1. Shiva Sutras - Sutras 06 - 09

This is a dialogue between lovers, a God and His Goddess. This is the ultimate truth of how life should be lived. This is Shiva's way!

In January 2005 THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM began speaking on Shiva Sutras which is a collection of various books like Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Thiru Manthiram, Guru Gita, Shiva Sutras and others scriptures.

He started speaking on Devi's doubts: What is life, beyond form pervading forms?

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM then said:

'Frozen into one frame, Mother or Lover, I am easy for you to capture and retain. I am then easier to market. It's good business for me, not good business for you. I want you to be confused so that you become enlightened. I want you to die so that you are awake. Come to me with your ignorance; it's my duty to show you the path. Don't hesitate to fall into my arms with love; you will soar with me into bliss.'

As we heard him we wondered: Who is he? Is he Father, Mother, Son, Brother, Friend, Lover or a Fake? We know he would love to be called a Fake. That would make the confusion more complete. Is he all forms in one? He can be the terror of Shiva. He can also be the nectar of Krishna. Is he better as a bitter nightmare or a sweet fantasy?

There were times when he chided, eyes aglow with anger. One learned to stay quiet. The grimace morphed into a grin; Shiva morphed into Krishna. Tears come to my eyes even as I write; what to speak of being in his presence.

He is all forms and no form. He refuses to be captured in a frame, turned into a stone, worshipped as an image. He is not a master who will be hung on the wall by his devotees, a master dying at the hands of the fantasies of his devotees. He would rather be the 'simha swapna' awakening us into wisdom. He would rather be the Zen stick that prods us into wakefulness, than the crutch that we are comfortable with. He relates to us on multiple frames and planes, just to keep us off balance and in confusion, than allow to be frozen into one frame that kills the master and ourselves.

The Master is beyond forms and beyond dimensions. He is not uni, bi, tri or multi dimensioned. His dimensions and forms are infinity; infinite dimensional; infiniD.

He calls us to embrace him to soar into bliss. We are so used to falling into mud that we hesitate. Soaring into bliss is not our nature as we understand it. Our anxieties and fears work upon us creating nightmares and fantasies.

We are watching a movie all the time. It's only when the movie stops that we see the screen beyond without which the movie can't be projected. We know not it's a dream till

we are awakened. Unless we experience the 'no mind', we have no idea that we have been fantasizing. A child when she plays still knows that she is playing. An adult keeps playing not knowing that all he plays with is unreal.

It's the Master's job to rudely awaken us to show us a glimpse of the reality. He enhances our problems so that our small worries are drowned in much bigger ones; with his grace the troubles fade and the Sun shines into reality.

When we dream, when we fantasize, it is about others and us. The first person attaches the second and the third. 'I' includes 'you' and 'they' as well. When the dream breaks, the movie stops, the circus gets over, you and they merge with the 'I'. Then the 'I' disappears and only the Consciousness remains.

Form and forms disappear once we realize we are watching the movie; even the screen collapses. Nightmares and fantasies cease. We awake.

This is the point of Ananda Gandha, the sweet spot, where the energy centers merge and where the form merges with the formless, and Devi's doubt answers itself: What is life, beyond form pervading forms?

What THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM presents in these discourses is the Consciousness of Shiva as he takes us through the responses of Bhairava to Devi. Each sutra is an understanding of the state of Shiva Consciousness followed by a meditation that takes us into that Consciousness. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM has said time and again that in these 112 techniques each one of us on this planet can find a technique that suits us to elevate us into our own awareness and enlightenment.

These discourses are quintessential THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Profound and never serious, communion and never a lecture, these words resonate long after one has read them. Each word is a 'click' as he calls them, a transformational experience that changes the way we think and act.

Let our Master's blessings be upon you!

Let me give introduction about this book, just a few words. Then we shall enter into the sutras. We shall then enter into the Shiva Sutras.

Shiva Sutras is a five thousand years old book. It is the essence of inner science technology and the core of the science of Enlightenment. It is the essence of five thousand years of research and development by more than one million inner scientists and more than one million inner science laboratories. In Bharat, we have more than one million inner science laboratories, meaning temples and Ashrams that are alive, which are still maintained. More than a million temples receive everyday worship.

Please understand that I am not talking about the temples that are in the dilapidated condition. I am talking about the temples that receive daily worship, temples that are used by people. More than a million inner science laboratories and more than one million fulltime dedicated inner scientists worked on these concepts. Bharat even today has at least a million swamis who have dedicated their whole life to inner research and development. I am not speaking about the swamis who are living in the streets, in caves, and those who are not living in the monasteries. If you count them the number increases to something like ten million. I am referring only to the people who are staying in one place and dedicating their life for the research and development of this inner science. That alone is one million. We have a billion people following this technology. This is the strength of this great inner science.

This book is the essence of this inner science, the inner science that was developed over five thousand years by one million inner scientists in one million inner science laboratories and practiced by one billion people. It is the ageless truth and ageless wisdom that we call Sanatana Dharma, the eternal path. This book is the essence of that wisdom, essence of that technology. This book gives hundred and twelve meditation techniques to experience bliss, to experience peace and joy that reside eternally in every one of us. This book gives the ultimate techniques to experience the ultimate bliss that is inside our being, which is in our inner space. This book has so many beautiful meditation techniques.

Not only we will read and understand the sutras, but we will also experience the sutras. These are Shiva's beautiful techniques to enlightenment. Let's enter into the Sutras, and then we shall study their meaning.

Sometimes, I am shocked, how could this book have been written five thousand years ago. We have a solid record of this book existing at least for the last five thousand years. Of course, we don't know the age of this book. At least five thousand years old, that's what we know.

The story how this book was discovered is this. A great devotee of Shiva had the darshan of Shiva and Shiva guided that devotee to go into a cave in a hill. Inside that cave the all these sutras were written on the walls. Shiva told him: Just copy these sutras and give them to the whole world. Still the cave exists. The Sutras are still there on the walls of the cave. The devotee brings the sutras and gives them to the world. This incident happened at least five thousand years ago. We have a solid proof that this book existed at least five thousand years ago.

I was shocked how five thousand years ago somebody could have thought so practically and so clearly about all modern day human problems. All our problems such as fantasies, phobias, fears and depression, each one of them is answered in this book. For every problem, Shiva gives solution. That's why I say this book is not just a book. It is the essence of five thousand years of research and development. The Hindu Vedic system is at least ten thousand years old. I can't say it is ten thousand years, at least ten thousand years. We have solid records to prove that the system is at least ten thousand years old. This book is discovered five thousand years ago. So, five thousand years of R & D expressed itself in the form of this book. Otherwise, it is impossible to give so many practical techniques.

It is very easy to hand out philosophy. It is very easy to deliver teachings. It is very easy to say what should be done and what should not be done. That is not a big thing. Very easy to tell people, 'Do this, don't do that'. It is very easy to create a philosophy.

To create a philosophy, you don't need anything. I can tell you three simple ways by which you can become a philosopher from tomorrow. All you need is to just criticize anything and everything. Whatever you see in front of your eyes just criticize. Do not bother about what you are criticizing. Second way is that never create a system that people can understand. Third way is that make things as complicated as possible. That's all. Nothing else is necessary. To become a philosopher is very easy. Finally the fourth way that is an important footnote, never give any solution.

Shiva is not creating philosophy. Creating a philosophy is easy. He is not giving you philosophy. He is giving you the techniques, technology, the 'how to'. He is not telling you what to do and what not to do. He is telling you 'how to do'. Straightaway he is giving you the technology to experience the inner consciousness, to experience the ultimate consciousness, to experience the Shivatvam, which means the consciousness of Shiva, the experience of Shiva. He is straightaway teaching us the techniques, not just words. That is why I say, this is the ultimate and amazing book that gives straight teachings and techniques to experience the ultimate consciousness.

This is a discourse delivered on Shivaratri day of 2008 at Bidadi in Tamil as part of a series by The SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM

Shiva answers Devi's doubts. She has lost herself in him and is one with Shiva in the deep state of the being. There is neither need for any questions or answers nor do they occur in this state. In order to internalize this state so that we too will attain the Shiva Consciousness, Shiva himself has shared these techniques with all of us.

Shiva's state is a pure state and the highest being oriented state. There is a possibility for this state to happen within each one of us. We can realize the truth of this state. Shiva shares with us the techniques to makes this state happen within us. Shiva himself expresses it to us.

On this auspicious day of Maha Shivaratri let us enter in to the Shiva Sutras.

On this pleasant day Shiva has blessed the earth. It is a day that the whole world celebrates in honor of Shiva. On this auspicious day let us enter into the very special Shiva Sutras. The words that came out from Shiva are like the divine nectar amruta that lead not only Devi but also have the power to lead the whole world into his Consciousness. Let us enter into the Sutras that have the power to make the whole world experience the truth.

I am not merely commenting on the sutras. Understand well that I am delivering them once again.

The Sutras are being given again. Let them raise your being. Let them fulfill your being. Let them fulfill your Self with the truth. Before entering in to the Sutras deeply internalize the energy of Shiva present here. Close your eyes and feel the energy that moves the whole universe. Feel the energy of Shiva in your body that is in the form of prana. The movement of the universe itself is deep within you as prana movement. Let yourself become this flow. Close your eyes, fill your self with the energy of prana and become one with it.

Immerse into the prana movement in your muladhara, the root chakra*,* deep within each one of you. Fill your body and mind with the overflowing presence of Shiva. Dedicate your prayers and thoughts whole-heartedly to Shiva's energy. Surrender your whole being to Shiva's energy. Cooperate with the changes and experiences that happen within you.

Open your eyes. Before we enter into the Sutras internalize these few things. The Sutras are in a very clear and simple form that no other enlightened master can deliver. This is because the first guru Shiva has not only revealed the Sutras of realization for the first time but with their wholeness. This is a book that leads to enlightenment of not just one person but provides the entire world with traditional research methodology to become

enlightened. This book provides 112 meditation techniques. Each meditation technique has got the quality and energy to give rise to a religion or a tradition. Whenever a master like him happens on this planet earth, the traditions that are going to happen after him will definitely have his strong perspective creating a very big wave. His deep and clear revelations are techniques that have neither happened before nor will never happen in the future.

Whoever follows him to create another wave will only be a smaller wave in the wake of that original wave created by Shiva. His was not merely another wave, a larger one, but a huge ocean into which all these other waves merge. The enlightened masters, siddhas and rishis who happen again and again just do the job of giving life to one of the techniques that has already been revealed by Shiva. They cannot add anything new. What all could be told and what all could be given have been said and given in these Sutras. After this all the energies that happened on this planet earth were only able to comment on these Sutras or use these sutras to fulfill their life. No one can give or do anything beyond them, as these Sutras were so complete. The Shiva Sutras have very clearly laid the path for the Shiva Consciousness, for the fulfillment of this Consciousness laying the boundaries for the scientific technology of enlightenment.

This one single book has created such a great impact in the consciousness of the universe that no other book could ever do. Some books could have had some impact on the society. Some books could have had some impact in the field on psychology. Some books could have had some impact in the field of engineering. However, this book has had its impact in all the fields. Because, any impact that happens in the being level of a human being will be definitely reflected in all the other fields. This book has created a great impact in the being of the human race. This book very clearly, very simply allows one to experience the being at the very moment.

With these 112 meditation techniques Shiva has given the keys to enlightenment to all humans, those who have happened in the past, happening now and those yet to happen. Shiva has revealed his wholeness. There is nothing more to be added or nothing else to be subtracted from it. The enlightened masters who came after Shiva have learnt from this experience and shared this with their followers. The entire base for the Sutras had been very clearly identified and classified by Shiva himself. People who have the opportunity of hearing it directly again now are the blessed ones. People who have the opportunity of internalizing it in their being are the blessed ones.

Raise your self to the state of Devi and internalize the Sutras as she did. Let yourself melt in the deep devotional state. Let your being be filled with the great devotion. At this deep devotional state let your self be once again be filled with the truth of Shiva sutras. Once again realize the being and let the being be filled with the energy of the Existence and let it be one with Shiva himself.

Words are not enough to say, words are not enough to explain the power of these Sutras. The wholeness of the Sutras cannot be explained with words as they are beyond words.

Shiva takes you to a state that is beyond words by using words, as if we are trying to see the sun by looking at his finger pointing to the sun. It is up to our intelligence to ignore the finger to look beyond and see the sun in the same way as it is our work to attain a state that is beyond words and not to be moved by the words.

Shiva has given us the Sutras so that the athmapramanam is changed into apthapramanam. Athmapramanam refers to our individual experience, whereas apthapramanam refers to the experience of an enlightened master. To recreate the same experience in each one of you that was experienced by the enlightened master let us now enter into the Sutras.

Shiva straight away enters in to the direct truth showing us the state of eternity. This is the only spiritual book where the truth does not have any introduction. Shiva enters into the job of directly showing the truth. This is a book with no introduction. He does not even waste the time by explaining the consequences of the deed. He enters just like that into the direct truth that takes you to the state of eternity.

Devi asks a very beautiful question. Her question is, 'How can one realize the truth that which is beyond place, boundary, time and explanation? How to attain the true state? How to internalize the state of eternity?'

Shiva directly delivers the truth. He directly gives the technique to internalize it in the being level. Shiva delivers the truth in such a simple, clear and direct form that no one has delivered earlier or will ever deliver in future. Shiva asks Devi to focus on the neutral space between breaths to experience Shiva Consciousness.

Existence always acts within us through our breath. Breath acts as a bridge between Existence and us. The only bridge that exists between Existence and us is breath. At one end of the breath we have the physical body on the other end of the breath we have the subtle being.

Fire stays as a bridge between the five elements of nature. Out of the five elements that are earth, water, fire, air and ether, water and earth have a form. Ether and air do not have a form. Fire has neither a form nor no form. It is beyond form. It can be seen but does not have a form. Earth and water are the elements with form. If they are fused with fire they too will become formless elements like air and ether. Fire acts as a bridge in converting the form to formless.

The day when Shiva revealed himself as lingothbava, expression in the form of a linga, in the form of fire at Thiruvannamalai, is said to be the day of Shivaratri. Shiva happened on Shivaratri day in the formless form of fire in order to liberate the souls by taking them from form to formlessness. Shiva appears in the form of fire as a bridge amongst the other elements of nature to take us beyond form. Shiva in the form of Lingothbava takes us from a state of form to formlessness through this first Sutra. He gives an understanding through the Sutra that he will reveal himself in the midst of the breath.

If you look deeply into yourself you will for a moment forget the feeling that 'I am body, I am mind'. You will experience the essence of Existence at least for a moment in the neutral space of each breath. The breath that goes in touches your being and then it comes out. The breath that comes out touches the being of your existence and then it goes into you. At each neutral space of your breath you are touching and coming in contact with and taking in the being of Existence.

There is no need to believe anything, there is no need to think of anything and there is no need to do anything except to just focus on the breath that goes in and the breath that comes out and the breath that goes in again. If you are able to internalize and just focus on theses two gaps that will do. Enlightenment and quality of Shiva will then radiate in you.

We need a deep understanding here. If any other enlightened master had delivered these words then these would have become one more set of meditation techniques. Here Shiva himself has delivered these Sutras, so they become satya pramanas, promises of truth.

Shiva reveals himself as Lingothbava to Brahma and Vishnu. Brahma represents an ego of superiority complex. Vishnu represents an ego of inferiority complex. The mind of Brahma always shows more than what it actually has. On the other hand the mind of Vishnu always shows less to what he actually has. Money is like the state of Vishnu. How much ever you have it is seen to be less. Knowledge is like the state of Brahma. Whatever little you have is shown as if you know more. Brahma is an expression of Saraswati, an expression of knowledge, and ego of superiority. Vishnu is an expression of Lakshmi, and ego of inferiority. Neither can see nor realize the truth. It is only when they understand that they cannot see or realize the truth and surrender themselves to Shiva that Existence reveals itself to them.

The breath that goes in is Brahma, the ego of superiority and the breath that goes out is Vishnu, the ego of inferiority. When you focus your whole being in between the two breathe and surrender yourself you will see Shiva revealing himself.

Brahma and Vishnu cannot see or realize themselves because of the ego of superiority and the ego of inferiority. In order to make them understand Shiva revealed himself in between and beyond the state of ego. The day Shiva revealed himself as Lingothbava is the day of Shivaratri. He reveals the same truth in this Sutra.

Inhalation is the ego of superiority and the exhalation is the ego of inferiority. Establishing the being beyond the state of Brahma and Vishnu, beyond knowledge and material is called as Shiva Shakti, Shiva energy or Shiva Consciousness or Bhairava. Shiva says that if you just focus yourself on the very small gap that is in between inhalation and exhalation you will be able to experience the state of eternity, the true state of the being, the state of enlightenment and the state of Shiva. This is a promise that he gives.

Understand deeply that till you have oscillation in your breath you will have oscillation in your mind. As long as you have oscillations in your mind you will be seeing this world. There is no oscillation in between the breath that goes in and the breath that comes out, the tranquil gap that is in between these breaths. Stay in that serene state and focus yourself in it so that the existence that is beyond name and form will infuse the same experience in you too.

Your attention will be always directed towards things for which you have a deep liking. The amount of time that you take for each breath is the same amount of time that is taken for the neutral space in between each breath. However, we don't show that much of interest in the neutral space. Since we are not deeply connected to them these gaps start to reduce. As the gaps diminish, our body becomes prone to diseases. When the breathing period is equal to the gaps or neutral spaces our life span increases. When the neutral spaces increase enlightenment dawns.

We all definitely have this neutral space within us. The breath that goes in comes out and once again goes in. If you focus on the neutral space between the breaths you will go beyond your form and your name. You will experience the state of eternity. There is no need to give any sort of explanation for this. You will need explanation only when you have any doubts. Shiva does not even give a chance for any explanation. There is no necessity or a possibility for any explanation.

In order to avoid the misconception or mistakes by the people who write commentaries Shiva has already given the Sutras completely. It's been revealed in its complete form. People who come forward to write commentaries may add wrong words and make it impossible for the next generation to imbibe Shiva the way he meant. There is no place for any doubt here. Just focus your being in the gap that exists between each inhalation and exhalation.

Shiva sutras can be classified in to three different ways. Nithya sutras are meant to experience the Sutra and living with it for 24 hours a day. Dhyana sutras are meant to experience the Sutra and following the sutra in a specified time, on a regular basis. Dhyana sutras are meditation techniques that you need to sit down and meditate either in the morning or in the evening or during any specified time. The third type comprises Ananda sutras. The moment one hears them they reveal bliss and enlightenment in the being.

This Sutra is a Nithya sutra. Once you hear it, you internalize it and it becomes a part of your life. You can follow this Sutra throughout 24 hours, because throughout day and night the only thing that you do without stopping is to breathe. That is one thing that you never miss to do. Focus your self on this one thing. The ego of superiority is inhalation and the ego of inferiority is exhalation. Just focus on the neutral spaces of breaths and you will see Shiva as Lingothbava.

The period Shiva expresses himself to everyone is the neutral space, so just focus your being in it. The mind that goes out is breath and the breath that goes in is mind. There is a deep connection between the two. When you stop breathing your mind ceases to act. When your mind ceases to act your breath stops. Shiva does not even ask you to stop the breath, or to control your breathing. He doesn't ask you to stop the breath but to just focus yourself on the neutral space. Stopping the breath is like applying the brakes in a moving vehicle. Shiva does not ask you to stop the breath by braking. He merely asks you to unclutch from it. He asks you to become aware and unclutch. It is only when you focus your whole being on the neutral spaces of your breaths is when you become unclutched from you mind and body.

Let us focus on the truth of this Sutra in the forthcoming discourses. I have started the Sutras on this auspicious Shivaratri day so that the words of Shiva will keep on ringing in your mind. Shiva has revealed the truth of Shiva Consciousness through these sutras. Let your being be filled and let your senses flower. It is through these Sutras that Shiva wants to fill your being, your body and your mind and make them flower with the eternal bliss. I bless you all become one with, express and radiate eternal bliss, nithyananda.

udagacchantim tadidrupaam pratichakram kramaatkramam | urdhwe mushtitrayam yaavat taavadante mahodayah ||

Kundalini rising like lightning through the chakras, Experience Shiva Consciousness as it explodes anew. You cannot compare Shiva with any another master, because the depth or the vision, the way in which he sees, the way in which he penetrates the future are so different. When I introduced this book I was telling you all that there are techniques in this book not only for those who have come into this planet, but also for all those who are yet to come. He speaks to every possible mind, past, present and future.

Today in this sutra he solves an important problem. He addresses a totally different kind of human being. Throughout this book you don't see a single ritual. You don't need any temple to practice Shiva's teaching. You don't need to do any rituals. Straightaway he gives life solutions. In this technique he completely changes our whole attitude towards life. He shakes us completely. He defines the concept of purity very clearly in this sutra.

What does Shiva mean by the word purity? The other day someone was asking me, 'Swamiji, when you talk about Shiva you say he was a great master, but we read in the puranas that he gets angry easily'. Today Shiva is answering that question by giving great clarity. He gives us a clear vision about purity.

Let us enter into the sutra:

Kundalini rising like lightning through the chakras, Experience Shiva Consciousness as it explodes anew.

I wish I could speak in Sanskrit, because the English translation is not as accurate as Sanskrit. In translation you can't do much. Let me give a rough idea of what Shiva says in this sutra. Whatever you think as worldly activity, whatever you think as impure, for e.g., anger, lust, greed, even in those moments if you can practice this meditation you can explode anew. It is an amazing assurance he gives us. He is giving us a new idea, new concept about purity.

Shiva addresses one of the issues that modern man is facing. People tell me, 'Swamiji I don't have time for meditation.' That is one of the important problems. Shiva is addressing that problem in this sutra. He says that you don't need to spend separate time for meditation. Even when you are in worldly activity, one can practice this meditation technique and so practicing in a few days can be born anew. Shiva is converting your whole life into spirituality.

First thing you need to understand Shiva's concept about purity. Constantly, we are asked to be good, to be pure. The idea of purity is forced upon us. Constantly we are taught by the society, by the moralists that something is right, something is wrong, something is pure, something is impure, something is good, and something is bad. Constantly we are taught the idea of good and bad, constantly you are forced to practice something that is good or what the society thinks is good.

But life is no way related to what society believes in. Life is totally different. What society believes is different; what life is, is different. There is a beautiful saying: 'When you think, you think in generalized way; but when you live, you can't generalize.'

Situations can't be generalized. In your life there are so many things where generalization is not possible, where you can't decide what to do and what not to do based on popular guidelines. All your ideas about morality, about right and wrong, will not have any relevance. Somebody asked me 'Swamiji why do our scriptures not speak of gambling? Only puranas speak about gambling. The older ancient scriptures don't speak about gambling. Why have they not banned gambling in the Upanishads?'

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

According to Shiva, purity means innocence, not being affected by the thoughts or the samskaras or by the engraved memories. Let you be very clear, even if you are not expressing your emotions, your anger, greed and lust but if they are present in your inner space, you are not a pure person. Socially you are a pure person but actually you are not. On the other hand if you express your anger, lust and greed but nothing touches your inner space and you live like an innocent child, then be very clear, you are a pure being.

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

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

Purity is directly related to inner space. It is in no way related to the outer world. Shiva is giving us a technique to achieve this purity, that's why I have given an introduction on purity. Shiva is telling us how to achieve purity. If you follow Shiva's life as is described in the Shiva puranas, you will not be able to see any social or traditional purity in him. The place where he lives or the way in which he lives is not directly related to purity. Shiva lives in a cemetery where bodies are cremated, surrounded by spirits and ghosts.

His lifestyle also is far from traditional purity but he is a great master because nothing touches him.

Kundalini rising like lightning through the chakras, Experience Shiva Consciousness as it explodes anew.

Shiva is giving us a beautiful technique, which can be practiced the whole day and does not need any separate time. You say 'Swamiji I don't have time for meditation', for such human beings Shiva is giving this technique. Now you cannot give even this excuse of lack of time. Whenever people come and tell me 'Swamiji I don't have time for meditation', I tell them, don't say you don't have time for meditation.

There are people who meditate and it is not like they do not have any better job hence have taken up meditation. The other day I asked one of our ashramites why he was not coming to the discourse. She replied 'Swamiji I have work.' Does that mean that people who are coming and sitting for the discourse are jobless or what?

I always tell people, don't say you don't have time instead say that you don't give enough importance to meditation in your life. If you say that you do not give much importance to meditation in your life, then I can understand. Let us be at least honest with ourselves. Do not say you don't have time instead say that you are not able to understand that meditation is important, or that meditation can help you in your life in some way.

First of all Shiva dropped all the rituals, all the techniques, and now he is dropping all other problems that are usually created by the mind. He says that even if you don't have time, no problem! Whatever you may be doing, keep you attention between two breaths, constantly watch the gap, and be aware of the gap.

In the previous sutras, Shiva was speaking about separate meditation techniques, which you need to practice for half an hour or one hour every day. First Shiva asked you to add mediation into your life and now he is asking you to make your whole life a meditation. Be very clear, he is not giving you any morality; he is not saying what should be done and what should not be done. He is purely giving you techniques. He is a great master; that's why he straightaway gives you the torch, and doesn't give you any instructions.

Be very clear, if you try to follow any instructions, you will always miss. All guidance is misguidance. Since the guidance was given for someone else, is penned down and then presented to you, it is not going to match with you and your lifestyle. Instead of giving instructions Shiva is giving the torch itself so you can find your own path. I call this book as 'finding your own path to freedom'. He is giving you so much intelligence that you can find your own path to freedom. You don't have to follow everybody. He is giving you

all the roots, all methods, all techniques. You can pick up any one technique and find your own path to freedom.

Actually this book gives you freedom at all levels while starting, walking and ending. Some books give you freedom and liberation in the very end. Other books give you freedom while walking. It is very rare to see a book that gives you freedom from the very beginning. Even when you start you have choice. You don't have to start according to the teacher. Even in the beginning level, at time of starting, you are given complete freedom. Your freedom is respected! You are accepted as you are. You are not asked to follow a particular person. You are not asked to go behind particular teachings. Shiva is giving you freedom even as you start.

Shiva says whatever you do keep your attention between two breaths. You can do this while engaged in any activity. Buddhist philosophy calls this mindfulness. Buddhist monks practise this while walking or working or meditating. Walking and working become meditation when you focus your attention between the breaths. Once you understand what Shiva is saying, whenever you watch your breath your attention will automatically move to the gaps between breaths. The gap is the source of the breath. With each breath your energy rises and you are renewed.

Be constantly aware of the gap between two breaths and live your life knowing the game of existence. You can ask, is it okay if I get angry or be greedy and just keep my attention between two breaths? Can I do whatever I want? In that case the whole society will be in chaos. People again and again ask me, 'Swamiji, you say meditation is enough. If we just do mediation and then do whatever we want, will the society not be in chaos?' I ask them: do you think now it is not chaos?

A person who meditates will never create chaos and will never do anything that you call impure. Meditation brings so much of intelligence that he will be completely integrated. He will never go against anyone's interest. He will never disturb anybody's life.

You can see in your life that when you are in joy, in bliss, in ecstasy, you don't disturb anybody. Even if someone makes a mistake, you take it in a light way. But when you are irritated inside, when you are tensed, when you are not relaxed, then there is no need for anyone to make a mistake. Even if they come in front of you it is enough. They will start having your blessings. Your presence will radiate and you will just start vomiting yourself on them. Be very clear, a person who is completely integrated, who is totally relaxed, calm, and settled in himself will never disturb anybody. He will have his own way of living. His morality can never be shaken.

Morality of a person on whom morality is imposed by rules and regulations can never be believed. Be very clear, his morality can never be believed. On the other hand the morality of a person who is expressing morality out of his spiritual wisdom and spiritual energy can never be changed. You can trust his life and you can trust his energy.

Shiva says that by being aware of the gap between two breaths you will be in ecstasy the whole day. He says one more thing, that by practicing this you will be renewed. Shiva says that this truth can give you new birth. You cannot be the same old person again and you cannot be living your old life again.

One important thing, these techniques have to be constantly practiced. Yesterday someone asked me, 'Swamiji, everyday you teach a new technique, how we can practice all since each technique needs some time'.

Here I am speaking for the whole world, so it can be recorded and be useful for the whole world. You can pick up any one meditation technique and start practicing it. Sometimes when you listen to a technique, you feel that your whole being is opening, your whole energy is vibrating and you feel that this technique can surely help you. You feel a particular technique is your path, and then simply take up that technique and practice at least for 21 days. You will see you have become a new being, and you are not the same old person again. You don't have to practise each and every technique that Shiva gives and that I speak on. Just pick the one that vibrates in you, internalize the understanding behind that technique and don't let it go.

Only when you practice you understand how bringing the attention between two breaths can change your whole life. Whenever you bring your attention between two breaths you are unclutched. Just remember that you are unclutched. You come to the same neutral space, in which you experience that you are unclutched. As long as you that believe you are a connected being, that your thoughts are connected to one another, all your problems will be alive and you will go on suffering. The moment you understand that by your very nature you are unclutched, illogical, unconnected, and independent being, from that very moment, you cannot suffer. You suffer only if you create a shaft of thoughts.

You can't continue to suffer if you remember again and again that you are unclutched. The suffering that happened to you one year ago, suffering which happened two months ago, and the suffering that happened to you yesterday are unconnected, independent incidents, separate thoughts. When you start connecting all of them and start seeing them, you create an understanding about them in your life, or create an idea about them in your life. Be very clear that by this connecting of thoughts you are creating suffering for yourself, hell for yourself. You are creating more and more difficulties for yourself.

When you go into these techniques you will see liberation happening in your being. Whenever you are in depression, just remember that you are unclutched. The incidents or things that happen in the outer world are no way connected to your response in the inner world. Similarly thoughts that arise in your inner world are no way related to the identity you have in the outer world.

You have two identities: One that you show for others, and one that you keep for yourself. Both are lies. Let you be very clear, you always think the identity that you show to the world is a lie and the identity which you have within yourself, about yourself, is

true. Let you be very clear, the identity that you are keeping within yourself, about yourself, is a big lie. It is also a big lie. Your response or your thoughts related to your identity shown to the outer world and the identity within both are completely unclutched. They both are lies.

People come and tell me their guilt. Swamiji, actually I am a different kind of person but I pretend to be courageous, nice and honest in front of people. I don't know how to bridge the gap. Let you be very clear, the guilt that you carry or the personality within that creates guilt in you, then that is also a big lie. If you think that the personality that you carry inside is true and the personality that you project to the outer world is false, it is then you start thinking about morality. All your understanding of morality is the gap between these two identities. In other words the gap between these two identities creates the idea about morality. Here I am talking about a very subtle, but basic truth of life.

The idea of confession or seeking forgiveness is nothing but pure business for religions. It is an idea given to you so you can be kept controlled. The idea of guilt and absolving that guilt through confession is a cunning and subtle way of exploiting human beings. It is a very cunning and subtle way to keep people under control. You are conditioned by religions to believe in and accept certain ideas and certain codes of conduct that you must conform to. These are imprinted in your unconscious mind. But consciously you keep doing many things that are not in conformity with these imprinted beliefs. You create guilt within you. You believe that by confessing about these differences between what is within and what you do and project and seeking forgiveness something is going to change. Nothing can change. You will keep visiting the temples and churches week after week, that is all.

