said, 'That is why I chose such compassionate people as my parents; some one else may have rejected me.'

I left that spirit and child alone.

People ask why any one would want to be born a beggar or die young or suffer from painful incurable diseases. There are good reasons. A wealthy person who has suffered as a result of his wealth may have developed the mindset to renounce wealth and this vāsanā results in his birth as a poor man or a beggar. There may be others whose carried over saṃskāra may limit life time.

It is hypocritical to mourn death. All mourning of death is selfish. Why not accept that the spirit has escaped the bondage of the body and that it has journeyed to where it belongs?

When death happens, you move into a different frequency. Matter becomes energy. That energy becomes matter again when the spirit re-enters the body. One of the energy layers that the spirit passes through at death is the causal layer or kāraṇa śarīra. Till this point, that is till the fifth layer, the spirit has the possibility to return to the body. People who stay in coma, stay in the causal layer, which is a space of intense darkness.

This space corresponds to the darkness of the birth canal as the infant moves out of the mother's womb into life. This is the point at which the spirit enters the body. Till then it is just a body mind that is nourished by the mother's life.

Passage through this dark space can be one of great fear. This is the fear we seek to dissolve in the LBP 2 (NSP) meditation.

What is fear? Fear is the feeling of losing something that you have not yet achieved but feel that you can achieve. Fear cannot happen if you do not see a possibility. You do not fear that you will not become Bill Gates, because you totally cast aside that possibility if you are reasonably intelligent. But, you are afraid that you may not measure up to your brother, friend or neighbor because you see the possibility there.

You have no fear when you are fully confident of achieving any possibility without a problem. Fear happens only when you perceive a possibility and do not feel confident of achieving or facing up to that possibility. When you drop all possibilities, you have no fears. Up to the point of death, only the prospect of death can make you afraid; not death itself.

When you go beyond boundaries, you will have no fears. If you really understand this, then you will have no fear of either life or death.

When you understand that truly nothing is possible by you, then too all fears dissolve, because then everything is in the hands of the Supreme. All great masters and all scriptures have reiterated this truth.

The Hindu scriptures say that not even a blade of grass can move without divine sanction. This is a truth. This is not a logical fact. Anyone can disprove this as a fact. They can say, 'I can move, I can move others'. But when you delve deep into yourself, you understand that everything happens from beyond you. When you surrender that power beyond you, then you lose all fears; in fact you lose all boundaries and you achieve all that you wish.

You can lose all fears through surrender; this is the path of devotion. You say to the Supreme that all that happens is because of you, and if you cannot grant me what I wish, nothing else can help. This is bhakti mārga, devotional path.

Or, you can move beyond your boundaries in absolute confidence, with the deep understanding that you are no different from the Supreme. This is the path of knowledge, jñāna mārga. Either way, you can lose your fears and be liberated.

Otherwise, you will constantly be suppressing your fears, as you do not wish others to see your fears. You put on a brave front or become arrogant and aggressive. You will find that all authoritative persons, who make other people's life miserable by expecting every one else to obey them without question, are deeply troubled and insecure persons. They cannot face their fears and so they suppress them into insecurity.

When you let go the fear of death, you let go all your fears. No ghost will haunt you again. When you understand death and what happens at death, you really understand life and learn to accept life without struggling and suffering. You tune into bliss.

This meditation is a guided meditation for 30 minutes.

When done regularly, it facilitates the cosmic energy that is present everywhere to empower and energize your body and mind. It also opens and energizes the Svādhiṣṭhāna chakra or spleen energy center.

You may have the words of the guided meditation taped for the appropriate period and play it back.

Sit comfortably on the floor. Those who cannot sit on the floor, may sit on a chair. The head, neck and spine should all be in a straight line.

(Play soft music if you wish to.) Close your eyes. Breathe deeply.

Imagine that you are walking into a dense forest. You are walking into the densest part of the forest. You enter a deep, dark cave. You cannot see anything with your eyes. You sit down in the cave. You cannot see your own body. Except for your own feeling of being there, you have no other identification.

Exhale deeply. Focus only on your deep exhalation (1 minute).

How much ever you try, you are not able to see. There is nothing to hear, smell or taste. In this deep darkness your senses do not function (1 minute).

You are born from darkness that was in your mother's womb and you dissolve into the same loving, compassionate darkness (1 minute).

Breathe in deeply the utter darkness that surrounds you everywhere. Breathe in deeply the darkness that has made your identity disappear.

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body merging with the darkness. You have no sense perception, no thoughts, no mind. It is as if your mind and body have completely merged into the darkness (5 minutes).

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body becoming the darkness. Stay in the darkness. Become one with the darkness (5 minutes).

With your whole body, breathe IN the darkness. With every cell of your body, breathe IN the darkness deeply (15 minutes).

Begin to feel yourself. Start to feel your whole body with all your senses. Move your body very slowly in the sitting position. Get up and move out of the cave. You are coming out of the dense forest.

You have returned to your meditation space. Slowly open your eyes (2 minutes).

• 1. Practice the meditation for removing fear.
• 2. Intend that you will be fearless in all that you do.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total courage in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be fearless and be in nityānanda, eternal bliss!

Master, You have said that in death we move from being matter to energy and we move again back to matter when reborn. Does the energy reside in that matter as well? How is it expressed?

*Albert Einstein, the great scientist, climbs to the top of Mt. Sinai to get close enough to talk to God.*

*Looking up, he asks God, 'God, what does a million years mean to you?'*

*The Lord replies, 'Just a minute.'*

*Einstein asks, 'Ok, and what would a million dollars mean to you?'*

*The Lord replies, 'Just a penny.'*

*Einstein asks, 'May I have a penny, my Lord?'*

*The Lord replies, 'Sure, in a minute.'*

*Vedic* scriptures say that the entire universe is made of five elemental energies.

These are the energies of earth, water, fire, air and ether. Earth is the grossest form and ether the subtlest of these energies. Everything in this universe, living nor non-living, is made of one or another of these five energies, or a combination. There are no exceptions. The energy form moves from solid to liquid to gaseous to intangible. That is the subtle progression of energy.

When the form is gross, we term that matter; when it becomes subtle and we cannot see the form, we call it energy. There is no distinction between matter and energy; matter is energy and energy is matter.

Scientists were fighting about this for centuries. In the days of Newton, not much was known about energy. It was Einstein who established clearly the link and the conversion. Even then many assumed that it was either matter or energy, not both. Now Quantum Physics has established beyond doubt that it can be matter and energy at the same time.

Sometimes objects appear to be matter or energy or both depending on the viewer! Quantum Physics experiments have established that the behavior of subatomic particles including their appearance, changes depending on who views them!

Matter is material, scientific, logical and self-centered. Energy is spiritual, beyond logic and multi-centric. Energy cannot stay in one place and cannot be bound by boundaries unlike matter, which stays where you left it. Matter needs to be moved by energy. One is form and the other is the formless behind the form.

An idol in a temple is seen by your eyes as matter, but can be seen as energy if your being is open. That is why people steeped in logic have a problem in understanding the nature of idol worship.

All living beings are energy, and humans at the higher end of the evolutionary scale are high-energy beings. The human being is a holographic image of the universal etheric

energy. The human being is the microcosmic representation of the macrocosm. There is no distinction in energy; all energies are one and derived from one.

They seem to differ only in the form that they assume.

Within our mind–body system, we have energy pathways. Traditional Chinese and traditional Hindu medicine systems, as well as other ancient wellness systems, clearly talk about these energy pathways. Meridians and pressure points are the central concepts of Chinese acupressure and acupuncture treatments and millions of people benefit from these.

In many cases, people turn to these forms of treatment after Western medical treatments have failed to help them. These treatments are based on a clear understanding that our mind–body is an energy field. Many other Chinese practices such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong and so on are also based on energy and are widely practiced.

In the tradition Hindu medical system of *Ayurveda* (knowledge of life), the mind–body system is looked at as a holistic energy field. Energy blocks are diagnosed and related to mind–body states and cures are prescribed. It is not they will treat only the leg if you have a pain in the leg.

Each part of your body is not separate; it is part of an integrated system. You cannot cure an ailment by treating only the affected part or the symptom. One needs to identify the root cause and remove that cause.

Western medical science is on its way to understanding some of these concepts and accepting them. Many professional Western medical doctors have written extensively on holistic medicine based on the traditional concept of energy. It is now far better understood that mind and body are not two separate entities.

There is no such thing as a psychosomatic illness.

If what that term means is that the ailment is caused by the mind, all ailments including cancer and heart attack are psychosomatic. There is no ailment that we suffer from which is either purely body centric or mind centric. All ailments have a combined cause and effect of mind–body together. There are no exceptions.

The *Vedic* system says that there are 72,000 energy pathways in the body. Not all of them are active. In fact, probably about 14,000 of these paths we use in our lifetime. Then there are energy centers distributed around the mind–body system. The Chinese system talks about some 150 such points and Hindu systems such as *kalaripayattu* and so on mention 108 such points. Some of these points are critical and when affected can cause paralysis or even death. These points are known as *marma* or secret points in the Hindu system. Identification and use of these points are an art and a science, and there are still qualified and effective practitioners of these ancient cures.

In the past, when this knowledge was practiced extensively, it became in addition to a healing science a self-defense system as well as a spiritual path. It is in the same mould that karate and such other Eastern martial arts also developed.

There are seven major energy centers in our body. In Sanskrit we call them *chakras* or wheels. This is because when the sages meditated, there was extraordinary energy flow at these points resembling whirlpools or wheels of energy. The *chakras* are virtual energy centers. Doctors cannot find these when they cut up the body and so they might discount their existence, but kirlian photography has captured these centers clearly in the energy plane and now these centers are accepted by the world of medicine also. Each *chakra* is connected to an endocrine gland. Endocrine glands produce hormones that control our physical, mental and emotional wellness.

In the latter day Tantric tradition of Hinduism, which developed with the influence of Buddhist practices, various practices are used to energize the *chakras*. The objective of most of these techniques is to raise what is called the *kundalini* energy. This energy rests in the *muladhara chakra* at the base of the spine and through meditation can be moved upward, toward the *sahasrara chakra* at the crown of the head.

Though the underlying concepts are true, most of these practices can be quite dangerous to the average person. A person has to be ready to cope with the awakened energy. Even for someone who is prepared, it takes quite a while to become accustomed to the awakened energy. For someone who is not, there can be major damage to the physical and mental faculties and the nervous system.

Many people come to me asking me to help raise their *kundalini* energy. Others tell me of bad experiences in having tried this either by themselves or through other teachers. These dangers are real; you can become mentally unbalanced; you can go blind. I tell them to stop worrying about the *kundalini* and practice the completely safe and simple meditations we teach in our initial level programs called LBP.

These meditations help raise your energy; they energize all your *chakras* in a very safe way. We use the meditation techniques that will clear your emotional blocks in order to settle you into well-being.

Please understand this simple truth. When your energy is good and is flowing right within, you are in good health and at ease. When there is a problem and when your *chakras* are blocked, they disrupt the energy flow and you are in dis-ease and unwell. Proper flow of energy and energization of your *chakras* are essential to your well-being.

When your *chakras* are blocked, they can contract and become as small a button on your shirt. When they are energized, they expand and can be as large as a truck wheel.