Let you be very clear, both your idea about yourself that you are keeping inside your mind and your idea about yourself that you are projecting to the outer world are pure lies. Both identities are lies. Keep your awareness between two breaths and realize, remember again and again that you are unclutched, that by your very nature you are unclutched. Again and again remember that you are unclutched by bringing your attention between two breaths.

All of a sudden you will notice that all your activities are taking a U–turn. You will notice that you no longer talk as before, you no longer do things in the old way. You realize that you have started working in a new way and you think in a new way. This will be so because your idea about pleasure will change, your idea about joy will change. Your idea about pain will change. All your ideas about yourself will change.

That is why I say Shiva is the only master who is the master who cures the disease of bondage. He is the only master, the only doctor to treat the disease of bondage. He straightaway liberates you. He doesn't even give you the bondage of spirituality. Almost all the religions take away all other bondages but keep you in spiritual bondage, the golden chain. But with Shiva, he neither gives you spiritual bondage nor gives you physical bondage.

Religions will usually relieve or liberate you from the image that you show to others. They will say do not bother about name, fame etc. It is easy to liberate you from the image that you project about yourself to the outer world. Just little bit of intelligence and understanding is needed and you will be liberated. But real freedom is to liberate yourself from the image that you carry within about yourself. That is what J. Krishnamurthy calls 'freedom from yourself'.

Liberating yourself, from your self since your self is constantly torturing you is true freedom. You can't relax with yourself and you can't sit with yourself. You can see for yourself that even old people, who don't have any responsibility, cannot sit with themselves. I have seen old people with no responsibility, with no more needs to be satisfied, and yet cannot sit with themselves. From morning till night they read the same old newspapers with big glasses on in such a detailed manner, which even the Editor would not have read. They would have been married, their sons would have been married, their daughters would have been married, their grandsons would have been married but they would still be reading the matrimonial column, with their big glasses on. They can't sit with themselves. When you can't sit with yourself, be very clear, you are not relaxed. You are not at ease with the image you are carry about yourself in your inner space.

Here Shiva is telling you to be at ease with the image you are carrying about yourself within yourself. Only then will real morality happen. Please understand that unless you are completely at ease with the image you are carrying about yourself within yourself, unless you accept yourself completely, real morality can never happen in your life. The one and only way to accept yourself completely is to understand the truth that by their very nature your thoughts are illogical, irresponsible, independent and unclutched. You can't do anything about it.

You can only do one thing, understand this truth and liberate yourself, that's all. When you liberate yourself you will be completely at ease with the personality or the image that you are carrying about yourself in your inner space. Only when you are at ease with your personality; only when you are integrated, will life become a game of existence. Until then you will be tortured with life.

In Sanskrit there's a beautiful word called leela, which means play, an illusory play. To a person who has integrated his life, a person who is completely comfortable with the image that he carries of himself within himself, to him life will appear as a leela. Life will not be a serious thing but a game of existence. Such a person is just playing the leela and there's no question of something being right or wrong, no question of getting exploited by someone or exploiting someone.

If you have respect for your freedom, for your inner space, you will never disrespect another's freedom. Same way if you are binding somebody, taking away somebody's freedom, let you be very clear that you will be selling your freedom. You can see that all

so-called moralists are moral because of their followers and the followers are moral because of their leader's injunctions. Both the leader and the follower are in big bondage, both are binding each other. Be very clear that the real morality or purity can happen to you only when you are completely at ease with the personality that you carry within yourself about yourself.

This meditation technique has two parts. First you need to center your attention in the gaps between the two breaths. Next, you need to hold this attention while you are in action. You will be able to put your attention between two breaths and be at ease with yourself, only if you can be at ease with the neutral space. You have to be comfortable in the zone where you don't have attachment with your identity, where you are ready to be relaxed from your identity and where you are at ease with the personality that you are in your inner space. This is the first step.

Second step is to being aware or centering your attention on the same neutral space even during action.

First let us understand the first step. Since so many of you are new today I want all of you to do the first step first, later we will do the main meditation technique from this sutra. First step is to be aware of the gap between the two breaths. Let you be centered, let you put your attention between the gap between two breaths. Today the meditation technique will take at least 45 minutes. So now we will do the first step, then I will explain about the second step.

Please close your eyes. Sit straight. Do not suppress and do not express any of your thoughts. Just be aware of inhaling and exhaling. Just be aware of incoming and outgoing breaths. Be aware of incoming and outgoing breaths. Keep attention between two breaths. Keep your attention between incoming and outgoing breaths. Be aware of the gap between incoming and outgoing breath. (Approximately 15 minutes)

The next meditation technique is a strange one but very powerful. Usually mediation means our body will be still and our minds will be moving. In this technique your mind has to be still even when the body moves. If you have done Vishuddhi mediation during the first level Life Bliss Program, this mediation is based on the same concept, the same truth, but the technique is different.

Since there are a lot of newcomers, let me explain what I mean by the word neutral space. The gap between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath is what I call neutral space where you are unclutched, by your very nature. This is where you relax into the consciousness by your very nature. Here is where you experience ultimate peace and bliss by your very nature. As of now you can experience this neutral space when you close your eyes and meditate; but you should be able to experience this neutral space even when you are in action. That is the main theme of this sutra, this technique.

You must be able to experience the neutral space even when you are in worldly activity. There are two prerequisites; one, that you must be ready to let go, ready to relax from the identity that you are showing to the outer world; to your friends, to your family, to your relatives, and to your enemy. As of now, you present an identity to the outer world trying to impress others. You must be able to relax, and let go from that identity. Next, you are carrying an identity within yourself about you. Constantly condemning!

There's a beautiful saying by Jesus: Love thy neighbor as you love yourself.

The big problem is we don't love our self then how can we love our neighbor? Constantly you are condemning yourself. You are carrying a personality within yourself with which you are constantly struggling, constantly trying to chisel and work. You must be able to let go from this second identity also. Only then you will be able to experience the neutral space even when you are in worldly activity.

Please understand, actually commenting on Bhagavad Gita is very easy. It is more a social scripture telling you what to do and what not to do. But explaining Shiva sutras is very difficult, because it is directly connected to mysticism, directly connected to your inner self. It is a powerful alchemy where the transformation is bound to happen. Only people who are interested in transformation will be able to understand. The moment you enter into Shiva Sutras transformation has to happen. It is very powerful. That is the reason you need to understand every inch of it. Even if you miss a single statement you will miss the whole meaning, you may miss the whole purpose itself.

Small story:

One famous art collector was traveling in a small village. Outside a shop he saw a cat drinking milk from an old saucer. He realized by looking at it that the saucer was very old and valuable. Somehow he wanted to posses the saucer. He went to the shop owner and started talking. Can you sell that cat to me? The owner said 'no sir, that cat is not for sale'. The art collector said 'I want a hungry old tomcat to kill all the mice in my house. I will give you 10 dollars for it.' Owner said: No. Art collector said 'I will give you 20 dollars.' Owner said: all right, have it. And he gave the cat. This guy started saying, 'why don't you give the old saucer also, because the cat is used to that saucer; it will be happy with that saucer. I don't want to buy one more dish for the cat.'

The owner said 'No, no; no, that is my lucky saucer. Just because of that saucer, in one week, I have sold 48 cats.'

Sometimes you miss the essence. Be very clear. Even if you miss a single line, you may miss the essence. You may miss the saucer and have only the old cat. So now at least don't miss the saucer.

Here you need to understand two things. You need to relax from the identity, which you are projecting to the outer world. Then you will experience the neutral space. Actually if you relax from the identity that you are projecting to the outer world, immediately you will have the experience of the neutral space, the gap between two breaths.

Second thing, if you are relaxed from the identity which you are carrying inside about yourself, then you will be able to maintain that same neutral space throughout the day. Nobody can disturb you, nobody can shake you, and nobody can pull you out of that neutral space.

If you relax from the identity that you show to the outer world you will have a glimpse of the neutral space. Then relax from the identity that you have for yourself within yourself. This identity is far stronger since you believe it to be true, but actually it is also not true. You are made to believe it is a truth by your conditioning through society and religion. Morality, speaking truth, not harming others and all these commandments are about projecting the identity that you are carrying about yourself on the outer world.

Be very clear, that identity itself is not true. That identity itself is not true, so even if you give importance to that identity it is not going to help you. Let you be very clear that is why these people who understand this social morality or who understand only about speaking truth etc, they will be completely masochistic and self-condemning.

Always you carry two identities; one which is projected to the outer world, the superiority ego. You believe, I am this and I am that. It is the big cutout that you carry about yourself in the form of a visiting card. Be very clear that, the visiting card is not as small as it looks; it is actually of a billboard size. Since you cannot carry a billboard wherever you go, you carry the visiting card. This is superiority complex. Second identity is which you carry within you for yourself. If you relax from the first one you will get a glimpse of the neutral space, and then you need to relax from the second one also.

When I say relax from second one, what I mean is this. Do not bother about developing it and don't bother about improving it. Constantly you are trying to improve, trying to develop, the idea that you are carrying about yourself. That is why you are constantly entering into all these self-development programs. All self-development is just useless because there is no self. What then what will you develop? There is no self.

All self-development programs are nothing but trying to give you a feel good factor. If somehow you can give a feel good feeling to someone, then you can become a self-development teacher. Nothing else. It is not a big thing. Self-development is pure nonsense, because there is no self, what will you develop?

The very identity that you are carrying cannot be developed because it does not exist. You can't develop something that does not exist. Even if you develop, develop, develop, after five years you will be the same old thing. You may start believing that you have developed, but if you record and see you will be the same old person.

Let me give you a simple experiment. Record or pen down whatever comes in your mind right now and keep it in a room; then, for five years try to develop yourself. After five years again record and see, it will be the same or a little worse, that's all. You will not have anything else.

All you can do is only one thing: understand that your self cannot be developed. Then suddenly you will see that you are able to integrate the whole thing. Developing is different and integrating is different. Suddenly you will see that you are able to express the identity, which you are carrying.

You will see a different energy, different kind of love, and a different kind of compassion in your life. That is what I call enlightenment. Relaxing from the identity that you are showing the world is the first experience, satori. Relaxing from second identity that you are carrying in your mind, in your inner self, is what I call enlightenment.

Now Shiva is asking us to be enlightened and to be renewed. Just practice this for a few days and you will be born anew. What do you mean by the word 'few days Swamiji'? Surely less than a week, else he would have said few weeks. Shiva has not said few months, or few weeks, so he means less than a week.

Let you be very clear. Constantly remind yourself that the identity you are carrying within yourself and the identity that you are projecting outside are both not true. Be convinced that they are not solid things and that they are purely unconnected, independent, illogical shafts. When you understand this, you will be liberated!

Actually in the two days of Dhyana Spurana Program (DSP) that we conduct this is what I am trying to do. DSP is nothing but inserting or putting this truth in your inner space and making you experience this from all the corners.

You have five levels of conditioning. In five major levels you are caught. One is in the physical level, annamaya kosha; next at the breathing level, pranamaya kosha; third manonmaya kosha, at the mental level; fourth vignanamaya kosha meaning the emotional level, unconscious level, and the fifth is anandamaya kosha, which is the level of spirituality. You are supposed to go beyond the idea of spirituality. In all the five levels you are caught.

In these two days of DSP, we work on how to give you the experience of being unclutched in all five levels. You will be liberated; you will be made to experience liberation. Actually the truth even if it is understood once, will transform your being. When you work on that deeply, you can't be the same old person again. If you understood once logically and clearly that you are un-clutched, every time you remember that you are unclutched, a new energy will rise in your being, a new consciousness will rise in your being. You will feel the big liberation and celebration in your life!

Now let us enter into the meditation. It is a two-step technique. First thing, you will be sitting with closed eyes trying to relax in the neutral space, means putting your attention between two breaths, not bothering about the identity that you are carrying or are projecting to the outer world. All your thoughts will be centered on name, fame and money and on your money, property, name and fame, relationship, your ideas about how you should position yourself etc. Relax from these for a few minutes. Once you are able to settle down in your neutral space, once you are able to relax in the gap between two breaths then being centered in the same space you will start moving your body.

As of now, you will feel the neutral space when you are sitting with closed eyes. But when you open your eyes and start moving your body, you will forget the neutral space. You will be caught by the activities. Now you are supposed to train yourself to be in the neutral space even when you are in action, even when you are moving and leading your life. Be in that meditative state and move only one hand. You will miss, suddenly you will forget, bring back the awareness, bring the attention back, then move the leg, then slowly open your eyes.

Step by step I will guide you. We will operate our mind and body being in the neutral space. Initially it might look a little difficult, but it is not. If you practice you will realize that you are able to operate your body and mind from the neutral zone, the neutral space, and the Zen zone. We can operate our body and mind from Shiva Consciousness.

Let us start. I request you all to move the chairs, so that in the second step you can stand up and move your body, being in that same consciousness. If you can't sit down, please go to the last row. You can sit in the chair in the last row. If you have found your place, please sit down and close your eyes. Tie the ribbon around your eyes. If you don't have a ribbon at least use your kerchief. I want everyone to sit on the ground. If you really cannot sit down then go to the last row and sit on the chair. Sit straight. Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible, as deeply as possible. Tie the ribbon over your eyes.

Inhale and exhale as slowly as possible as deeply as possible. (2 min)

Slowly very slowly put your attention on the incoming breath. Be aware of the incoming breath. (3 min)

Slowly put you attention on the outgoing breath. (2 min)

Slowly very slowly put you attention between two breaths. Just be aware of the gap, neutral space. Forget about the incoming breath and forget about the outgoing breath. Just be aware of the gap, of the neutral space, the space in which you are Shiva Consciousness, the Zen zone.

Be aware of the gap. Keep attention between the two breaths. (3 min)

Keep attention between two breaths. Relax in the neutral space. Being in the same space, same consciousness, try to move only one hand, any one hand. If you feel you have come out of that awareness, bring yourself back to the neutral space. Come back to neutral space and move the hand. Very slowly being in the neutral space, move a hand. Without losing the neutral space, without coming down from that consciousness move at least one hand. Bring yourself back to that neutral space. If you feel you have lost your awareness, come back to the neutral space. Come back to the neutral space and move the hand. (5 min)

Being in the same neutral space, without losing it, please try to stand up. If you feel you are losing the neutral space, sit down; come back to the neutral space again. Now without forgetting, without missing the awareness try to stand up. Let your eyes be closed. Just be aware of the gap between two breaths. Let your attention be between two breaths. Let you be in that neutral space. Let you be where there is no mind. (3 min)

Keep attention between two breaths. Be aware of the neutral space. Without missing the awareness try to move both the hands very slowly. Important thing do not miss the awareness. (3 min)

Relax. Be centered between two breaths. Be completely at ease in the neutral space. Be aware of the gap. With that awareness, without missing the awareness slowly move your head. Important thing do not miss the awareness. If you feel you have lost the awareness, come back, bring the awareness back and then move the head. (5 min)

Without losing the awareness, totally centered between two breaths, being in neutral space, try to move your feet. Be aware. Do not miss the neutral space. Be completely centered on the neutral space. Do not miss the neutral space. (3 min)

If you feel you lost the awareness, come back. Slow down. Center yourself in the neutral space. Let your attention be between breaths. (2 min)

Without losing the awareness, slowly very slowly, try to open your eyes. If you feel what you are seeing takes away your awareness, close your eyes and again center yourself in that awareness. Very slowly, be in that same awareness, be in that same neutral space and try to open your eyes. If you feel you are losing your awareness, close your eyes and bring the awareness back. Center yourself in the awareness. (3 min)

Keep your attention between two breaths. Keep your attention on the neutral space. Let your attention be in the neutral space. (3 min)

Be in that same awareness and sit wherever you are. If you feel you are missing the awareness, come back, slow down, and center yourself in the awareness. Be aware. Keep attention between two breaths. May you be in eternal consciousness! (3 min)

Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi. Relax. May this teaching and technique of Shiva liberate you. May you be in and radiate THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

In tantra, kundalini is the primal energy that lies dormant in our root chakra, muladhara. When activated this energy moves up through the spinal passage sushumna to the crown center, sahasrara. Metaphorically, sahasrara is the point where this energy or shakti merges with the Cosmic Consciousness, the Shiva Consciousness.

Prana is an integral part of this kundalini shakti. When the sutra refers to kundalini rising, it refers to the prana energy rising as well. Breath is the vehicle through which prana normally moves. This is how breath and kundalini are related.

As you focus on the neutral space between breaths, the very awareness activates the kundalini and allows it to move up to the sahasrara and reach Shiva Consciousness. If one wants to understand logically this is the explanation.

But neither kundalini nor Shiva are logical. They are far beyond logic. As long as you try to understand the rationale and figure out how you can move your kundalini shakti up, you are only playing a useless mind game. As long as your mind occupies you in the useless mind game the kundalini will lie dormant in your muladhara. You will be controlled by fear and greed, the resident emotions of the muladhara chakra. You will remain in bondage, not merely in this life, but for many more lives.

As long as you sit in meditation and try to observe the neutral space you are still adding that meditation as an activity to your life. You constantly fight to find the time and space to do this. However, when you make that activity of being aware of the neutral space amidst all your normal actions of the day and night, then and only then meditation becomes the core activity for you. You no longer need to find the time and space because you are in meditation always.

The very word meditation creates fear and greed in the minds many people. From the simple fear of how to sit and how to stay still, one extends one's logic to the threat to the loss of one's identity. Even before yo have learned to sit still for two minutes you start being afraid of dying. If I focus on the gap between breaths, what will happen if I forget to breathe? You have not even learned to breathe properly yet, and you are already worried about forgetting to breathe.

Shiva has provided you with a natural intelligence that operates in spite of you. Even if you forget this natural intelligence is aware that you need to breathe. You do not need to be taught that in schools.

For others it is the greed. One starts imagining all the powers that one is told would be theirs when the kundalini is awakened. They can already visualize their materializing objects from thin air and predicting the future. Nothing of this sort may happen. Even if you get such powers the intelligence that comes with such powers ensures that you do not feel the need for them.

Shiva takes you in stages to this point. You are already aware of the neutral space and you know how to experience the neutral space. Now he leads you to experiencing it in the midst of other activities. He teaches you to be aware while being active.

I have spoke in other places of a naga master who used to test people with his trident. He would ask the candidate to focus of all three tips of the trident all at once without moving the eyeballs. This practice creates awareness. Normally we concentrate. Concentration is elimination. We eliminate all others to the exclusion of whatever we concentrate upon. Awareness is inclusion. It is a 360-degree view. Nothing is excluded. You can talk, you can listen, you can see, you can eat and you can do everything while still being aware of the neutral space.

In fact in this state because of this awareness, whatever action you are engaged in becomes more meaningful. It becomes special. It is no longer a routine. Every flower you see is special. Its beauty explodes n your inner space. Every dish you eat, however many times you may have eaten that before, becomes special and ever so delicious. Nothing is ordinary. Everything in this universe is extraordinary. That is because you have become extraordinary. Each moment is a new moment. You are constantly reborn.

This is the state Shiva leads you to. He has taught you how to become aware of the neutral space while still in motion and action. Once this practice becomes natural and once this awareness is built into you, your kundalini energy is constantly exploding anew maintaining you in that Shiva Consciousness.

In various tantric practices there are various techniques that are prescribed to activate the kundalini energy. To the uninitiated many of these techniques can be harmful. All the techniques that Shiva prescribes in Shiva Sutras are absolutely safe and without any ill effects. It is a promise that Shiva makes. These techniques unless where I warn you to do under a Master's guidance can be safely practised at home or elsewhere by you. They will deliver you the effects that Shiva guarantees.

Shiva has made this path so simple. He has made the possibility so easy. All you need to do is maintain your awareness in the neutral space between your breaths, one or the other or both. You can maintain this awareness along with any activity you are engaged in. this awareness can be maintained even while your senses are flooding you with inputs. When you are in this mode, you become a witness to what your senses are up to.

Every moment, even when you think you are asleep, your senses are active. You are constantly on the periphery with your sense antennae trying to catch all wayward signals that float around you. That is the food for your senses. They cannot remain alive without

this feed. When your senses feed they drag you into the slush with them. Like a pig in a trough you wallow in the feed that they serve you.

You have an option. You can move from the periphery to your core. Your core is at the neural space. When you move into your core you are centered. Nothing that assails yours senses then disturbs you. You are a mere witness to the games your senses play.

You no longer need to bind and control your sense organs. Whatever anyone may tell you this cannot be done. The suppression will only explode later. You can then play the game with your senses, instead of their playing a game with you.

Senses can only play with your when your boundaries are defined. This can only happen when your identity is defined. When you are centered the boundary disappears. There is no need for a boundary at the center. You are stable. From this vantage point you can safely witness all that happens around you. You are no longer in bondage because there are no boundaries. You are not attached to your senses which constantly try to drag you with them since you are now merely a witness and not a player.

You now have the technique to play with your mind. You have the means to move beyond your mind.

kramadwaadashakam samyag dwaadashaaksharabheditam| sthoolasukshmaparasthityaa muktvaa muktvaantatah shivah ||

From gross to subtle to the causal, from waking to dreams into death Let breath move through chakras into Shiva Consciousness.

Shiva Sutras is the applied science, the technology to experience the ultimate truth in our life. Vedanta philosophy is the theory, the scientific theory. Shiva Sutras are the applied science, the technology to experience what Vedanta gives as a theory. In Vedanta what you learn is the intellectual truth, in Shiva Sutras you are made to experience that. That truth becomes part of your being.

Just reading about the ultimate truth may not be a direct help. It may be an inspiration but it won't be useful in any way unless it becomes your experience. Unless they become your experience, words alone cannot do anything. They won't be able to transform your life.

Small story:

A father goes to meet his would-be son-in-law. After meeting him, he asks, 'My dear, what is your plan about the future? What do you want to do to make your living?' The boy asks, 'Living? I will study Vedanta. God will take care of me.'

After a few minutes, again, the girl's father asks, 'My dear, how are you planning to provide, to take care of my daughter?' The boy says, 'Oh, your daughter! Well, I shall study Vedanta. I shall study Gita. God will provide.'

After few minutes, again the father asks, 'My dear son-in-law! What's your plan about taking care of your kids, your children?' The boy replies, 'Oh, kids! I will study Vedanta. God will take care. God will provide.'

The father comes back home. His wife asks, 'What happened to your meeting? How do you feel about the boy? What do you think about him?'

The father says, 'I know two things. One, he has no plans for his life. He has no plans about the future. Another thing, he thinks I am God!'

'He thinks I am God' means the boy expects that the father-in-law will provide!

Understand, Vedanta is not going to do anything directly in your life. It may be an inspiration. But, unless you are transformed, unless it becomes an experience in you, you won't be helped. The Shiva Sutras are the technology to directly transform your being. They work directly on your being. They straightaway transform your being.

Here, Shiva is not giving you any theories. He is straightaway giving you the technology to explode, to expand, and to experience your inner space, what I call 'Shiva Consciousness'. Many different words, Atman, God, Self, Nirvana, whatever word I may use, it is the same eternal bliss.

Now, let us enter into Shiva's words, the Shiva Sutras to understand the teachings of Shiva. Today's topic is 'Death Demystified'. So, let us enter into the Shiva Sutras so that we can demystify the death experience and death itself.

kramadwaadashakam samyag dwaadashaaksharabheditam| sthoolasukshmaparasthityaa muktvaa muktvaantatah shivah ||

Beautiful verse! Let me give you the translation; then, we will enter into the sutra itself. Of course, I am giving you the translation just to give you the understanding. You will really be able to understand the sutra only when you see the explanation.

To tell you honestly, none of these sutras can be translated. Each has got so many meanings. It is impossible to translate. If you have deep knowledge of Shakespeare or if you are really a poet and have experienced Gitanjali in original Bengali, you will understand that translation of these poets is simply impossible. If you enjoy Shakespeare, you will understand translation is simply impossible.

Even a single word if you miss, you won't be able to experience the juice or the real essence.

So, now, I will try to give you the translation just for your information. But, we will understand the sutra itself when we see the explanation. Because only that can give the real meaning what Shiva wants to convey.

From gross to subtle to the causal, from waking to dreams into death Let breath move through chakras into Shiva Consciousness.

This is one possible translation. Let us explore step by step what Shiva means by this sutra and how it can transform our life.

One thing I want to tell you, this single sutra can give you the tremendous power to fulfill all your dreams and to give you the realization that dreams are not ordinary things as you think.

Dreams are made of the same stuff of which this world is made. If you think dreams are ordinary, this world is also ordinary. If you think this world is some kind of reality for you, dreams are also reality.

This sutra will give you the experience, it will give you the power, it will give you the energy to make your dreams into reality and it will give you the intelligence to understand that whatever you think as reality is nothing but a dream.

It will work deep in you. It will give the energy to make your dreams into reality and it will give you the intelligence to understand the reality itself is nothing but one more dream.

Here, we are talking about the breath energy. In Sanskrit, we call it prana. Breath does not mean the air that goes in and comes out. Air is just a vehicle in which the energy of prana comes in and goes out.

Prana is the life force, the energy itself. Understand this one example: if a truck comes inside this temple and leaves something and goes out, the truck is like the air, the truck is like the breath. The product that comes in the truck, the product that is delivered from the truck is prana.

Constantly, the air is going in and after leaving the prana inside the air is coming out. The air is going in, leaving the prana inside and the air is coming out. Constantly, we are taking prana through air. From the cosmos, we are taking prana through air.

Here, when Shiva talks about breath, he is talking about prana. He is not speaking about breath. He is not concerned about breath.

In Bharat, if you have attended Kumbh Mela festivals that occur as massive gatherings once in 12 years on sacred riverbanks, you might have seen this. I have seen the yogis who will put their heads totally in the earth and be buried for three days. Three days, they will keep their head under the earth; the head will be buried. Logically, you can't understand. Logically, you will be thinking, 'How are they alive? How are they breathing? How is the prana being supplied to the body?' In Bharat, yogis know how to take the prana directly from the cosmos without the help of air.

As long as you take prana through air, you need to breathe. You need to inhale and exhale. But, when you can take the prana directly without the help of air, you don't need to inhale or exhale through the nose. Your body can directly take the prana through the cosmos.

One more thing: as long as the incoming breath is bringing more prana and going out empty, as long as it comes in as prana shakti (energy) and goes out as empty vehicle, your life will be strengthened.

If the reverse starts happening, if it comes with less prana and goes out with more prana shakti, the person can understand his death is nearing or he is going towards the death.

That is the reason all the great masters who know or who can sense the prana shakti can tell about their death. They were able to predict their death. Before six months of their passing away, they were able to see very clearly the prana moving out of their body. Just the empty air will enter but when it goes out, it will go with the prana.

There is a powerful concept in Ayurveda (traditional Hindu system of medicine) called as the peak age. Till a particular age, the person will be receiving more prana through the incoming breath and less prana will be going out through the outgoing breath. The moment the outgoing breath starts carrying more prana than the incoming breath, they know now the person is moving towards death.

If more prana is brought through the incoming breath, if the incoming breath is carrying more prana than the outgoing breath, you are going towards the life, you are expanding, you are strengthening your body, and you are strengthening your energy.

If the outgoing breath is carrying more prana than the incoming breath, be very clear, you are going towards death, and you are working towards the death.

The great masters, Buddha, Shankara, Guru Nanak, Mahavira, all of them had predicted their death. All of them had very clearly predicted the time of their leaving the body. It is just because they were able to sense their prana. They could very clearly experience the amount of prana. They were able to very clearly see what was happening with their breath.

This technique is a very beautiful technique. Now, Shiva is giving you the technique to work on the prana and to increase the amount of the prana. Not only is He telling the basic truths about the prana, He is giving you the technique also to work on the prana, to increase the incoming prana. And, above all, He is giving you the ultimate freedom from the death itself through this technique.

Let us enter into the technique.

Now, He is introducing the next part: 'let the breath move through the energy centers'. The prana moves, functions and stays in the center of the forehead, which is the ajna chakra (third eye energy center) when you are in the waking state. When you are in dream state, it moves around the neck around the vishuddhi chakra (throat energy center). When you are in deep sleep, it moves around the anahata chakra (heart energy center).

That is why you can never fall asleep if your head is straight. Unless you relax the head, unless you allow the prana movement, unless you relax, the prana cannot move from forehead to anahata. This is the reason why unless you relax your head you can't go to sleep.

Even if you are lying on the bed if try to keep the head straight, you will never be able to sleep. If you think constantly, your head will be straight and your shoulder will be under stress. The stress in shoulder and the head being straight, both are very closely associated. You can see in your life. Early morning, go to your office, you don't have to do any work,

just sit in your chair and think about the problems, get stressed, you will have shoulder pain!

Without starting any work, you don't have to do anything, just remember your manager and meditate on him. You will have shoulder pain! Actually all the pain and the stress you experience first is from the shoulder. When your shoulder is under stress, your head cannot bend and your head can never relax.

That is why people who think constantly can neither relax their head nor will they be able to fall asleep.

Even when you are lying in the bed, try to keep your head straight. You can't fall asleep. You won't fall asleep. Even when you are sitting, just put your head down. Simply, you will start sleeping and snoring.

Actually, going to some spiritual discourses is the best way to get sleep! Spiritual lectures, spiritual books and if nothing else works, start chanting some mantra! These are the ultimate techniques to fall asleep. Because in these spiritual lectures you don't have to think much. You think, 'He is talking and I can just sit and relax!' We don't need to do anything.

Whenever you relax, whenever your neck is relaxed, your prana will start flowing towards the anahata, towards the heart center; you will fall asleep.

Usually, when you are in the waking state, your prana will stay in ajna. You should know these few basic pieces of information to enter into the sutra or the technique. That is the reason I am trying to give you all this esoteric information. These are all the knowledge of the experiences of the ancient sages. They have done deep research in human consciousness and how to use human consciousness to develop the life.

Actually, the whole West has done so much in the field of mind! It has done all possible things to enrich human life using the mind, using the outer world. The East has done all possible researches to enrich the human life using consciousness. The West has worked in the line of the mind, the outer world. The East has worked in the line of consciousness, inner world. Both of them have tried their best to enrich human life, to make the life more comfortable, more blissful, and happier.

These are all the few techniques created by the ancient rishis to make your life more blissful, more ecstatic, using your consciousness.

From gross to subtle to the causal, from waking to dreams into death Let breath move through chakras into Shiva Consciousness.

Now, He is giving the technique.

He says, be aware at the moment when your prana reaches to the heart when you fall asleep and have control over dreams and over death itself.

Let me give you a small diagram and explain how this technique is going to help you and how to practice this technique.

Each day we go through four states of consciousness, whether we are aware or not. Two of these have our awareness in different degrees and two happen in unawareness. In two our mind functions generating thoughts and in two others it stays silent. This is a direct learning from the diagram. Now let me explain this differently.

We all know of two things for sure, life and death. These two basic things we all know. Constantly, life is slipping, entering into death. Life slipping into death is what we call living. Please understand, actually we don't live. We are just waiting for death to happen. Ordinary human beings don't live.

Life is just slipping into death and life is disappearing into death. That is the reason however many years you may live, you won't feel satisfied, and you won't feel you have lived your life because you don't know what life is. Just, something is slipping. You are not aware. You are not even aware of what is happening in your being.