You no longer have to believe that *chakras* exist based on what scriptures say or what a psychic could see by looking at you. Today, there are scientific techniques available that can capture the energy of *chakras*. Kirlian photography is one such tool and there are

others. These techniques capture the energy field in you and around you. Many practitioners are using these techniques for diagnostic and treatment purposes.

There is no longer any doubt that an energy field surrounds us and that the same energy field acts within us as well. These pictures show energy blocks that help identify points of potential discomfort, even before such discomfort is manifested. Of course, one has to use these techniques with awareness and caution. When used appropriately, these can save lives and avoid suffering.

These energy centers are located at various points in the body. The corresponding endocrine glands are also shown separately. The accompanying chart explains more details about chakras.

I do not want you to get involved in the esoteric aspects of chakra, related to raising the kundalini and so on; these are not for amateurs. However, you can practice techniques that are very safe to energize yourself and to shed your emotional blocks. This is what we teach in our first-level programs.

Our LBP 1 is about the seven chakras in our mind–body system. The program takes you through each of the chakras in great detail as to which emotional state they are related to, how they get blocked and how they can be energized through a very effective meditation process.

Attending this 2-day program has been a transformation process for many. Nearly 200 ordained teachers now teach these programs in 33 countries all over the world.

No one can open your chakras for you. Whoever claims to do this is trying to make money out of you, that's all. You have to work on energizing your chakras through appropriate meditative practices yourself. Even if I were to help in energizing your chakra, the effect will be temporary; you need to work on it yourself to make the energization long lasting.

By nature, we are designed to experience bliss. As young children, we actually do experience bliss. It is only when our environment conditions us, that we start building a wall around us. We erect a wall of ego and identity, which effectively blocks our access to this experience of bliss. In this program we teach you how to break that wall and start experiencing bliss all over again, as you did when you were children.

This is what happens when you meditate upon these chakras with the techniques that we teach. You are able to drop your mind and ego, the wall that isolates you, and you allow

the energy of the universe to recharge you. With the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, you can actually ingest them directly. However, the etheric energy, which is the subtlest and the most pervasive, is not accessible for direct consumption.

The only way to absorb this etheric energy is through meditation.

The muladhara chakra or the root center is at the perineum point, at the bottom of the spine. This center is deeply connected to the earth and is related to our basic survival issues such as food, procreation and so on All the feelings that are centered in this chakra are primal, such as desires, greed, anger, lust and so on. This center is blocked by our fantasies. It gets energized when we accept, understand and act in reality instead of dwelling in fantasy.

We constantly live in the future or in the past. We spend time speculating about the future and fantasizing about what all can happen. From time to time we look back into the past, mostly with regret wishing that we could have lived differently and we could have done that instead of this. This too is a fantasy. We rarely spend time in the present.

Watch yourself or someone else while eating. We do everything else while eating. We talk, we read, we look here and there, we watch television and we keep doing something or the other as if eating is an unpleasant chore that needs to be combined with something more interesting. When we eat, we do everything else except focus on the food; we just swallow the food, as if we wish to get it over with as quickly as possible.

This is what we do with everything else. Our mind is rarely where the body is. When you are at work, you think about pleasure or home. When you are home, you think about work. When you are in a movie or at the beach, you are worried about the children at home or the unfinished work in the office. To be in the present moment is the most difficult thing for our mind to do.

Reality is in the present moment. What is now is what matters. The past is gone, it is history; there is nothing you can do with the past. Regrets cannot undo what has been done. They do not even help you learn not to do what you did to generate that regret. You do not even have the intelligence not to repeat your mistakes!

You may be upset when I say this, but just look back and see how much suffering you have had by doing the same things again and again.

There is nothing that you can do about your future. It is not in your control, however much you may think it is. You cannot even influence your own breath! You never know when it will stop. How can you then influence anyone else? All the speculations and all the fantasies you weave about your future can result only in one thing: suffering.

The only way you can do anything with your future is by doing something now. The future becomes the past through the present.

When you focus on the present and handle the present with awareness, both your future and past are taken care of; there is neither need for regret nor speculation. When you are in the present, you are devoid of fantasies; you are in reality. This is the meaning of the word and the state that is referred to as brahmacharya in Sanskrit. This state is that of the young disciple who the master trains in reality. Brahmacharya literally means walking in reality and that is the first lesson that the young student was taught in the Vedic curriculum. Ganesha is regarded as the ruling deity of this chakra, since he is the ultimate brahmachari.

Muladhara controls the sexual desires and actions. Lust is the primal emotion of human kind designed to ensure its survival through procreation. Lust is an essential emotion and not sinful as made out by religious injunctions. Unfortunately, humans have lost the ability to indulge and fulfill lust as animals do. Humans indulge in fantasies and not in pure lust.

As I said, a blocked muladhara leads to fantasies. In today's world, where media loads you with information, it is easy to get into and stay in a fantasy world.

A young girl, hardly 9 years old, came with her parents to the ashram. I asked her, 'What you would like to be when you grow up?' She said, 'I would like to marry so and so…' She was referring to a famous actor. This man was already married with children and probably 40 years old!

These fantasies lead us into false relationships which we think will lead to love and joy. What we look for is not love and joy; we look for someone who meets some image we have created inside us based on our fantasies. When a man meets a girl or the other way around, each one already has a template in their mind. If there is a superficial resemblance with that template, they get attracted and fall in love.

When the relationship grows in time and the distance reduces in space, true colors emerge. Templates do not fit reality. Marriages break down. Then one starts looking for another image to fit the template. Not only that, the template would have changed by now because more fantasies would have been collected by that time!

How will this ever work? You can keep changing partners and friends and relationships, but as long as what drives you is your fantasy image drawn from media or even the past, things will never work. It is like the woman looking for her father image in a partner, and a man looking for his mother image in a partner. Will it ever work? No! It will only lead to suffering.

Erase that template and start looking at reality as it is. Look at a person as he or she is and learn to accept that person. Otherwise there is no end to suffering.

When the muladhara chakra is energized by meditation, you learn to settle into reality and into the present moment. Primal emotions such as greed, anger and lust become more in control. You start moving up in the evolution of your spirit. The lowest chakra in

human evolution is the muladhara, and this is the highest energy location for animals. As long as one is in a blocked muladhara state, one is still controlled by animal instincts. That is why if you wish to use the faculties of awareness and higher consciousness that are the gifts to human nature, you must unblock and energize the muladhara chakra.

People ask me that since humans are evolved from animals and since animals are generally polygamous, isn't it true that humans too by nature are polygamous? They say, that there is nothing wrong in changing partners and indulging in multiple partners at the same time.

It is correct that when a human is born, he or she is born with the mindset of a polygamous individual. However, the human species does not have to end polygamous. The human, out of most living beings, has the ability to move from polygamous to a monogamous relationship. He can further convert this relationship into a non-sexual one.

This is how the life orders are defined in the Vedic system. A young brahmachari stays celibate till he or she gets married. They stay in the monogamous relationship of a couple as grihasta during their sexually productive years. They then move into a non-sexual companionship relationship as a vanaprastha. Some then choose to let go all attachments, possessions and relationships and wander as monks, or sannyasis.

The next energy level above muladhara is the swadhishtana chakra, which is commonly referred to as the spleen chakra. This is located in the groin area between the navel and the genitals. Swadhishtana, when blocked, gives rise to fear and insecurity. All our fears are based on the possibility of non-fulfillment or loss. If we are either fully confident of achieving and retaining something, or totally unconcerned about something, we can never have any fear about it. A poor man living on subsistence income has no fears about losing his millions. Bill Gates should have no fears about becoming homeless.

Fears can be material centered such as about wealth and possessions, emotional centered about our feelings and relationships, intellect or mind centered, spiritual centered and quite often related to things we do not know enough about – like God and Death. Fear of death, which is perhaps the most common and potent fear, is about the unknown, driven mainly by not knowing clearly what lies ahead. It is also about the potential loss of identity, a primal fear that the mind has about losing itself.

Swadhishtana is about 'I', one's identity just the same way muladhara is about 'mine', one's possession and the greed to possess.

Why do you mourn someone's death? The person is gone, he or she cannot hear you. You actually don't cry for that person. You cry for yourself. You cry out of selfishness, out of having lost something that may have continued had the person lived; and you cry out of fear that one day you too will be dead.

When you learn that death is not an end but a passage, this fear will pass. Once the fear of death passes, almost all your other fears disappear too.

Fear can never be overcome by suppressing fear. It will reappear. Fear can only be overcome when faced. Meditating on the swadhishtana to unblock and energize this chakra helps in facing your fears and overcoming them. The meditation that we teach focuses on the fear of death, and once this fear is transcended, all other fears drop.

Above the swadhishtana, situated in the navel area, is the manipuraka chakra. When blocked, this chakra gives rise to worries. Worry is the constant inner chatter that we experience repeatedly, emphasizing all that is negative. Even when everything seems to be going well and smoothly, we are concerned that something will go wrong. Our entire assumption is that we are unfit to enjoy life.

Every silver lining has to have a cloud inside it.

I often place a dark spot on a white background and ask people to tell me what they see. Ninety-nine percent see only the dark spot. One in hundred says it is whiteness with one small spot in it.

How our senses perceive the external world is not what decides our response, it is the way our mind interprets what the senses perceive that decides it. This interpretation is done by the unconscious mind. Unconscious mind is driven by the memories engraved deep into it. These are the samskara that drive us. These deep-rooted memories do not allow you to stay in peace. They are forever driving you one way or another, oscillating you from one extreme to another, producing stress.

Stress and worry are energy drainers. There is nothing positive about them. At least desires including lust and anger are energy expressions. The problem is in our inability to control them and use them effectively. However, we can happily do without worries. It is another fantasy about nothing. I call manipuraka the corporate chakra; so is the vishuddhi chakra that we will talk about later.

No one in the corporate world is without stress. If there is nothing to worry about, they will invent new worries. Because they believe, totally wrongly, that unless you are stressed you will not produce results. So, they create situations that stress you.

I do not know if you have seen any large poultry farm. I am sure there are thousand such poultry farms in the United States. They keep the lights on, powerful tube lights, where the chicken are cooped. I asked why. They said this is to make them stressed, so that they will keep eating all the time, they won't even sleep, and they will gain weight faster. The poultry industry only wants the chicks to gain weight quickly. So, you guys end up eating highly stressed and dis-eased birds.

In the corporate world, all they care about is how much work they extract of you, that is all. That is why you have people burnt out at 30. They nearly go mad, and they have nervous breakdowns. Instead of becoming CEO or chairman, which in any case only one in many thousand can aspire to, these executives end up ruining their lives. I believe they call them salary men in Japan. They live like animals, like the chicken in coops.

In the corporate world, stress is transmitted through time-based targets. If you do not finish something in time, you are a loser. So, they make budgets and forecast profits. I talked to CEOs and they admitted frankly that budgets are never achieved. 'Why then do you prepare budgets', I asked them. They looked sheepish. 'We need directions Swami', they would say, 'We need guidelines and all management experts agree that budgets are the only way.'

First of all, how many management experts have been successful businessmen and are amongst the richest people in the world? Advising other people is easy. Making things happen is very difficult.

I am not telling you not to plan. Please do. But, do not get obsessed with what you have planned. Use it as a directional tool, not as a Judgment Day decision, as a life and death tool. That is what all you corporate people do. And you get stressed out. The mere thought of the budget and time line freezes you in fear.