When you become conscious at some point in your life, when you become conscious of the life, when you start thinking, contemplating about your life, when you bring awareness into your life, you create a new center in your being.

Between this life and death, when you bring more awareness into the life, you create a new center, new space in your life, and that is what I call consciousness. Whenever you are conscious, you will start deciding about your life. Please be very clear, whenever you are aware of your life, you will naturally start deciding.

For example, the more you become aware, the more you start designing or choosing what type of car you should drive, what type of house you should live in, what type of life you want; every inch you start deciding. You start deciding about every inch. You become conscious about everything: how you should talk, how you should behave, how you should think, and every inch you start becoming aware.

The consciousness starts happening only when you become aware. You start controlling the life itself only when you become aware. So, awareness creates a new thing in your life; you start controlling the life. Only when you become aware, you start controlling the life.

And if you become completely aware, you will start controlling death also. The moment you start becoming aware, you start deciding, you start controlling your life.

You bring things under your control only when you become aware. The moment you bring awareness into your life, consciousness grows and you start deciding, you start controlling life.

Both life and death happen in the conscious level. In the unconscious level, two other things happen, dream and deep sleep. If you are consciously thinking, it is life. If your consciousness can't think, it is death. In the unconscious level, if you are aware, it is dream. If you are not aware of anything, it is deep sleep.

Please understand this one diagram. You really need to understand this technique and this very understanding can transform you. Practicing is one thing; this very understanding will inspire you to practice because these are all the basic truths about life.

One you know how to breathe, what is the best way to bring energy through your breathing, after that you don't have to do that consciously. Just because of the very understanding, you will start doing it.

Now, we are working on your consciousness. In the waking state, when you are aware, when you are in the conscious state or what psychology calls as conscious state, if you are aware, it is life. If you are not aware, it is death. In the unconscious state, if you are aware of something, it is dream and it is called as dream. If you are not aware of anything, it is called deep sleep.

If you bring more awareness into your life you start controlling your life. Same way, if you start bringing in more awareness in your dreams you will be able to control your dreams and deep sleep.

Understand, in the conscious level, if you are aware of any movement around you, it is called life. If you are not aware of any movement, it is called death. In the unconscious level, if you are aware of any movement, it is called dream. If you are able to see anything, if you are able to sense anything, if you are able to feel anything, if you are able to experience any movement, it is called dream. In the unconscious level itself, if you are not able to feel anything, if you are not able to understand any movement, then it is deep sleep.

These are the four states you live in everyday. Between life and death, if you become aware of living, if you are conscious about living, you start controlling the life. You start deciding. You think, 'I think this type of car won't help me', 'This type of house is not going to work for me', 'Enough with this wife!' You start deciding, 'I am done with this job.' You start deciding. The more you become conscious, you start chiseling your life. You start controlling and deciding about your life.

Same way, again here, if you bring little more consciousness to this space, if you become conscious of the dream state, if you bring the same consciousness to the dream state, you will be able to control the dream and the deep sleep.

Controlling life and death, controlling dream and deep sleep both require one important thing: awareness. Awareness is the main thing to control life and death and to control dream and deep sleep.

Here, Shiva is giving you the technique to bring awareness into your dreams. He says, bringing awareness into your dream not only can help you to control the dream and deep sleep but it can help you to control the death and life also.

You may think, 'How?' He is answering. Let us see the sutra and you will see the answer.

All of us know, if you bring the awareness in the life, you can control your life. If you become completely aware of the prana, prana flow, how the prana is coming and how the prana is going and how to retain more prana in the body, you can then control the death process as well. This all of us can understand.

But, Shiva says, bring awareness to the unconscious, to the dream state. Not only you will be able to control the dream, you will be able to control the deep sleep. He says, you will be able to control death and life.

He gives so many different techniques. He offers so many different techniques to give us the experience of ultimate truth and the energy. How Shiva is saying control over dream and deep sleep can bring control over life and death, let us see.

When you bring prana to the forehead, when you start experiencing prana in the forehead, you will understand that not only prana is supplied from air and it is made of the stuff out of which the reality and the dream both are made.

Whatever you call as reality, whatever you call as dream, both are made of stuff called prana. Prana is the energy and prana is the substance out of which this reality and that reality both are made.

One more thing, when Shankara says this whole world is maya, He means this only. He means the stuff in which this world is made, in the same stuff only, that world is also made.

When you understand this, you will have the tremendous power and you will create tremendous energy to control both. As on now, you are just a victim; you can't even control your dreams; understand.

You may think you are a big person. You may have big identities. You may have big concepts about you given by the world, given by the society that you are a great person, you are this, you are that, all your university degrees, all the certificates given by the society, all the name and fame, everything you may have but you can't even control your dreams. You are just a victim of your dreams.

Can any of you dream what you want? You can't! You can't control a single incident in your dream. As on now, either you go through the whole dream or you can get out. You can get out of the dream, you can come out of the dream, and you can just wake up. Only these two are possible. You can't control the dream itself.

First thing, you should understand is that when you can control your life, why can't you control your dreams? As on now, you are not able to control your dreams. When you can influence your life, why can't you influence your dreams?

Actually, you can control your life. You can sit here. If you want, you can get up and go out. You have freedom to do some movement. Here, you see clear individual consciousness. We call it in Sanskrit, pratyagatma chaitanya, inner consciousness. We have individual intelligence.

You can decide and you can do things. You can control your life. But why are you not able to control the dream? That is what Shiva calls as ignorance, not trusting yourself, not bringing enough awareness to the dream.

He says, when you bring enough awareness to the dreams, you will become more aware in life also. Actually, as of now, you have certain amount of awareness, consciousness in the life. That is why you are able to control the life. But you don't have awareness in the dream state.

If you can bring more awareness to the dream state, the awareness in the life state will increase. The awareness in your life, awareness in the living state will multiply. If the awareness in the living state multiplies, naturally you will be able to control the state of death as well.

He is going in a very beautiful way, technical way. Sorry; it is little boring but truth! It has to be understood. It is a very important thing in the life that everybody needs to understand. Otherwise, death will be just a frightening experience.

One parrot was brought up in a pet store. It was taught all foul, slang language and bad behavior. One guy, somehow, without knowing, bought the parrot and brought it to the house.

He was trying his best to teach good words, good behavior to the parrot. He was not able to. And he tried to punish; he tried to do all sorts of things. But, nothing worked. The parrot was only getting ruder. It was not ready to listen.

Finally, this guy got fed up. He put the parrot in the freezer and closed it. After a few minutes, he felt pity, 'All right, now it is time. Let me open.' He opened the freezer and took the parrot out. The parrot started saying, 'Please forgive me. I am sorry. Now, I understand I have disturbed you with my language and behavior. I won't do so from now.'

This guy was shocked. He thought, 'Oh God! I did so many things. The parrot was not ready to understand. Now, just a few minutes in the freezer, how did it understand?' He asked the parrot, 'What happened to you? How did you change your behavior? How did you realize your mistake?'

The parrot replied, 'I want to know only one thing: what did the chicken in the freezer do? I am afraid you may do the same thing to me!'

Only death can teach. If we don't learn now, death will teach. Let us learn now; let us not wait for death to teach.

There is one more beautiful one-liner: 'Go to the church by yourself; don't wait to be carried by four men.'

Understand the truth about death yourself from the right source. Don't wait till the death comes!

As on now, you have some amount of consciousness and awareness in the life. You are not completely aware or conscious. You can move, you can control only the things related to the body. You can't control the things related to prana.

You have many layers in the life also: annamaya, pranamaya, manonmaya: the body level, the prana level and mental level. There are many levels. As on now, you have enough awareness and consciousness to work on your body. If you want, you can stand. If you want, you can walk. If you want, you can decide anything related to the outer world.

But, you can't work on the level of the prana. You can't change the prana shakti coming in or going out. With this level of consciousness, you can't do even physical level changes in the dream.

In life, there are the physical, prana and the mental levels. Same way, in the dream, there are physical, prana and the mental levels. In life, you can do changes in the physical level, but not in the other two levels. Same way, in the dream, you can't even do changes in the physical level.

If you bring more and more awareness into the dream, if you can bring more and more consciousness into the dream, suddenly the quality of consciousness in your life will increase.

Shiva is actually helping us by giving us the technique to work on the dream state. He is actually helping us to work on the dream state to increase the awareness in the life state. He is going in the other way; He is not directly working on the life state. He is not directly working on the awareness.

He is working on the dream because he knows that in the living state you can work only to a certain extent. In the living state, whenever you are in this space, you are completely occupied by the outer world. You don't have time to work on the spiritual line.

You don't have time to work on meditation. Because when you are in this space, all your time is taken away by the outer world and you are continuously bothered, continuously you are thinking about how to expand your house, how to get a bigger car or to how to create a bigger bank balance. Your energy is totally in the other direction.

But, in the dream level, you have no other business. You know if you buy a house and you do complete housekeeping in the dream state, it is not going to work. In this level, you are more available.

That is why Shiva is trying to work on this level to improve the consciousness in this level. For the result of life and death level, Shiva is working in the dream and deep sleep level. He is not asking you to work directly on life and death because the more he gives you the techniques about life and death, the more you can be clear that you will not practice.

I have seen that whenever I give a technique to people, the first thing they will say is, 'Master, we don't have time. We don't have time.' All their time is completely occupied. When they are in the conscious state, all their time is completely occupied with outer world. Because the outer world looks very solid, strong, as if it is a reality, as if everything is truth.

So, even if I try my best, I can't convince people. Not only I can't convince, even you can't convince yourself to put more time or more energy into spirituality, into meditation, into awareness, into bringing consciousness.

In the unconscious level, at least that energy, that space if it can be used to bring more and more awareness into your being, if it can be used to raise the level of consciousness in your being, it will reflect in your life.

If the quality of your dream changes and as a result if the quality of your deep sleep state changes, then the quality of your life will also change. The quality of your dreams and the quality of your life are both directly connected with each other. Life is nothing but daydreaming. Dream is nothing but nightlife.

Nightlife is dream; daydream is life.

In the day, whatever you do, you call it as life. In the night, whatever you do, you call it as a dream. In the day, if you are not able to do anything, you call it as death. In the night, if you are not able to do anything, you call it as deep sleep.

In the day if you have three things, trividhi, experiencer, experienced and the experience, it is called life. I can give you the example. If you have all these three, coffee, the person who drinks the coffee and the experience of the coffee state in the daytime, it is called life. In the daytime, if you don't have all these three, it is called death.

In the nighttime, if you have all these three, it is called dream. In the nighttime, if you don't have all these three, it is called deep sleep.

Now, you can understand the direct relationship with your dreams, with your deep sleep and with your death and with life itself.

Shiva is trying to give meditation techniques for all kinds of human beings. For people with insomnia, not only will this technique heal them, it can straightaway help them use the time for useful things.

After finishing the explanation, I will exactly explain the technique itself, how to go into that space. If you enter into the technique, not only will your insomnia be healed, it can give you different consciousness, different understanding.

Shiva says,

From gross to subtle to the causal, from waking to dreams into death Let breath move through chakras into Shiva Consciousness.

'In the waking state your prana stays in the forehead. As on now, always your prana stays in forehead. The moment you start moving towards the dream state, it starts coming towards the vishuddhi, throat center. The more you move towards the deep sleep state, it moves towards the anahata, heart center.

It works the same way in death also. The more you are energetic, the more you grow in the life, the more the prana gets centered, accumulated in the forehead. When the incoming breath is bringing more prana and the outgoing breath is going empty, your prana will be centered on the forehead.

If the incoming breath is getting less prana and the outgoing breath is taking more prana, means slowly the prana will slip into vishuddhi, throat center. If the incoming breath is not bringing prana at all, only outgoing breath is taking the prana, means you will fall completely into the heart center.

Understand, if you understand prana, the basic truth about the prana, you will understand life and death, dreams and deep sleep. Both have got the same formula.

Actually, falling from life to death, falling from the waking state to the deep sleep state, both are directly related to prana movement. If the prana movements, the prana coming in, going out is handled properly, you can handle life and death as well as dream and deep sleep.

Both can be handled by handling prana; prana is the thread. If you know how to handle that single thread, you can handle life, death and dream and deep sleep. This single key, single thread called prana can handle dream and sleep, as well as life and death.

It is a very deep, yogic subject. It is a very intense subject. I am trying to explain the intense truth, intense subject, and basic truths about the life, how you grow towards the life or you grow towards the death.

In life, you can see, till a particular age, you will be becoming stronger. After that age, you will be becoming weaker. That point, that center point is what ayurveda calls as peak age or the peak energy.

Going towards life or going towards death, both are directly connected to the prana. Both are directly connected to the movement of the prana shakti.

Same way, moving towards dreams or moving towards deep sleep are both connected to the movement of prana. If you can handle the prana to control dreams and deep sleep, you will be able to handle the prana to handle life and death as well.

Shiva says very beautifully that if you can be aware of dreams, if you can be aware when you fall into the dream state, when your consciousness is slowly fading away, whenever you are falling asleep, whenever your consciousness is slowly fading away, if you can remain aware, you will be able to change the dream itself.

One more thing, let you be very clear, if you are able to change your dreams the first thing you will do is you will stop dreaming. You will stop dreaming because you know the uselessness of dreams. You know you are wasting time and energy in dreams.

Those who can be aware of dreams will never dream. Those who are aware of life will never take one more birth. That is why in the East, all spiritual scriptures, whether the Vedas or Dhammapada or Jain sutra or Guru Granth Sahib, any spiritual book, are aimed at only one goal: not taking one more birth. Only one goal: moksha.

A person who is aware of dreams will never dream. He will simply stop dreaming. A person who is aware of life will not have the desire to live. He will simply stop the life pattern. He will not take one more body.

When you become aware of dreams, you stop dreaming and you simply enter into deep sleep. In the same way, when you become aware of life you stop living and you enter into death.

Now, you need to understand one important thing. When I use the word death, I don't mean you will commit suicide. When I say that when you become aware of life you enter into death, I don't mean you will commit suicide.

You will stop living in the normal way. You will stop living with identity. You won't carry it and you won't give importance to identity. That is why enlightened masters are called dead people.

Actually, enlightened people are dead as far as this world is concerned. They don't have identity or they don't have life as you understand. Their life cannot be called any more as life.

Practically, if you want to give any term to their life, the only term that you can give is death. They are not alive as you think. That is the reason, again and again, all the scriptures say, the spiritual people are called 'reborn'. They are no longer alive as you think.

The moment one is aware of dreaming one stops dreaming. The moment one is aware of life one stops living the way one used to.

When you are in deep sleep, you are beyond dreaming. The same way, when you stop living, you are beyond life. The games of life can never torture you.

Life will look just vague or like a film. It will look like a film. It won't penetrate and it won't disturb your inner space.

Let me give you the gist of this whole sutra: By bringing more and more prana into your ajna chakra, the third eye and being aware when the prana falls into the anahata when you fall asleep, you will have power over the dreams. You will be able to alter and arrange your dreams as you wish.

Because of this power, you will simply stop dreaming. When you can stop dreaming and fall into sleep, when you can control your dream and sleep as you want, be very clear that you will have the tremendous power over life and death because dreams and deep sleep are made of the same stuff in which life and death are made.

For example, if you remember you are a doctor or a lawyer constantly in your daytime, you will remember the same in your dream also. If you are taught to remember something in the daytime constantly, you will remember the same in the night also.

That is why if you are afraid when you are studying that you may fail in any of your exams, the very fear will reflect in your dreams. Always, you will have the dream as if you missed the exam, you did not go to the exam, or on that day something has happened, you are sick. You will always have this type of dream. This is the impact of life over the dream.

Now, Shiva is asking you to work on the dream, change the dream and change the consciousness of the dream so that it impacts your life.

So far we know only one route. We know that by penetrating or changing our life we can touch our dreams. Now, Shiva is telling us how to touch our life from our dreams. It is because in dreams you don't have to go for a job. In your dreams you don't have to work for your living. In dreams, naturally, by very nature, you don't believe anything is important.

You are not bothered about building a house in dreams, buying a car in dreams or having bank balance in dreams. But, you are really concerned about buying a house in the

waking state, building your bank balance in the waking state. You are bothered about your car in the waking state.

Trying to do the spiritual work in the waking state is difficult because you are occupied with so many things.

But, trying to do some spiritual work in your dreams is possible because there is no need to do anything in the dream state. So, Shiva is working from the other way. He is asking you to improve, to develop the awareness, consciousness, in the dream state.

Now, let us go to the practical side of the technique. You are supposed to be aware of your being and of the prana movement when you fall into the dream state. When you fall asleep the prana moves from the ajna to anahata. When you are falling asleep you will travel through the same route. When you are dying as well you will travel through the same route.

If you become aware of the route when you are falling asleep, you will become aware when you are dying also. If you become aware when you are falling asleep and you are able to handle and control that route, you will be aware in the same way when you are falling to death.

When you fall asleep prana moves from your ajna to the heart center. Whenever you grow weak, you become weaker and weaker, whether you are traveling towards sleep or traveling towards death, prana will be falling to anahata, it will be falling towards the heart. Be aware at that moment. You will then have direction over dreams and over death itself.

If you can be aware when the prana falls into the heart center everyday, you will stop, alter, and manage your dreams and deep sleep. If you are aware of prana slipping from ajna to anahata once and for all means at the end of your life you will be able to stop and you will be able to change your life and death.

If you want, you can extend. If you want, you can bring it little early. If you want, you can postpone. You can play in whatever way you want.

Here, Shiva gives the ultimate technique to predict or postpone death itself. Be very clear, these are not theories. These are all the truths of thousands of years of research and development of our rishis. Our rishis have done thousands of years of research and development in the human consciousness. These are all the truths published by them after thousands of years of their research and development.

Let you be very clear, this technology, these techniques can directly develop the quality of your life from today. You don't have to think, 'Oh! If I practice this technique for ten years, maybe in the eleventh year, it will give results.' No!

Part 2: Shiva Sutras - Sutras 06 - 09

Let you be very clear, because we do not know this technology, we started suspecting the science itself. For example, in some way if the theory of gravity is useful, applicable in your life, you will not suspect the truth of the theory of gravity. You will not suspect the science of the theory of gravity. You will not suspect the formulas created by the scientists.

But, if it doesn't have any direct application in your life, if you don't have any direct benefit in your life from the theory, naturally, you tend to forget, you tend to question, and you tend to suspect. Finally, you tend to completely throw the whole science itself.

Just because we have not practiced this technology, this kind of truths and techniques in our life, we started suspecting the whole science of spirituality itself and we started suspecting, 'Is it really going to work for me? Is it really going to help me? Is it really going to do anything for me?'

Let you understand two things. Now, whatever I have spoken, it is not only going to help you for your death, it will help you every moment.

You may think, 'How?'You may think, 'How can it help every moment of my life?'

Actually, dream state means the low prana, means the prana moving towards the heart center, which is the time you fall, you drop into the dream state.

If you can be aware at that time, naturally, you will be able to control your dreams. Naturally, you will be able to control the prana. Not only will you be able to control your dreams, you can bring yourself up any moment. You can bring yourself directly up. Whenever you are aware that the low prana level is about to happen, you can increase the percentage of prana in your body.

Power is knowledge. The power, the prana is becoming low is enough to bring more prana into your body. That power is enough. That power is knowledge.

If you know that the prana is coming down you can bring the prana up by bringing in more awareness and more energy in the dream state, whenever you are falling into dream or falling asleep. If you are aware, you can immediately stop and bring it up.

Same way, when you are dying, relaxing from the body, when the prana falls to the lower level, you can stop and bring it up.

It is not only at the time of death, but also when you are sick that prana is slowly falling into the anahata. The more your prana falls towards the anahata, more you start falling sick. If you can stop the prana movement and bring it up, you will naturally heal yourself. You will heal yourself. It is the ultimate technique to heal your body and rejuvenate your body.

Next thing: if you can change, alter, if you have power over your dreams through the prana, you will be able to exercise the same power over your life and alter the incidents.

Altering the dream and altering the life is nothing but one and the same. Both are connected to prana. When you are able to handle the prana, naturally, you can handle the life itself.

Only when you enter into this technique, only when you enter into this meditation itself, you will start experiencing the depth of the truth expressed through this technology, through this technique. This one single sutra will not only lead you to liberation, it will bring the tremendous energy to heal you physically and bring tremendous energy to make your dreams into reality.

Let me give you the gist. By becoming aware of the prana in your forehead falling towards the heart center, you can stop the prana from falling down.

It falls on two occasions, once when you fall asleep and again when you are falling into death. Both when falling asleep and falling into death prana is coming down. You will be able to stop that prana just by becoming aware of it. Just by being aware of that prana movement you will be able to stop it from falling into the dream state or deep sleep. You can bring it back to life.

Same way, when it falls into disease or death, you can stop and bring it back to life. You can heal your body and mind.

The next thing: whenever you are aware of this falling, not only you can bring it back, you can even handle it and manipulate it as you want. You can start having the dreams of your wish. Same way, you can start having incidents in your life as you want.

You can repeat or create or remove, manipulate any incident in your life.

It may look like too big a promise from Shiva. But, I tell you, anybody who can enter into this technique and play with these techniques will understand the truth behind these techniques.

If you are constantly thinking about something, you will start remembering the same thing in the dream also.

For example, whenever you are frightened, if you have the habit of calling 'Rama' or 'Krishna' or some God's name, even in the nightmare time, you will remember the same name. How many of you have experienced this? Even in the nightmare, if you are threatened, you will remember the same name. You will remember the same God. Automatically, it will happen.

If you are doing anything strong in your life, it will impact and it will create an impact on the dream state.

Whatever happens strongly in the dream state will create its impact on your waking life.

Now, Shiva is asking you to work on the dream state so it will create the impact on your life.

Now, let us enter into the technique of working on the dreams, of stopping when your prāna flows into the heart. It may flow to fall asleep or to die. For both reasons, it may flow towards the heart. Now, how to be aware and how to bring it back, how to rejuvenate it, how to raise the consciousness, we will see in the meditation technique.

Now, it is time to enter into the meditation.

Now, if any of you have any questions, you can ask. Of course, there are one or two people who have given some questions but they are not directly related to this subject on which I spoke today.

Somebody has asked, 'If your heart says one thing and your mind says another thing, which to follow?' These type of questions which are not directly related to this meditation technique, you can ask when you come for ānanda darśan, when you come for energy darśan. If you have any other personal questions also, you can ask when you come for energy darśan.

Now, let us enter into the meditation. Before entering into the meditation, let me give you the instructions. Now, I am giving you the whole gist of this great wisdom or the science of life that Shiva is trying to gift us.

The prāna energy that is taken through air is the core of this technique. That is the main thread of this technique. The amount of air, the quantity of air which you are taking in, inhaling and exhaling, is in no way related to prāna.

Sometimes, you take less prāna with the incoming breath and leave more prāna through the outgoing breath. At that time, even if you are inhaling and exhaling, you are traveling towards death. You are not inhaling life; you are exhaling death. You are breathing for death.

If you are taking more prāna through the incoming breath and leaving very less through the outgoing breath or you are not giving any prāna at all to the outgoing breath, then you are breathing for life. Then, you are going towards the life. You are expanding.

Prāna is directly related to life and death and it is directly related to dream and deep sleep. The prāna moves towards the heart when you fall into deep sleep and when you

fall into death. Both the times, it moves towards the heart center. Everyday, it moves towards the heart center when you fall asleep.

If you can be aware of that prāna movement when you fall asleep, you can stop it and control it. Hardly 10 days of practice! Very simple, beautiful practice! You can't say 'I don't have time' because everybody falls asleep.

This technique is so simple. Only one thing: you have to be aware when your consciousness is disappearing into the sleep. When you are falling asleep, when you are dissolving, you have to be aware; that's all. That is the whole technique. You can't say 'I don't have time' because everybody falls asleep. There is nobody who says 'I don't sleep'.

If you are aware, you will catch the moment when your prāna is slipping from ājña to anāhata, when your prāna is slipping from forehead to heart center. Not only you will stop it, you will rejuvenate. You will create a different energy. Your whole prāna energy will become different. This is the first step.

Next, second important thing: when you master this one, the same thing happens when you fall sick or you fall into death. So, you will be able to heal yourself and postpone your death.

Third thing. You may ask, 'If I can postpone my death, do you mean I will never die, Master?' Be very clear, when you understand about dream, you don't feel like dreaming anymore. When you understand the futility of the dream, you don't feel like dreaming.

So, when you understand the futility of life, you don't feel like living. When you understand the futility of life, you won't feel like living. Even if you live, you will live as long as you want to finish the responsibility or whatever it is that you must do.

When you want to live, you will not have any problems. You won't have any difficulties. Moreover, if you want to live and your prāna movement is towards death, you can alter it.

You have complete freedom in front of you. You have freedom; you have choice. You are liberated from the forced death. We call it iccha mrityu. Iccha mrityu means dying when you want. This is the technique to bring that iccha mrityu consciousness to your being.

Bheeshma is called iccha mrityu. They say that he was waiting till uttarāyaṇam to leave the body. Uttarāyaṇam means the sun moving towards the northern hemisphere, the northern solstice. When the sun moves towards the southern hemisphere, it is called dakṣiṇāyanam and the movement to the northern hemisphere is called uttarāyaṇam. Uttarāyaṇam starts around the 14th or 15th January. Bheeshma was waiting for uttarāyaṇam.

Be very clear, the very possibility that you are able to postpone or wait till certain date shows that you have control over your prāna. That can happen only if you have control over your prāna. That itself clearly decides you are already liberated.

There is a faith that if you die in uttarāyaṇam, you don't have to come back to another cycle of birth and death, you are liberated, you will have mokṣa. I tell you, if you have the capacity to postpone your death till uttarāyaṇam, naturally, you have control over the prāna, means you are liberated. Naturally, you won't take one more body. All these things we know only as a mythology or a story. Now, Shiva is making everything alive by giving the technology. By giving the proper technique, Shiva is making everything into reality, into life.

I have seen so many people, so many enlightened masters, who have predicted about their death, who are very clear about their death time because they know how the prāna is going out. While inhaling, the incoming prāna is very low and the outgoing prāna is more, so they know when they are going to leave the body. If they want, they can balance, they can handle. When they feel that the mission is done or the purpose is done, they say, 'Beautiful! Good bye!' They are very clear about their life.

Actually, when you master the prāna, another one important thing happens to you, you understand that death as you think doesn't exist. Death as you think doesn't exist.

As on now, you are afraid of death mainly because of the uncertainty. It is not even about death, it is the uncertainty. That only creates more and more fear.

See, everybody knows we are going to die. We have to die and nothing can be done about it. All of us know that death is sure. But we don't know when, how and after that, what. The uncertainty behind these questions is what creates a big problem in our being.

So, the psychological suffering that we go through when we remember death or the idea of death is more associated, more related to uncertainty. It is not related to directly death itself. It is not related to directly death itself.

Once this uncertainty is clear through this technology, the very idea of death is totally demystified. The idea of death is totally demystified. The negative impact, the idea that death has in our being will be completely cleared. It will be cleared.

You will have more freedom not only to choose, but also to postpone or predict and to know the death itself. This is the ultimate gift you can have from any spiritual technique.

Above all, even when you fall sick, the prāna directly may not go completely into the anāhata but it will start traveling towards anāhata. You know you are falling sick and you can bring it back.

It is enough if you aware of the flow of prāna. It will automatically come back to the higher energy and your body will heal itself because the flow of prāna is directly related to all your diseases.

All the prāṇāyāma techniques are nothing but bringing the prāna back to the consciousness or back to the higher energy, back to the higher space.

So, now, Shiva is giving us a beautiful technique. He knows human beings are the only animals in the planet earth that can give reasons, especially these computer consultants! They constantly go on doing the project plan, project plan, project plan but never will the project get done. You can become a great consultant if you can just sell project plans but never implement them. If you implement, then you are in difficulty.

See, in Bharat, usually, to do any work one decides and straightaway the work is done. Here in USA it is not like that. The other day I was sitting and talking to one of our devotees. I said, 'Try to do this work in Bharat and hardly it will take any time. To create a brochure in Bharat will take ten minutes. I just call a devotee and dictate and he takes it down and does it, over. But here, they will put a big project plan and a deadline and the last date. They will do so many things and finally the job is not done. Except the job, everything is done!' Really, sometimes, I am surprised.

They say, 'No, no, Master! This is the only way you can sell yourself. If you do the work without showing how big it is, you can't get paid. Before doing the work, you should frighten the person that it is too big a job, it can't be done unless are involved and it is not so simple as you think. Only when you hypnotize him that you are giving a big plan and idea, then if you do it, you will get paid.' And the whole attitude and the whole work, I was really surprised about all this.

In Bharat, I think people are not so intelligent. I can't say not cunning; they are cunning but not that much intelligent. They don't know how to frighten the other person. They don't know how to exploit the other person's fear.

Here, nicely, they have a clear plan, that big thing on that computer presentation which nobody understands. I was just trying to create our website and I was struggling for the last six months with these computer consultants. I get only the project plan, project plan, project plan. Finally, one day, I got fed up and took two hours and finished the job. Hardly two hours and it was done! Because their mental setup has become such, things are completely complicated.

Corporate means nothing but complicating simple things. And there is a big link, big chain. The more problems, you are a big guy.

Of course, the same thing starts happening with your body also. Please be very clear, never think your profession is related only to the outer world. Your profession impacts your body, your health, your mental setup, everything.

When you learn to complicate small things in your profession, you start doing the same thing with your body also. With your body also, you start playing the same game. Even if it is a small thing, mentally, you start brooding over it.

I have seen in my young age, even if there is a serious fracture, the elders will just put some herbal leaves and tie the broken part using a wooden support, like the measuring wooden scale that you use in schools, and tie it. Done, that's all! And, now you can't think of this type of treatment.

Yet, even now in Andhra, there is a place called Puttur. I don't know if you have heard of this place. Each day, many fractures are treated. fractures and not a single failure! Please understand, each day patients with multiple fractures, different kinds of fractures are treated free of cost; that is another great thing. Free of cost, nobody is charged. Just one family takes care. You should go and see the miracle.

No instrument, nothing! They will have some leaves and maybe they may ask you to get an egg to mix with that medicine. For any type of fracture, all they use is two or three stones. For example, if it is a leg fracture, few people will just hold the leg, one person will just beat your body around the fracture with the stones and adjust the bone! To adjust the bone, they also use a hammer sometimes!

They just adjust the bone and they know when it is fixed just by feeling with the hand. If things are clear, they will put some leaves, put the small wooden scale and tie it, over, done! Each day, many fractures are getting treated. What I am saying is a fact. It is not just a story. This is not from the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra or from Shiva Sutras. I am saying it is happening in Bharat in Andhra in Puttur. patients are treated and not even a single case is a failure! I have not seen a single case being a failure case.

Things are much easier, much simpler. One more thing, if you believe in your mind that things are simple, things will be simple. If you think in your mind that things are complicated, your body also behaves in the same way. It complicates.

The other day, I was reading a beautiful book called 'Biology of Belief'. The book's name is 'Biology of Belief' and a great doctor, scientist by the name of Bruce Lipton, writes it. He has written that book after thirty years of research in biology. He says, cells or genes do not control the body as you think, as biology teaches you. Body is controlled by your faith, belief and positive and negative emotions. I was shocked but there are so many other researches, studies that he also quotes to prove and to validate his statement.