Focus on the present, focus on the process, not on the future, not on the goal. If your process, if what you do now is right, it will certainly lead you to the right result. However focused you may be on the goal, on the future, if what you do know and do is not right, you will never reach there.

Stress and worry are killers. In the meditation for manipuraka, we teach you how to dislodge and dissolve the garbage that is embedded in you since childhood or before. People actually feel clean and light after this meditation. In fact, this meditation is so powerful that you cannot do it with a full stomach; you will vomit.

The next chakra above manipuraka is the anahata chakra, the heart center. Anahata chakra is the center with which we begin our first-level LBP 1 courses. This is the transition point between the lower centers for animalistic, instinctive emotions and the higher centers for more evolved, humanistic emotions. When the anahata is open, you love people and you attract people to you. When it is blocked, you demand, beg and buy attention.

From childhood, we are conditioned to do what pleases others. Our parents and teachers condition us to do what pleases them, by bribing us with chocolates and outings and what not. They stop us from doing what bothers them by punishing us. So, good children quickly learn how to manipulate others and how to obtain their positive attention, whether they truly wish to do it or not. This is what we end up doing in our lives. We carry notebooks begging others to sign in saying 'Please say I am good'.

All through our lives, this drama goes on. We do what others want us to do, so that we can get their positive attention and feel happy. If someone frowns at us instead of smiling at us, we feel troubled. It is as if we are a box full of labels stuck on it, 'I am this, I am that, I am also this'. It is as if people can appreciate who we are from the labels we sport.

We are bound by other people's opinions because we have no opinion of ourselves. That is the simple truth.

The anahata meditation, which is derived from ancient Tibetan Buddhist practices works at many levels. It builds true self-esteem, not the false 'in your face' attitude that you find so commonly in materialistic societies. It builds a quiet and confident esteem that does not ask for recognition. You know who you are, and that's what matters.

At another level, it allows you to express love without expecting something in return; you learn to respond to every one in whatever way they act toward you from your anahata, from your heart center, with love. Your negativities and judgments drop.

At yet another level, this meditation, known as the mahamantra or the great chant, is a self-healing meditation. Our healers teach this meditation to all those who they heal and who are interested, so that these people can live in harmony with their body just by doing this meditation.

There is a very powerful practical application of the energized anahata. When you attend the LBP 1 courses and practice the meditations, your chakras are energized. You are requested to continue with at least this one meditation every day. It will keep your anahata chakra continuously energized.

By now, you understand the emotional blocks associated with each chakra and you will be able to determine from the attitude of people interacting with you which chakra and which emotional block they are coming to you with.

Someone approaching you in greed or lust or anger interacts with you with a blocked muladhara; one who acts in fear acts from a blocked swadhishtana. Any average person would react to the emotional block with the same or complimentary emotional block: anger with anger and fear with fear.

Once you have understood the mechanism of the energy centers in your mind–body system, and with your energy centers activated, you have the option of responding to all interactions with your anahata. You can respond to all such emotions such as anger, greed, fear or worry with just one emotion, that of unconditional love, from your energized heart center.

The energized anahata makes this possible. Even if it is difficult initially, and it may be difficult especially with those who you are close to, persevere with it along with your meditation practice.

In whatever way anyone approaches you, with whatever emotion they interact with you, respond to them from your energized anahata. The results will be nothing short of miraculous.

Not only does your relationship with all who you interact with change for the better dramatically, but you also feel a deep sense of liberation and bliss within. Unconditional love is the purest and most powerful of all emotions; it liberates you.

Above the anahata at the heart, at the throat point lies the vishuddhi chakra. This energy center called the throat center is the receiving point of all the energy that comes to you through meditation. Most of this energy gets stored in the muladhara. The vishuddhi is related intimately to the thyroid gland that governs your growth. The vishuddhi chakra controls your communication skills, listening and talking. An energized vishuddhi would be of great value to all whose professions are linked to these skills, such as speakers, musicians and so on.

The vishuddhi chakra is blocked by jealousy or envy. Above the anahata, one's emotional blocks go beyond one's inner self. Greed, anger, fear, worry and so on can be self-created. Jealousy needs another person to happen.

If you are the only person on this planet, who can you be jealous of? You have no one to compare with.

When we are very young, we have no jealousy. Young children may react when something is taken away from them or want something else that they see with another child. But the wanting is driven more by curiosity. After a few moments the child will just forget it and move on. But, as we get older, we are conditioned to value ourselves against others. This is the damage to our thinking caused by the present day education system.

Children are ranked on their ability at a very young age, just so that the teachers' job of managing children becomes easier. Our school system builds in this damaging emotional block of jealousy through comparison at a very young age.

Once you rank one child as first and another as second, you automatically consign the rest of them to the dust bin. We say that it motivates them. How?

Is saying 'you are useless' a form of motivation?

This practice of the so-called motivation continues into the corporate world as we grow older. Ask any intelligent mother how she handles her children. Can she do it by comparing one unfavorably with another and hope that the less performing one will do better? If any mother does that, rest assured that the child would be damaged for life. Any intelligent mother will favor and lavish more love on the poorer performing child.

Each of us is unique. Each of us is made by god as an individual being and not as a mass manufactured product. God is a sculptor not a machine operator. He produces each of us from a different mould. What is the point in trying to compare with another? If you are good at one thing, someone will be good at another. No one can be good at everything!

Comparison is the worst waste of one's energy. It achieves no purpose at all. Move with the full awareness of your own uniqueness; you will achieve more. It is like running a race. You need to focus on how fast you are running and try to keep running faster. That is most effective way to win a race, because even if you spend a split second in looking at your co-participants, you have wasted that split second in your own progress!

Energizing the vishuddhi chakra provides you with extraordinary energy at a third level. You may ask what this third level is. Normally you work about 10–12 hours a day based on your stored up energy. After this, your body tells you to rest. You feel sleepy. You have exhausted your first level of energy.

This body message is your conditioning. It is not a real need.

I can tell you for sure that all you need is really only 4 hours of sleep every night, if you know how to sleep. The rest of the time you toss and turn.

Anyhow, if you keep working without listening to your body needs you will find around midnight that you are no longer sleepy; you are wide awake; even if you try to sleep you won't be able to. This is the awakening of your second layer of energy.

Sometimes, you come across situations where you are able to perform mental and physical feats far in excess of your normal capability. When a dog chases you, you will do the mile at less than 4 minutes! Mothers have been known to stop moving vehicles to save their children. Impossible feats can be performed when your life or the life of someone you love is at stake. This happens with a third level of energy when the vishuddhi is activated.

You can raise your third level of energy by linking yourself with the cosmic energy source through the vishuddhi meditation.

The energy center above the vishuddhi is the ajna chakra or the third eye center, located between the eyebrows. Ajna means 'will' in Sanskrit and when this chakra is energized, whatever you will can happen. This center is also the controller of all other energy centers and its related endocrine gland is the pituitary, which is the controller of all glands.

When the ajna is energized and the third eye opens, you perceive everything in a different plane altogether. You are no longer caught in the illusion of day to day life, what the sages call maya, illusion or unreality. You realize that the life that you lead is a psycho drama, and it has a higher meaning than what you have so far accorded it. You become aware of your divine origin.

When people talk of the original sin that Adam and Eve committed and relate it to sexual knowledge, they do not understand the metaphorical meaning of this parable. The original sin of Adam and Eve when they consumed the apple was that they forgot their divine origin. Their feet that were till then above the ground, touched earth and they became ordinary humans. One of the expressions of that loss of knowledge was the experience of lust.

The Ajna chakra is blocked by our ego. Ego is a mask that we wear to perform different tasks. We behave differently at different times. As a father, one behaves differently from what one would as a son. As a master one would behave differently from what one would as a servant. Every time your role changes, you wear a different mask. Each persona is a mask. When we wear the wrong mask, ego becomes a burden. The identity gets fixed and gets mixed up when you play different roles, it becomes inappropriate.

When we drop our identity, our ego, we behave naturally. Whatever we do is appropriate. There is no gap between what we think we are and what we convey to others. In Sanskrit, ego is classified into two parts – ahankara and mamakara. Ahankara is what you express as what you are to others. It is always more than what you really are. You boast, you pretend and you lie to boost your image.

Mamakara is what you really think of yourself when you are by yourself, which is always less than what you really are. People tell me, 'No Swami, this is not true; I have a high opinion of myself.'

I ask them, 'Do you think you are God?' They look down sheepishly; they think I am pulling their leg and say, 'No Swami, not like that.' Let me tell you this: any opinion that you have of yourself that is less than that you are God is a low self-esteem!'

You are divine, that is the truth.

That is why I say time and again that my mission is not to prove my divinity; my mission is to prove your divinity.

The gap between this ahankara, which is high, and mamakara, which is low, is what causes suffering. This is the ego imbalance that leads you into trouble. Dropping the ego is the last step in your evolution. Once you drop your identity and surrender to Existence, you are liberated. You discover your true divine nature. You go beyond the Self, because then there is no longer anything to call Self.

The ego that you project out, the ahankara, is all about taking yourself seriously. Learn to laugh at yourself. Learn to laugh with others at yourself. You will find that their opinion about you rises in direct proportion to how your opinion about yourself decreases.

Technically, ajna is the last chakra. As I said earlier, once the ajna is energized and your ego is dropped, you are truly there. You know the truth. Sahasrara, the chakra on the crown center (top of head), is really a gateway.

Sahasrara is the gateway to gratitude and bliss. When you realize your true nature of divinity, you are filled with tremendous gratitude to Existence, gratitude for the very fact of your being. It is that gratitude borne out of a sense of total surrender that drives you.

Some of my disciples tell me that when they hear my name or think of me, their eyes fill up and they are overcome with gratitude. To them, the master is Existence and their sahasrara energizes whenever they think of the master. It is not imaginary, it is real. They reach the state of true surrender in those moments.

Ramakrishna says that when a devotee's eyes fill with tears at the thought of his master or favorite God, the devotee can be certain that he will not be reborn! He would have had a glimpse of the ultimate truth in this life; this is moksha, liberation.

Beyond all these energy centers lies the ananda gandha, literally the fragrance of bliss. This is the ultimate center that is the convergence of all energy centers. When I initiate our THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spiritual Healers, this is the center that I open up and energize. From then on, the healers are in permanent and perpetual contact with the cosmic energy through the master.

Unlike other chakras, which can be opened and energized by you through meditations, ananda gandha cannot be accessed and opened through meditation. This center requires the grace of the master and his initiation.

All THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spiritual Healers would have attended three pre-qualification courses. The first is the LBP 1. Here they understand the emotional blocks associated with energy centers in their bodies, the chakras, and how these emotional blocks can be dissolved through appropriate meditations and practice the meditations to energize the chakras.

At the next level, they attend LBP 2, or the Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP). Here, they understand the process of death and about the seven layers of energy that the spirit passes through when it leaves the mind–body system. The meditations in this program dissolve the samskara, the engraved memories of your conditioning that unconsciously run your life. In a sense, the participant is reborn with no samskara. They are then given a new name to signify this spiritual rebirth, a spiritual name that I choose in line with their calling.

The third level course is the LBP 3, which is the Bhakti Spurana Program BSP in Bharat or the Atma Spurana Program ATSP in the United States. These programs take the participant through deep meditative techniques related to the master–disciple relationship and other energy layers.

Once a person has done these three courses, he or she is ready to be ordained. I open their ananda gandha chakra as part of a personal initiation as a disciple. From then on, their spiritual growth is my responsibility. They are my disciples. The meditation that they now can practice helps them merge with Existence and gives them the power to heal. They become my healing hands.

Healing is a quality of that infinite energy that surrounds us. It is not merely a physical effect as measured by body and mind health; it is something far beyond that takes you into the energy state of the master and Existence, that of nithyananda, eternal bliss.

Says Shiva in Vignana Bhairava Tantra:

Consider your essence rising from center to center, up your spine, and so rises 'livingness' in you.

The spine is the base of both your body and mind. Your body and mind are both rooted in the spine. Your age rests in your spine. If your spine is supple, you are young; if your spine is rigid, you are old!

The seven major chakras, or energy centers, are located along the length of the body. At the base of the spine is the muladhara chakra, the sex center. On the crown of the head is the sahasrara chakra, the center that opens us to god.

The spinal column is the passage for energy. In this meditation, you will move your energy upward from the muladhara, right up to the sahasrara. This movement doesn't happen easily because it is against gravity! It is very easy for your energy to move downward.

In fact, 80% of our energy is locked in the muladhara. It is like a weight pulling you down to the earth. Haven't you noticed how heavy your lower back always feels? When this energy is drawn upward and released through the sahasrara, you will feel a tremendous weightlessness, a freedom. You will get a taste of bliss.

Sit in a comfortable position with your eyes closed and your spine erect. Now imagine yourself as if you are a Being of Light. This is not just imagination. You are light, all is light. You are just not used to thinking of yourself as energy. You have got so used to seeing yourself as just matter.

Visualize that you are a column of light. Now move your attention to your root center, muladhara. Feel that this center has become bright and alive, like a ball of light. Now visualize this light moving upward, through your swadhishtana chakra up to your navel center, manipuraka chakra.

You will feel warmth rising inside. This is real warmth! When the navel also becomes a bright ball of light, a source of light, allow the light to start moving upward.

Feel the light moving upward to your heart center. Feel the light and warmth in your heart. Feel your breathing become deeper; feel your heartbeat become more relaxed.

Picture the energy move up to the space between your brows, the ajna chakra. Feel the whole region engulfed in light.

Gradually, move up to the crown chakra, sahasrara, the energy zone at the very top of your head.

You may have many strange experiences when the energy reaches your crown. You may feel dizzy or nauseous. Your head is not used to handling this much energy. Sometimes, if there is too much energy moving into the head, it may be felt as an explosion in the head. Don't be afraid. If you are feeling dizzy, if you are falling, allow yourself to fall. Even if you feel you are going to faint, don't worry.

This is the state of deepest sleep, known as yoga nidra. Many meditators experience this state, and it is nothing to be scared of. You will come back to normal in half an hour's time.

Part 4: Quantum Spirituality_English_part_4.md

When the energy reaches your head, your whole head becomes warm. Your head becomes a ball of light.

Now, release the energy into the cosmos. Feel as if your head has become a flower, a beautiful lotus flower. Let the flower open gently and release its energy into the cosmos.

A word of caution: never leave this meditation incomplete.

Before you start, ensure that you are going to be undisturbed for at least 2 hours. During the meditation, ignore every other disturbance. If you get up and leave the meditation halfway through, the energy will get clogged in that particular center and cause physical or mental problems.

This meditation is a beautiful way to transform your sex energy into spiritual energy. When you practice this regularly, you will notice that your sexual desires are gradually stilled. You will feel more and more prayerful throughout the day. With so much energy going to your head, you will feel more alive, you will work more efficiently. And most importantly, you will be in a perpetual state of joy.

1. Practice the meditation for Livingness

2. Intend that you will be in Livingness always.

3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize that you are in this state of energized Livingness. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be in Livingness and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Beloved Master,

You say that your mission is to transform the individual. You have said that transformation of the individual is the greatest miracle a master can perform. Can you elaborate on this please?

In a university, a competition was organized on the subject of 'What would you do if you were the last person on earth?'

Students and teachers came up with many creative and many crazy ideas.

One said, 'Now I have the whole world to myself, that is what I wanted all the time. I will have no one to bother me; not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends. I will enjoy life to the hilt.'

Another said, 'I have always wanted to travel. Now I shall take my time and travel, enjoying what the world has to offer.'

A young man said that he would kill himself as he could not bear to be alone.

A young woman said, 'If I had even a little advance notice that I would be the last person, I would get myself pregnant so that the human race has the potential to continue.'

She won the competition.

The human race is based on survival. It is based on continuity. It is based on connectivity.

None of you is an isolated individual. You are all connected. You are all not individual novels disconnected from one another. You are all chapters in one novel.

The great philosopher John Dunne once said, 'No man is an island.' Nor is a woman an island!

You may think you are unique, and you are indeed unique. God is an artist not a machine operator. He creates each of you as a unique individual entity, each in a different mould. Yet, He builds within all of us connectivity with Him that is forever.

God, Universe, Existence, Nature and by whatever name you wish to call that Cosmic Intelligence that operates our planet Earth, our Solar System, our Milky Way and our Universe as we know it is an integral part of each of us. He is like a hologram and we are part of the hologram. When a hologram is broken, each tiny bit carries the entire image of that hologram within it, unlike in an ordinary photograph. With that one piece, however small it may be, you can recreate the entire model.

So it is with us and Nature. However small the individual beings are, each being carries within it the imprint of the same holographic image of Existence.

We indeed are cast in the mould of the cosmic intelligence and linked permanently with that intelligence.

The problem, however, is, that we lose the awareness of this connection. We forget the master image we came from and we forget our interconnectivity. This lack of awareness is the root cause of all our suffering and violence. When a man or woman forgets that he or she is an integral part of every other man and woman, they cause suffering to others in the belief that they are gaining something, and in the process they are harming themselves.

We all say with great ease that we love humanity. Yet, we find it difficult to love our neighbor. The problem is in loving your neighbor with whom you share an identity, a relationship. It is easy to love a faceless, intangible and disconnected human race with whom you have no established identity. You need to drop your ego to love your neighbor.

Mulla Nasruddin was riding on a donkey. The donkey did not want to go further and was trying to throw him off. Nasruddin was angry and started beating the donkey.

His neighbors gathered around him and advised him, 'Nasruddin, the poor donkey is tired. Let it eat and rest. Don't bear the poor animal unnecessarily.'

Nasruddin exclaimed in disgust, 'I didn't know that my donkey had so many relatives here to care of him. Let me go elsewhere.'

Education fosters your ego. Rene Descartes once said, 'I think, therefore I am.' Western education focuses on the thinking man and the external world. This education is ruled by intellect, not intelligence. Intellect is a product of your mind, limited by your mind, whereas intelligence is a gift from the cosmos.

The more educated you are, the less tuned to Nature you become and the more disillusioned with life you become. Life ceases to have definition and your own existence ceases to have a meaning. You don't understand who you are and why you are here. Depression is the result.

Western science has accelerated this process of forgetfulness and unawareness. It has created in us an obsessive fixation on external world and the material world. The belief that only what we can touch, feel and externally experience is real, has created around us a false sense of reality. It is only recently that scientists engaged in Quantum Physics have discovered that subatomic particles behave differently depending on who is viewing them when and how!

In that sense, nothing is absolute, nothing is real.

Many thousand years ago, the great sages of Bharat, the rishis, experienced what these scientists have discovered only now. They experienced that the external world is unreal by looking inward. These sages were inner scientists and they developed an inner science that raised one's awareness of our connectivity with the cosmic intelligence and therefore with one another.

Unlike Rene Descartes, these rishis claimed that when you stop thinking you become aware of who you are.

They showed that it is only when your mind stops and you stop thinking, that you discover your true nature. This true nature is one with Existence.

This awareness created a deep sense of happiness within oneself; a sense of bliss that no longer depended on what we experienced externally, but totally on one's inner experience of awareness.

When we focus on external objects, events and persons for our happiness, we lose touch with ourselves. More we enjoy, less joy we get; we need more and more to give us less and less joy. Science that focuses on the outer world has not been able to address this problem that I call depression of success. This is the greatest malady of modern age, especially of the civilized world.

More I see of the Western way of living, more I realize how much men and women are out of tune with Nature and themselves. They chase happiness, because they are so unhappy. They change cars every year, homes every 2 years and spouses every 3 years in the hope that in the next car, home and spouse they will find happiness. They chase a mirage that keeps eluding them.

Freud said that the Nature of man is unhappiness. The problem is Freud studied only those who were unbalanced and came to this conclusion. He did not meet enlightened masters. He did not meet the great rishis of the ancient world. We can prove that the nature of man is bliss.

I experienced this inner bliss of ultimate consciousness of bliss through a deep study of these ancient Hindu Vedic practices. From the age of 3, I studied and practiced Ashtanga Yoga. Till the age of 7, I stood in awe of the wonders of Nature around me, curious and keen to learn. From then till 12, I played with methods of meditation that gave me my first spiritual experience.

From 12, I experimented upon myself, often rigorously using techniques that these great ancient masters had developed. At 22, I experienced the state of eternal bliss firsthand. I later realized that this process could have been much faster had I allowed Existence to guide me rather than my trying so hard.

As I tell my disciples, I experimented with many keys to open a lock with one key. I now have that key to offer and to share so that others who are seekers do not have to try as hard! Over the next 3 years, I worked upon this technology of inner science to replicate this experience on others. Since then I have been working on people all over the world using this inner science-based technique of meditation to help people become aware and experience the same bliss that I do.

I have now succeeded in this transfer.

This is what I call transformation of the individual. All of us are part of the cosmic intelligence. We are by nature, divine. We need not do anything or go anywhere to make us divine, we already are.

You just have to understand, accept, believe and realize that you are divine just like you believe is.

There are only two types of human beings. One, gods who are aware they are gods; others, gods who are as yet not aware they are gods. That's all.

That is why time and again, I exhort my disciples, 'my mission is not to prove that I am God; my mission is to prove to you that you are God'.

Many who come to me have been skeptics like many of you readers, intellectually curious and wanting everything to be verified by the touchstone of science and rationalism. Bliss and consciousness sound highly intangible; you cannot easily accept that these are real.

I can help you understand how you too can reach this state of bliss.

We have now written down my experiences and my realization in a form that would help everyone to understand and practice.

The content of my teachings and the philosophy behind them is being written down in a much more detailed way in the form of scriptures. We call it Nithyananda Sruti. Sruti is something that is heard and transmitted and is eternally true. These are truths that I have experienced. There is no voice that came from heaven that gave me this wisdom.

Existence in its compassion opened itself to me as a seeker to reveal these truths. I have no copyright over these. These truths have been expressed by other great masters for thousands of years. I may express them differently, the way Parashakti, the divine energy has programmed me. That's all the difference.

On the first of January 2000, when I was exactly 22, I realized that I was one with the universe. Everything around me was part of me. There was a deep calmness within me. I knew without a doubt that I had found what I was seeking so far.

In the next few years, I put together these truths in a manner that others too could understand. I then started training others who could convey these in spoken and written words. I have conveyed these truths in many of the programs that my ordained teachers, acharyas, now teach across the world.