There are so many other researches. I read another research paper recently. We all believe that many diseases are transferred genetically. You inherit the disease from your father or your mother, that the disease is transferred. There is a detailed research done to study this.

Without the knowledge of the parent and the child, the doctor removed one child and left it with another couple. After thirty years, the person gets the disease of the person who he thinks as parent, who he thinks as father or mother, not the biological father or mother. He did not get the disease of the original, biological father or mother, but he got the disease of whom he thinks as father. So, there are so many researches of this kind that say that your body is directly related to your faith, your emotions.

The eastern rishis were successful in creating a society where the ultimate truth is day-to-day reality. They tried their best and they were successful. Maybe in the recent days, due to too much of Westernization, there are some truths that are lost but basically, they were successful in bringing the ultimate truths into the day-to-day life of a common man.

There are so many examples I can say. Even a common man in a teashop or who is working in a farm in Bharat, knows concepts like 'everything is maya', 'everything is Brahman', 'only God can decide'. The ultimate truths, even he has some idea about it. That is the greatness of the rishis.

All right, it is time to enter into the technique.

This technique is in two parts. One that you are supposed to do when you fall asleep, when you are lying in the bed and second one which you can do whenever you can remember during the whole day.

The first one will create more energy to do the second meditation. The second one will create more energy to do the first meditation. Both are complementing each other. It is actually two parts; same meditation but two parts.

I will explain the first part that you need to do when you fall asleep. When you lie down, before falling asleep, just remember the area near the ajna chakra or the third eye, the center of the forehead.

Remember. Please do not concentrate. If you force yourself, if you start concentrating, your sleep will be disturbed, you will have headache. Don't concentrate. Don't create stress.

Just remember that area in a relaxed way. Just like you look at a flower, just casually, in a relaxed way, in a very relaxed way, remember that area, be aware of that area, the third eye.

And slowly, you will see that you are disappearing. You are relaxing, you are disappearing into the deep sleep state or you are slowly dropping into the deep sleep state.

Just be aware when you are sleeping. Put your awareness in the third eye region.

Practice, you can start practicing today itself. When you are putting your awareness in a relaxed way in the third eye region, the ajna chakra, you will clearly see how you are relaxing, how you are slowly falling, how you are slowly relaxing into the body, how you are slowly falling into the deep sleep state.

Just be aware of the prana movement, that is enough.

First day, you may feel that you are not falling asleep at all. Your sleep is getting delayed by ten or fifteen minutes; don't bother about it. Don't worry about it. Just be aware completely about this third eye, about this ajna chakra, means the prana movement in this ajna chakra.

Naturally, you will see you are aware when you are falling into the dream state. Maximum ten days is enough to experience this. Ten days is actually too much. You may think, 'How can it happen?' I tell you, ten days is too much. Just today, you can experience. Today, you can see, in the dream, suddenly you will see you are dreaming.

You will be aware that you are dreaming. If you want to continue the dream, you will continue. If you don't feel like, you will come out. But, you will not have nightmares. The depth of the dream will not be there.

As on now, your dreams can shake not only your mind but also your body. You can see many times when you wake up from a nightmare that your heart is beating fast, your pulse rate is high and your blood pressure is high. The impact of the dream will be there on your body. You will not have that effect if you are aware of dreaming.

This is the first effect of this meditation. The next step, you will start having the dreamless sleep. That is the deeper level. Whenever you start having the dreamless sleep, you will start having the dreamless day. Dreamless day means without daydreaming, means your energy will be conserved.

As on now, the night with dreams will create the days with dreams because if you are dreaming in the night, you will do the same thing in the daytime also. In the daytime also, you will be sitting and dreaming. Your mind will be moving from this side to that side and from that side to this side.

You will notice that when you are driving it is only when you see the cop's car that you will become aware. Till you see the cop's car, you will not be aware of what you are thinking. Your mind will be somewhere doing something. Neither do you know what you are doing nor does any one else know what you are doing.

The daydreaming and night dreaming are directly connected. This technique will give you the dreamless, deep sleep. Because of the dreamless sleep you will naturally start having dreamless daytime, which means the pure awareness. You will start living in pure awareness.

Above all, when you are able to change your dreams, when you are able to handle your dreams, you will have the intense power and energy to handle the incidents of your life.

As on now, you are just a victim of your life, victim of your dreams. You can't handle anything. You can't stop even a small sneezing. Not only in the waking state, even in the dream state. You can't stop anything. Just things happen to you, that's all.

At the most, you can have a feeling, the wrong feeling that you are doing things or the illusion that you are doing things. If you can be aware of the dream state and have the power to work, to stop or to manipulate the dream state and your dreams, you will have energy, capacity, and awareness to work on your life in a much deeper way.

Even now, you can work on your life a little bit; the freedom is very limited freedom you have on your life. Your freedom will become more, your choices, your consciousness will become more expanded with this single meditation technique. It can do miracles in your being.

Now, let us start the meditation. I will guide you; you can just do it for ten minutes so that you can go and do it in your house when you fall asleep.

It has to be done only when you fall asleep but let you understand at least the technique so that when you fall asleep, you can do it.

Please sit straight, close your eyes. After the meditation, I will tell you the second part so that you will not get confused.

Please sit straight, close your eyes. Be aware of the third eye, the ajna chakra. Please do not concentrate, do not force yourself. Just be aware in a very relaxed way.

Be aware of the ajna chakra, third eye and be aware of the prana movement, how the prana is flowing into your body, how the incoming breath is bringing more energy and the outgoing breath is relaxing your body. Just feel it.

Do not concentrate. Just be aware in a very relaxed way.

Just flow with the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. Be aware of the ajna chakra, third eye and just flow with the incoming breath and the outgoing breath.

Just be aware of the third eye, ajna chakra. Without concentrating, be aware.

Relax. You can open your eyes.

Now, let me explain the second part. The first part is doing the same thing what you did now. Very simple thing, be aware of the forehead, third eye when you are falling asleep. When you are falling asleep, when you lie down in the bed, switch off the light, when you decide, 'Yes, now I am going to fall asleep', just be aware when your consciousness is getting diffused, when you are just disappearing into the darkness, into the deep sleep. Just be aware.

Just be aware of the prana movement. If you are aware of the third eye that is enough because that's where your prana is. From there only, it will start moving. Naturally, you will be aware of the prana. This is the first step to be done when you fall asleep.

The second step, the whole day, whenever you remember, remember and think this whole thing is maya, you are just dreaming. You are just dreaming. Whatever you are seeing is just a dream. Just try to think again and again and again.

Please do not bother whether it is fact or not. Immediately, you will think, 'How can I think that Master? It is not a fact. This world is a reality.'

Please be very clear, two things, one is a fact, another one is truth. What I am saying that the whole world is a dream may not be a fact according to you because your scale, the scale that you use to measure whether something is a fact or not, that itself is not fact.

The scale that you use to measure or the logic that you have to evaluate whether something is a fact or not is not a fact by itself. So, you may not understand what I am saying is fact or not.

Once you try to practice, in a few days, you will understand the truth behind these words. It will lead you to the truth. It may not be fact for your logical mind or the scale with which you analyze whether something is fact or not. With that mind, it may not be fact.

But, it is a deeper level truth. Whole day, just think whenever you can remember, think this is a dream; this is just a dream. And, slowly, you will see it just gets diffused and you will see the screen on which this whole dream is going on. The screen you project this whole dream upon and see is what I call consciousness or prana.

When you start seeing the screen on which you are seeing this whole dream, you will see the same screen with awareness when you are dreaming.

I am trying to help you from both the corners. Shiva is giving you the technique to work on the dream and through that to realize that the dream and the life are one and the same.

I am adding one more step with my experience. Only one simple thing I am adding, even in the daytime, whenever you remember, just remember this whole thing is dream: your eating, your sleeping, your walking, your drinking. Whatever you are doing, whether you are driving or whether you are sitting in office, whatever you do just remember you are dreaming.

Next question, the mind will ask, 'If I am dreaming, why should I do what I am doing?' Why should you not do? If you are dreaming, why should you not do? In the dream also, you can do; nothing wrong.

You don't want to do because you take it seriously. If you remember you are dreaming, your dreaming or non-dreaming is no way going to change anything. Let it happen. Let you do what you are doing.

Just be very clear it is a dream. Suddenly, you will have the intelligence. Your intelligence will be awakened. You will be awakened to the truth that the whole thing is your projection.

Let you start doing these two things, simple things. You will see you will not be the same person again. You will never be the same person again.

These two are so powerful, so energetic, that they can just transform your life.

When Shankara says, 'The whole world is maya', He is not stating a fact so that we can validate whether it is fact or whether it is right or wrong. He is not stating a fact. He is just giving you a technique. If you digest, if you accept that as a technique; you will realize the truth behind these words.

Immediately, if you start validating, 'Oh, if it is dream, then what is this world?', if you start validating a statement, you will miss the truth behind it.

As on now, even the scale that you are carry to validate whether something is fact or not is not fact. So, you cannot know whether it is fact or not.

All you can do is to just accept this as a technique and try. In few days, you will see the truth behind this statement.

If you see the truth, naturally, you won't forget. It will become your experience. If you are not able to see as truth, naturally, you can throw it away; what is there? You will forget about it. Don't bother thinking you are trying to grab some word that is not fact.

The so-called intellectuals or people who think 'I don't do anything unless I see the truth behind those words' think that they are very intelligent and they think their life are very logical. They are completely wrong.

At least in Bharat, somehow, whether people want to believe it or not, they have to, they are made to listen to these truths because the culture is such. Even if you don't want, even in your village, some purana, some Bhagavatam, some lecture will be going on, some swami will come and you have to touch his feet at least for the sake of your mother, at least for the sake of your father. Even if you don't want to go there, the loudspeaker will be so loud you will be able to hear from your house! Something will be happening; you can't do anything about it. And all these things will be going into your life.

But, here USA, somehow because you are distanced and you are away from the constant repetition or constant remembrance, you tend to sometimes think that, 'I don't do anything unless I know it is a fact and unless I am very clear.'

There are some things that may not be fact according to the logic that you have now. But, if you are awakened to the higher intelligence, you will see the truth behind that statement. You will realize the truth behind that statement.

Now, when I say, remember this whole world as a dream, I am not stating a fact. If I say I am stating a fact, then you will challenge it with all your logic, with all your vengeance, with all your facts. You are all waiting to fight and you will start attacking me. I am not stating a fact. I am giving you a technique. Try it and play with it. You will realize the truth behind this technique.

These two techniques will change your whole life. One attains the supreme goal, you conquer the death itself, and you reach the ultimate goal of the life. You live beyond death.

One more thing, when I say death, when Shiva says death here, not only he means the death that happens at the end of the life, he also means the death that happens during life.

For example, if your money is taken away from you, the identity that you are a millionaire dies in you. If your brother dies, the identity that you are brother of somebody dies. If your father dies, the identity that you are son of somebody dies.

In all those moments, you feel you suffer; you go through the terrible pain. You go through half death. Some part of your being dies. Please be very clear, the whole, the complete death happens at the end of your life. Even during your life, partial death happens, some part of your being dies.

Even those moments, at that time also, you will not go through the pain, suffering. You will not be tortured. You will overcome death if you can handle the prana, if you can live with awareness. You will not only be able the final death but also be able to handle the death that you face everyday in different ways, in different contexts. You will be able to work, manipulate, postpone, move or even stop those deaths.

So, let this great truth and technology of Shiva liberate you from death and give you eternal bliss. Let you be in and become one with and radiate eternal bliss, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM. Thank you!

What Shiva says here is that our entire life is a dream. It is a long dream no doubt but still a dream.

Shakespeare meant the same thing when he said that, 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'. Some of you may think this is a cliché. Some may ask what if I hit you and you are hurt. You fell the hurt. You may even bleed. Is it still a dream?

As long as your identity is in control of you it is not a dream. You feel the pain and you suffer. Once you are able to shed the identity then it is really a dream. The body may experience what it is conditioned to feel as pain but there will be no suffering as a result of the blow. It is another experience, just another incident, neither joyful nor of sorrow. Without identity you are in equanimity. You are unattached.

The problem is that we do not realize that we are acting out our parts when we are awake. We are too serious to realize this. We are all so busy playing those respective roles of father, son, husband, wife, brother, sister or friend or enemy to relax into a witnessing mode and laugh at this play acting. If we do we are afraid that our relationships, our possessions, and more importantly our control over others will be lost.

This control becomes the center point of all our activities. All these questions about interpretation of dreams and harvesting of dreams arise from this desire for control over our dreams. Yes, it is true that Shiva gives you control over your dreams through this technique. However, the reason is different. Shiva wants you to understand how meaningless it is to control anything. Once you realize you can control you have the intelligence to relinquish control.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong in what Feud said. He was right to say that dreams erupt from suppressed desires or unfulfilled desires. Many such desires that we are afraid to express in our waking state for fear of social reasons we express without inhibition n the dream state. This is true. Because of his conditioning Freud linked all his conclusions to sex. I read somewhere recently that he was mistranslated from his native German. The critic, in this case a supporter, said that the German word meat something else. It is the sexually inhibited British who translated that as sex!

Where I believe Freud and others went overboard was in trying to find interpretations to these dreams and nightmares. They tried to use these as predictive tools. In dream

harvesting they talk about planting, nurturing and harvesting dreams, which is probably even more dangerous.

Medical practitioners can tell you that dreams serve a useful function in most of you. Your sleep consists of interspersed periods of rapid eye movements that are dream related and undisturbed deep sleep. The composition of dream state and deep sleep state is important to your physical and emotional health. If you have no dreams, your unfulfilled desires will remain suppressed and cause you emotional disturbance. If you have too many dreams, your sleep time suffers and you cannot function effectively in your waking state.

In the dream state your identity dissolves. That is why you can express yourself in an uninhibited manner in the dream state. That itself is a catharsis. You do not need to interpret them to make them go away. By bringing in logic you will be interfering with the dream process. You will not allow this lack of inhibition even in your dreams.

If you indulge in activities such as dream harvesting you are deliberately interfering with your natural sleep rhythm and setting yourself up for ill health. This is also true of sleep-learning and all that stuff. It is not that these cannot be done. It is just that these are games that can be dangerous.

Shiva here taught you how to witness dreams. Witnessing brings with it the power to control. Along with that it also brings the awareness about the futility of control. As a result dreams stop of their own accord. Not because you force them to stop, which you cannot, but the understanding and awareness of the futility to utilize them in some fashion makes your sleep dreamless. Of course, if you wish to, as I said, you can do things in your dream that you do not find the time to do in the waking state and thus learn how to influence your living through your dreams.

The difference is that in this case the process is not initiated by fear or greed as in the case of interpretation and harvesting. There is no purpose except the awareness. You are conscious in your dreams. When you are conscious you are in control. When you are in control you can move beyond the mind. Dream is another mind game.

It is not that you dream only while asleep. Many dream while awake as well. The difference is relative. You are in a fantasy world where you believe you have control, but in fact you do not. You are driven by the unconscious mind though you are under the belief that your actions are rational and logical.

This is what we call samskaras or conditioning through engraved memories. These samskaras affect both your waking state activities and dream state activities. The nightmares that you have in your dreams continue as phobias and depression in your waking state. When you awaken from this unconscious state you become the Awakened one, the Buddha, the enlightened one. The enlightened one is free of dreams, both while sleeping and while awake. He is in brahman all the time, in ultimate reality.

tayāpūryāśu mūrdhāntam bhanktṿā bhrūkṣepasetunām | nirvikalpam manaḥ kṛtvā sarvordhve sarvagodagamaḥ ||

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness. You are Divinity. It is a beautiful subject. This is the very message of the Shiva sutras. Shiva sutras are techniques given by Shiva, Rejuvenator of the Hindu Holy trinity, to his consort Parvati to realize the divine. There are 112 techniques in all. Sutra means technique. Message of Shiva sutra is that 'You are Divinity'. Let us enter into the sutra and see what Shiva wants to tell us today.

It is a beautiful sutra. Sometimes I try to avoid Sanskrit. I straightaway give the English translation and enter into the sutra. This is the translation of the eighth sutra. Today we are working on the eighth sutra.

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness.

Yesterday, Shiva gave us a technique to work on breath through intellect. For the people who are intellectual, scientific, logical yesterday's sutra will help them and they can work on that.

He is giving a technique today for the people who are more emotional; who are heart oriented; who are centered on the heart center; who don't care much for logical thinking.

Tomorrow he is working on the deeper level beings, the people who are being oriented. Tomorrow he will give a technique for the people who are neither intellectual nor emotional but who are more intuitive. The next sutra gives a beautiful technique to work in the being level.

I think for the first time devotion or bhakti is given as a spiritual technique for transformation. Almost all the literature related to meditation or Vedanta is philosophical in nature. They always avoid giving importance to devotion. There are some Vedanta statements that go to the extreme of saying devotion is nothing but fantasy. There are some books that condemn the experiences of Meera. There are so many Vedanta books that condemn devotion.

Shiva is not here to contradict or condemn anybody. He is here to help every type of being to fulfillment. He is the ultimate Master. He tries to help every type of human being from where he or she is. Wherever they are standing, he goes to their level. From there he brings them to the ultimate experience.

If we read the commentary on the Brahma sutra given by Shankara, an enlightened Master from Bharat, he condemns every other system. Shankara tears to pieces all those who believe in duality or dvaita, that God and man as separate entities and who are bhakti or devotion oriented. He completely shakes the foundation of their whole system of beliefs. If we read Shri Bhashyam, Ramanuja's commentary on Brahma sutra, he shakes the whole foundation of Vedanta. Both Shankara and Ramanuja are enlightened masters.

Actually Ramanuja looks sharp and intellectual. He looks more logical than Shankara. I had always thought that people who are devotion oriented would be less logical. But Ramanuja proved that to be incorrect. Even though he is devotion oriented, his logic is sharper and deeper than that of Shankara. Actually the quality of logic is such that it gets better as it gets updated. Whenever we write something the person who writes after us can always oppose it. He can write much better than us since he knows our logic now. Because Ramanuja came after Shankara, he was able to penetrate much deeper than Shankara. The fight between Ramanuja and Shankara has not ended in Bharat. It goes on till this date. I was shocked to see this fight continue between the believers of Shankara and Ramanuja. Constantly somebody goes up, somebody comes down. At the time of Shankara the whole wave of intellectual people rose. At the time of Ramanuja there was the bhakti or devotion wave.

People come and ask me: Who is really truthful? I tell them: Be very clear, whenever there is a debate, never think it is a debate between devotion and intellect, and never think it is a debate between Vedanta and bhakti. It is a debate between these two individuals. Whoever is more logical will win. It is not the philosophy that wins. Both philosophies lead to the same ultimate experience.

I think Shiva knows what is going to happen in the future. That is why five thousand years ago he has solved this problem between bhakti (devotion) and jnana (knowledge) with this single sutra. With this one sutra he has solved the whole problem between the head and the heart.

He says:

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness.

He says through devotion you can experience the ultimate enlightenment. Earlier he had talked only about being unclutched. Knowing the knower is the ultimate experience according to Vedanta, Hindu philosophy. When we explore this sutra, we can see how beautifully he has connected the Shankara and Ramanuja philosophies, the head and the heart. How beautifully He starts from where people are and leads them to the ultimate experience.

All believers in dvaita, the people who speak on duality, they condemn people who believe in vedanta as mayavadis (people in delusion). They condemn people who believe in non-duality, advaita, that God and the Self are one and the same. All these people who are in the line of non-duality*, advaita,* condemn people who are in the line of bhakti as lilavathis (game players). Both of them constantly fight and waste their energy. Here Shiva beautifully synthesizes these two approaches. He gives the ultimate respect to devotion. He is gives great respect to the path of devotion. I think he is the first Master on

the planet earth, maybe the last Master to declare that devotion is one of the ultimate techniques to become enlightened.

People who are in the line of devotion miss experiencing the ultimate. Usually they just stop with the form of God. And the people who are in the line of ultimate experience they miss the joy in life. They are so dry, so boring. If you go near them, you will feel depressed. These are the two extreme kinds of people. People who are devotion oriented are very lively. They sing and dance and enjoy. But the problem is they miss the ultimate experience. They just stop with dancing and singing. People who are goal oriented, enlightenment oriented they will be very strong; they stick to their path. But the problem is they miss the joy of life or the ecstasy or the experience of beautiful devotion. Somehow nobody was able to connect these two. The fight goes on and on. Sometime it goes to the extreme.

The other day one of our devotees was telling me about his experience. He told me: Master, after attending the last meditation camp now I don't feel like mediating on the form. The form is not coming to me. I am experiencing only pure energy.

I told him: It means you are really blessed by the God or deity on whom you are meditating. When you meditate on a form you are meditating on divinity. When you reach the formless energy, you are divinity. You are not meditating on divinity. You are divinity. It is complementing each other. It is not contradicting.

Five thousand years ago Shiva solved this problem between the head and the heart. Besides synthesizing, he helps us. He encourages us to jump into the ultimate from where we are. The beauty of Sanatana Dharma, the eternal path of which Hinduism is a part, is not only that it accepts us as we are but it also gives us the jumping pad. We can just take a quantum jump into the experience from wherever we are standing.

That is why I tell people that sanatana dharma not only accepts all other dharmas, different spiritual paths leading to higher truths, it welcomes every dharma. It doesn't care about where we are standing. It always looks at the possibility of how we can jump from there. That is why in sanatana dharma we do not have the concept of conversion. We don't believe in conversion. We don't even have an idea about conversion. All that can happen if we go to some enlightened master is that he can help us take the ultimate jump from wherever we are. No question of conversion arises. We don't believe in conversion. No ritual to convert is available in sanatana dharma. People will be amazed to realize this.

Sanatana dharma is the oldest religion and it never had any idea about conversion. Because we feel that conversion is psychological violence. We are torturing the person psychologically by converting him. All conversion happens through fear or greed. It is purely based on fear or greed. Either you give him some benefits or you threaten him that something will be taken away from him. So no conversion is purely spiritual. When it is

purely spiritual there is no need for conversion. The spiritual masters will do this job of giving you a jumping pad to take a quantum jump into the conscious experience.

Here Shiva is such a great spiritual master he is giving you the jumping pad. Let me tell you, this is the only book that does not have an introduction. It does not condemn any philosophy. There is no kandana mandana throughout this book. Kandana mandana means condemning or pulling down the other system. I have not read a single vedanta text without kandana mandana. Throughout this book not even in one place Shiva is condemning any other system.

That is why I say he is giving completely the essence or the pure spiritual truth. This whole book is completely filled with the spiritual truth or essence of spirituality. He is not influenced by any political strategy. He is not influenced by any political system. He is not influenced by any organized religion. He is pure consciousness available to all of us to take the quantum jump into the consciousness. Not even one line condemns any religion or any system or some truth.

We can't even say he does not condemn because there was no other sect or religion at that time. We can't say that because he gives solutions for all the problems. This implies that all the problems existed. Otherwise why should he give the solution? The moment we read a book about dropping addiction, it is clear that in that society addiction was present as a problem. When Patanjali says that astheya, not stealing, is a vow it implies that there were many thieves at that time. Otherwise what is the reason for Patanjali to say that not stealing is one of the important vows? When he says that astheya (not stealing), ahimsa (non violence), brahmacharya (staying in reality), aparigraha (no greed) and satya (truth) should be one's vows we should be clear that these problems existed.

Here when Shiva gives a solution for the problem, we should know that the problem existed. He is such a wonderful being, such an amazing expression of enlightenment. Even if Shiva is a concept, I can tell you one thing the person who conceived that idea is unimaginable. According to me even if he is an imagination, it is the ultimate imagination or the ultimate expression of human consciousness.

Somebody asked me: Master, how do you know that Shiva wrote this book? I told him whether or not it is written by Shiva, one thing is sure such a great truth if it can come out of somebody; he is truly in Shiva consciousness. There is no doubt about it. So who ever published this book is worthy of being called as Shiva. He is that state of Shiva. In Buddhism, whoever achieves enlightenment are called Buddha. It is a state, not a name. Same way, Shiva is a particular state not a particular person. Whoever achieves that state they become Shiva. So, there is no need to become confused whether it was really written by Shiva or somebody wrote it and added the Shiva's name. Don't bother about where it is coming from. The very expression shows the experience.

Throughout the Shankara Bhashya of the Brahma sutra at least a hundred sutras condemn all other systems. Shankara has taken every system and has cornered every

system with his logic. Ramanuja, Madhva or other acharyas have done the same thing. But Shiva does not condemn even a single system.

One more thing: Shiva did not condemn strange cultural practices such as piercing the body and torturing oneself. He uses even those as techniques to take a quantum jump. He does not condemn anything. He is like an unabridged dictionary of spiritual technology, of spiritual techniques. He has collected all possible methods to take the quantum jump into the ultimate consciousness, into the pure consciousness. He is not concerned about fights. He is not concerned about the differences. He is simple, beautiful and pure intelligence. Besides accepting all the groups, he is giving the launching pad for every being to take the quantum leap into the ultimate experience.

There was a Vedanta bookshop. Devotees came there to buy books. There was the Shankara Bhashya, Shankara's commentary on Brahma sutra place side by side with Ramanuja Bhashya, Ramanuja's commentary on the Brahma sutra. A customer who went to buy the books asked a volunteer working in that bookshop: Sir, what is the difference between these two books, since the title reads Brahma sutra on both books?

The volunteer said: Oh! Just forty-five rupees.

The whole problem is just forty-five rupees, a dollar, worth. When you start, the truth it is not even forty-five rupees worth.

Here Shiva is not bothered about the differences. He is straightaway providing you the launch pad for every being to take the quantum leap into consciousness. That is why I tell you, I think he knows human beings well. Not only has he predicted the problems of all times, he has also given solutions. All other prophets, all other prophecies, predicted only problems. Whether it is Nostradamus or any other great person they only predicted problems. Shiva is the one and only master who besides predicting the problem gave the solution as well. He gave the technology also to experience it. Let's enter into the sutra.

Shiva is the only master, such a great master, who besides giving respect to devotion turns the devotion towards us. He is such a great energy that he straightaway helps people to turn the devotion towards them and to direct the devotion towards themselves. That is why Shiva bhakti, the devotion towards Shiva is very easy and it is more oriented towards the spiritual experience and meditation. The more we start our journey towards Shiva the more he will again and again put us towards our energy. He will turn us towards ourselves. He will constantly turn us around to look into ourselves. He uses his form only to create inspiration in us. The moment the energy is created he just puts the

energy back into us. Shiva is such a wonderful being. Throughout his teachings, he completely accepts us as we are. He turns the energy directly on us.

That is why almost all those people who believe in advaita, non-duality, will be Shiva bhaktas. All those people who speak about duality will be Vishnu devotees. All the yogis, people who speak on yoga will be Devi devotees. These are the three major groups. All the yogis will be the bhaktas of Devi. All the dvaita followers will be the bhaktas of Vishnu. All the vedanta followers*,* the enlightenment focused people will be the devotees of Shiva. Throughout the Shiva Sutras in every step Shiva inspires you to enter into yourself. This sutra tells us how the bhakti or devotion towards Shiva takes a turn as devotion towards yourself, and how it leads you to know the knower.

Now you need to do two things. First you need to have deep devotion. One important thing, as far as the devotion is concerned, whether is towards God or towards Guru or towards ourselves, it liberates us. We don't have to bother to whom we are devoted.

The very quality of devotion is enough to liberate us.

People come and ask me: Master, there are so many so many Gurus what to do? How to choose the right one? How to know whether somebody is enlightened or not? I tell them never bother about whether they are enlightened or not. There is no scale to measure whether somebody is enlightened or not. Because only one enlightened person can recognize another enlightened being. Whatever scale we may have, it can't be foolproof or completely truthful. The only one way to know is to see if we feel connected to him. If you really feel your heart is vibrating with him, if you feel that you are in tune with him then even if he is not enlightened don't bother, go behind him. Even if he is not enlightened you will become enlightened.

Be very clear: Even if the master is not enlightened you can become enlightened. Even if your master is enlightened but if your heart is not feeling comfortable and if your being is not in tune with him he can't help you. Forget about him.

It is all about your heart. It is all about our being. If you feel connected to him don't hesitate. Just jump in, fall into his being, just drop into that ocean. Even if he is not enlightened you will become enlightened. It is because our very devotion, our very surrender has got the quality to liberate us.

Please be very clear, the sutra does not say with Shiva bhakti, it just says with unclutched devotion, with pure devotion that is untainted by thought shafts. He doesn't say we should be devoted only to Shiva, it doesn't say we should only be devoted to Krishna, doesn't say we should be devoted only to Rama. It doesn't say only if we are devoted to Devi; he says with unclutched devotion.

In the next word he is turning the whole devotion to our self. First we need to have devotion, next turning the whole devotion towards our self. He is beautifully taking us step by step into the enlightenment experience.

Let me tell you few things about this devotion towards Shiva; how we can use that Shiva bhakti, the Shiva devotion, as a launching pad to realize the ultimate divine. As I was telling you this one example, even if the Guru is not enlightened the very devotion can liberate you; your very devotion can take you beyond everything. Because it is the quality of devotion that liberates, not the quality of the person to whom you are devoted.

We can see that this was true in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, an enlightened Master from Bharat. He was devoted to a stone. He had strong faith and devotion to the Kali image. It was the stone image of Devi, the Divine Mother. Even if it is a stone, when we are intensely devoted to it, it liberates us. He was completely liberated. Not only was he liberated but he also liberated thousands of people. He helped and gave enlightenment to thousands of people.

Sri Ramakrishna's disciple, Vivekananda says beautifully: If we can produce one Ramakrishna we can have not one stone or one temple but thousands of temples. Be very clear: It is not to whom or to what we are devoted the very devotion is the energy. The very devotion helps us experience the truth.

I would like to tell you one more beautiful story. I just love to narrate this story.

There was a man in Varanasi. He was staying on the banks of the Ganges River in Bharat. Varanasi is the religious capital of Bharat. In this city, the floating population is three hundred thousand people every day Three hundred thousand people enter into that city everyday just to touch and have the blessings of Shiva, who is the residing deity of the main temple in that city. You will be surprised the only income of that whole city, the only reason for the development of that whole city, is a few temples of the city. All these things can happen only in Bharat. Cities grow around temples.

Even the village in which I was born and brought up, if we see the value, the amount of money, time and energy spent on building the village temple and compare with the amount of time, money and energy spent on building the remaining village, it is not even ten percent. If they have put hundred rupees, hundred men and hundred percent energy in building that temple, they would have invested less than ten percent of money, ten percent of men, and ten percent of energy to build the remaining village. You may be amazed. Twenty-five acres of built-up area, built entirely of granite stone while all other houses have been built of wood, cement and bricks.

In this beautiful city of Varanasi there lived a man called Ramdas. He was a very simple, innocent and uneducated person. He wanted to have initiation from a priest. He thought that priest was enlightened. Somehow he devoted himself to that priest. Not only that

priest was not enlightened, he was also not interested in accepting this illiterate man as a disciple.

But this man's devotion was such that he did not even realize this about the priest and the priest's attitude towards him. He decided: I should take initiation from this priest. Let me do something. Then he somehow came to know about the initiation process. Initiation meant that the disciple will touch the feet of the master and the master would place the feet on the head of the disciple and give the mantra, a holy word to repeat. This is how initiation is done.

This man thought: Let me go early in the morning and lie down on the steps leading to the Ganges when the priest goes to the river to take a bath. Because it is dark when he walks he will not know where he is stepping and he will put his feet on my head. He will somehow step on me. So it will be a blessing.

One more thing we need to understand to follow this story. In Bharat there is a habit, a strange habit. When we make a mistake, we say Ram, Ram or we say Krishna, Krishna. The words that we repeat are very powerful.

Let me tell you a small story to help you understand this:

A remote county village priest became rich overnight and bought a Mercedes Benz. His neighbor the next county priest was not able to understand how this priest became rich overnight. So he asked the other priest: What happened? How did you become rich?

The priest said: One small technique. When I gave my Sunday sermon I prayed standing in front of the audience. I saw suddenly the whole group was hypnotized. I gave one instruction: Let all of you empty your pockets. And they all emptied their pockets. That is how I became rich. The other priest said: Oh! That is the technique. Let me try it and see if it works for me.

After one month the priest with Benz car went around driving the Benz, but the second priest did not have any luck. The priest asked: What happened? The technique did not work?

The second priest answered: Oh! Don't ask me about what happened. Like you I also prayed. One moment suddenly I realized that as I was holding my rosary and praying, people were completely hypnotized. I could see their heads moving along with the rosary. If the rosary moved this side their heads also moved to this side. If the rosary moved the other side their heads also turned to the other side. The whole congregation was hypnotized. I was about to give instruction to empty their pockets. Suddenly the rosary fell and I shouted: Shit!

I am still cleaning the church.

Be very clear: The words that we use when we are unconscious show our mental setup.

Let us come back to our story of Ramdas.

So it is expected that any devoted person would use the words related to God or sacred words even when he is unconscious; even when he does something wrong. So Ramdas also expected that his chosen Guru would also repeat Ram, Ram or Krishna, Krishna when he steps on him by mistake since he was spiritual. He thinks: I will take that word as a mantra. He will put his feet on my head and as he slips he will say Ram or Krishna or some God's name, and I will take that as mantra.

Next day, he went down to the Ganges steps. Early morning at four o'clock he laid himself down there. It was the same path that the priest used to take to come to the river. Almost everything was working. But one thing, he missed. The priest came, he walked in the same route and he put his feet on Ramdas but because he is not enlightened as Ramdas thought, instead of saying Rama or Krishna he shouted in irritation: Oh buffalo! Hey buffalo!

But Ramdas is such a sincere person that he had decided whatever his master uttered was his mantra. I will repeat this word 'buffalo' as my mantra. He repeats that word buffalo. He chants: Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. Continuously he repeats it. Just because of his devotion the story says Devi appeared and gave darshan to him in the form of a buffalo.

If it is just a story we won't believe it. We would say it is just a story for inspiration and forget about it. This is a historical incident, an incident that happened. There is history behind this incident so you can understand the power of this devotion.

The next year during the festival time they tried to bring Devi in a procession. They tried to bring the Devi idol out of the temple door. The door of that temple was ten feet high and the idol was only three feet high. But when they tried to bring out that Devi, the idol did not come out of the doorframe. It was stuck. Physically there was nothing obstructing it. These priests tried their best to bring it out. This priest who initiated Ramdas also tried hard. The Devi did not come out.

Ramdas was there at the festival. He shouted: Hey, don't you see? The horns of the Devi are hitting the doorframe. Just lower the idol a little bit and then she will come out. He was able to see Devi appearing to him in the form of a buffalo. And the horns of that buffalo were hitting the doorframe. That was the reason the idol was not coming out.

It is very difficult to believe logically that all these things are possible. Let me tell you one or two more incidents with this historical proof then it may you may be able to understand. He shouted: Oh! Priest! Oh! Master! Why don't you lower the statue a little bit? The horns of the Devi are hitting the wall. The priests shouted at him: Fool! Don't

you have eyes? What are you talking about? Where are the horns of Devi? Keep quiet. Your being allowed here itself is too much! Get out!

Then they tried their best. She did not come out. Finally Ramdas felt disturbed that they were hitting the Devi's horns on the doorframe. He just went, by force he pressed the idol down by half a foot and immediately the idol slipped out of the door. The story says Devi gave him darshan in the same form of a buffalo on which he had meditated. Besides giving darshan, she proved to the whole world through this incident that whoever meditates on whatever form with whatever name, the divine appears to them in that same form, in that same way.

In memory of this incident they have a beautiful buffalo created in a silk carpet, which is hung next to the Devi temple that you can see today. If we go to Varanasi on this festival day, they will hang a big curtain on which they have embroidered a buffalo in a silk curtain. And the puja is done to that form also. This is done in memory of this Ramdas, who was a great devotee of Devi; and who got enlightened meditating on Devi in the form of a buffalo.

Not one, there are thousands of incidents where we see God appear to bless his devotees. One more thing, the person from whom he took the mantra, the priest himself was not enlightened. He never had the darshan of Devi. But the devotee Ramdas, just because of his devotion not only had the darshan of Devi; he was able to communicate with the ultimate.

Be very clear: Don't bother about whether the master is enlightened or not. The very devotion, the very surrender, the sincerity, has got the power to liberate us, to enlighten us.

There is yet another incident. A great devotee called Kanakadasa lived in Udipi, a famous pilgrimage town from the state of Karnataka in Bharat. He belonged to a lower class and because of his birth status he was not allowed to go inside and pray to Krishna through the front door. So, Krishna turned around and blessed him when Kanakadasa sang to him from the rear window.

Be very clear: Again it is not story. It is history. Till date the statue faces its back to the front door. Even today the statue of Krishna in the famous Udipi temple looks to the back of the temple. He is called Kanakthvaara. Through the small rear window he gave darshan to Kanakadasa. You can see God only through the small window to this date. There are thousands of incidents where the devotion leads the people to experience the ultimate.

You should understand one thing: we can argue logically about whether these stories are true or not. But these stories create such a deep emotion and devotion in our being that devotion is worthy, that it is such a great gift; that even if these stories are not factual it is okay. The devotion that these stories inspire will lead us to the truth. That is the reason I

always tell these people: Do not bother about the factuality of these great stories because logically you can never say this is right or this is wrong and you may never verify them as facts.

One more thing, we always think if some so called scientist says it or if it is written in some logical way then it is true. If a saint says or writes it is always biased or it is written out of vested interests. We should understand one important thing: Saints, sages, devotees and spiritual beings do not have any vested interest. Their life was never dependent on influencing or impressing anybody. But these so called scientists their life constantly depended on influencing, impressing the people who funded them.

Be very clear: In Bharat the saints and sages and rishis and spiritual Masters were never under the influence of business people or politicians. Vaisyas (business class) and kshatriyas (ruling class) both were kept away from the brahmanas (scholars and priests). It is the brahmanas who were in the top rung of society. The brahmana saints and sages and rishis and devotees were given more respect. They were in the top seat. They were ruling. They were guiding the politicians and businessmen. So they had no vested interests. They are given all best things of society without any necessity to prove themselves. So they had no vested interests.

However with these scientists, if we look deeply into the system, things are more complicated because they always have to work to fulfill the vested interests of those people who fund them. These are the business people, the vaishyas and the people who are ruling the country, the kshatriyas and the politicians.

Be very clear: That was why in Bharat the research and development in the spiritual plane was completely kept away from politicians and business people. Both were kept away from the research and development. Any intelligence if it has to take the quantum ultimate jump, if it has to be useful to the common mass in a complete way, it should not be disturbed, it should not be interfered with by the vested interests of those who rule the country or people who finance these things. Neither the business people nor the politicians should be allowed to enter into the research. Only then it can go in the line of truth and express the truth alone to the common mass.

That is why I always tell people that with science there are more illogical superstitions and more dangerous outcomes than spirituality. Even if it is little illogical even is it not a fact according to your logic, spirituality has always led people towards the ultimate truth of global peace and global bliss. It led to transformation, its ultimate purpose. So-called sciences even if factual do not lead you anywhere.

One more beautiful story:

Do not validate with your logic, whether it is a fact. When it happened? What is the year, date? Whether it happened in the morning or evening? Usually in the East we have something called purana not history. History is totally different from purana. History

means date, time of the incident and the incident itself. Whatever happened in the level of length, breadth, and depth is recorded. But in the puranas, not only what has happened in the length, breadth and depth, we record the impact of that incident in the time and space. That is why we feel the puranic incidents are exaggerated.

For example, consider Hitler taking birth and another ordinary man taking birth at exactly the same time. Based on physical factors such as length, breadth and depth both events are the same. But Hitler's influence on space and time was totally different from the influence created by an ordinary man. The birth of an ordinary man and the birth of Hitler if we see from the view of history, length, breadth and depth both are the same. But if you see the influence on time and space, Hitler's influence is totally different.

In Bharat, in the east they try to record as puranas in which they give importance to the influence that person created in time and space. They did not give much importance to the incident itself, which is in the dimension of length, breadth, depth. That dimension was not given much importance. But the dimension of space and time was given more importance. It is because the rishis or enlightened beings were able to penetrate and see the influence or impact of that incident in time and space. Krishna took birth the same time as Sisupala with the length, breadth and depth both being the same. But why Krishna is given so much more importance? Why a big beautiful book is written about his birth? It is because Krishna's influence in space and time is totally different from the influence created by Sisupala.

Be very clear: History can never be complete unless it covers space and time also. Whatever you call as history is incomplete and not only that it is biased. Whoever wins the war records history. If Hitler had won the war, history would have totally been different. So whatever we think of as facts or history or we are taught as history, be very clear: It may not be history.

Puranas are the history recorded by the people who are able to see the impact of an incident in space and time, by those who don't have any vested interests. The were not influenced by business people or politicians. That is why puranas sometimes look illogical, for a man with the normal logic, one who is with the ordinary intellect; who can relate only to the facts and figures.

They describe beautifully when Krishna took birth, all the devatas (minor deities) and all the Gods and Goddesses appeared on this earth and blessed the planet earth and had the blessings of Krishna. We can't verify where they all assembled, which hall they booked, who conducted the party, what all they served in the party and who hosted the party. We don't have a record of it. We can't start verifying whether this is a fact or not. But one thing is sure: It is the truth. By creating these statements, by uttering these statements all the Gods and Goddesses have appeared on the planet earth and blessed the planet earth they mean so much of auspiciousness has happened. Just by this single person appearing on this earth so many good things are going to happen.

Till now we can feel Krishna's influence in Bharat, in the Hindu community. In Bharat I can say he is practically the greatest hero worshipped by billions of people over the ages. To date even after 5000 years still his influence can be felt in every village of Bharat. The rishis knew the impact of what happened because of this incident of his birth in space and time. They knew the impact. We don't. That is the reason why we feel the puranas are exaggerated. It is done deliberately so that we will be able to understand the importance of these incidents. These exaggerations should be understood and accepted as an instrument towards the truth. We can't verify these incidents. And if we try to verify, we will be in trouble.

That is why I tell people when some theory is proposed, in the East, it is never questioned immediately whether it is a fact or not. They have only questioned the utility of the hypothesis, the utility of the theory. How this theory is going to contribute to our growth? They were never violent. They did not want to pull the other man down. They give enough space. They give chance for every being. They just see what can be done with this theory. Can the theory really help us? That is the reason so many people have taken the quantum jump. In that spiritual incubator called Bharat so much of enlightenment, so much of spirituality, so much of conscious growth has happened.

Now let me tell you another small beautiful story.

Then we will enter into the technique itself. Because it is all about devotion, I want you to understand the importance of devotion. One more thing we need to understand: We always think people who take to the path of devotion are foolish and immature. We always think by being logical, by being very steady or cool, we think we are intelligent. Let me tell you one truth clearly. To doubt we don't need intelligence. Any fool can doubt. Only fools doubt.

It is very easy to doubt. Any fool will start only with doubt. Only to trust, we need intelligence. We need integrity; we need courage only to trust. We need to take the risk only when we trust. To doubt we don't need to take the risk. Doubting is a simple thing. Any fool will do that only because there is no risk involved. Go on analyzing, analyzing, analyzing, doubting, doubting, doubting. Nothing needs to be done. Our logic is trained to doubt.

Never think you are a great if you constantly doubt something. Some people think they are great because they can doubt me. I tell them: Any fool can doubt me! It is easy. I am not speaking with respect to me alone, with respect to anything. To doubt we don't need intelligence. All we need is little ego which all of us have enough of. All we need is little foolishness and little ego that we have enough of. Only to trust, to have devotion, to feel connected we need intelligence. We need to take the risk. We need to be courageous, only then we can trust. We can take the jump. Otherwise it is impossible.

I tell people: Never think people with devotion are not courageous. We always have an idea that people with intellect are courageous people. People who can doubt are courageous. They are cowards. That is why constantly with every step they analyze, logically question and doubt. Be very clear: Let doubt not be associated with courage. It is a pure cowardice. Cowards doubt. Blessed are those who can take the risk of jumping; who are courageous enough to trust. Only to trust we need courage. Because when we trust we take the jump. It is a big risk. Ordinarily we can play a safe game in doubting. We don't need to take any risk. Just stand aside be a watcher and play the safe game. And we know to what extent we can go and when to go back.

When our intellect reaches its peak it becomes intelligence. When our emotion reaches its peak it becomes devotion and trust. When our being reaches its peak it becomes enlightenment. Through the purification process of sadhana (practice) and tapas (penance) if our intellect reaches its peak performance, it becomes intelligence. If our emotion reaches its peak it becomes trust and devotion. If our being reaches its peak it becomes enlightenment.

To doubt we don't need intelligence. We need foolishness which we have enough. Only to trust we need courage. Trust should be associated with courage not doubting. People think just because they can doubt the spiritual system, or they can doubt some tradition, they can doubt some spiritual Guru, they, can doubt some book; they think they are courageous. Never think you are courageous because you can doubt the truth of some book, some of the spiritual Gurus, or some of the spiritual techniques.

The present day youth believe they are very daring when they tell me: I am a very courageous person. I don't care for my mother's beliefs. She believes in God. I don't care about those things. I doubt everything.

May we never feel we are intelligent or courageous because we doubt. To doubt we don't need anything. We don't need courage. Only to trust and take a quantum jump we need courage. Only to have devotion we need courage. Only to have trust we need courage.

There is one more story where Shiva came down and he arranged dates for the disciple. Shiva did first dating service. He tried to help one of his devotees. He did the ambassador's work of representing one of his devotees.

This is a beautiful story.

The name of that devotee is Sundara. Sundara means handsome man. He is a great devotee of Shiva. Let me try to describe an incident in the life of a great devotee called Sundara who lived in South Bharat in Tamil Nadu. He wants to marry a particular girl. He wants to impress her. He tried his best. But she was not attracted to him. Somehow he was not able to get her attention. So he went directly to Shiva of whom he was a devotee. He says: Master, please do something. I want to have her attention.

That is the beauty of Shiva. If it were some other Master he would not have entertained these thoughts. But Shiva is such a beautiful energy. He is life affirming. He is life positive. He is not life negative. He says: All right, don't worry, I will do something. Then he goes in the dream of that girl and he says: This man is handsome, and a very honest person. He tells her all good things about this man, and tells her to marry him and assures her that she will have a good life. He inspires her, finishes everything and comes back.

Then Shiva comes to Sundara again and says: See I told her all lies about you. I know you are not honest. I know you won't be faithful to her. I know what all you will do. But even then I lied. Please take care of my words. Please try to act according to my words so that she doesn't feel that I lied about you. He tries his best and convinces Sundara to act accordingly. Finally Sundara also says: I will try my best to act according to your words.

The marriage happens. As usual within six months, honeymoon is over. That is why it is called honeymoon. Not honey sun. How long will the moon last? Sixteen days. And this emotion will also stay only for sixteen days. Now he feels bored. He starts looking around.

Again, after six months Sundara goes to Shiva and says: No, no I don't want to live with her anymore. I want to see the next person. Shiva is terribly annoyed. He says: What nonsense? Finally Shiva says: I will not allow you to stay in the same town, because I have given big words about you to her. At least go out so that I can save my face. So Sundara starts wandering. In the name of going to the different Shiva temples he starts his so-called spiritual journey. His wife is very intelligent, she knows him well. So she takes a promise that he should not marry anybody. She will not let him go if he did not promise her. So Sundara was left without a choice. He promised her not to marry any one else and went away. He thought: Ah! After all what is there? It is just a promise, mere words.

He came to the present day Chennai. Still the place where this incident happened is there. It is just beautiful sweet memories where all these great leelas (divine play) happened, where God walked as an ambassador for a human being just because he is a devotee, just because he feels connected to him. It is the utmost respect paid to the devotion. Whether it happened or not who cares? But even the concept that so much of devotion is possible and so much of respect is paid to the devotion of the devotee, is such a wonderful thing. Just to understand the truth you can cherish all these things. It can transform your being. It can just make your heart so beautiful and so light. Even if it is story, it is okay. It is a beautiful story. You can cherish it.

Sundara fell in love with another girl. Now this girl is also not ready to give her attention to him. Somehow he is not a fortunate fellow. He doesn't know the technique or knack of getting attention from girls. He is not able to get her attention. Again Sundara goes to the Shiva: Oh! God please do something. Shiva goes the second time. He says: Alright second time also I will do something.

This time he does not appear in the girl's dream. He goes in the waking state itself. The story says he walked without his sandals, because an ambassador cannot go with upper cloth and sandals. Ambassador means you are a servant. So when Shiva starts walking Sundara says: Hey! Now you are my servant, drop the sandals and upper cloth. So Shiva leaves both outside the temple and starts walking in the street. Since Sundara says he should go without sandals and upper cloth, only then she will believe that Shiva is his servant, Shiva goes without both. He leaves the trishul (trident) and the trinetra (third eye) and goes as a servant to that girl's house.

The girl was shocked to see the Lord of the universe Shiva himself coming to her house without the upper cloth and sandals. She says: Oh Lord! Whole world serves you. Why do you become a servant of somebody? What happened to your upper cloth and sandals? Shiva says: I am the servant of my devotees. So I have come to represent one of my devotees as his servant. She says: Even before you tell me the purpose of your visit I assure you I will do what ever you want me to, but please first wear your upper cloth and the sandals. I can't bear to see you without the upper cloth and the sandals and that you serving somebody.

Then Shiva says: Oh! I am very happy now. I have now done my job. Please marry Sundara. That's why I came. I have come here as his ambassador to represent him. I want you to marry him. She says: Just for the sake of your upper cloth and sandals, I'll marry him. Please wear your upper cloth and sandals. I can't see you as a servant of somebody. And the story says both of them got married.

Again after six months Sundara goes to Shiva and says: Now I feel the first one is better, I want to go back. Actually I have seen many couples after a divorce of two or three years they feel like living together again. Anyway Shiva says: Don't talk to me. Don't tell me anything more. Enough of all this nonsense! I can't do anything. Don't bring anything to me now. Either you live or get lost. I can't do anything. Then Sundara says: No! No! How can you say this to me? I am your devotee. How can you ask me to get lost? You have to do something.

It is a beautiful conversation that takes place between Shiva and Sundara. I can't translate the whole thing. But I can at least give the story. Sundara says: No! No! You have to do something for me. I am not able to forget her. I want to go back and live with her.

By now the second girl whom Sundara married came to know that he is already married. Now she creates trouble for him. She tells him: You can't leave this city. You can't leave this town to go back to her. She is very adamant and nagging.

And the story takes a totally different turn. Finally she won the game. She said: Tomorrow morning you have to promise that you will not leave the city. Not only simple promise, because she already knows he promised once to that girl and did not keep that promise. Now she says: Come and promise in front of Shiva. If you don't keep that promise Shiva will punish you. Shiva only made this whole drama, so come and promise in front of him. Now nothing could be done. What to do? Anyway because of the nagging he accepted to do as she wanted.

But Sundara tried to play a little intelligent game. He told Shiva: Oh God! Please do something. Tomorrow I am coming to this temple to promise in front of you. I have only one small request. Don't be in the temple. You have done so much for me; just do this last one thing. Don't be in the temple. Go and sit near a tree. There is a tree near the temple. Just be under that tree. So that when I promise in front of the temple that promise will not have any power. Even if I go beyond the promise I will not be punished.

Now Shiva says: You fellow, I have done so much for you. And after all she is also my devotee. And I have to be a little truthful to her also. But his compassion for his devotees is so great that he says: All right, I will not be in the temple. I will go away to the nearby vanni tree. Shiva says: I will go and stay near that tree; don't worry. He disappears.

Then he goes to that girl and says: Sundara is very intelligent. He is playing a double game. He told me to go and be near the vanni tree. Anyway after all he is my devotee so I have accepted to be near that tree. You do one thing. You are also my devotee and I cannot cheat you. You don't take the promise from Sundara in front of the temple. Come to the tree and take that promise. Bring him to the tree and tell him to promise in front of the tree. And she says: All right.

Next day morning, she brought him to the temple. Sundara says: Let me promise in front of the temple. She says: No! No! I don't want you to promise in front of temple, if you go beyond the promise you will be punished. Come near that tree and promise. Even if you do something wrong I don't want you to be punished. After all you are my husband. And Sundara says: No! No! No! I will promise only in front of the temple. She says: No! No! No! I want you to promise me in front of the tree.

Finally you know who wins. Naturally only the woman wins. Sundara goes near that tree and promises in front of that tree: I will not leave this town. The promise is taken. Anyhow now Sundara knows he is bound, because Shiva was sitting there under that tree when the promise was made.

The story says that after six months Sundara got tempted again to leave the city. Again he was not able to control himself. He left that city. As a punishment of not keeping the promise given to Shiva, he lost his eyesight. And again he goes to Shiva and says: What happened? See I am your devotee. What happened to me? Do something. Then finally the story ends saying that Shiva himself called both the women and pacified them and blessed both the women and restored Sundara's eyesight and. He helped all of them to live happily with him. Finally gave Sundara enlightenment or ultimate liberation.

The sweetness or beauty of these stories is that it creates so much of life, it creates so much of devotion, it creates so much of joy in our being and we relax for few minutes from our logic, which is constantly nagging us. Our logic is constantly torturing us. These few stories can create devotion that can straight away help you to know and knower.

Now let us go into the second part of the sutra.

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness.

Shiva is now turning the devotion towards our self. Devotion towards the Rama, Krishna, Shiva, and Devi is easy to feel. But turning the same devotion towards ourselves is difficult to feel; because we are constantly condemning ourselves. We do not accept ourselves. Here Shiva turns the devotion to you. Shiva's job is very easy because he is speaking to Devi who is his beloved consort and she is already devoted. Straightaway he says: Now experience me in you. But I am speaking to you all. First thing I have to do is to create that devotion. That is what I was trying to do. Create an idea about the importance of devotion.

Now we'll have to move to the second step. Turn the same attention or devotion or energy towards ourselves. May we be completely devoted to our being that can be felt as you center yourself between your eyebrows in the two spaces between breaths.

As I was mentioning yesterday in the early sutras, we always experience ourselves in the gaps between the two breaths. We are the Self without any identity. As of now we have two identities: The identity that we project about ourselves to the world and the identity that we project about ourselves within ourselves. We meet our ultimate self that is not these two, which is beyond these two in the center of breath. Whenever the incoming breath takes a turn as outgoing breath or the outgoing breath takes a turn as incoming breath, in both these junctions we touch that pure inner space, which is beyond both identities that we carry in our life.

We carry two identities. One is ego, superiority complex that we constantly show to the outer world. We always show more than what we think we are. The second identity is inferiority complex that we carry within our self; we always think we are in some way insufficient, imperfect. The idea or identity that we carry about ourselves is one and the identity that we project to the world is the other. When we go beyond these two identities, we experience our true identity every moment between every incoming and outgoing breath. Every single moment that we center on the spaces between breaths we experience that neutral space where we are beyond identity, beyond our mind. He says: Be devoted to that space.

Now we all know how to be devoted to Shiva. Sit in front of Shiva's statue and completely offer ourselves. Surrender to him and relax. Or sitting in front of Rama, we know how to be devoted. But now he says with that utmost devotion, sit in front of our space, our own Self. He asks us to relax into ourselves. He is asking us to accept our Self and put our attention between two breaths, in the neutral space. It is just a wonderful technique to experience the neutral space. He says through this experience me. Through this the being is constantly experiencing everything. He says through this achieve the ultimate enlightenment.

First thing we need to create tremendous devotion towards Guru or God, and turn that devotion towards our Self. I always tell people: When we express that devotion towards the master, invariably the master always turns the devotion towards us. The other day one of our devotees was telling me: Master, the other day when I started trusting you suddenly I realized I am able to trust myself.

In Bharat, we now regularly have the fire walking ceremony, in which people walk on live burning coal. It's just to express the power of devotion and trust. Before the ceremony everybody has tremendous trust in me, because I am the first one to walk. I walk first then everybody follows me. After such a ceremony one of the devotees shared her experience. She said: Master, before the fire walking I trusted you. After the fire walking I am able to trust myself.

There are so many people here who walked on the fire. There are so many sitting here who did the fire walking. Please raise your hand. Let us see how many of you came to the ashram and did the fire walking. Big number! People were shocked to see such a long distance, at least 21 feet, live charcoal. You can't escape. Eight hours earlier itself we started burning the coal, so that it will be live and hot charcoal. The fire pit is prepared in a very traditional way with wood and charcoal. You have to walk on that fire bare foot. Don't think they walked with shoes or socks. You cannot wear anything on your feet.

She told me: Before the fire walking, I trusted you. Now I am able to trust myself. A real Master does this. He turns the devotion towards us. When we are devoted to him; he just turns the whole devotion to our self.

Shiva is turning the whole devotion to our Self that is constantly available to us every moment in the center of the two breaths. In the center of two breaths every moment, we experience the space without identity. But we are afraid to be without identity. That is why we don't relax in that space. We just jump and catch that other breath. Between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath we have that space, where there is no breath and no mind. This is our Self without identity. We are afraid to be without identity. That is why we take a fast forward jump. We don't relax in that space. We are not happy with that space. We are uncomfortable with that space because identity means life for us. Especially for the vested mind they can't imagine themselves without identity. They can give up anything but not the identity. That is the basic thing.

I tell you: When we relax from the identity we show the outer world and the identity we show to ourselves we will experience the ultimate Self. We achieve the enlightenment that is the Self. It is beyond both our identities. The identity we show the outer world behind which we are constantly running, to keep which we are constantly dying and the identity which we show to our self on which we are constantly working, which constantly nags us are all pure lies; not impure lies. Be very clear both are lies. We are constantly suffering with lies. We are constantly wasting our life with lies. We are constantly struggling with lies. Now Shiva is putting us in the space where truth expresses itself

beyond the lies. He is leading us from the fact to the truth. He is giving us the ultimate technique.

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness.

Let us enter into the mediation technique given by Shiva to experience him.

Please understand the technique. With unclutched devotion means with the deep devotion without any objective just be aware of gaps between incoming and outgoing breaths. That's all this technique is about. Between every incoming and outgoing breath our self shines by itself. The truth reveals by itself.

We are supposed to sit with unclutched devotion, the way we usually sit in front of your God or Guru. The big problem is we don't know even that. If we know that then we can turn back into this. We never sat with devotion. We sat with greed to get something or with the fear of losing something. We sit in the office with the greed to make money or with the fear of losing money or losing some comforts. We always sat only with the fear or greed. Even in the lectures we sit with the greed to acquire more knowledge. That is why we do not know how to sit with unclutched devotion. Now at least let us try.

Upanishads say: Sitting with intense devotion is itself a technique. That is why the word Upanishad means just sitting. Upanishad means sitting near. The literal translation of the word Upanishad means sitting. So we are supposed to sit with unclutched devotion. We can do one thing. We will have devotion towards something, may be to some God or some Guru or may be our own mother, rarely our wife or our husband. We may feel connected to somebody in a small way. Somewhere we must feel some devotion. There is no doubt about that. For a few minutes we can remember how we feel connected to that person; how we feel connected to that Guru, or how we feel connected to that God or anything for that matter. With that same mood just sit and watch the breath, watch the gap between the breaths. First few minutes we will take to feel connected.

Mostly we feel connected to our mother because mother is such a beautiful being; she showered so much on us. We may ideologically feel connected to her or we may not feel connected to her now after growing up because of our own ideas. But we can't say that she has not done anything for us. We can't give up our love or gratitude for her. Today we may have ideological connection to her or we may have ideology different from her. That is different. But we can't deny her great contribution in our being. So may be we can feel connected to our mother.

If we had some Guru already or we experienced some love, some connection with some Master, some Guru then we can feel connected to him. Or if we have experienced some devotion or connection to some God we can feel connected to that God. First few minutes we will take to remember the person or God who creates deep devotion in us. If you feel

nothing creates devotion then I can't do anything. I don't know. But surely there will be something that creates devotion. It may perhaps be your father or mother or some friend, even some young age friend or some teacher, who inspired you. Somebody will be there. Or some leader would have inspired us in some way.

First we will take a few minutes to feel connected towards them. So it will be two steps. First creating the devotion means feeling connected, opening up our heart to some being. The second is concentrating or turning that same connection or attention towards the gap between the breaths.

We will do this as two steps. First step we will sit and remember the person who contributed something to our life. We can even remember even two or three persons. Sometimes we may even have two or three persons, beautiful mother, wonderful Guru or to some God. We can even remember four or five. Who ever we feel connected or whoever we feel utmost devotion, remember them or remember their contribution towards our life and feel connected to them. This is creating the utmost devotion.

Next we will turn that awareness towards the center on the two junctions of breath. We will experience Shiva Consciousness within our Self by doing this.

Let us close our eyes. Sit straight. Let us remember all the people who have created a deep devotional feeling in us who reside in our heart who are inspiration sources for us to whom we turn whenever we feel we are dry; whenever we feel we want to rejuvenate ourselves. Let us remember the people who add a little juice in our life. Now let us turn towards them and feel connected deeply to them. Let us feel deeply connected with our whole being. Let us be still with utmost devotion to that person or that being. Let our whole being melt in devotion. With deep devotion let us be aware of the gap between the incoming breath and the outgoing breath. Let us center on the two junctions of breath.

Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi(may peace be with you).

Relax now and open your eyes. Through this great truth and this technique may we experience Shiva Consciousness. Let this technique lead us to the experience. Let us be one with the divine and radiate eternal bliss.

Both tantra and yoga are techniques to awaken you. They have the common aim of liberating you from the bondages of this world so that you can realize the inner divinity within you.

All humans are bound by fear and greed. These are the primal emotions that control all of us. Both arise from the muladhara, the root chakra. Both are needed for what you think as your survival.

Greed and fear can also teach you. When faced fear can strengthen you. When understood greed can become achievable desire. Yoga chose the path of fear to teach. Yoga just controls you and corners you. At some point you are awakened. You understand that you are dreaming.

Tantra chose the path of greed to teach you. It gives you, fills you and suddenly you understand that you are dreaming. Both ways, whether you are with greed or with fear, the theme or the idea is to put your attention on your Being. It is to turn your awareness on your Being. Whether it is fear or greed, we need only one thing to awaken us.

In tantra they say that to achieve the state of enlightenment there are two ways, either you have to make all your dreams into reality or you should understand all your reality is nothing but a dream.