These truths will make you understand who you are, why you are here, what your purpose is and what path you need to follow to achieve that purpose.

Following the Sruti are the techniques, the practical guidelines that will help you travel that path to your destination. These are the Nithyananda Smruti, rules, regulations and guidelines. These combine to form the key that I struggled to discover to open the lock to the door of bliss.

With the Sruti and Smruti that combine to form my philosophy of Nithyanandam, I hand over to you this gift of transformation, the key to the kingdom of awareness.

This transformation is the greatest miracle that any master can perform.

Many masters may be able to grant you boons and produce material as if from nowhere, I too can. Those are mere powers that we may exhibit to demonstrate the limitless bounty of Nature.

However, the transformation of the individual being which leads him to understand his true nature is the greatest of all such powers; it truly is a miracle; it is the only miracle.

All of us are focused all the time in proving how right we are and we try to persuade others to see our point of view. Many of us take pride in the fact that we are helping to transform other people through counseling, through example, through guidance or through mentoring.

Please understand this: all this is a waste of time and a pure expression of your own ego. None of us has the capability to transform someone else; even an enlightened master can only show the way. If the individual refuses to follow the path, even Buddha can do nothing much.

A small story:

A disciple of Buddha who had benefited much from his master's teachings implored Buddha to propagate enlightenment. 'This is the need of the hour', the disciple cried, 'What you have, can transform the lives of millions. Please teach people how to be enlightened.'

Buddha smiled and said, 'So be it. Why don't you go and find out how many people are interested in getting enlightened?'

The disciple was overjoyed. He knew that there were many people who had been healed and touched by Buddha and he was sure that all these people would be keen to follow Buddha's path of enlightenment.

He traveled around the countryside and returned to Buddha a week later.

'Well', asked Buddha, 'How many people have you brought?'

'Well, master', the disciple looked sheepish, 'Actually, none.'

'So, no one was interested in getting enlightened?' asked Buddha.

'No, master', said the disciple, 'Actually there were two people in a far away village who were very keen.'

'Then?' asked Buddha.

'It was difficult for them to travel all the way to you. They wanted to know if you could send the enlightenment kit through me to them, so that it would be easy!'

That is how it is. If I can send transformation through courier, preferably freight prepaid, there may be a few who may be interested. Such is life.

I come across literally hundreds of thousands of people. The number of people who are willing to work on their personal transformation is a very small percentage. Many come to be healed. Many come because the physicians of all medical streams have given them up as lost causes, and they come to me as a last resort. Even if they are helped and healed, in most cases, it is business as usual for them. Their life style does not change. Whatever energy blocks created the illnesses, continues, and they do not like to change.

In Western countries, people come for intellectual reasons. They suffer from what I call 'Depression of Success'. They have succeeded in achieving everything and yet are unhappy. As I said earlier, they need to change everything every year or every second year hoping that the change will bring them happiness. Sadly, it does not.

There are a few who are seekers, many amongst them professional seekers, who collect masters and techniques. They will go from ashram to ashram, take down copious notes, so that if nothing works, they can at least write a book and make money. They get attracted to these masters easily, because each master has something important to say. But, when the time comes for the master to take them seriously, when he demands their attention, they find it difficult.

As long as the master gives them a long rope and they can choose what they wish, it is fine. The moment the master gets serious, it is time to leave.

My disciples know this only too well. I tell all of them this, right from the beginning. If you wish to sit at a distance and have eye and ear candy, be my guest, no problem at all. I will smile at you and you can smile back. But, if you decide that you want to be my disciple, then you make me responsible for your spiritual journey. I then burn you.

I burn your negativities, I burn your ego, I dissolve your samskara, your embedded memories; your conditioning.

Please understand this clearly: The master is a surgeon. He is there to remove your ego, because that is the only way you can reach your own Self. The process can be painful. So, you need to think carefully before you embark on this mission to adopt a master, because that is what happens in this age.

Masters are plenty, disciples are few. Masters have to wait for disciples.

The closer you get to the master, the more painful it can be. Those of you in doubt, ask my disciples. Why do they then stay with me? Or why do other disciples stay with other masters when the journey can be so arduous?

It is simply because these disciples have had a glimpse of what lies beyond, and there is nothing that will stop them from reaching there. They know that the master is their only hope to reach there.

The master is your bridge to God. Without him you will find it difficult to cross the gap.

As I said before, I had to try ten thousand keys before I found one that fitted. You do not have to do it. I offer you the key that fits. All you really need to do is to take that key and fit it to the door and turn.

That's why Jesus said, 'Knock and it shall open.' In this case, you do not even need to knock. You already have the key; you have the authority. Go in and take a look; have a glimpse.

What is that glimpse that changes you so?

Vivekananda has this beautiful story to tell:

Once upon a time, a pregnant lioness went hunting. She pounced on a herd of sheep, slipped and was fatally injured. However, before she died, she gave birth to a cub. The lioness had died far from her pride and the cub was alone and helpless.

The cub struggled to get up and walk around. Some sheep pitied the cub and adopted it. The cub grew up with the sheep. He played with them, drank sheep milk, fed on grass and other vegetable matter and even learnt to bleat. At this point, he was no longer a lion. He was another sheep in the herd. He was quite content eating grass and happily bleating along with the other sheep.

One day a lion preyed on this herd of sheep. This lion was shocked to find a lion cub in the herd. He wanted to learn more about this lion cub who had become a part a sheep herd. He gave up all thoughts of hunting that day.

The next day, the lion came by and waited until the cub came out from the herd. He quickly pounced on the cub and carried him by his throat. The cub nearly died of fear!

The lion waited until the cub calmed down. Then, he put him down and told him, 'You are not a sheep. You are a lion, really!'

The cub didn't understand the lion. All his life, he had heard that he was a sheep and a lion was his mortal enemy.

The cub bleated, 'Let me go. Please…'

The elder lion was wise and patient. He released the cub. Still shaking in fright, the cub joined the herd of sheep.

The lion was clever and determined. He returned everyday, for many days, and picked up the cub. Each day he told the cub, 'You are a lion. You are not a sheep.'

The cub didn't understand what the lion spoke. Yet, by now, the cub realized that the lion meant no harm. He allowed the elder lion to carry him. Occasionally, the cub got scared

and pleaded with the lion to let him go. Sometimes, he simply ran away. The lion would always pick him up and talk to him again about his true nature.

One day, the lion took the cub to a stream. The cub saw his reflection in the water for the first time. To his shock, he saw was a lion staring back at him. Bewildered and terrified, the cub bleated in fear. He ran for his life.

Gently, the lion brought him back to the water. The cub stared at his reflection. Then, he looked around to check if anyone else was around him. No, it was his reflection. And, yes, he looked very much like the elder lion.

The lion told the cub, 'You are a lion, not a sheep.'

The lion then gave the cub a piece of meat to eat.

The cub ate it and instantly liked it.

The cub realized his true nature and roared.

Instantly, he too became a lion!

Like this lion cub, you too are unaware of your true nature and your true potential.

A master appears and tells you who you are. You run away frightened, because your present identity is too comfortable to give up. Yet, you come back to the master, attracted by a strange but powerful inner desire. The master does not give up. Eventually, you may see that reflection of your true nature.

This is the story of all true disciples. They do not realize their potential as lions and live like sheep amongst sheep. The master comes to them and in some way they get attracted to him. The fear of letting go their sheep nature makes them run away. Finally, when he deems the timing right, the master pounces and makes them realize that they are indeed lions.

The role of the master is to help you realize who you are. His compassion for the disciple is infinite. He can wait for as long as it takes. He will do anything to help them realize that potential. I tell people who come to me that once they have crossed the gates of my ashram, it will be difficult for them to move away because I am a reminder of their true Self. Those who find it difficult for one reason or another, ask me if I get upset when they leave. Of course not. They ask me if I will curse them if they leave.

Please understand this clearly: no enlightened master can curse someone. They are full of compassion. If some one does, please be sure that the person is not a master. Words of such a person will have no effect on you. So, you don't have to worry.

When I find someone who becomes a disciple with desperation at the being level and he suddenly moves away because of some play of the mind, it causes real concern to me. That spirit, that being, has been in search of a master for many lives. This was a great opportunity for it to hold on to the master and realize itself and be freed. When for one reason or another that does not happen, I do feel concern.

My disciples know that my spirit energy separates from its mind–body system every night as it rests. For it to return to the mind–body system, certain precautions need to be taken. But, most importantly, the spirit must have a reason to come back. It needs a mission to come back.

Once my close disciples at the ashram asked me what the most important reason was for the spirit to return. They knew that I had no identity of my own. They knew that I had no free will of my own. Every single thing that I did was at the behest of the Existential energy. I cannot move even my little finger on my own. It moves as the universal energy dictates. They were curious what it was that drove the spirit back into the mind–body system which I have told them is like a cage for me.

I had to think a bit to answer this question. I had never seriously analyzed this. I was given the mission to start the spiritual center Dhyanapeetam as the transformational tool of individuals through meditation, as if in a vision. I was directed to Bidadi, near Bangalore, and was instructed to establish this Dhyanapeetam at the site of a banyan tree. However, never had I a clear answer to why I was here and what makes me stay.

The answer that I had for them was that it was the remembrance of all those who waited for me in my ashrams, my disciples and their needs that brings me back. That was about the closest I could think of for an answer.

A disciple is one who shares my pain all the time; the pain of not being able to help in this transformation fast enough and spread the message far enough. They know how impatient I am to get the mission I have been entrusted with as far and as wide, as soon as possible.

I say often that a devotee is one who brings his pain to me and expects me to share it and heal him. A devotee transfers his burden on to me. That is fair enough as a devotee feels that I am capable of handling all that pain, without the suffering that he or she has.

A disciple on the other hand rarely brings his or her problems to me or their pain. On the other hand, they share my burden and my pain. When I say pain, I don't mean real pain. I mean the compassion that oozes out toward humanity to transform individuals as quickly as possible into leading a blissful life.

Devotees are happy and comfortable hearing my words and being in my presence. The words and the presence mean a lot to them and they feel energized and healed. My contract with them stops there.

My disciples, whether they are in my ashrams or outside, whether they are healers, organizers, acharyas, brahmacharis or sannyasis, have no need for my presence. They follow my formless energy. What sustains them is the service they do for the mission. They follow Buddha, the master, by forming the sangha, the community, and by following the Dhamma, the master's teachings.

I tell them that once they are in my service, they have no need to physically follow me or chase me as my devotees do.

I chase those who serve my mission; I follow them and I stay in their hearts.

Many times, new comers ask me how they can make out that I am their Master. They ask, 'How do we remember you?' I tell them the truth: If I am your master, your problem will not be in remembering me but in forgetting me! I stay fixed in your heart. Ask my disciples; they will tell you.

It is no accident that brings this book to those of you who have not heard me talk. Everything that happens to you is an incident that has been programmed by cosmic intelligence. You may not be aware of this, but this is the truth.

Let you all benefit from this gift of nithyanandam, eternal bliss.

This is as simple a technique as you can get. All you have to do is whirl, turn round and round and round – the way you used to do as a child!