Technically both are part of the Agamas, literature that is parallel but separate from Vedic literature. Yoga is one of the paths recommended in the Agamas for divine worship. Tantra is part of the Sakti sect of the Agamas, one of the three sects. The other two are the Shiva and Vishnu sects.

The objective is the same but the approaches are different, though not all agree with this. There are many who refer to Tantra Yoga classifying Tantra as a pat of Yoga. There are others who consider them totally separate. Yoga is a far more defined approach, whereas Tantra is much more subtle.

Both Vignana Bhairava Tantra and Patanjali's Yoga Sutra were expressed as sutras in epigram form. Both are difficult to interpret without deep understanding. The similarity stops there. Each of the sutras of Vignana Bhairava Tantra or Shiva Sutra is a technique for liberation. Each technique can be practised and realized. When understood and internalized these techniques can help reach the goal quickly, sometimes instantaneously.

On the other hand Yoga Sutras are definitions, instructions or commandments for behavior and action. Each one shows a pathway that needs to be followed. Realization of goal may take time. However, the journey itself can be fulfilling. This is why I refer to Yoga as 'uniting' rather than the traditional translation of 'union'. Yoga as I see it is a

process, it is a verb, and it is a journey. What we teach as Nithya yoga is based on this principle. It is the perfection of the asanas and other elements that is the goal of Nithya Yoga, but the process itself is the goal. Nithya Yoga aims at adding life to your movements, instead of adding movements to your life.

Both Tantra and Yoga require a master's help to realize the goal. In the case of yoga this can be delegated as the process is based on knowledge. In the case of Tantra it is essential for the Master to initiate the disciple since the techniques are deeply mystic and subtle. Unless the master himself is enlightened it would be difficult for a disciple to make headway in the tantric approach.

At a deeper level, Yoga starts with the assumption that one is incomplete. Yoga wants to mold you in line with its assumptions and commandments. It is based on the assumption of a master that if you do it the way he did it, you too will succeed.

Tantra on the other hand accepts you as you are. Tantra is a flow that you enter into unlike yoga, which is a mould you are fitted into.

Your master can decide what is best for you. Yoga is better suited for an intellectual person. Tantra is better suited for a being level person.

shikhipakshaish chitrarupairmandalaih shunyapanchakam | dhyaayatoanuttare shunye pravesho hridaye bhavet ||

Die into the infinite void where you are no more Moving beyond the senses into Shiva Consciousness Be intense just once is today's topic. In today's sutra, today's aphorism, Shiva is giving us a wonderful teaching; he is giving us a beautiful technique to be intense, and how to experience the intensity of being, just how to be.

We know so many ways of becoming. Becoming is totally different from being. To become a doctor we know what has to be done. To become a lawyer we know what has to be done. To become a politician we know what has to be done. To become this, to become that, to become a millionaire, to become all this and more we know what has to be done. All our knowledge is all about becoming. We know only how to become something.

We forgot an important thing, how to be.

Because your inner space has become too much corrupted with the obsession of becoming, we have lost in touch with the idea of being. We have lost in touch with our very truth that is our being. Becoming is directly related to mind. Being is directly related to your nature. Becoming is related to society and being is related to your nature. At least for one moment if you can experience the being, your being or just being, so many things which you accumulated when you wanted to become something - the physical illness, mental illness, suffering, sorrow, so many things you accumulated when you were trying to become something, all those things will be washed away. You will have the inner healing. Whatever was disturbing you will dissolve. All the wounds will be washed away.

Above all you will have real, concrete solid base to become something. Even to become something, if you experience the being and then start your becoming, it will be successful. Even becoming something will be a great success, if you start trying after experiencing being. Without experiencing the being, if you start or if you try, to become something you will be utter failure.

There was a beautiful question that somebody had asked yesterday. He was asking, 'Swamiji, how can I love somebody, how to share my love with somebody? Is loving others important or is meditating important?'

Be very clear, unless you meditate, unless you know your being, you can't love somebody, whether it is relationship or social service. In relationship and social service, in both the fields you need love. If you are serving the society you need love. If you are in some relationship you need love. You can't experience or express love unless you have experienced your being. First of all you don't have a base or you don't have clarity about yourself; what love can you give, what can you show? At the most you can show your teeth, not anything else. Showing your teeth or your smile doesn't mean that you are expressing your love.

Love is pure energy. Why do you think constantly people try to give some gifts? Because they can't make the other person feel their love energy. They are so poor; first of all you don't believe you are able to give the love, second thing naturally, when you don't

believe you won't be able to give. When you can't create that love effect in the other person, you just give some gifts and try to patch up.

That is why, in this cultured society, in the civilized society, giving gifts has become almost equivalent to loving somebody. If you love somebody, you have to show it by giving gifts. But I tell you, giving gifts is nothing but hiding. It is polite way of hiding your hypocrisy.

Through that gift giving process you are trying to prove that you love him or her. Be very clear, when you are showering your love towards him or her, the other person should be able to feel it. It should be so vibrant and so alive so that the receiver experiences your love. Love is pure energy. The other person, even if he is not around you, even if she is somewhere else, simply he should start feeling connected to you. Something will be happening inside him or her. If that is not happening, be very clear, your gifts are not going to work. Maybe you can cheat her or him saying that you love them. If you just cheat her or him it's ok. But most of the time you yourself get cheated. Just because you give a gift and use the words, I love you, I care for you or I miss you, you start thinking that you really love. At least if you cheat others it's ok. Don't get cheated, that is too much. That is too much. Most of the time, you are only playing with words with all these expressions.

You may think you are capable of loving, but you don't know what love is. Unless the person has entered into meditation, unless he has experienced his being, all his activities, whether it is love, or even his anger, all emotions and expressions will be hypocritical. Be very clear: a beautiful, important sutra, this sutra it's a wonderful sutra. Here you are asked to be intense in whatever you are doing.

Let us enter into the sutra.

Shiva is trying all possibilities and he is trying to take you to your being through all possible doors. There are so many doors available, so many ways available. He is trying all possible doors. He is helping you to reach your self through all possible ways. Today he is trying to take you to your being by making you intense. He tells you to move beyond your senses into the very experience itself. He says that's sensory perceptions or intense restlessness or intense emotions can take you beyond and can take you to your being.

Even your anger is hypocritical. You just choose whether to express your anger or not. Your anger also is directly related to your logic. You never get angry beyond your logic. Your anger is managed by your logic. You just try expressing here, am I going to lose anything here, in this situation? If you are sure you are going to lose something, you just suppress it, you just suppress. If you are clear, 'Oh, I am not going to lose anything, I can

shout at this guy, what can he do', then you just explode and show too much, much more than what is necessary. Whatever you've stored in your being, whatever was in the stock, you open up everything and give.

Even your anger is managed by your logic. Be very clear, when your logic manages your anger, you'll have two problems. First, you unnecessarily shout or unnecessarily show your anger when it is not necessary because you have a lot of suppression. Second, even when you are not expressing, you'll be suppressing it. First, if you are expressing you'll be expressing too much, much more than what is necessary. Next, if you are not expressing, you'll be suppressing it. Both are wrong. Be very clear, both are wrong. Suppressing or expressing, both are not going to help. Then you might ask, what are we supposed to do? You are not asked to do anything, just be. When you do anything, express or suppress, you will be hypocritical. Your anger is based on hypocrisy, forget about love; even anger is nothing but hypocrisy.

Krishnamurthy says beautifully, whenever an emotion overtakes you, if you can just be without moving your body, without co-operating with your emotion even once, even once if you just stay without co-operating with that emotion, you will be liberated from that emotion. All of J.Krishnamurthy's philosophy is just this one single sutra. That is why I call this book as book of all books.

Shiva Sutra is a book that gives you a clear idea about how to create more books. Single sutra of Shiva can create at least two hundred to three hundred volume books. All J.Krishnamurthy's teachings put together are in this single sutra. It is not even this single sutra, it is one third of this sutra. Die into the infinite void where you are no more, that's all. You can put the whole teachings of a great master's teachings in this single sutra.

If you are staying without moving your body when you are flooded, or when you are overpowered by any emotion, even once; I am not saying that you have to constantly practice this, no. Practise just once, only once, immediately you will be liberated from this emotion. You are liberated from that very emotion. Lie down as dead: it is a beautiful technique that we'll practise today. Suddenly lie down, no crying, no agony, no other emotion. No love, no anger, no greed, no fear, just lie down. Be very clear you are dead, that you enter the void.

It's one of the wonderful techniques. The great master Ramana Maharishi became enlightened through this technique. With just this single technique, Bhagavan Shree Ramana Maharishi became enlightened. When he was sixteen, spontaneously this happened to him. Actually he must have been practicing in the past lives. Otherwise such a big experience cannot happen spontaneously. Spontaneously, you cannot have enlightenment. Even if you have, you must have tried earlier itself. I don't think such an ultimate experience can suddenly happen without any reason. There is no coincidence in the existence. It is purely your intensity.

When he was sixteen Ramana was in Madurai, near his native place. His birthplace is called Thiruchuzhi. He was in Madurai, in Tamil Nadu. Suddenly one day he started feeling that he was going to die. The great fear of death arose in him. You also feel that sometimes when you hear about some near or dear one's death or when you hear some friend has died or when you see an accident or when you come across some news about death. You also have that fear. But we are so well versed or trained to suppress our emotions and control ourselves that we never allow this fear to come out. We are such hypocrites that we don't even know that we are cheating ourselves. Many times we can see the fear rise in us but we are on automatic mechanism to stop it. By now you know how to balance yourself or suppress yourself. You suppress yourself and just forget about it or try to do something. You just turn the attention elsewhere.

Be very clear, all your TV, newspaper, doing this, doing that and everything is directly related to your hypocrisy. You just do not want to sit with your self. I've seen many people doing something in the name of social service, just because they can't sit with themselves. They can't sit with themselves so they do something. Be very clear, even if you do social service, going to some temple, going to some social service organization, doing some social service because you are not able to sit with yourself, you will never be able to experience the truth.

Going to a temple or church or doing some social service should be like overflowing. You feel so much, you feel there is nothing more to be done and think, 'I have so much of time, let me do some service to society', then it is beautiful. Then it will lead you to enlightenment. The service itself can lead you to spiritual experience. You feel love overflowing and think, 'God has given me so much, this whole life is so beautiful and let me go to a temple or church and offer my gratitude' then it'll just liberate you. You will become enlightened.

But if you are going to temple or for social service just because you don't feel relaxed within yourself, because you can't sit quietly and because of so much of restlessness, it is of no value. You need to deal with your catharsis in some way and this is the way.

Such people with this type of attitude, even if they go to temples, will be sitting there and ranting against everybody. Hey don't do this, don't do that, what are you doing? Don't you know? God wants this and God wants that. They will start representing God. They will start, not even representing, they will start acting like God. These type of persons, even if they go to social service organizations, even if they do some service, they will be only putting their ego in front, they will only be torturing, they will not be serving, they will be torturing others. I've seen people doing so much of nonsense in the name of service.

Small story.

There was a schoolteacher, who was also a scoutmaster. He had a rule that all his students, all scout students, should come and give him a report on at least one good activity or one service that they did that day. Every day as soon as they came to school, they should report to the scoutmaster about one good activity or one service done by them.

One day three friends, all three of them got up and said, 'Sir, today we helped an old lady cross the road'. Scoutmaster said, 'Old lady crossing the road is O.K., but you don't need three persons. Why do you need three persons to help her cross the road?'

They said, 'Yes Sir, it really took three persons, because she didn't want to!'

Be very clear, many times you start doing things just for the sake of service, not feeling. You don't feel what you are doing. You don't feel the need of the other person. You have to fill your diary. You need to fill your timesheet. You need to fill your time and you need to show your project report to somebody. Maybe to the higher authorities or to the society that, see what I've done, just for that when you do it just for that, you create more mess and difficulty for others. You sow only more difficulty and more mess for others.

I always feel service should be overflowing out of your being; never should it be done for some ulterior purpose. Whenever it is done for some other purpose be very clear you will not be intense, you will not be growing in your being. Your love or service will be pure hypocrisy; I can say impure hypocrisy, not pure hypocrisy. Real hypocrisy, if you are pure you will be liberated. This is impure hypocrisy.

When Ramana Maharishi felt he was dying, he did not run here and there. He did not ask for water. He didn't say, 'Oh, call the doctor, 911'. First of all in Bharat there is no 911. There is some number that never works and nobody knows that number also. Really I'm not able to remember because we never call, it never works. At the most in Bharat we know only one number, 'Oh God', and something can happen. That alone can happen. That is all, nothing else can be done. Anyhow no 911, no water, no doctor, no emergency service, he was not even trying to save himself inside the house, trying to do something. See there is no possibility of 911, that we know. At least he could have tried to get little water or he could have shouted because his relatives were there in the house.

He did not do anything. He used that door of opportunity to get into the void. We are also again and again going near this door. Whenever you hear about somebody's death or whenever fear attacks, you also go near the door. But we are afraid to take the jump. And we have trained ourselves so much to be hypocrites or not to be intense. We somehow balance and we escape. We switch on the television we just move our attention towards something else.

Ramana Maharishi used that door to take a quantum jump into deathlessness. He just laid himself on the floor and did not move his body, allowed death to happen. He says beautifully, after the enlightenment he says about his experience.

'Suddenly for no reason I felt the deep fear that I am going to die. I was not sick; I was not having any mental problem. Physically, mentally I was healthy. But suddenly the thought came that I am going to die. I just co-operated with that fear. I did not try to jump, I did not try to run away, I did not bother about anything else. I did not feel like doing anything else. I just sat and allowed. I just sat and allowed the death to happen to my being'.

He says, 'I lay down and I decided, let me see what happens, what can be done. I just accepted, consciously started moving into that fear. That fear overtook me. The fear started working on me. I could see that I am dead. My body is not moving. Nothing is happening in me. I could see very clearly that I am out of the body. Suddenly like a flash the intelligence or the truth descended on me that my body is dead, but I am alive. I am not dead. My body is dead, but I could see, I could feel that I exist. It means I am something beyond body'.

He says, 'That single experience in that moment, experience of the truth, shook me completely and I realized I am not just body. I am something beyond body. After that I never had death fear or any fear. Once for all the fear has disappeared from my being. At that moment I understood that there was something in me that was not dying even after my body was dead. Why should I then bother about my body's death? Why should I bother about the death of my body? I knew that even if my body dies I should continue to exist. I am going to exist. I am alive. What is happening? Then I am something more than what I think. I am something more than this body'.

He says that this realization never left him. He says that he never moved away from this realization after that one experience. Just that one death experience has liberated one of the greatest masters Bharat had ever produced into enlightenment. His influence, especially in the recent days, is so much on every political and social leader of Bharat. I can say the great spiritual way which we are all expressing wouldn't have happened but for him. It is the wave happening from the great ocean called Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi. Almost all the modern day mystics, enlightened masters, social leaders, politicians have drawn their inspirations from him, as waves in an ocean called Ramana Maharishi.

This single technique has created an enlightened being or gifted a great enlightened being to planet earth. Of course, it happened spontaneously to him because he was practicing for a long time, over many births. You don't expect it will happen spontaneously to you. And even if it happens, you will not allow that fear to take you over. Now only you need to practice, you must practice. Just lie down in the house as dead, do not move the body and be very clear that you are dead. Immediately all kinds of fears will arise. No, no, no, just half hour, let me finish some urgent work and come back or can I just sign my will and come back, Swamiji? Our mind will not be ready. Your mind will never be ready. Even if you have lived three hundred years your mind will not be ready.

There is a nice story in Mahabharata.

There was a king called Yayati who lived for a hundred years. Then Yama, lord of death, came to claim him. Yayati says*,* 'No, no, no what is this? I am a king. I have so much to do. I have such a big kingdom and hundred years is too little. Please leave me. I cannot come now. I have not lived this whole life'.

Yama says*,* 'What? Leave you where? I have never heard this statement, I never even allow people to talk this much. Pack up. This is totally new for me and there is no petition in my case. I come and take people straightaway. That is all. If you don't come, I'll take you, that is all. Nothing else. In my language I don't understand all these words'.

He says, 'No, no, no please consider, do me one favor, do one small favor.' Yayati tries to convince. I think that day Yama was in a good mood. He said, 'All right, you are begging so much but at least someone of your sons should give their life for your sake'.

Yayati calls one of his sons. Son says, 'Yes, yes I'll give my life I have no problem, let my father live*'.* Son gives his life to Yayati. Yama extends Yayati's life by another hundred years. Next time when Yama came, again this guy started, 'No, no, no please do something. You said you'll come after hundred years but you came so quickly. I don't think hundred years are over. Something is wrong with your calendar. Why don't you check once more?'

Yama said, 'Nothing is wrong with my calendar something is seriously wrong with your mind. Nothing can be done'. Somehow Yayati rolls on the ground and prays to Yama and weeps. It's very rare case. I've never heard Yama giving discount or Yama obliging anybody. Again second time he accepted, 'All right, I'll take another son if he is willing to give up his life and let you live hundred more years. This is the last extension, but be very clear. You can't ask for extension anymore. Done, nothing more'.

When lord of death Yama comes the third time, Yayati wants another extension. Yama says, 'No, now nothing can be done'. Then Yama gives some teachings to him, beautiful teachings. He says you cannot put the fire off by pouring oil into it. You cannot feel fulfilled by offering sense pleasures to the senses.

You cannot feel that you are ready if you never lived intensely. Living intensely is not about fulfilling your senses, pouring pleasures into your senses, or living as you want. When you live intensely, you will be automatically liberated. I always tell our ashramites do mistakes with creativity. Do some new, new mistakes. Don't do the same old mistakes. Even to do new mistakes you don't have intelligence.

If you see your lives, just if you have the habit of keeping diary, you'll understand you are doing the same type of mistakes. For last twenty to thirty years you'll be doing the same type of mistakes. Maybe the scale is different, the place where you do is different,

or the time when you do is different, the date is different. The scale is different. But the mistakes will be almost same. We don't have creativity even to do new mistakes. If you see your lives you'll understand you don't have creativity even that much. That is not living intensely. When you live intensely, when you do some mistake intensely, you will never do again, there won't be any need.

All our karmas are repeated. Karma is nothing but saṃskāras created by you, which are not completely fulfilled. If you create some saṃskāra inside, the engram inside, which is not completely full, it will have the power to make you come again and again and travel in that same path. Whether it is coffee or champagne or smoking, whatever the engram, once you create that engram, will have the power to make you do the same thing again and again, till you feel completely fulfilled with that habit or with that enjoyment, with that pleasure. Even if you enjoy it intensely once, only once, you will be completely liberated. The saṃskāra, that engram, will never ask you anymore to travel in that path. It will liberate you.

Unfulfilled engrams are what I call karma. You keep your body alive, you keep your mind alive, because still you have hope that the mind can give something to you and the body can give something to you. Still you have the hope you can enjoy something, or something needs to be fulfilled through the body and mind. This is what I call karma. Karma is nothing but unfulfilled engrams and desires that are inside your being, which constantly make you again and again travel in that same path, trying to fill or give experience, fulfillment in your inner being.

You have created so many saṃskāras, engrams, in you. Saṃskāras mean engrams, so many memories engraved in you, embedded into you. Engrams are not dead memories. Understand that they are not dead memories. They are powerful energy lines, which can activate again and again to pull you down and make you travel with them, move through that same lines. If you are addicted to something this sutra is a great technique. Understand this technique is actually in three parts. All the three are leading to the same space.

Day before yesterday, with the seventh sutra, Shiva was trying to give a technique for intellectual people. With the eighth sutra he was trying to help and give the experience for emotional people. Now he is trying to give, trying to help the people who are more being level oriented. That is why he is saying, just be, at least once. Let you be completely, intensely, at least once. That itself will transform you.

Always you can see the being level people will have some sort of addiction. Being level and addiction are very closely connected. Intellectual level means logical, constantly thinking, thinking, and thinking. They'll make lot of money. They'll be achieving social success. They'll have tremendous social success. For all practical purposes, the intellectual group, who can logically think and express what they are thinking in a very logical way, rules the whole world. The person who hears will really think he is going to be helped. But you know what will happen, only after the happening.

Only people who are logically able to think and convince others rule the whole world. That is why there is so much of misery, because these guys don't have any hearts and their heads sucks their whole energy. They don't bother about anything. All they care is what they want. They don't even bother or care about anybody else. The second level group, emotional, these guys will be totally happy, lying in the beach; their only religion is hammock. Have the hammock; nothing else is necessary. Or painting. just painting not for the sake of selling. These guys won't even take the risk of selling. That is why when it comes to selling art, artists sell them only through galleries. If somebody wants to buy, let him buy. They don't have something called marketing. The moment you do marketing be very clear, you are no longer an artist, in which case you come in the category of intellect.

No true artist will go for marketing. He will not be interested. He is completely fulfilled the moment he finishes the painting. The painting itself is a reward for him. That itself, the job itself, is reward for him. Feeling the over flowing, fulfilled desire by writing poetry, doing some sculpting, painting, singing, dancing or whatever appeals to their desires is enough.

A real singer will feel fulfilled just by singing, not what he gets after singing. A real dancer will feel fulfilled just by dancing; the very dance is fulfillment, out of joy. You are not dancing for something; you are dancing just out of joy. You are not singing for something; the very singing is just out of overflowing. You are overflowing, so you are singing. These people are emotional level people.

The third kind is being level, people who are centered on their being. They will always have some addiction. The being is directly related to your saṃskāras, your engrams. Unless you are caught by the saṃskāras, you will not be a being level person. You will either be intellectual or emotional.

People who are neither intellectual nor emotional only will go to the depth of being. In that level, the one and only problem one will be having is addiction. Addiction means unfulfilled karmas, unfulfilled engrams.

Shiva is giving answers for those beings, for those beings only. First step lie down as dead. In the end I'll try to describe the technique step by step, you can then do. First step lie down as dead. Just decide that you are dead. Don't think oh, I'll do all my other work for the next two, three days then third day I'll decide and lie down. No, just now lie simply; now or never. Because after two three days you think you are going to have a new mental setup? No, everyday you are going to wake up to this same hell.

Be very clear that when you get up from the bed you are not going to have suddenly a new mind. Maybe when you get up from the meditation you'll have new mind. But not when you get up from the bed. Bed is not going to change your mind. Otherwise we would have started selling enlightenment beds to you long ago, because I saw what all

nonsense is getting sold in this country. Really you'll be surprised, what all is getting sold. At least I never heard about all these things before I came here, anyhow God saved me.

When you get up you are not going to have a new mind. So never postpone. Decide today, just lie down. Naturally when you decide or when you tell yourself that you are dead, so much of emotions, mixed emotions will come out. Suffering, surprise, anger, inability, guilt, so much and more will rise in you. Your whole being will be boiling. You will wonder what is happening, what is going on? Sometimes you will even feel anger towards me. What is he teaching? I have had enough of all these nonsense. You may think this is not for you.

But let me tell you that death is the ultimate technique, to open up all the emotions, to open up the Pandora box. To open up all the saṃskāras, which are the unfulfilled desires and feelings of guilt. Desire means I should live like this in future and guilt means I should have lived like that in the past. I should live like this is desire and I should have lived like that in the past is guilt. Both are same energy. When it travels towards the future, it is desire and when it travels towards the past it is guilt.

Desire, guilt, inability, worry, everything will start coming out. It is like boiling your being. It is one of the wonderful techniques. Do not do half-half. Don't think anyway in half hour I am going to get up what is there? Don't think after one hour you are going to get up and you are going to make that call. Your mind will say Oh, I think I have to listen to my answering machine, I have to pay the bill; Your other corner of the mind will say alright, anyhow after the meditation I'll get up and go and pay.

Be very clear you are not going to get up; you are not going to get up. Be very clear, very clear that you are not going to get up. Even if you have one small thought, in one corner of your mind that you are going to get up after one hour, then you can go and pay the bill, then you can go and answer this question, then you can do that, then you can do this, then I can do that, then this meditation is not going to work for you, no. You missed. You are not going to be helped. Be very clear you are not going to get up from the ground, over.

Neither your body nor your limb is going to move. Nothing is going to move, over, done. Only then all these emotions will rise. As long as your body is moving or the possibility of moving exists, you will not experience the intensity of emotions. You will not experience the flood of emotions in you. Only when you lock your body completely, all possibilities, suddenly the whole thing will open up.

The suppressed guilt, the suppressed anger, suppressed violence, suppressed sex, the whole bag of tricks will open up. You will be shocked where all these things were lying. It's like opening of the Pandora's box.

Shiva says these beautiful words, Die into the infinite void where you are no more.

Part 3: Shiva Sutras - Sutras 06 - 09

He knows what will happen when you lie down as dead. When you really lie down as dead, this whole thing will start rising in you. What will happen to my daughter, what will happen to my son, what will happen to my business?

An important truth, it's an ultimate secret you must understand, never think it's because of you things are going smoothly. It is in spite of you things are going smoothly.

This is one of the important secrets. Everyone should understand about life. As long as you think it's because of you things are going smoothly, you've done a big mistake. You don't have an understanding about life. You will be constantly suffering with ego. You'll have a constant nagging effect. You know what I mean when I use the word nagging effect. Most of you know when I use the word nagging effect, what I mean. Constantly you will be bugged for something. As long as you think because of you things are going well you'll be staying in the twenty-four hour nagging effect. Now fifteen seconds extra. Recently they discovered a day is not twenty-four hours, but some fifteen seconds extra. And not merely in the leap year, in the leap year you'll have only one day extra, now they say it's not even one day, another hour or hour and a half extra. One day plus an hour based on recent research. So constantly you'll be having that nagging effect for twenty-four hour and fifteen seconds.

When you understand in spite of you things are going well, then you'll be able to relax easily. Understand, fifty or sixty years ago you were not there on the planet earth. The day before your birthday it was not that planet earth was not moving. Just one day before your birthday, you can't say no, no, planet earth was not moving properly, it is only after I took birth I corrected everything, now things are going well, no. And the next day of your death never ever think planet earth will change the direction and it will drop from the cosmos, no.

Before your birth also it was going on beautifully, after your death also it'll go on beautifully, maybe much more beautifully, that's all with less trouble. Only when you have the clarity, you'll be able relax into this meditation. As long as you think because of you something is happening, you can't relax. One corner of your mind will be saying what nonsense you are doing? These are all not for me. Be very clear even a single thought like that cannot be there. Today we are going to do the meditation. If you have the thought that after the meditation I'll go back to the car and go home, gone; over. You are not going to open up. Only if you cover all possible holes, the energy will open up. You will stay, you will move into the experience, which means that your whole being will start bubbling.

It's a beautiful technique to boil your being. Ramakrishna says beautifully, siddha alu. Siddha in Sanskrit has two meanings. One is to become enlightened and other one is to be boiled. He says siddha means enlightened and boiled, beautiful word. If you have to become siddha, you have to be completely boiled. Alu means potato. If you boil the potato, after boiling, the potato will become very soft inside. Like that, siddha also will

become very soft inside. If your inside is boiled, that will become just like a boiled potato. Your whole being will be boiled.

Now, Shiva is giving a beautiful technique to boil your whole being. Unless you lock all the gates, all possibilities through which that steam is leaking, through which the steam is going out, you will not have enough energy to boil your being. The steam will go out if you give it a chance, if you allow, if you create any chance for your mind to think about future. Your mind is constantly running, thinking, wasting its energy by thinking about the future. Be very clear, thinking sucks your energy.

For example, just sit in your office, you don't have to do any work, just sit in your office, and think about the future for half hour. You will have shoulder pain. Your entire upper body from neck and shoulders will tighten. Just think about your future for half hour. Nothing else needs to be done. The very thinking sucks your energy. Your energy just flows, goes out.

Now the first thing when Shiva says is die, he says close all the doors. Lock all the doors. No corner should be allowed and no corner should be opened, so that the whole steam will be inside to boil your being. The boiling will start happening. You will be enraged in wrath. All the emotions that you can't name will start rising in you. It will start boiling you.

Stay in that same boiling and let the whole thing be boiled. Just stay so, do not think, after the meditation I'll take care of that. After this meditation I'll do that. You should not even have an idea, that you are doing meditation. You should be very clear that it is happening, nothing can be done now. And one more thing, never think death is not going to happen to you. Who knows? Is there anybody who is very clear that they will reach their home safely? At least I am not clear. If you are clear, I don't know about it. But I am not sure. You don't know. That is the only certainty.

Uncertainty is the only certain thing on the planet earth. Death is the only thing that never dies on the planet earth. Death is the only thing that never dies. You don't know, and not only you, but nobody can know. Our logical mid always keeps you in hope, so that you'll not enter into this experience. You are constantly cheated, exploited by your mind, with all these ideas about life, without you experiencing your being or the truth of your beings. That is why we always keep the cemeteries out of the city, outside the city. They are located in one corner, as if they do not exist. You do not want to see the signs of death anywhere. You do not want that memory to come into your life any time.

You are afraid and you are trying to hide a big pumpkin inside your small plate. You are trying to hide a big elephant in your garage, car garage, impossible. Be very clear, you may try, but at one time it comes out or shakes the house itself. It shakes the whole house itself. You are trying your best not to see the truth, avoiding, trying the best to avoid seeing the reality.

Here Shiva says, Die into the infinite void where you are no more

Ramana Maharishi says, 'Just because I allowed the death fear to happen, just because I accepted the death fear and went through that fear, the fear never came back again. I never had any fear in my life again'.

Just visualize living a life without fear, what a way to heaven it'll be. You can't imagine, because you never experienced that space even a single moment. You can't imagine life can be without fear.

Ramana says, 'Not only death fear, after that, never I experienced any fear. I do not know the meaning of the word fear, after that experience. I am not able to relate with the idea of fear itself, because I understood, even after the body dying, there was something which is not dying. The moment that truth was revealed to me, I could see very clearly, I could feel very clearly, I could experience very clearly that I am something far greater than body. I am not just body.'

This meditation will not be just a lesson, a teaching; it'll be a solid experience. It will be a truth for you, when you enter into this technique.

Next line is,

All these three are interconnected. Dying and entering into the void, moving beyond the senses and finally just becoming that experience, all these three are gates or doors to the same space. Through all these three you can enter into your being. This is what I call intensity.

Be intense, at least in any one of these three. There are some people they can't think of death or they can't lie down. They think oh God, we don't want all these things, even if it is meditation, we don't want. OK Swamiji, they will say and lie down and after the interval they will escape. For that type of persons, personality, Shiva says, I can't leave you. Even if you try to escape I shall not leave you so easily.

He is giving you another one technique. He is giving the next level technique. At least, even if you don't want to lie down, move beyond your senses. Even if things are happening in front of you, just stop the eyeball movement. When you stop the eyeball movement also, you will experience a total different space in side your being. Again you will see so much of emotions will be rising, but you will be centered. You will be completely centered.

Drink something, coffee or tea or water whatever you may drink, but just become that experience. When the water touches your mouth, when it touches your tongue feel the coolness, feel it is traveling inside. Feel the experience of that cool feeling, what is

happening, with that drinking and your body. Just be aware of what is going on in your being and just become that experience. Just immerse and relax yourself in that experience. Again you will see the whole gamut of emotions rising, but you are completely centered, you are centered.

Three levels of meditation to try, try at least one meditation technique. If you are courageous enough, just lie down as dead. That is wonderful technique. Lie down as dead and enter the void. Even though it looks very difficult, it is straight cut or I should say short cut. People who don't want to waste their time, those who want instant enlightenment, for them this is the technique.

If you are not that courageous, 'No, no, little meditation I can do Swamiji, not too much. Anyway I just came here because I saw your flyer. I am not so keen. it's OK. Anyway you speak so nicely, so I thought let me sit here. After all what am I going to do sitting in the house? I'll be fighting with her and she'll be fighting with me. Instead better let me sit here. At least, I'll forget some of my worries. I can relax and remember something else. What are we going to do? I'm just here because it is a good option. This is a little better option among all the possibilities'.

It is a better than sitting in front of the TV and watching that nonsense like Jerry Springer show. Actually all this is a specimen of the ugliness that is inside a being. See, I am just shocked that these kinds of shows are becoming popular. I heard that is the most popular show. I was shocked it is completely nothing but violence and sex. It is a subtle way to experience what you can't do. When somebody else does you are very happy and you are enjoying. You can't beat your husband, out of politeness, at least not everyday. There he is getting beaten, the husband is beating the wife and the wife is beating the husband.

I could not watch that show for more than fifteen minutes. They were telling me, some of our ashramites were telling me to watch it. I was asking them that I wanted to learn more about American culture so that I'll be able to relate with them in whatever I wanted to speak on. I picked up two, three books also to read about American slang expression, so that I can speak on what I wanted to tell them in their language. So I asked them, tell me about some show. They did not tell me about the nature of this show, they just told me, you watch this show Swamiji. There are other two, three shows that were little decent. Same type, but people do not beat each other. They don't allow the violence and it's a little more decent. The first show, I couldn't watch for more than five minutes.

I said, what nonsense? Actually these are all the specimens of what is going on in the mind. Anyhow, if you are here just as a little better option, then you can go for second or third techniques. No problem, you'll take your own time, I'll also take my own time. By the time you come to enlightenment, you'll be old and I'll be old. But if you are sincerely interested these techniques can transform you.

Always before you do this meditation, keep somebody who will call you after one hour. You will come back, that is different, why I say that is because then you can forget about getting up. So that you can be completely be clear in your mind that you are gone, over, done.

Otherwise you will be just waiting, after one hour I have to get up, I think half hour is over or should I get up after ten minutes? You'll have to give place for your mind. Let your mind be completely free, liberated. Only then you can completely go into that meditation. Do not allow even a single thought that makes you believe you are going to get up, or there is a life after this one hour. Do not allow even a single thought, which speaks about extension or next step. Completely be very clear, nothing is going to happen anymore, over; be very clear. Let that person come and call you after one hour.

Do not enter into the meditation unless you have somebody to come and call you after one hour. That person should be able to call you in a very polite, mild and loving way. He cannot come and bang the door. He cannot come and shout, he should not disturb you, because you'll feel you entered into the body with pain and fear. That shouldn't be the case.

You should settle into the body in a very relaxed, loving way, in a graceful way. Someone should call you in a loving way, one who really loves you. It's very difficult to find such a person, but nothing can be done, you have to find someone who will call you in a very relaxed way, in a very loving way, so that you can enter into the body and settle down and go and do the routine work. After the meditation, at least for half hour don't do anything, which needs your attention, like driving, etc.

Don't do anything, which needs your attention. Now I'm here, so I'll call you, don't worry. Let me give the instructions.

Somebody has given me a question asking who am I? What is my purpose in the life? Actually, you are supposed to ask the question who am I to yourself, not to me. I asked the question to myself and found the answer. Now you have to find the answer. I cannot give you the answer. If I give you the answer, it'll be my answer. It is supposed to be your answer. Only then it'll be your experience. So ask the question deeply and find the answer.

Now, you can sit on the floor or you can sit on the chair also, no problem. But leave your shoes and relax your belts, nothing should hold your body tightly. If you can, better remove the belt, socks, nothing should hold you, nothing should make you feel bound. You should feel very relaxed.

For some reason if you don't want to do this meditation, you can just sit in the last row, because for some people this meditation may create fear. But even if you don't do this meditation, it's not that you are not going to have fears in your life. At least it's a beautiful method. When you go into the fear in the presence of the master, you will

come out as a new being. At least I am here to help you, to support you. Otherwise also you will go into the fear whole day. But now the rare thing, the presence of the master, help of the master, support of the master is there.

Small story.

The prince of one country enjoys going into the market, mingling with the subjects, and shopping by himself and all those things. One day he goes shopping and asks the shopkeeper, what is the cost of the fish? She said, 50 dollars a pound. The Prince asked, what fifty dollars, is it some rare kind of fish? She said, no it's rare to get a Prince like this to shop here! I may get this fish, but I won't get a Prince like this once more in my shop to pay that much money!

You may have meditation, but you'll not get the Master again. So better do it now itself. After this also if you are not interested, you may sit in the last row, but close your eyes and sit, so you won't disturb others meditating.

Let me give the instructions now. Clear understanding of the instructions is necessary. Please understand, you will be very clear that your body is not moving, you will not do anything, anymore in your life, done with everything.

Mentally be very clear that life is over, life is over. Nothing needs to be done and nothing can be done. Then naturally you'll see, the fear, the whole thing rising; the fear, the greed, the guilt, all those things will not rise if you are convinced that you are going to get up after one hour.

If you are very clear that you are going to get up and go back to the car and go back home, then nothing will rise. And if you sincerely finish, say no, over, then you'll see all these emotions rising in you.

When all these emotions rise in you, just be a witness or do not move your body with that. Let those emotions rise and fall like a flood; let them happen in your life, in your body, in your being, but you just be a witness.

I'll guide you step by step. You may do it for twenty-minutes. But when you do it in the house, at least do it for forty-two minutes, because twenty-one minutes is one energy cycle. Do at least two cycles, because it is not so easy to convince your mind that you are not going to get up in twenty one- minutes. Now because of the time constraint we will do twenty-one minutes, when you do in the house do for at least forty-two minutes.

Anybody who is intensely, really interested in transformation, this can give you the miraculous transformation. These are all few techniques for that. Just miraculous transformations will happen. Just like that it'll change your being, attitude, understanding, experience about your life and your being.

Please close your eyes. Lie down as dead. Even if you are sitting be clear, body is no more active. You can be seated, no problem, but decide you are dead. Let every part of you body relax. Visualize deeply that your toes are turning cold. …Now your legs are turning cold….Your thighs are getting cold… your midsection is turning cold… your chest and back are turning cold….your arms are turning cold… your neck and shoulders are turning cold….your face has turned cold…. Your entire body is cold and unmoving… there is no activity in your body…

You have no feeling anywhere in your body. You cannot feel. You cannot smell. You cannot taste. You cannot hear. You cannot see. All your senses are dead.

You have no thoughts. Your mind is no more. If you feel thoughts or emotions allow them to rise and die.

You are dead. (42 min)

Start with pretending but don't stop there! Even in life that is what we do. We pretend we are living, that is all. Unfortunately we don't stop.

Dying is not easy! You need to let go, even to die. When Yama is not taking you by force you have to relax. Here, you are volunteering, so you have to make an effort. Relax first. Let every part of your body relax from the tips of your toes, limb by limb, to the top of your head. Once you fully relax, visualize intensely that you are in a deep dark space. You are not able to see yourself, you cannot hear, feel, smell or taste. All your sensory organs have shut down. Your mind cannot function as well without your senses supporting it. It will try to play back residual memories. Relax. Slowly your mind will die down. Your body will get cold. Do not struggle. Just relax and let go.

As you relax into death your mind will struggle. Various emotions will pour out of your mind. Past memories may flood you. Emotions such as greed, guilt, fear, worry, jealousy and anger will arise unbidden. More you try to settle into that state of ultimate relaxation the more your mind will try to live out its unfulfilled desires, emotions and memories. Stay with that emotion whatever the emotions may be.

If you are angry stay angry but don't move. Stay still as if dead. Do not let the emotion cause any motion in your body. Stay unmoved. Just witness the emotion. Once you are able to stay still without moving you can master that emotion. Our scriptures say that if we are able to stay unmoved eleven times while an emotion plagues us that emotion will forever lose its grip on us. Whether it is anger, lust or fear, nothing can have a hold on you if you stay unmoved just eleven times. I feel eleven is too many times. You can do it in less.

It is only a small step from pretending to visualization. The intent makes the difference. Do not worry about what you should be feeling. When you are dead you will not feel anything. You should not be feeling anything at all. This is the state you are in each night when you are in dreamless deep sleep. So it is not something that is unfamiliar to your body and mind. They both are used to switching off every night. Possibly even during the day in the case of many of you. It is your conscious mind that holds you back. With determination you can shake that off.

When you are in that state of deep relaxation visualizing as dead you are beyond mind and therefore beyond senses. You can also move beyond the senses in the conscious state when you are awake. When you turn your attention inwards instead of outwards you can move beyond senses.

Whenever you experience anything through your senses there are three elements in that experience. First the experiencer, the subject, that is you. The second is the object that is seemingly creating the sensory input. The third is the process of experiencing. To most of

us out of three elements, experiencer, experienced and experiencing, the most relevant is the experienced. The object holds our attention. The sight we behold, the sweet we suck, the body we feel, we perfume we smell and the music we hear captivate our senses and through our senses us.

If we can get beyond the object being experienced we can go beyond the senses. Your attention then shifts inwards. The process of experiencing becomes the only element of the experience. That is the first part of going beyond the senses. There are tantric techniques that train in going beyond the senses. You can look at something without moving your eyeballs and moving your body. Time will cease to matter. Mind will cease. Similar techniques can help with other senses as well to move beyond them.

For now if all you can do is to pretend, then please pretend. But pretend intensely so that the pretension becomes visualization. Visualization is just acting out reality. Just change your intent. You can then experience death and move beyond the senses into Shiva Consciousness.

A discourse delivered by THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM in Tamil

Awareness is the way to go inward. In our life, be it problems with our body, problems with the mind, or problems with our feelings or problems that are spiritual, it is because of our tremendous insensitivity. We lead our life even without knowing what is going on. We do not even have the basic clarity to see what is happening within us and around us. It is because we live our life superficially. We never understand the changes that happen within us or the changes that happen outside us.

A small story:

A man after drinking heavily came home. He had drunk to a point where he could not drink anymore. As he was coming home his worries started. The first question his wife will ask: Why are you coming home so late? Secondly he knows she will ask: What were you doing all this while? A big enquiry will take place. So he was afraid.

He entered the house through the back door. As he climbed the stairs he slipped and fell down. He was hurt all over his face. Without making any noise, since he wanted to save himself from his wife's anger, he went to the bathroom and put on bandages on his face. Somehow he managed the situation without knowing what he was doing in the drunken state. He went to sleep without his waking his wife up.

The next day morning as soon as she woke up she started yelling: Last night where did you go?

He said: I had overtime work.

She asked: What were you doing?

He replied calmly: I told you I had overtime work in the office.

She said: You are lying. You have been drinking!

He denied it and said: Surely I have not been drinking. How can you be so sure that I have been drinking?

She said: No, go and look in the bathroom, you have put bandages all over the mirror!

In his drunken state he looked at his wounds in the mirror and applied the bandages on the mirror!

We also do the same thing in our lives. Where ever there is a problem instead of applying medication where the problem is we apply it somewhere else. Besides becoming an object of ridicule for others, the pain of problems follows us everywhere.

The man in this story ignores his face that is hurt and applies the bandages to the unhurt mirror. He applies a bandage to his face reflected in the mirror! He tries to set the reflection right! In the same way this world and our life are reflections of our self. If we are in bliss we will have the feeling that everyone is in bliss. If we are in sorrow we will have the feeling that everyone is in sorrow. If we are the kind of person who believes everybody we will have the feeling that everyone believes us. If we don't believe others, we feel no one believes us. The world is just a reflection of who we are.

We instead of putting the bandage within ourselves we put the bandage on the mirror. We apply bandage on the world and we try to change the world. Some of us only put a bandage, while some others begin to operate! When we begin to operate on the mirror, at the most the mirror will break. That is all. We are not going to gain anything or see any change.

Truly what has to be done is to create awareness within us and develop clarity as to where we are making a mistake. Why we are committing that mistake? How to correct it? Only when we turn back and look into ourselves we can bring change. We will begin to create bliss within ourselves. Within each of us blissful energy is blossoming all the time.

In this world thousands of Jñānīs (enlightened persons) are created. Jñānīs never agree on anything. If we ask one of them about food one will say: It is enough if we have one meal a day. If we ask another Jñānī he will say: No. It is okay to have two meals. Another Jñānī will say: Nothing wrong we can eat as much as we want. If we ask Mahavira he will say: Don't eat. It is wrong to eat. If we ask him about marriage he will say: Don't get married. That is the only solution for a peaceful life. If we ask another Jñānī he will say: Nothing wrong in getting married once. If we ask another Jñānī he will say: Nothing wrong one can get married four times. Each Jñānī will give a different opinion.

I always say: If we get married once in our life, attaining Jñāna (enlightenment) is an option. Even if we don't have Jñāna we can live. But if we get married twice, attaining Jñāna is a compulsion. We cannot live without attaining Jñāna. It is difficult. Only if we have Jñāna we can solve all the problems we face.

It is said in the Vedas that this is because each one's experience is different. Each Jñānī expresses his experience in a unique way. The way in which one Jñānī expresses another will not express in the same way. That is why each Jñānī has a different opinion, different method, and different goal.

But all the Jñānīs throughout the world accept one thing. On this one issue alone no one differs from the other. That means this idea must be a very basic fundamental idea. This idea is that man by his very nature is a blissful free being. On just this one idea all the Jñānīs, all the yogis, all the rishis, all the siddhas and all the sages have agreed. All the great saints have accepted this one idea. All the Jñānīs say that life is of blissful nature. Our mind is blissful by nature. By nature we are blissful beings.

However, in our daily lives that is not our experience. In reality, our life is otherwise. In our real life experience, life is full of sorrow. It is not very blissful in nature. Then where does the problem occur? Are the Jñānīs telling a lie or are we making a mistake somewhere in our lives? Now we have to do research only on these two things. Are the Jñānīs lying or are we living our lives in the wrong way? Surely there is no need for Jñānīs to tell a lie, because they do not need anything from this world. So there is no need for them to lie.

Ramana Maharishi has beautifully said the following words. It is explained in one of his disciples' books: A manual worker may earn around a thousand dollars as wages. A teacher may earn a few thousand dollars. Business people may earn many thousand dollars even millions. However, the Jñānīs who work at a deeper level of the being need two meals and three yards of cloth. That is all. They do not need anything more.

More salary is given to the people who talk than is given to the people who do physical labor. More salary is given to those who use their mind than those who do the talking. But the world does not give the Jñānīs who work at a deeper level than that of the mind anything. It is because they do not need anything. So there is no necessity for the Jñānīs to tell a lie. They have no vested interests. They have nothing to achieve by telling a lie.

That means only we are making a mistake somewhere in our lives. Where are we making a mistake? How to correct this? This is what we are going to understand deeply in this discourse.

I want to make a small request before entering into the discourse. In a step-by-step manner I am going to try to explain to you the setup of your mind. Generally only in our mediation camps or workshops I share this idea. The reason being the people who come for these mediation camps come with a deep desire to meditate. They do not come to do window-shopping. When we walk on the street we just go into a well-lit shop to satisfy our curiosity to see what is in there because the display window is beautiful. The people who come for these meditation camps are not mere window shoppers. They will be sincere seekers of Jnana (knowledge). So I generally share these deep ideas only at these meditation camps. But today with the thought that all of you have come here sincerely I will try to explain this idea.

One thing you have to do from your side. Listen with deep awareness to what I say and absorb the ideas. With deep Sraddha (conscious, sincere and dedicated mental attitude) try to absorb all that I say. It is because this truth has the power to bring about the change in you just by listening to it deeply.

Some people come to me and ask: Master, I know it is wrong to smoke but I am not able to stop smoking. What should I do? I asked him: Sir, we know our hands will get burnt when we touch the fire but do we still put our hands in the fire? No, we don't. We know it is wrong to smoke. We know smoking is harmful for our health. Then how can we say we are not able to quit smoking? It means that we do not understand fully that smoking is injurious to our health.

If we understand the truth, it will change our life. The truth has the power to transform our life. Nothing else has the power to transform our life other than the truth. If the truth that it is harmful for our health to smoke, is clearly explained to a man he will not be able to smoke again. If we are smoking again and again the truth has not been explained to us clearly. Is there anyone who will say that: I know that if I touch fire it will hurt me, but I am unable to keep my hands off it? Do we ask: Teach me a mediation technique to keep

away from fire? Do we ask: How not to touch fire please advice me, Master? No, we do not ask such questions. The moment we know it burns we take our hands off. There is a saying in Tamil: The pot was hot and lo! The hand let go! If the pot is hot automatically the hand lets go. If the hand does not let go then it means that the clarity that the pot is hot has not taken birth in us.

The truth has the tremendous power to liberate us immediately without postponing. The truth has the power to take us to spiritual freedom in a moment. All we have to do is to deeply and calmly absorb the ideas spoken today. We have to give permission for these truths to work on us.

At least for the next few hours do not ask all these foolish questions, contradictory questions. There are two types of contradictory questions. One is to know the answer. It is asked because you want to understand more deeply. I always welcome these types of questions.

Sometimes people ask because they think they know better or they ask based on the ideas that they already have or to prove a point supporting their mental setup. They oppose what is being said. These people ask questions out of an arguing mentality just to prove their point. Such questions asked out of an arguing mentality will only lead to stubbornness. Stubbornness is worse than paralysis. At least paralysis will only prevent one side of our body from functioning. With stubbornness, our mind itself will stop functioning. People who are stubborn do not move forward in life. They do not think of moving forward either. They do not have the clarity of thinking to move forward in life. People who hold on to the past or future are the stubborn people. They do not come to the reality of the present. They do not have the clarity to come to the present.

Now all those questions that arise again and again are because of our stubbornness. Life means we will have our own imagination of how it ought to be and we will be living it. If someone comes along and says the final truth, that truth proves that our whole life is a lie. It proves that the objects after which we run are like mirages in the dessert.

Even if we understand and accept that it is the truth, for the sake of the ego we protect our earlier understanding of life. Even if the person in front of us is telling the truth we question him. When we function with this attitude the truth does not work on us. We do not permit the truth to work on us.

Ramakrishna has beautifully said: When a wind called malayamaarutham blows all the trees in its way will become sandalwood trees except the banana tree. The banana tree will not allow the wind to change it. In the same way this breeze of Jnana that blows when we open the doors of our heart will transform all those in its way into Jnanis. We cannot do anything to those people who are struggling without being able to open the doors of their heart whatever may be the wind that blows past them. Not just the wind of Jnana, even if a storm of Jnana cannot do anything to them.

All the thoughts we already have about life, the mental set up we already have about life is dharma; the thoughts about our security such as wealth is artha and thoughts about what we think as comforts in our life is kama.

All our thoughts about these three, all our thoughts about our life, the rules that our social setup have given us and our opinion about these rules, constitute dharma. One should not kill another. Reason being it is a dharma. If it is okay for one to kill another, the world will not have any people. Eye for an eye attitude will make the whole world blind. This revengeful attitude will not show us the final truth about. These agreements we make between us are called dharma. We say to another: I will not torture you and you will not torture me. Both will co-exist happily. We have come together and made these rules amongst ourselves. These have become the rules of society and rules of the country. These ideas or rules constitute dharma.

Artha means wealth. Whatever we think will give us security till the end of our lives would constitute artha. Wealth and life insurance will constitute artha. Truly if you see it is not life insurance. It is death insurance. After a person dies the money goes to the relatives of the dead. The relatives are waiting for this. After death if it goes to someone then that someone is waiting for this. It is death insurance.

A small story:

A small boy was playing on the seashore.

His mother said: Son, do not go to the water. Do not play in the waves. Recently we had the tsunami. Don't enter the waves. Keep away from the water. Play in the sand.

The boy asked his mother: How come when father goes and plays you never tell him not to. If father goes you let him go but you stop me from going?

The mother said: Oh! Your father has life insurance. Even if he dies it is okay.

Life insurance is truly death insurance. Whatever we think of as security in our life is artha.

Thirdly we will see about kama. Kama is all the things we think of as comforts in our life.

All the wrong ideas we have about dharma, artha and kama make our lives sorrowful. If we attain freedom from these wrong ideas about dharma, artha and kama, we achieve moksha, liberation. Our elders say dharma, artha, kama and moksha. If we understand clearly that the ideas we have about dharma, kama, artha are wrong and correct it that will bring us moksha. Only these wrong ideas about artha, kama and dharma give us mental stress which leads to physical disease. They create mental and physical disease that puts us in sorrow.

Truly if we deeply see our mental set-up we will see that there is nothing called the mind. Please understand deeply, time and again jnanis have said that something called mind does not exist. But we think that such a thing such as mind exists in our life.

In truth if we create awareness within us and see, we will find that each of our thoughts is separate and free and cannot be connected. But because of our past experiences that we have created and that we remember the imprint of our thoughts, we begin to connect all our thoughts and imagine that the mind exists. Thoughts are not at all connected in any way within us as they arise. Each thought is independent and unconnected. Please understand that if we understand this one thought clearly this very second we can attain jnana. This very second we can realize the freedom within ourselves.

You can do this small exercise. After you go home sit quietly for ten minutes. Take a piece of paper and write down all the thoughts that come to you. Do not try to control or change any of the thoughts that arise. Write these thoughts in a casual and spontaneous manner. You are doing this for yourself. You are not going to show it to anybody. So be honest and sincere and write all the thoughts that come to you. After writing for ten minutes just read what you wrote once. After reading that you will understand what a big mental asylum you are running in your mind.

Without any reason unconnected thoughts come up again and again. Suddenly you will have the thought to go to Madurai. Then you have the thought: At least once I must go to America and visit my son. Then the next thought will be: Would it not be nice to ask my wife to bake cakes to eat? Then another thought: Someone said THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM is giving a discourse. I should go there. Then another thought: Some one said they are conducting mediation classes. I could go there. Then a counter thought: Why should I? I am well. Why mediation for me? Let's leave that. After a while another thought: It's been a while since I went to the doctor. Maybe I should go and visit him.

The thoughts that arise in the mind will be unconnected and separate. There will not be any connected thinking. Just for ten minutes if we sit down and put our thoughts on paper as they arise we will know that the mind by it's very nature has unconnected thoughts, thoughts that cannot be connected with a reason, thoughts that are unbounded, thoughts that are free.

Each thought that arises in our mind is independent, free. Every second we are renouncing a thought. A small example: If we want to get up from here we have renounced the thought we want to sit here. The moment we decide to walk we have renounced the thought that we want to sit. The moment we decide to sit up we have renounced the thought that we want to recline and sit.

Because we are renouncing our older thoughts again and again, newer thoughts are coming to our mind. Some times some people will try to hold onto one thought and stay deeply rooted in that thought. Only when we deeply root ourselves to one thought we achieve whatever we have thought of. Even for achieving, after we achieve we will not

be rooted in that thought. That is why Ramana Maharishi says: The illusory mind perceives a small mustard seed as a mountain before attaining it and sees a mountain as a small mustard seed after attaining it.

Before attaining we feel we cannot live without that. After attaining we feel that whatever has been achieved is dull and uninteresting. It is a foolish mental setup. Before attaining the mind shows even a mustard seed to be a mountain. It shows us that life cannot be lived without a certain object. It tells us: It is a basic need for my life. Somehow can't I attain it? How will my life go on without this? The mind will use all these big words to cheat us. After we attain what we want it will show even a mountain as a mustard seed. The foolish mind will show even a small mustard seed as a mountain before attaining and show a mountain as a mustard seed after attaining it.

To quote a small example: We go shopping to buy something. On the way we see a new shoe on display. It is a beautiful pair of shoes. As soon as we see it, we feel like buying it and wearing it. We do not have money to buy it. So we just brush aside that thought and go away. The next day, while going the same way we see the same pair of shoes. A thought crosses our mind: Somehow we will save enough money to buy those shoes. The third day the mind will say: Surely if I buy those shoes it will be good for me. The fourth day the mind will start living with those shoes. After a week the mind will say: If we buy those shoes we can wear it and go jogging in the morning. Our health will be better. It will be a great help for our life. What a big help these shoes are? The mind will say the next day: My life will change for the better if I buy those shoes.

Slowly the mind will make all kinds of reasons to show that our life will not run without those shoes. It will show as if it is a basic necessity in our life. Immediately we will somehow try and save money or borrow money from somebody and buy those shoes. For one week even while sleeping we will sleep with those shoes on. For one week those shoes will be on our feet. After one week we will start wearing it only when we go out. After a month we will wear it only for some special occasions. After three months you won't even polish those shoes. They will be lying in a corner of a room below the stairs.

This is our way of life. Before achieving even a small mustard seed will show up as a mountain and after achieving even a mountain will show up as a mustard seed in the illusory mind. Not only objects, we treat our relationships much the same way. Before living with somebody he will appear like an angel to us. Whether it is husband or wife, before marriage the other person will appear like an angel. He will appear like a hero and she will appear like a heroine. They will appear just like the image we have in our dreams. The moment we come and live closer together slowly we begin to realize that the other person is not up to our expectations. After a few days we begin to think that we made a mistake by marrying that person. After a few more days we begin to think that we did not make a mistake, but the other person has cheated us and not lived up to our expectations.

First our mind says: Ah! Just looks like the girl in our dreams. Then it says: No, she is not as I expected but I will adjust and live with her. Later it says: Maybe I did make a mistake. Finally it says: I did not make a mistake but she has cheated me. Step by step the mind thinks this way.

Whenever we take something for granted, whenever we decide something is ours, that very instant we stop living with that object or person. One more thing, the mind by its very nature has a tendency to show the mustard seed as a mountain before attaining it. It shows even a mountain as a mustard seed after attaining it. Only if we understand this we will begin to go with our feelings rather than live by what our mind says.

The mind is a place where separate, unconnected and free thoughts arise. But we try to connect those thoughts in a superficial way. The stress we had yesterday and the mental turmoil we have today are separate free incidents. There is no need to connect the two. But our mind connects the mental turmoil we had yesterday, the stress we had one week back, the turmoil we had one month back with the turmoil we have today and comes to the conclusion: I am in a mental turmoil. I am in depression. My stress has become more. This is our first sin. It is called the original sin.

Without knowing anything about us firmly or clearly we just pick out some incidents in our life and connect it and come to a conclusion about ourselves. This is the first mistake we make. The mental turmoil we had ten years ago; the mental turmoil we had two years ago; the mental turmoil we had a week back; the mental turmoil we have today are all separate incidents. There is no need to connect these incidents. We cannot connect these incidents.

Our mind creates new thoughts every second. Because of habit when we connect all these incidents we imagine some incidents as pleasurable and some incidents as sorrowful. If someone listens to what we say we imagine that to be pleasure. That is why we have put a stamp of pleasure on the incidents when people listened to us. Whenever people listen to us we put the stamp of pleasure and tell ourselves: Oh! We are experiencing pleasure. Then the mind says: Initially I was happy. Now also I am in pleasure. Immediately the next question arises, how to be happy tomorrow? The mind thinks: So tomorrow if I have to be happy then someone has to listen to me. I have to be in a position so that others will listen to me. I have to bring the same mental setup with me. Around me I should keep people who listen to me. What should I do to make this happen?

If we think that a certain incident is pleasure then we will make all efforts to elongate this period of pleasure. If we decide that something gives us pain then we will take all efforts to break that pain.

Understand deeply: Our mind is an unclutched gear. It is a gear shaft that has not been engaged. It is a free gear shaft. It is composed of independent thoughts revolving on their own. But because of our habit we try to connect these thoughts and think they form a clutched shaft. Because of our nature we try to engage a free unclutched gear shaft

thinking that it is clutched and create a thought continuum. Only when we decide our mind is a continuous object, problems begin. When we think it is a continuous object that exists we create a net of pleasure incidents and a net of pain incidents.

By connecting all the incidents that we think give pleasure we try to do whatever has to be done to make such incidents happen again in our life. We act in order to create that same mental state of pleasure in us. This is one act. Secondly we pick out some incidents in our lives and label it as pain. Again because we do not want all that happened and the pain that we went through to happen again we do whatever we need to do to avoid that. But we have forgotten one basic thing. By trying to make incidents that we think as pleasure happen again and again it may happen that no pleasure arises out of it. We forget that when we keep eating more and more of a sweet that we think tastes good, instead of feeling good we may feel we have had enough. We may feel sick.

We forget that when we brand some incidents as painful and try to avoid those incidents, these very incidents have the ability to run and chase us and catch hold of us. Be it death or a separation from a friend or relative, we create a wall of pain around these incidents. We do all that needs to be done to avoid that separation. After all some day the separation has to happen. We refuse to accept this truth. When we refuse to accept this truth nature forcibly with deep swiftness and full force creates this separation for us. When incidents that we think of as pain happen beyond our control, we struggle without being able to accept them.

Maya or illusion is nothing but the effort we make to break the incidents that cause us pain and to elongate the incidents that cause us pleasure. Truly we cannot break pain or extend pleasure. In truth there is no pain or pleasure there. In our life each incident that happens is a separate free incident. Only we try to connect all these incidents and stamp them as painful incidents and incidents that give us pleasure. After stamping these incidents we try to either prevent such incidents from happening or try to make them happen again. Labeling these incidents as pleasurable or painful is a wrong act. Trying to break the pain or lengthen the pleasure will only result in failure.

In our life, right from when we were ten years old, we try to connect all the incidents that gave us pain. We then decide that life itself is painful. After deciding which incidents give us pain we try and make an effort to prevent such incidents from happening. But we do not understand that the very conclusion that life is painful is wrong. Life is not painful. Only some incidents that have happened in our life have been painful. That is all. But when we connect incidents that happen in our life and come to a conclusion that life itself is painful, even without our knowledge we create hatred towards our entire life.

In a fish tank there is small air pump that generates bubbles. There will be a continuous stream of bubbles that comes up from this pump. Each bubble is separate and free from the other. It will come up from the bottom. Same way in our mind each thought is a separate bubble. It is not connected with the other. It cannot be connected. But we have stored our thought bubble ten years back and the thought bubble that just happened. We

connect the two and decide that from then till now I am in sorrow. We decide that from then till now I have stress. The moment we make this decision we have created an enemy that does not exist. Then we begin to fight with this enemy.

In the fields, to chase away the crows they make a scarecrow. They make this out of hay. For the head they use an upturned pot and paint a face on that pot with charcoal. If the crow wants to fight with that scarecrow, will the crow win? No, the crow will not win, because actually there is no enemy there. The crow has to know that it is only a dead doll. We do not have to fight with it nor make friends with it. Truly there is no one there. No person is there. Even within us as we think there is no sad or happy mind. Only because we are habituated to connect independent, separate thoughts that arise in the mind we imagine the mind exists, we also fight with the imaginary enemy, and we get tired mentally within ourselves. We feel that the misery we have is not enough so we bring in one more misery of how not to be miserable and sink our selves in unrecoverable misery. If misery is on one side, on the other there is the thought as to how not be in sorrow. The thought of how not to worry becomes another worry. The thought of how to be without fear becomes another fear.