Whirling is a powerful centering technique. The beautiful thing about this technique is that your body will be whirling – going round and round – but your inner Being is right at the center, unmoving – like the unmoving center of a moving wheel

No food and drink, at least 3 hours before the meditation The meditation has two phases: whirling and resting

Whirling is usually done in an anti-clockwise direction, with the right arm held higher, palm facing upward, and the left arm lower, palm facing downward. If you are uncomfortable whirling anti-clockwise, switch to clockwise. Whirling can be practiced for hours – for as long as you feel comfortable. But you will need to whirl for at least an hour to experience the 'energy whirlpool'.

Start with whirling slowly. Let your whole body be soft and unresisting. As you whirl, the passing images will become blurred.

Let them flow past. Don't try to focus on anything – it will make you dizzy or nauseous. For the first 15 minutes, go really slow. Then build up speed over the next 30 minutes. After 45 minutes or so, you will feel as if the whirling has taken you completely over.

There will be action and movement on the periphery of the circle, but at the center will be stillness.

You will feel as if you are a witness to all this action, not a participant in it.

When you are whirling so fast that you can't stay upright, your body will fall by itself. Don't plan the fall. If your body is soft and pliable, you will not get hurt. As soon as you fall, turn over onto your stomach so that your navel is in contact with the earth. Feel your body become one with the earth.

Keep your eyes closed. Remain in the same position, passive and silent, for at least 15 minutes.

After this meditation, remain silent and meditative for a few hours. Some people may experience a sense of nausea during this meditation. This will disappear in a few days. If it persists, discontinue the meditation.

• 1. Practice the Centering meditation.
• 2. Intend that you will be always in centered.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize that you are in this centered state. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.
• 4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you always be centered and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Master, you have taken the name of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM and you promote the mission of Nithyanandam*, eternal bliss. Was this connection accidental, or designed?*

A new couple had come into town. They had two young naughty children. The boys were forever getting into trouble and the parents were concerned that if any mischief occurred in this town, their sons would surely get blamed.

The parents heard that the pastor was good with children and they took the children to him and explained the situation.

The younger boy went in to see the pastor first. The pastor, a large man with a loud voice told the boy to sit down and asked, 'Where is God?'

They boy stiffened with his mouth open. He attempted to speak but no words came. He just sat there silently with his mouth hanging open.

The pastor asked again even more loudly, 'Tell me now, where is God?'

The boy started to cry silently.

The pastor shook his finger at the boy's face and bellowed, 'Stop crying! I am sure you know. Where is God?'

The boy screamed and ran from the room as fast as he could. He ran all the way home, ran into the bathroom and huddled into a corner.

The older brother looked in after a while and asked, 'Tell me, what happened?'

The younger boy struggled for words and said, 'We are in real BIG trouble this time! God is missing, and they think we did it!'

There are two important truths you should know.

First, you do not need to have an enlightened person as your master for you to become enlightened. Your master need not be an enlightened being for you to become enlightened.

In any case, as long as you are not enlightened you will not even know whether the other person is enlightened or not.

So, there is no need to worry. It is your utter trust and surrender to that being that leads to your enlightenment. Even a stone, if you approach with trust and feeling of utter surrender, can enlighten you.

All that you need to do is to be open. Just trust and be open. This mood can work miracles.

When you trust Existence and allow yourself to be open to the energy of Existence, you fill yourself with love. Your heart center, the *anāhata chakra*, opens. As this love is spread outward without boundaries, it becomes compassion. When it extends out to the universe, to Existence, when you realize you are one with Existence, you are enlightened! There are many who have become enlightened just by opening themselves to idols. People have the wrong notion that in the *Vedic* tradition we worship idols. No, we don't. We worship *through* the idols. We worship the Existential energy *through* idols.

I had earlier spoken on Ramakrishna and his experiences with Mother Kali. When a true devotee approaches with an open mind and trust, miracles happen. The stone statue of the Mother Goddess enlightened a semi-literate person who was steeped in love, trust and devotion.

Second, if you have a living master who you have deep faith in, just follow that master's body language in everything that you do; just follow him in all your thoughts, words and actions. Whenever you need to make a decision, ask yourself again and again, 'What would my master do in this situation?' Then act the way you think he would.

I call this Living Enlightenment. Following your master blindly with total trust and a spirit of surrender, you will live in enlightenment and reach *nithyananda*, eternal bliss.

You asked whether my name was designed or accidental. The simplest answer I can give is that it is certainly not accidental that I have the name that I have now. At the same time it is not a name I gave myself or asked for; it was not designed by me. Had it been my own design, chances of its happening would have been different.

I left home at the age of 17. I had just finished my diploma course in mechanical engineering near my birth place of Tiruvannamalai. My parents were working to fix my elder brother's marriage. I was next in turn. Relatives were already exerting pressure on me to choose a girl for myself.

It had to happen some time, given my spiritual inclinations. One day, I decided, 'this is it'. I told my mother I wanted to leave home and become a *sannyasi*, a monk in search of the Truth. She started crying. She too knew it would happen but could not bear it when it happened. She did not stop me from going, she just cried. My father blamed her thinking it was something she did or said that caused my decision. I told him that it was my decision, nothing to do with what anyone else has said.

I left Tiruvannamalai, my hometown, and started my journey soon after from Chennai. I wore the two piece *kavi* – the saffron cloth – that I wear now, took a stick and my *kamandalu* – the water pot. These are the only possessions allowed to a *sannyasi*. I carried no money. I just got into trains and buses where they would allow saffron-clad people to travel without ticket and traveled far and wide across the length and breadth of Bharat.

In Bharat, it is still a tradition of great respect for the saffron clad. They don't stop you traveling in a train without ticket. In fact the ticket examiners used to buy me food, because I had no money and depended on others for giving me food. In one sense, I was a beggar, in another, at the mercy of the universe.

It was tremendous liberation when I started out this way. When I left home, the whole world suddenly became my home! Wherever I stayed, whether it was the banks of a river, a forest, a hut or a temple, that was my home. There was no restriction. Whoever gave me food was my mother. I truly understood the meaning of the words with which monks seek food, '*bavathi biksham dehi*', which means, *please give me alms*.

The Universe, *Parashakti*, was my Mother.

When you set out with nothing in hand and nothing in the mind, you are no longer a beggar. You are the master! That's why it is said of Buddha that when he sought alms, it was he who seemed like the king and the kings who gave him alms seemed like beggars.

Over the next few years, I traveled all over Bharat, by train, by bus, on foot; I traveled tens of thousands of kilometers. I traveled from Kolkata in the East to Dwaraka in the West and from Kanya Kumari in the South to Lhasa in the North. This was the route that the great master Shankara took over a thousand years ago.

The Himalayan ranges were my favorite; the majestic mountains, their snow-clad peaks, the total uncertainty of what Nature could do the next moment – all these fascinated me. All I needed to do was to look, and I was overwhelmed. Wherever I went I found shelter and food. Mother of all Existence, *Parashakti*, was there to take care of me.

I stayed near Kedarnath for a while, in a location between Gaurikund which is the starting point of the trek and Kedar itself. Kedar is a very renowned pilgrimage center that has a temple of Lord Shiva. Shankara sanctified this temple over a thousand years ago. I lived in a place off the trekking path in a cave about 4 kilometers from Gaurikund.

One day as I was walking on the path, I saw a person coming straight toward me. He was smiling. He was just beautiful. His body was a shining gold color, majestic, and he was dressed only in a lower garment up to his waist. His chest was bare. As he came close to me he called out, 'THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM!'

Then something strange happened. He walked right through me. I was startled! I turned around to look. There was no one there. It was as if this person had walked into me and stayed inside. I also had no idea of why he called out the name THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. I did not know anyone by that name. I assumed that it was an indication to me to meet a person of that name.

Suddenly, I recalled that person from the pictures I had seen earlier. I had seen pictures of this great sage Mahavatar Babaji in a few places. He has been described most famously as the *parama guru* or the ultimate guru of Paramahamsa Yogananda. Yogananda went to the United States after his enlightenment and lived there teaching. I have been to Yogananda's *jiva samadhi*, the sacred burial spot near Los Angeles; it is a place of high energy.

There were many legends about Mahavatar Baba in the Kedar region. He is supposed to be a *chiranjeevi*, ageless and immortal. I had read that he could be seen in the Kedar area many times, even in the market place. In fact he appeared to one of our devotees during our Himalayan trip in 2005, but that is another story.

I had no idea why he appeared to me or why he said what he said, and I could not understand the reason for his disappearing inside me.

This incident may have been in 1996; I cannot recall exactly. A year or so later, perhaps in 1998, I was in the Kolkata region, spending time at Dakshineshwar, on the banks of Hooghly, which is the final form of Ganga. An old *sannyasi* became friendly toward me and insisted that he give me *sannyas* – initiation as a monk. I really did not want *sannyas*. I was quite happy as I was. Finally I agreed because I liked this man and he said that he needed to do this before he passed away. It was as if something was driving him.

Giving *sannyas* to someone is a detailed process, quite complex. First, one has to be ordained a *brahmachari*, then a *sannyasi* and so on. There are different stages in *sannyas* as well: *vanaprastha sannyas*, *naishtika sannyas* and so on.

The word *sannyas* in Sanskrit means a man who floods truth into his being and allows whatever that cannot stand the test of truth to be washed away. The truth dissolves, burns, washes away all conditioning and negativities that exist within. It is an acid wash. If you can do this, you are a *sannyasi*.

*Sannyasi* is not any one who wears kavi and lives in the forest. Only if you can let go everything for the sake of Truth, you are a *sannyasi*.

'San' means one who serves and 'nyasi' means to purify. If you can go through a truth wash like acid wash, you become a *sannyasi*. The only acid that will purify your being is the Truth.

On the appointed day, we went down to the banks of the Ganges, and without too many preliminaries he initiated me into *sannyas*, and declared that I shall henceforth be known as THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM!

I was startled!

I knew that to be called a Paramahamsa, there are additional requirements or one who truly believes that he is a Paramahamsa can declare himself as one as prescribed in the *Paramahamsa Upanishad*. Furthermore, his choice of name astounded me.

I asked him in surprise, how is it that in one single ritual he initiated me as a Paramahamsa, and why he chose the name THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

The name startled me because ever since the time I had seen Mahavatar Babaji, I had been looking for Parahamsa THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, because that is what I believed was the

message to me, to look for this person, perhaps my guru. It had never occurred to me that Babaji was calling me by a name that I would be known by!

The old *sannyasi* said, 'This is what I was instructed to do'. I asked, 'By whom?' He said, 'Not by anyone living, but I had a very deep experience about what I needed to do. I have done that and my life's meaning has been fulfilled.'

This is how I got my name; first, from Mahavatar Babaji, and then formally from this old *sannyasi* on the banks of the Ganges. I never really had any formal Guru as such. Ramana Maharishi and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa were my spiritual guides. Annamalai Swamigal, a disciple of Ramana Maharishi, initiated me into a meditation that facilitated my first deep spiritual experience. This is described in detail in my biography, but I never trained under any master as a disciple.

I tell my disciples now that my lineage is that of Mahavatar Baba, and Kedar is our location.

So, in no sense did I plan this, and I was not trained in any manner to become THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. It was certainly not accidental. The planning was cosmic not human. That is the way the universe works, if you allow it to.

It took me another 2 years to realize the truth about myself. It happened in the forests of Omkareshwar, on the banks of the river Narmada.

I had been in this location inside the forest for a few months. I had done the *parikrama* of going around the sacred river Narmada. It was December 1999. On December 25th, I suddenly felt that all that I was doing was a waste of time. I felt strongly that I had followed all these great masters like Ramakrishna and Ramana foolishly and they had misled me. I felt that I had wasted the best part of my life. I was in deep despair and depression.

I threw away the photograph of Ramakrishna I had always carried. It was framed with a glass front, which broke as it hit a stone. I threw away my *kamandalu*, the water pot, and my *japa mala*, the rosary. Feeling that I had no reason to live, I walked toward the river. When I reached the river I kept walking into the river. I apparently lost awareness at some point in time.

When I regained awareness, I found that I was on the opposite bank of the river Narmada!

I have no idea till now as to what happened. The river was full. At the middle it would have been at least 30 feet deep. There was no way that I could have walked on the river bed and not been drowned. Whether there were stones all the way across the river that I walked upon, I have no idea. Whether I floated I do not know.

I did not swim, that much I know; simply because I never learnt to swim!

When I reached the opposite bank, my mind was clear. I had to walk a long way to find a bridge that would bring me back to where I crossed the river. There was no way now that that I would walk back the same way upon the water!

When I reached the cave where I used to stay, I sat down to meditate. I lost outwardly awareness. When I resumed outwardly awareness, I felt that I had become one with the Universe. Everything that was around me – the trees, the birds, the insects, the rocks, whatever I could see – were an extension of me. I felt boundariless. There was a deep feeling of calmness, peace and utter bliss within me. I had no thoughts at all. I was alone and undisturbed; yet I was not alone, the entire universe was with me. In fact I *was* the universe.

What followed will be covered in my biography in detail. There was a clear indication as to the meaning of my life from then on. When I crossed the Vindhya Mountains in the middle of Bharat on my way north, I had decided that I would spend all my life in the Himalayas. I had no desire to return to the south of Bharat where I was born and raised. But now, it was clear to me that I had to return. So, I started traveling southward.

Nithyanandam has nothing to do with my name. However, it has everything to do with my state. Nithyanandam is the expression of my experience. Eternal Bliss is the state I am always in. My mission as defined by Existence, Parashakti, is to transmit this blissful experience to others. This is the mission of my institutions now as well as the thousands of individuals who follow me as healers, acharya, ashramites, brahmacharis, sannyasis and devotees.

Bliss is our natural state. We are born blessed, and blessed to be divine. Do not believe that you are born as a sinner or to be a sinner. No God would call you a sinner. God, Existence or whatever else you wish to call that superior energy is nothing but compassion. That God or superior energy resides within you.

People ask me, 'Are you God?' I tell them, 'Yes, I am and so are you. My mission is not to prove my divinity; my mission is to prove your divinity.'

The only difference between you and I is that I am aware of my divinity and I accept it. I accept it with a total surrender to that divinity, to that Existence, to that superior energy.

You as yet have not accepted it because you have not surrendered fully to Existence. The instant you do, you will realize you too are god. You will be enlightened. You will reach the state of Nithyanandam.

You may say it cannot be that simple. Many have said that before. It is that simple if you let it be that simple.

Human nature being what it is, we cannot accept anything simple. We need to complicate things. We need to believe that we are sinners. To consolidate that belief we need to do what has been described as sin. Otherwise what is the fun? Then we set out to dissolve all the sins we have accumulated. The problem is that by this time, we are so accustomed to doing what we think is not right, that we continue doing that and continue to work off that sin.

This comic cycle goes on endlessly. This is what our great sages called maya, illusion.

The way to realize you are divine is very simple. That is the way you were when you were children. Remember, when you were young, you were carefree, joyful, innocent, blissful and divine. What happened to you after that?

You grew up, actually you grew down. Your upbringing was really your down-bringing. Your education was your path to losing that bliss. You were conditioned at every stage of your life to bring yourself down from that loft space of bliss into one of suffering and sorrow. If you continued to remain blissful and innocent, you are termed mad and laughed at by your society.

Our society is populated with blind people, people who cannot see even though they have eyes; it is full of deaf people who cannot hear even though they have ears. It is full of people who are asleep even though they seem awake. Such people cannot accept and allow any one else to use their eyes and ears and tolerate anyone being awake.

A small story:

A famous actor was once taken to visit an asylum. They were shooting a movie in which he was to play a mentally disturbed person.

As he was being taken around the asylum, an inmate came up to him. The actor introduced himself by his name and offered his hand.

The inmate quickly took him aside and whispered, 'Listen, I too came here saying the same thing. They brought me here a year ago because I used to think that I too was you. They locked me up. You know what. They cured me in 6 months. Don't worry. They will lock you also up, and you too will be cured!'

This is the way of the world. If you are sane and awake, in the midst of those who are insane and sleeping, you will be looked upon as different.

Refuse to be conditioned. Refuse to accept that you are a sinner. Believe in your divinity. You will regain the bliss you lost.

It is easier to retain the bliss and if necessary regain this, when you start the right education when you are young. That is why in our Vedic educational system, children were left with a master when they were six or seven. They were initiated into techniques that strengthened their inner bliss. They were brought up in an environment that allowed them to discover their identity of inner divinity.

This is what my mission is about. It is to start with young children in our Vedic style gurukul schools in our ashrams and bring them up in their true state of innocence and purity so that they stay in bliss, so that they are in nithyanandam.

There is a lot to do, and little time to do that in. Fortunately, consciousness and awareness are increasing now after having declined for thousands of years. This does not mean that we shall all live in some ideal place, in an idyllic paradise. It, however, means that we do have a great opportunity now, as never before, to discover the truth of our own existence; the truth of our inner divinity and the meaning of our lives.

In the modern day world, materialism is king, capitalism the creed. There in lies the opportunity. Many of you have gone as far as you can go in this material world and found no real meaning. How much of good food can you eat? How many parties can you attend?

You can have many houses, but not one home. You may have many bedrooms, but find it difficult to sleep. You have all the money in the world, but you don't have time to enjoy.

Many of you in this day have realized that money cannot buy happiness. It is no longer a cliché to be laughed at, but the truth. There is no need to condemn money, it certainly brings you comfort, but it can never bring you happiness. In the absence of money, you can have happiness. Millions of people in the remote villages of Bharat and other regions live happily with hardly any wealth.

It all depends on your conditioning or lack of conditioning.

When you realize that you have achieved all that you could and still you are unhappy and discontented, you start seeking. You start looking for that intangible something, which will give you happiness. That intangible something you can only find within yourself, not anywhere outside of you. Once you realize this, you are set free.

Yes, it is true that spirituality is steeped in places like Bharat over many generations. However, there is a problem with this handed over culture of spirituality. When something is given to you free, you do not value it; you start questioning its utility; you do not care to find out.

Spirituality can become a useless ritual in such cases, something that you can wear on your sleeves when it suits you and you can take off when it does not.

This is just like some of my devotes who wear my mala, the necklace, very proudly when they come in front of me, but take it off as soon as they go out into what they think is the real world. It embarrasses them when people ask what the necklace is about, who this person on the pendent is and so on.

The mala is a protection that I give them with my energy. It charges itself every time you meditate. Even if you do not meditate it works by creating an energy field around you. I tell them to use it like a cell phone when they need my help badly. Many do and have testified to the effect of their free call!

So it is with the copper bracelet that I energize and give people. These are not superstitious talisman but true energy sources that keep you safe. You need to be aware of what these are for and not merely make them another piece of your accessories.

Spirituality becomes engrained when it comes after a struggle, when it is derived from suffering, when it arises from depression. Such spirituality brings new life into you. It infuses bliss into you. It is when you reach the deepest despair that the brightest light shines within; you become enlightened.

That is why many of you who have gone through your acquisitive phase and having discovered that it is path to nowhere turn to seeking. You turn to seeking not because someone has told you, but because you have experienced suffering. This seeking can lead you to enlightenment. This seeking when guided properly can help you find yourself.

Masters are here for a reason. Existence brings in the energy of masters into this planet Earth based on need. Even a dozen masters in this world of many billions can make a change. They can guide the shape and direction of the planet by working on the transformation of individuals.

Now is truly the age of enlightenment. Never in the history of mankind has there been such a marked change; such a marked increase in the awareness of people and in human consciousness, as there is now. You are all indeed fortunate to be living in this period. You will see in your own lifetime how this enhanced consciousness will in turn enhance your life.

Over the last nearly hundred years, there had been remarkable advances in scientific and technological space. This in turn has brought tremendous improvements in one's quality of material life. But in its wake, this material advancement has also brought some terrible aftermaths in personal happiness.

In simple terms, humanity lost touch with Nature.

Such has been the effect of these changes that scientists agree now that there has been a fundamental change in the construction of the human brain and the functioning of the human mind. There has been the emergence of something called the cerebral layer, a layer of mind that processes information in a way quite different from how it was before. At one level, one can be proud of this fact, but at another level, this development has been tragic in building fantasies in us. We no longer live in any kind of reality. Most of what we know is not based on experiences, it is based on what we read, watch and listen to. Movies, television, radio, newspapers and now the Internet create what we perceive as the world we live in. We live in virtual reality.

We believe everything, almost everything that we get from the media.

I was amused highly when I was told by one of disciples recently that book publishers do not allow material from the Internet to be used as sources of information; it is not reliable enough. However, they will gladly accept what is published in magazines, books or newspapers. The guide to truth is that it has been published elsewhere earlier, so that you have a precedence to fall back upon if you are sued!

How can anyone be any surer of authenticity if the source is printed media instead of the Internet? How many people truly believe that newspapers and television anchors tell the truth? They are after money, fame and power, the same manner as anyone else is. Perhaps these people are afraid of the Internet because anyone can access and anything can be published on the net. They do not need publishers.

The truth is that we are inundated with information from all kinds of sources, much of it unreliable and untrue. We have no choice but to accept them, as we have no means of verifying the truth of what is fed to us. We do live in a global village.

While information travels at the speed of light, reality still stays local.

Reality still needs to be experienced.

In the last few years, perhaps decades, there has been a sea of change in the attitude of people challenging the establishment. People do not just accept what they are told. They need experiential proof. They challenge what they are told. This defiance, this attitude of challenging, this attitude of seeking has fundamentally shifted human nature upward spiritually.

Spirituality is not about the veracity of facts. Spirituality is about the verification of truth.

Facts are historical, truth on the other hand is metaphorical. If Jesus said while giving bread to his disciples that they were consuming his body, it was indeed the truth; it certainly was not a fact.

Enlightened masters had no patience for facts. Facts are for logicians. Logicians can never be enlightened. To be enlightened you need to transcend the mind, you need to drop the mind. How can you transcend the mind through the mind?

How will your mind allow you to drop itself? It will scream blue murder. It will want to preserve itself, to survive.

To be enlightened you need to transform. You cannot be enlightened as you are in your present mindset. You need to become a different person. It is difficult to move beyond your personality through your personality. You need help. It is much easier when you have a master.

That is why I am here. My mission is to help transform people. My message is meditation. Meditation is the most powerful tool for transformation in this cyber age. It cuts through the cerebral layer and dissolves all your past conditioning. It helps you to be reborn. It allows you to be reborn with complete faith in yourself without any blind attachment to anyone else living or dead.

This is my mission, this is the mission of my institution – Life Bliss Foundation.

But this transformation has to happen within yourself through your determination. The master can help, but the ultimate master is within you. He is that blissful state within you.