Sigmund Freud is the father of Western psychology. He saw mentally sick people again and again and heard their problems repeatedly. He has done research for about 35 years and has formed some ideas about man. After 35 years of research he writes a letter to his friend and student. He writes: Son, I have discovered many things in these 35 years of research. If I have to tell you the truth the only path for man is sorrow and sadness.

He says that whatever you do you cannot bring humans out of this state. After 35 years of research he says this. Is thirty-five years of research necessary for this? There is no need. Why he came to this conclusion is because all the specimens that came to him were mentally sick patients. He conducted these experiments on people who were already mentally ill. He did not get a single jnani who has gone beyond the mind. If he had an opportunity to live with a jnani he would not have come up with the idea that man cannot come out of sorrow. All the specimens he got were mentally ill. He got only hopeless and mentally retarded specimens. After looking at those specimens at hand, based on the conclusions he drew about these specimens, he generalized it for all humans.

Western psychologists continuously conduct experiments on rats. After doing research on rats they conclude that it is the same for humans. Anatomically, rat and human may be the same in many ways. There is nothing wrong in this. But even for mental health issues they are continuing to draw conclusions based on experiments conducted on rats. For how many days can you conduct experiments on rats and compare that to humans?

That is why there is much to Western psychology or psychotherapy. We just have to lie down on a bed and keep talking about our problems. The poor doctor will sit there and listen to us forever. That is all. In the villages there are old ladies, grandfathers, neighbors to share our problems. If not there are some swamis or Gurus. We can go to them and share our problems. In the West there is no one to sit and listen. Everyone is busy.

The person who listens is the psychiatric doctor. We just pay him to sit and listen to us. What will he do? We will talk and he will listen. How many days to talk about the same problems? The doctor will get bored. The patient gets tired of talking and talking about the problem and gets a feeling that the problem is straightened out.

So if we want to become a psychiatric doctor, we don't need to do anything. Just pretend to listen. Then learn ten words of consolation. We don't need to do anything more.

Not only that, Sigmund Freud created a beautiful idea. He made the patient lie down on the bed and put a screen between him and the patient. The doctor will sit on this side and the patient will lie down on the other side. The patient has to talk about the problem and the doctor will listen. You know why they put this screen? Because some of the times even if you record Hmm, continue and words like that and leave it where the doctor sits, the patient would not know. If you record all this and leave it the patient will not know what is happening. He will just continue to talk.

This is a true story. It truly happened. A doctor had five to six patients. So he made cabins. In all the five or six cabins he would put a bed, as soon as the patient comes in he will put the screen the recorded voice will be there saying: Okay then what happened? And the tape will continue to play. The patient thinks that the doctor is listening and will continue to talk.

After half an hour the doctor will come and see the patient and say: That is enough. We will keep the rest for tomorrow. And he will send the patients away. This is how the sessions take place.

One day what happened, the patient who was lying down had a doubt. He thought: What is this? The doctor is repeating the same word. He moved the screen and looked behind. He found the tape recorder on the other side! The next day the patient also put a tape recorder at his end! When the doctor can keep a tape recorder why not the patient? He also sat at home and spoke at length and recorded it, brought it to the clinic switched it on and left. When the doctor came he could hear the patient talk on the other side. The doctor was under the impression that there was somebody on the other side. Both the tape recorders were talking to each other. Western psychology is nothing but this.

It is the same with Philosophy. It is very simple to be a philosopher. If one wishes to become a philosopher it is enough to understand three or four ideas. One can become a philosopher. All the things we are not able to follow in our life we can write a book about it and publish it. That is the first thing. Secondly what has to be said, we should not say it in a simple manner. We should complicate it to the maximum extent possible. Thirdly, we should criticize everyone who comes within our sight. All the persons who come within our eyesight and all that comes within our eyesight we must criticize. Fourthly we must not offer a solution to anyone. If we give a solution then they will not come back to us. They will become independent. So we must not give a solution.

First we have to write all the impractical ideas that we could not follow in our lives. Secondly we must complicate it and not write it directly so it will not be understood. Thirdly we must criticize all the people around. Fourthly we must not give a solid solution. If we do this we can become an instant philosopher in a day.

People with all these qualities become very good philosophers. Practically they cannot achieve anything. They cannot follow in their own life what they teach in their books. Because they cannot make it an experience in their own life they cannot live happily. This is the fate of all the people who play with words without the experience. Such a philosopher may write: Stop worrying, stop worrying. How to stop worrying? He does not address that. As soon as we read this book what will happen to us? We will think: Oh God! I am not able to stop worrying! And this will become another added worry.

We can't worry. We can't stop worrying. Only if we know this we are liberated. We can't start worrying when we want to. Know this well. Twenty-four hours we can't be worrying. Even without our knowledge we will get tired and fall sleep. Even without our knowledge after a couple of hours our mind will relax.

For some one who says: No, my whole life is worry please try this. For the next five days you take an oath that you will not do anything else except to worry. Stand firm and deep on this oath. You cannot do it. I challenge you. You cannot worry. The reason being, worry and comforting thoughts alternately flow within us without any reason. When worry comes we cannot stop it. When we are happy we cannot extend it and keep same frame of mind. When the clarity happens that both these are not possible we can say: Let whatever happens, happen. Let happiness or worry come. We will refrain from making the mistake of connecting these thoughts. Only when we understand this we are liberated. Once we stop connecting yesterday's worry and the stress that came a month ago with today's worry, we will not have any mental or physical problems.

By our very nature we have the power to renounce thoughts. Even if we don't do anything else, even if we don't meditate, don't do any yoga, don't do any japa, don't pray, by our very nature we have the power to renounce thoughts.

Please understand well: I always stress on meditation. But now I am going beyond even this and revealing a truth with great clarity to you. Even if you don't meditate, your mind by its very nature has the ability to renounce sorrow, and has the clarity to stay in happiness.

A devotee asked me: Then why are you again and again asking us to meditate? Only if we sit two or three times we will realize that meditation is not possible. Only when we understand that meditation is not possible we will understand the ways of our mind and begin to surrender. We give the technique only to bring about this clarity that it is not possible for us.

If you look at the people who do japa or recite stotras or do puja, you will find that they are looking here and there. If you watch someone reading the sahasranama (thousand names of the Lord), within two minutes you will find them turning the pages to see the number of the mantra, just to see how many they have finished. Thoughts such as these will arise in the mind: How far have we read? For how much longer we have to read? I wonder how long it will take to finish it?

With great sorrow they will look at the page number. If you look at the people who perform daily puja as a ritual you will see that after finishing the puja quickly in the morning they will never come into the puja room again the whole day. They will never go that way. The reason is that when we do something regularly in a mechanical manner we create bondages.

You know why we ask you do meditation regularly? It is to make you understand that you can't. Man has to reach a stage when he says: Master, I tried a lot but I am not able to it regularly. Then there is nothing more to do beyond this. Now all we have to understand is that just as we are not able to regularly meditate, understand that we cannot create sorrow all the time. To understand that to be in sorrow all the time is not possible for us is the final stage of meditation. Being happy is also something that can't be done continuously. Being in sorrow is also something that can't be done continuously. When we understand that both these are not possible the liberation that happens within us is THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM.

The effort we take again and again to destroy sorrow or to lengthen happiness is responsible for the stress we face. The stress that came ten days ago and the stress that came four days ago and the stress that we have today are independent events. Please do not connect these.

A wise man lived in the West. A situation arose in his life when he had to be on a special diet. He would eat the same variety of spinach and the same variety of rice everyday. The disciple who used to cook for him got bored of cooking the same food for ten years and told him: Master, I am myself bored of cooking the same type of food. I cannot understand how you are eating the same type of food everyday? The jnani looked up and said: Same food? How can I eat the same food everyday? I am eating new food. Everyday I eat new food. Truly if we see how can we eat the same food the next day? It won't be in an edible state. At least it will not be in a state where man can consume it. The food can be had only on that one day. The second day it is new food. It is not the same food. It is the same type of food.

In the same way the sorrow that came the previous day and the sorrow that came after ten days and the sorrow that came after a year are all similar feelings, not the same feeling. Only when we think it the same feeling the urge to get out of the feeling arises in us. That urge naturally prods us to do something. That urge prods us to take efforts to control or contain or forget the sorrow. That effort naturally cannot be successful. Because something called worry is not firmly established in our being.

If we take a wooden log that is lit and swirl it in the air we will be able to see a circle of fire. If we try to break this circle made by this fire, is it possible? No, it will not happen. Because that circle itself is not there. Only separate balls of fire exist. This second it is here, the next second it is there. Because the swirling, the ball of fire appears like a circle. If we think there is a circle of fire and try to break that, we will meet with failure. Same way we think of the many sorrowful incidents that have happened within us as a circle of sorrow and if we make efforts to break it, we will only meet with failure.

When I went to America, I had been to Disneyland. There they do film shooting. That is where Tom and Jerry cartoon drawings are done. For one second of movie time they join 16 frames of drawings. For one second Jerry the cat's hand goes up, next second it goes further up, next frame it goes all the way up. So when we see it continuously we feel he has lifted his hand. When they join frames to form a movie and show it continuously it appears like a continuous movie. When we see the movie, we feel that the cat's hands and head are in action. But in truth they are all separate frames of pictures. There is nobody there acting as a cat or rat. It is the sequence of separate pictures that appears like an event to us.

In the same way it is the sequence of several thoughts when we see on a superficial level appears like the mind to us. The mind appears to exist. The moment we feel the mind exists we take efforts to lengthen or shorten these experiences. If we think these experiences are pleasurable we try to lengthen it. It is not possible to lengthen it. If we think it is sorrowful then we try to reduce it. That is also not possible. If we try to lengthen it we can clearly see when we try to eat four sweets the sweet taste on the tongue will last only that long. When we put the fifth sweet on the tongue it will say: Enough! When we put the sixth sweet on our tongue it will say: Don't want! If someone forces us with the seventh sweet we will try and run away from there. If the sweet was really tasty the pleasure you get from eating it must increase when you eat more sweets! But it doesn't happen that way. So the sweet is not tasty. The taste is elsewhere. It is not within our direct control. The pleasure from this tasty feeling and the sorrow from sad feelings are thoughts. These thoughts are not within our direct control. So we cannot lengthen pleasure or shorten sorrow.

When we stop doing the work of connecting these thoughts or breaking these thoughts then liberation happens to us. If we stop doing that one mistake of connecting these thoughts that very second liberation happens within us.

Now if you understand deeply the ideas that I have put forth this very second from all these three dharma, artha, and kama, you will be liberated. There is no need to wait till tomorrow. It will happen this very second. This very second if we drop this one mistake of connecting, liberation can happen to us.

One more thing, we don't do this mistake of connecting thoughts continuously also. We think we connect these thoughts all the time. That is another problem. It is not all the time

that we connect all these thoughts and create problems. Sometimes even without our knowledge we forget it and relax. The moment it comes to our memory what do we do? We think: Oh! My God all the time I am connecting these thoughts and suffering. My mind is not listening to whatever I say. We create this additional problem of not being able to unclutch and try to find a solution for this. Again and again if we stop doing the mistake of connecting these thoughts our life will blossom to the fullest. Only when we make the mistake of connecting we try to lengthen pleasure or break pain.

By creating an issue that does not exist and fighting with it is what we call maya or illusion. In Sanskrit they say: Ya ma iti maya. Whatever does not exist is maya. By thinking of something that does not exist and fighting with it is maya. We think of the non-existing mind as present we think there is pleasure within it. We try to lengthen that pleasure. We think that sorrow exists within it and try to destroy that sorrow. By trying to do this again and again, we suffer and establish ourselves in hell. We must understand that we cannot lengthen pleasure or shorten sorrow.

Each thought that arises within us is a bubble. Each bubble is an unconnected and independent thought. We cannot connect them or try to connect them. The bubbles we see in a fish tank, when they come up to the surface they create some waves. By creating these waves we get the impression that one bubble is connected to the other. When one wave touches another wave it appears to our mind as if one bubble is connected to the other bubble. When we get the clarity that these bubbles are separate and independent and cannot be connected we will come to a clear conclusion about dharma, artha and kama.

If we let all these thoughts enter our mind, the ideas about dharma, artha and kama that we had before of our life will be shaken from the roots. The very base or root of our ego will begin to shake. The ideas that we already have in our mind about dharma, artha and kama is our ego. All these thoughts put together is our ego. This very root will begin to shake. If the very root begins to shake, some intelligent people will say: Let it happen. This is what I need. Some people will say: Ah! Is all this possible? All this is wrong. And they will refuse to accept these ideas.

Some other people besides refusing to accept these ideas, they will begin to question the person who puts forth these ideas. When we cannot accept these ideas, we question the authority of the person who gives us these ideas. We question his state. Sincerely with the view of understanding the truth if we let these ideas work on us this very second we can realize a deep peace within us. We begin to understand that we ran after the objects of the outer world and created all the misery and made our life hell. We will understand the very basis of misery. Only because of this one mistake of connecting thoughts we did the actions of trying to lengthen pleasure and destroy sorrow. All these actions again and again took us to hell. They only led to failure and mental fatigue. The clarity about the game we were playing till now, will happen this very second. If that clarity happens that is liberation.

Some people come and ask me: Master, I am able to understand this truth clearly now. How to keep this truth tomorrow? What should I do to remember this truth tomorrow? Tomorrow it will not be there. The moment we think: How to keep it till tomorrow or this truth will not be there tomorrow, we have done the act of connecting the thoughts and seeing our mental frame of mind tomorrow.

Some time back we may have heard some spiritual discourse and our mind would have found some peace and bliss. In two days time we would have forgotten about it and our mind would have gone back to its old ways. We take that experience and connect it with this one. By looking at what happened then how our mind found peace and then felt sorrow, we come to a conclusion that now also we feel it will do the same. If you have already come to that conclusion not just me, no God can save you.

Now we ask the question: Without worrying, how to keep this happiness and bliss till tomorrow? Understand that we connect the joys with joys or sorrows with sorrows or past events with all the present happenings or all the thoughts in the past with the present thoughts and we create an idea about our life. We create an imagination. There is no other mistake we make. This one mistake is the original sin. It is the first sin. It is the first wrongdoing. Because of that one sin all the other sins follow us continuously.

If the pillar that holds the building together is crooked by half a foot what will happen? The whole building will stand crookedly. Same way the very basic ideas about life, the basic understanding of our mind even if we make a small mistake in this all the actions that we do after that will be the building that is built on this wrong mental setup. Even if it a small mistake how many ever stories we build on top of this building it will still be crooked.

A basic thing that we must know is that by our very nature our thoughts are separate, independent, unconnected, unattached and free feelings. Our mind by its very nature renounces thoughts. Now if we have a thought such as 'let us get up'. We have renounced the thought of sitting down. That is why the thought that we should get up comes. If the thought of walking comes then we have renounced the thought of sitting down. That is why this thought comes. Continuously we renounce thoughts. So even if we don't wish it, we will renounce the sorrow by our own nature. For five minutes the mind will be in a low mood when a problem arises. If we say let it be and keep quiet and if we stop fighting with that mental agitation, by our nature, we will renounce that sorrow.

We give life to that mental agitation when we make an effort to renounce that agitation. We make that mental agitation a bigger problem. When we create a problem that does not exist, however much we try to liberate ourselves from it, we cannot get rid of it. If we try to liberate ourselves from a problem that exists, it is possible. If we try to liberate ourselves from a problem that does not exist, will we be liberated?

Someone came and asked me: If everyone becomes a sanyasi like you how will the world go on? I told him: Not everyone is intelligent to that extent. First understand this. Then I

asked him another question. I asked: If everyone in this world dies how will the world go on? He said: How is that possible? How will everyone die? I told him: You say everyone can't die. Same way everyone becoming a sanyasi is not possible. These are hypothetical questions.

We create an imagination and ask questions based on that imagination. We let go the problems of the real world, we imagine some problems and ask questions based on that imagination. We cannot find solutions to imaginary problems. For real problems we can find a solution. Because it exists, we can find a solution. But for imaginary problems we cannot find a solution. Our mind itself is a problem imagined by us. Mind is a myth. The mind is something that cannot exist. It does not have an existence. It is a problem created by our imagination because of connecting thoughts.

By our very nature we only have independent and separate thoughts. For every kshana separate thoughts are arising within you. By the word kshana I do not mean second. In the Vedic tradition we do not calculate time in a chronological manner. We calculate time in a psychological manner. The measure of time is not a chronological one. It is a psychological one. Kshana does not mean second. Kshana is the gap between two thoughts. My kshana can be ten seconds and your kshana could even be half a second. If I am able to leave a long gap between thoughts then my kshana could be one hour or half an hour.

If you have mental agitation, sorrow, and mental turmoil your kshana could be half a second. Please understand deeply kshana is psychological not mental. That is why if we sit with a sweet person we will not know how quickly time passes. Yesterday many devotees came and told me: Master you have spoken for 2 hours and 15 minutes. But I thought you spoke for only twenty minutes and I remained seated. I did not realize the time pass. When we in a relaxed mood we don't feel rushed. The frequency of our thoughts is low. Our kshana is longer; so we do not realize the time pass by.

If we are with a friend who talks non-stop, even without our knowledge we will glance at our watch every five minutes. We will wonder whether the watch functions. We will wonder why the time is not passing quickly. Again and again we will glance at our watch. The reason is that when we are bored the mind gets restless. Since our thoughts become more the number of kshanas also become more. Kshana is according to psychological law not chronological law. Kshana is the gap between one thought and the next thought. Every kshana we renounce our old thoughts. Only when we renounce older thoughts newer ones come to the mind. But when we think our old thought and our new thought have a connection we believe that the mind exists we create the same problem again and again.

For the brahmacharis in our ashram the only advice I give them is not make the same mistake again. If they make new mistakes it is okay. I say, please do not make the same mistake again. But the big problem is we are not intelligent enough to make new mistakes. The same mistake we commit at a different time, different scale, different place

but we do not have the creativity to make new mistakes. We will do it at a different place, different time, to a different person, in a different situation. That is all. Even to do a new mistake it does not occur to us. Because we imagine that this is the same mind we pursue the same mental setup. When we pursue the same mental set up we create the same problem and the same diseases again and again.

That is why when we get up in the morning we get the thought that we must smoke. That urge comes up and we smoke. After two hours we will wallow in the guilt: Oh! I am not able to quit this habit. One hour later, again that urge to smoke arises and we begin to smoke again. Then again guilt appears. We will be living in the same mental setup.

One person came and asked: Master, how do I liberate myself from this? I told him: Sir, either you quit smoking or you quit the guilt feeling. If you quit one, you will be liberated from the other. He said: Master, how can I quit the guilt feeling. If I quit that then I will begin to smoke more. How will I come out of it? So I told him: Don't think about all that. Try to quit either and see what happens.

After a week he came and said: Master, the moment the guilt feeling was gone that very instance the inclination to smoke also went away. Then I just remembered why I started smoking. One day my friend and I were standing in the corner of a street and we were talking. My friend was smoking. From a distance my father who was watching us saw the smoke and thought that I was the one who was smoking. After I went home he began to scold me. He beat me a couple of times. In that anger and haste I thought that since I have been already been punished for something I did not do what is the harm if I do wrong now? So I decided to smoke. That was how this became a habit. Only now when I quit the guilt the clarity about why I started smoking came to me and the habit went away by itself.

Truly if we see the guilty feeling and this habit, it is a vicious circle. We get caught in that circle helplessly. That is why we are not able to create a new mental setup. One basic deep truth we need to understand is that again and again our body rejuvenates itself.

(Glancing at his watch THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM continues to talk)

When I looked at my watch I am reminded of a small story:

A speaker for a long time was waiting for an opportunity to talk. He did not find one. Somehow he got an opportunity. Without letting go of the mike he went on talking non-stop. Slowly the crowd began to disperse. Ten people left. Hundred people left. Almost everyone was gone except for one person. After finishing his talk tired of talking he said to this person: Sir, thank you for waiting and listening to me. At least you stayed back to listen to me.

That person said: Sir, I did not stay back to listen to your talk I am the owner of this mike set. The speaker said: Sir, Is that so. If you had kept a watch here I would have known

what the time was. Since I did not have a watch I did not know what the time was so I continued to talk. Sorry about that. The mike set owner said: Sir, It is true I did not keep a watch. I hung a calendar. At least you could have seen that and known the time. At least you could have seen that and finished your talk.

I did not want that to happen that is why I took this watch and kept it with me.

Kshana is something that we must deeply understand. It is enough if we understand this one idea. We will now be clear about our ideas about artha, kama and dharma. But sometimes a fear will take over our mind. It will think: If all these thoughts are unconnected how to live my life?

One more thing we need to understand: Whether we believe it or not, our body becomes new everyday. Every second thousands of cells die and thousands of new cells are created. Every twenty-one days the liver renews itself. Once in every thirty-two days our intestine renews itself. Our kidney becomes new too. Every few days each organ in our body renews itself.

Between each and every thought if there is no connection and if we have the clarity that we are a new person each time the body renews itself, the body will make a new body. But if we have the belief that it is the same mind we will create the same problem and the same diseases within our self. Suppose we have liver disease. If we are liberated from this old elongated mind a new liver will be created by our new mind. It is our mind that creates the body.

Yesterday, I was mentioning to you about the book Biology of Belief. The author, Dr. Bruce Lipton explains very clearly that our body is not controlled by DNA or cells. Even the cells and the DNA are driven and controlled by our beliefs, thoughts and counter thoughts. When we realize that we are free and that each thought is independent not only we create new body parts, but we also get liberated from our old mental setup and old diseases. Our mental setup and our diseases have a very close connection.

If any person who has a liver problem clearly understands this, he can let go the habit of connecting thoughts and can truly create a new liver without any disease. I speak from the experience of seeing several hundred thousand people over three years who have been touched directly by me for mediation. At least devotees have been cured of diseases. They have written letters of gratitude and have medical proof of being cured of the disease. I speak from my experience of running an institution and of creating and training more than 2000 healers through whom more than people are healed in a day. Please understand this deeply. If we liberate ourselves from our mind we can liberate our self from diseases also. There is no such disease that cannot be cured.

By understanding that every second we generate separate, free and independent thoughts and keeping away from creating this mind that connects these thoughts, we can keep away from bringing the same diseases that this mental setup brings. If we see deeply we

will understand this idea. In the morning at 9.30am if we make a habit of feeling the office tension then even on Saturday or Sunday when it is 9.30 our mind will feel the haste. We may wonder why the mind is restless though today there is no work. Even if we tell ourselves that there is no office work and request the mind to be calm, our mind even without our knowledge will create haste in us. Reason is that just as we make our body a slave so also we make our mind a slave of our old mental setup. Just like how drinking coffee becomes a habit, worrying also becomes a habit. We must understand that we are free every second and that we are the form of separate thoughts. Once we stop connecting thoughts, instantly our body will stop creating the new body on the old body and will begin to create a new body based on our new mental setup.

From my experience of three years of healing hundreds of thousands of people of various diseases through meditation, I say truly that people who wish to realize mind and body health should accept this truth and begin to apply it in their life. This truth not only has the ability to take away our mental problems of mental stress and mental turmoil, it also has the ability to cure diseases related to the physical body. We should clearly decide that thoughts cannot be connected and that thoughts that occur in our mind are not connected by reason. The moment this clarity comes to us, in that moment, we get instant liberation from all the problems we had thought of at the mental level. There is no need to search for a solution because the problem does not exist. Only when a problem exists there can be a solution. There is no problem there.

Another thing, for five minutes if we sit down and write on a piece of paper all our thoughts we will see that there is no reason for the thoughts to come one by one. A small example, we see a dog going on the road. When we see that dog we are reminded of a scene from our childhood when we were afraid of dogs. Then the memory of where we lived in our childhood comes to us. In our childhood we will remember the teacher who taught us. The locality where our teacher lived will come to our memory. If we look with awareness there is no connection between the dog we saw on the road and the teacher from our childhood days. Both of them barked at us when they saw us. Other than this similarity there is no logical connection. But without any reason our mind somehow has traveled somewhere. Our nature is to have free separate thoughts. When we understand this, our imagination about the existent mind will disappear. When this disappears we will be liberated from all the thousands of problems that we have created within us.

Then we may ask: How will I continue my business? How will I be able to connect yesterdays' account and today's account? How will I live a life with continuity? This fear will come first. Secondly how will I keep my security, my investments and my comforts? This is the next fear. All these fears come because of ignorance. The reason why this fear happens is because our mind and our ego will see for how long it can keep us in fear. Only for that long it will be able to rule our life.

One small example: In our office if some worker managed to make us believe that work will not go on without him, he will use this to cheat us all the time. Our mind is much the same way. The mind has managed to create an illusion that business cannot go on without

it. It will cheat us with this idea. It will take revenge on us with this. It will be able to satisfy our life. That is why the mind keeps us in deep fear always.

A man who was blind by birth went to a doctor. He said: Sir, please treat me and bring back my vision. The doctor said: Son, I will perform an operation and you will get your vision. Then you can walk without this cane. The doctor was referring to the cane blind people use to find their way.

The blind man told the doctor: I can understand that you will perform the operation. I will get back my vision. Even if I get my vision back how can I walk without my cane? For a long time he got used to walking with that cane, he comes to the conclusion that he cannot walk without the cane. Now can we convince this blind man that he can walk without the cane? No, we cannot. Once he gets his eyesight he will understand of his own accord.

The same way we think if we understand this truth and let go of our mind the fear as to how we will lead our lives, the awareness will happen in us. How the blind man does not need a cane to walk after he gets his vision back, in the same way if we understand this one truth we do not need the mind to live our life. We can live without the mind. A man whose vision has returned does not need a cane. A man whose third eye or wisdom is opened does not need the mind to live. You can live without the mind. But the fear within us does not leave you.

In our life we will be able to see that if a man shows us that he is an important person in our life he will cheat us continuously with this. If we want to cheat anyone in their life this is a beautiful way. Just make him believe that his life cannot be run without you. Till the end you can keep him as your slave.

Same way our mind or ego has managed to convince us that we cannot live without it. It has made us believe that we cannot save our selves without it. It has given us the idea that we cannot be in this world without it. That is why we feel that if we do not get angry others will cheat us. That is why we feel that if we are not strict, others will cheat us. We live with some worry. Understand this truth just as how the blind man does not need his cane after he gets his vision back, man does not need his mind to live his life.

If that man convinces us that we will not be able to live without him, he will take revenge and use us. In the same way if our mind has convinced us that we cannot live without it, it will swallow our whole life. It's nature is to swallow and take away our life from us. Only if we come out of that fear this truth will change into an experience for us.

One small example of how this fear attacks us. In the forests hunters will catch birds in the forest using a trap. To catch the birds they will tie a stick with a thread to the tree. The stick will hang from the branches. The bird will come and sit at one end of the stick. That instant the stick will turn upside down. As soon as the stick turns upside down the bird

will hang up side down. The parrot will hang up side down. The parrot will think that if it lets go of the stick it will fall down and die. So it will hold on to the stick.

The bird does not realize that if it lets go of the stick it can easily fly away. It does not realize that it can be free and fly away. It will hold on to the stick. But if the bird wants it can remove its feet from the stick and fly away free. But the bird thinks logically, just like us. It thinks that, 'Oh if I let go what will happen? I will fall down and die'. So, it will hang on to the stick with this fear. The hunter after waiting patiently for two or three hours will come and catch this bird and put it in his bag.

Just the way the bird thinks that if it lets go of the stick it will fall down and die we also hold on to our mind. If we let go we are afraid of losing this and that. Just like the bird that clings on to the stick we also cling on to our mind because of our ignorance, our fear. This moment if we let go of the mind we will fly as a Paramahamsa. The people who have let go of the cane and the people who have realized their freedom and have flown with courage are called Paramahamsa. The people who do not have the courage and are still holding on to the stick are waiting for Yama, God of death. Yama take them from the stick by force into death. If the bird had let go by itself the bird would have its freedom. It would not have been caught in the hands of the hunter. Just like how the parrot is holding on to the stick and waiting for the hunter's return, we also wait losing our freedom.

Same way if we cling on to our minds, our interests, our attachments and worldly things Yama will come and take us away from the things we are holding onto. Our freedom will also be lost. Just the way the bird clings onto the stick blindly with fear, thinking that it will die, same way we fear that if we let go of our mind, our dharma may be lost or our wealth or artha may be lost or our comforts or kama may be lost and so we cling on to our egoistic mind, till Yama comes and takes us away forcefully. This is the mental setup of our mind.

This very second after understanding this and by realizing clearly that if the parrot lets go of the stick it will not fall it but will fly, if we let go of our mind without losing our artha dharma or kama we too will be liberated and attain moksha (liberation).

I bless that you all let go of your egoistic mind and fly like a bird in the cosmos and be Paramahamsas. Be Blissful!

Dhyana 6 Verse 29

udagacchantim taDIdrupaam pratichakram kramaatkramam | urdhwe mushtitrayam yaavat taavadante mahodayah ||

udagachhantim: upward moving, tadidrupam: like lightning, pratichakram: each energy center, kramaatkramam: moving from one to another, urdhwe: upwards, mushtitrayam: three fist measures, yaavat taavat: that much, ante: in the end, mahodayah: explodes anew as Bhairava

Kundalini rising like lightning through the chakras, Experience Shiva Consciousness as it explodes anew.

kramadwaadashakam samyag dwaadashaaksharabheditam| sthoolasukshmaparasthityaa muktvaa muktvaantatah shivah ||

kramat: as laid down, dwaadashakam: 12 centers, samyag: well deadassakshrabheditam: as 12 letters, sthula sukshma prastitya: gross subtle and other states, muktvaa: leaving, muktva: liberating, antatah: in the end shivah: become Shiva

From gross to subtle to the causal, from waking to dreams into death Let breath move through chakras into Shiva Consciousness.

tayaapuryaashu murdhaantam bhanktwaa bhrukshepasetunaam | nirvikalpam manah krutwaa sarvordhve sarvagodgamah ||

Tayaa: as a result of, apurya: being filled, ashu: quickly, murdhaantam: to the crown center, bhanktwaa: breaking, bhrukshepasetunaam: the bridge between eyebrows, Nirvikalpam: unclutched, manah: mind, krutwaa: holding, sarvordhve: above everything, sarvagodgamah: experience the all pervading space

Center unclutched between the eyebrows Experiencing omnipresence of Shiva Consciousness.

shikhipakshaish chitrarupairmandalaih shunyapanchakam | dhyaayatoanuttare shunye pravesho hridaye bhavet ||

shikhipakshaish: like a peacock feather, chitrarupair: in multicolored form, mandalaih: circled, shunyapanchakam: linked to the five senses, dhyaayato: while meditating, anuttare: endless, shunye: emptiness, pravesho: enter, hridaye: in the heart, bhavet: be|

Die into the infinite void where you are no more Moving beyond the senses into Shiva Consciousness

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM ("SPH"), Jagatguru Mahasannidhanam ("JGM"), His Divine Holiness ("HDH") Bhagavan 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:

इत्येवंनिष्कळं प्रोक्तंपरं भावमिति स्मतमृ ।् सष्टिृ स्थंलोकरक्षार्थं लोकस्योत्पत्तिकारणम।।् साधकानांहितार्थं तुस्वेच्छया गह्ृ णतेतनःु।

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 responsibility and has resulted in continued systemic complicity with torture, 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.