Let you be in eternal bliss, Nithyanandam!

Thank you.

Expression of gratitude is the greatest meditation that there is. No prayer is really a prayer unless it is in sheer gratitude; otherwise it is a beggar's song. A prayer becomes meditation when it is pure gratitude and nothing else.

When a disciple becomes enlightened, he reaches the same level as the master. The disciple does not need the guidance of the master any longer. Yet, the disciple chooses to be part of the master's lineage.

All that remains after enlightenment is a deep sense of gratitude and surrender. An unenlightened person has free will. He can do anything he wishes. An enlightened being has no free will. He has surrendered to Existence. Everyone of his movements is now at the will of Existence.

This state of surrender to Existence, this surrender of free will to Existence, is the ultimate liberation; it is the only real freedom that one can have.

May you have a glimpse of that ultimate liberation through this gratitude meditation.

Sit straight and close your eyes. Concentrate on your sahasrara chakra – crown center. Forget all other parts of your body. Concentrate only on your crown center and relax there. Wear a smile and relax.

• With your whole being, offer your gratitude to your mother for giving you this body. Remember her with deepest love and affection and give your gratitude to her with all your being.

• Offer your gratitude to your father for giving you this life and providing for all your needs.

• Offer your gratitude to your siblings who helped you grow in love.

• Offer your gratitude to your spouse, your life partner and greatest love, for giving you love and security in your life.

• Offer your gratitude to your children for all the joy that they have given you.

• Offer your gratitude to all relatives and friends who supported you at various times of need.

• Offer your gratitude to all the doctors and nurses who received you when you came to planet Earth.

• Offer your gratitude to all the people who took care of you when you were an infant.

• Offer your gratitude to all those who worked for your food, clothes and living when you were young.

• Offer your gratitude to all the teachers who gave you primary education.

• Offer your gratitude to all your young-age friends who made your life happy and blissful, who shared their innocence and joy with you.

• Offer your gratitude to all the people who gave you professional education, who helped you to stand in your profession, who gave you the courage to stand on your own feet.

• Offer your gratitude to all the people who helped you financially, whenever you needed it.

• Offer your gratitude to all the doctors and nurses who took care of your health, who gave you medical assistance whenever you needed it.

• Offer your gratitude to all the people who encouraged you and gave you inspiration in your spiritual life.

• Offer your gratitude to all those who have served you in one way or another all through your life: the milk man who delivers milk, the grocer, the laundry man, the garbage collector, your servants, your driver, all the people who you take for granted.

• Seek each one's forgiveness for any hurt that you may have caused intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously.

• Offer your gratitude to your enemies and those who have hurt you, for making you strong and determined.

• Offer your gratitude to all those who helped you physically, mentally, socially, economically and spiritually.

• Remember each one of them and offer gratitude taking your own time.

• Offer your gratitude to your body and all its parts one by one.

• Offer your gratitude to your mind for its miraculous functioning.

• Offer your gratitude to the Divine, to the Whole, to God, for making all these things possible in your life.

1. Practice gratitude meditation.

2. Intend that you will be always in gratitude.

3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize that you are in this state of gratitude and surrender to Existence. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

4. Let go.

5. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be in tune with Existence and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss

The Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism ("SPH"), Jagatguru Mahasannidhanam ("JGM"), His Divine Holiness ("HDH") Bhagavan Sri THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, is recognized as the 1008th living incarnation of Paramashiva as per Sanatana Hindu Dharma ("Hinduism") and by His predecessors of enlightened masters and adepts

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM is reviving Hinduism as the 1008th Acharya Mahamandaleshwar (the head for all spiritual leaders) of Atal Akhada (ancient apex body of Hinduism), coronated as Mahamandaleshwar (Supreme Spiritual Head) of Maha Nirvani Akhada (largest apex monastic order) and the youngest Mahamandaleshwar, ordained as the 233rd Guru Mahasannidhanam (Pontiff) of Thondai Mandala Aadheenam, ordained as the 293rd Guru Mahasannidhanam (Pontiff) of Shyamalapeeta Sarvajnapeetam, ordained as the 23rd Guru Mahasannidhanam of Dharmamukthi Swargapuram Aadheenam, and coronated as the 203rd Emperor of Suryavamsa Surangi Samrajyam.

The Srimad Karana Agama, Purva bhaga, Patala 71, Sakalotpatti vidhi, Sloka 8 & 9 (Sacred Ancient Hindu scripture) declares:

इत्येवंनि ष्कळं प्रोक्तं परं भावंनिनि स्। सृनिस्थंलोकरंक्षाथंलोकस्येत्पनि कारंण।। सृधका नि#थं$ स्वंच्छये गृह्ण $)।

In this way (Shiva) who is Nishkala - without any body and parts, who is the Ultimate Supreme Being, who is established in the Creation, who is the Cause of the creation of the Universe, assumes a body out of His Free Will for the protection of the Universe, and for the welfare of the Spiritual seekers and Devotees.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM is the reigning spiritual emperor of 17 ancient traditional Hindu kingdoms and the reviver of the most ancient, most peaceful, still-living and long-lasting demonstrable system that shows the possibility of peaceful co-existence amongst people. Following the coronation to establish KAILASA worldwide at the age of 16, for the past 27 years, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM, as the face of the unified Hindus, has been single-handedly, tirelessly inspiring the dispossessed Hindu Diaspora to reclaim their Hindu centric freedom and stand unified for the centuries-old Hindu genocide.

The 1008th living incarnation of Paramaśiva, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM stands as the unifying force for the 2 billion born and practicing Hindu diaspora worldwide and established the Hindu State, KAILASA for the persecuted Hindus in over 100 countries. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM has made resolute efforts towards recognizing and legitimizing the Hindu genocide which has been receiving scant consideration by global leaders and international bodies, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM founded KAILASA Uniting Nations. For the past 27 years, this international body has been responsible in building relations, bridging dialogs, inspiring leaders, uniting nations towards acknowledging the Hindu policies which are universal, life positive as referenced from the ancient text of Hinduism. This is the 'ahimsa' (non-violent) way of bringing acknowledgment to the horrors of the Hindu genocide, the untold facts of the darkest act of mankind on Earth to the most contributing civilization - KAILASA.

KAILASA is an apolitical nation whose vision is enlightened living for all. Towards this goal, KAILASA is the only Hindu nation on planet Earth today bringing legitimacy to the principles of Hinduism. Social principles, economic principles, judicial principles, Hindu medical principles, and Hindu economic principles. KAILASA is THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's response to humanity's global problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, disease, violence and global warming and the continuing ethnocide and genocide of over 80 million Hindus worldwide since 7 centuries.

Over the last 50 years, the effects of meditation and its significant impact on stress, crime rates, violence, political decision making and even war in local and global consciousness is well established. Unfortunately, in the last two hundred years, forcibly we are made to believe Hinduism is a functional principle only for enlightenment and spirituality. It is absolutely dysfunctional for the political, social, economical system. Making Hindu family structure, Hindu social structure dysfunctional is the greatest crime done against humanity.

Sanatana Hindu Dharma has faced both historical and ongoing religious persecution and systematic violence, in various forms including assassination attempts on living incarnations, targeted elimination of Hindu pontiffs through bio war and lawfare, cyberbullying, Hindu phobia, forced conversions, documented massacres, demolitions, desecration and grabbing of worship temples and monasteries, looting of Hindu temples properties, destruction of Hindu educational institutions, elimination of well known Hindu libraries, the gross violation to the freedom to practice the Hindu school of liberated thinking (Sankhya), Hindu schools of living enlightenment (Jeevan Mukthi), gross violations of the right to freedom of religion that includes violations of the right to life, personal Hindu integrity or personal Hindu liberty, mass execution, looting and enslavement.

Hinduism was once practiced freely in over 56 nations across the continent from Afghanistan, Bharat, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, all the way to Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia and Indonesia, and in 200 states, 1700 samasthanas (provinces) and 10,000 sampradayas (traditions). Over several centuries the combined forces of foreign invasion, political upheaval, colonialism and religious persecution systematically ended millennia of Hindu Swarajya, or self-rule. Today Hindu temples remain in a few countries but the Hindus who worshiped in them have been ethnically cleansed.

The revival of Hinduism through the civilizational nation of KAILASA globally irked vested interests of atheistic terrorist militant elements, caste supremacist terrorists and other anti-Hindu forces who executed a massive persecution and genocide on SPH and His followers on 2 March 2010 that continued for the next whole decade and comprised of over 70 assassination attempts, over 250 sexual assaults on SPH and his monks and disciples, lawfare of 120 false cases over 10 years, massive hate propaganda in electronic media of over 14,000 hours and print media of over 25,000 articles in 5 years, destruction of heritage properties worth over 27 million USD, and the continuing ethnocide and genocide of over 80 million Hindus worldwide since 7 centuries. Specifically, the lawfare involved:

• Delegitimizing SPH by hate propaganda, disenfranchising Him of His civil and human rights, prejudicing Him from fair representation and fair trial
• Repeated illegal imprisonment, with brazen torture, custodial assassination attempts, supported by system justification in various forms, including the common processes of bureaucracy, indifference, self-deception, diffused 1responsibility and has resulted in continued systemic complicity with torture,4 .murder and genocide
• Well-planned multi-layer false hate propaganda by the 'fourth estate' media sustained by moral disengagement, leaving the broader public in a state of willful ignorance, motivated denial, out-group victim-blaming, dehumanization and bystander apathy to even genocide.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM stands in solidarity with the untold, multi-level social, political, intellectual, religious, cultural, linguistic, economic, legal, digital persecution done to Hinduism and faced by Hindus and Hindu minorities worldwide for the past several thousands of years continues through the modern day. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM has been recently acknowledged by the United Nations for the persecution of The SPH and the KAILASA global community, especially the affected women and children.

The KAILASA with de facto spiritual embassies operating across over 100 countries and having presence across the globe as the largest spiritual knowledge source on Hinduism is spiritually governed with the life positive, all-inclusive, universal policies sourced from Hinduism revived by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Having enriched and enreached more than one billion individuals over the past 27 years the KAILASA raises the voice to protect Hindus, defend Hindus and preserve the Hindu narrative for the world.

Living in the cyber age is mainly to do two things. First, how to manage the information that floods you and live harmoniously in spite of all the negativities that are being hurled at you every second. Second, how to manage relationships, parents to children, spouse to spouse and amongst friends. All else is secondary. If you effectively manage these two, you will manage everything else material, successfully.

Both these issues, one of managing information and the other of managing people, are about managing your own self.

This is the age of science, this is also the age of spirituality. This is the age of depression, this is also the age of fulfillment. This is the age of evil, this is also the age of enlightenment. This is the age of the devil, this is also the age of the divine.

There are no negatives and there are no positives in the spiritual sense. Spirituality is not being isolated from wealth, health and happiness. It is an integration of all this.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM takes you through the principle of Quantum Spirituality and shows you how you can be wealthy, healthy and happy by intending to be.

You can be a billionaire if you intend to be!

He also tells us how we too can liberate ourselves from our self-imposed bondage of conditioned memories to reach enlightenment.

THIS BOOK IS A GIFT FROM AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER. THIS IS A WORKBOOK THAT YOU CAN PRACTICE MEDITATIONS WITH. START TODAY!