1. The Door to Enlightenment

Most of us would have heard about the word 'karma'. Each of us has some understanding of what karma is, based on what we have read from books or heard from others. The principle of karma needs to be understood by every individual because it is the basis of the cycle of our birth and death. We have to realize the understandings about life are very important; they are the bedrock upon which our ideals, principles and hence, actions are based.

For example, suppose you went for an adventure trip to a jungle with a group of friends. Let's say the group gets lost and you are all trying to find a way out. It is getting dark, everybody is scared and you need to find your way back before nightfall. In this situation of panic, suppose one person takes responsibility and says that he will lead everyone out. Now, this person does not have the required knowledge about the jungle but he is a

I welcome you all with my love and respect. Let me first introduce the word Nithyananda Spurana to all of you.

Nithyananda - nithya is eternal, ananda is bliss. Spurana is flowering. Continuously, eternal bliss is flowering within us, happening within us; but we keep stopping it!

Ananda means the feeling or the energy that never subsides. The opposite of it is nanda, which means that which can leave you, which can be taken away from you. Ananda means that which never leaves you, which can never be taken away from you, which will never reduce. It can never be affected by a certain time or a certain space. It happens irrespective of time and space. Anything that changes based on time and space is nanda. Anything that will not change based on time and space is ananda. Right now, whatever you think of as ananda, is only joy; it is not bliss. And joy changes based on time and space.

At a particular time, we are blissful. In a particular space we are blissful. If we try to reproduce that same time or space, we find that we are not as blissful as before! That is what I mean when I say that the joy that we know is subject to time and space, and also inconsistent at that.

In each and every one of us, there is an energy continuously flowing, which never changes. There is an energy that can never be taken away from us. Of course, again and again, all the masters who appear on planet earth say that in every being, ananda is flowing. Apart from the masters saying it, even if we start

searching inside, we will understand that if there is no Ananda sustaining us at the bottom line, we won't be able to move even an inch in our lives. Even the inhaling and exhaling is happening because of the underlying bliss. Our life continues because either we experience this bliss, or we hope to experience this bliss some day. The hope of bliss is what keeps us alive even if we are not aware of it.

It is only because of this ananda, that even our inhaling and exhaling happens. Either we experience it, or we have an idea that we will experience. It is the continuous flow of ananda that makes our life also flow. Otherwise, our life will not flow. That is why still we are alive. That is why still we are breathing. That is why our system is still functioning. This energy that we call ananda is continuously working within our being.

There is a beautiful saying in the Upanishad (vedic scriptures), 'If two rishis (sages) agree on some point, be very clear, one of them is a fake!' No two rishis will agree on any one concept. They will always have some conflict, because each one expresses things in a different way. All of their experiences are the same, but each of their paths and expressions is different. That is the problem.

If we ask about food, some of them will tell us to have only vegetarian food; some will say that we can have non-vegetarian food; some will say that we should fast unto enlightenment! Some will say that there are no food restrictions. Each one will have his own opinion about it.

If we ask about marriage, some will say, 'Don't marry, be a celibate.' Some will say, 'You can marry; being a householder is okay.' Some will say, 'You can marry even four or five times.' Marrying four or five times is the straight way to enlightenment! If we marry four or five times, we can't manage our life without enlightenment! It becomes a basic need then. If we marry once, enlightenment is an option. If we marry more than once, enlightenment is a basic need without which we can't live!

Anyhow, jokes aside, each of these masters has got his own idea, his own opinion on every subject. No two masters agree with each other on the same subject. But when it comes to this one concept 'ananda', all of them agree to the statement, 'We are bliss. Our inherent nature is bliss.'

There is no being on planet Earth that is not filled with bliss. In every one of us, bliss is flowing. In every being, bliss is continuously happening. As far as this one concept is concerned, there is no master who disagrees. If all the masters are agreeing on this point, it must be a fundamental Truth.

In USA, 115 years ago, a young lady asked the great sage Vivekananda, 'What is life?'

He said, 'Come with me to Bharat. I will teach you.'

She asked, 'What will you teach me?'

He said, 'I shall teach you how to die.'

The question is about life but the answer is about death! It seems strange! What Swami Vivekananda is saying is, if you know

the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change.

Death is not a mere incident at the end of your life. It is a profound knowing. If you know how to die, you know how to live. Living and leaving are two sides of the same thing. Your life will be totally different once you understand death.

The NSP journeys you through your own life, simultaneously revealing the secrets of death. It makes your inner space pure and clean by unloading the baggage of emotions that you usually carry with you. It teaches you to live blissfully and leave peacefully. It puts death in the right perspective so that your life becomes more joyful and meaningful.

How does the mind work? The diagram shows how the information that enters through the eye is processed; actually, not just the information through the eye but information through all the five senses, that is through the nose, the ears, the tongue, touch and the eye. As an example, we are now taking the eye. Let me explain it to you.

When you see something, first, the eye sees it. There is something called chakshu in Sanskrit, which digitizes the information seen by the eye. It is something like a digital signal processor – the DSP. The signal or the input is converted into a

digital file by this chakshu. As I said earlier, this conversion happens to the information received through all five senses, not just the eye.

Then the file goes to the memory - chitta. In the memory, a little more work is done on the file. It analyses the file received through the process of elimination as the first step to identify what has been received. For example, if you are seeing me now, the file is processed through the chakshu and taken to the chitta, memory. The memory starts analyzing it. It starts saying, 'This is not an animal, this is not a plant, this is not a rock,...' It does the process of elimination.

Then the file goes to the mind or manas. The mind does the job of identification. It concludes, 'This is a human being, a human being who is teaching a class.' The mind concludes, 'This is it.'

Next, the whole file takes a quantum leap to the ego and your ego decides to act based on your past experiences. If you have stored past experiences with similar classes, say yoga or meditation, and they have been alright for you, you will decide to sit here, or else you will think it is better to move on!

Let us go through the process again. The first step is you seeing me. The eye passes the information to the chakshu. The chakshu converts it to a digital signal. The memory then does the elimination work on the file – 'This is not…', 'This is not…' Then, the mind does the identification of the file – 'This is it.' Then the whole file takes a quantum jump to the ego. In this zone of stored memories, you decide whether to sit here or leave.

I always give this example to understand the process of elimination versus that of identification:

Let us say that you want to find the word 'Home' in the dictionary. You start from the letter 'A' and you eliminate: not A, not B, not C, until you come to the letter 'H'. Until you come to the letter 'H', it is only an elimination process. Once you come to 'H', it is an identification process. You start identifying 'HO', then 'HOM', and then you come to 'HOME'. Even in the identification process, there is elimination, but that cannot be considered elimination, because your whole attitude is different during this time. Until you come to 'H', you don't even look at anything; you only eliminate. Once you come to 'H', 'H' becomes a standpoint. Then you start looking for HO, HOM, etc. There is a difference in your attitude in the identification process when compared to your attitude during the elimination process.

It is like this: you have thousands of files stored in your mind. Now let us say that you are seeing me. You will first start eliminating: this is not a stone, this is not a tree, this is not an animal. Then you come to man and say, 'This is a man.' Once you come to man, you start identifying me: six feet tall, saffron clothed, talking about meditation, my master, THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM! So, you are eliminating until you find the right classification. That is the first step. Going in-depth into that classification to identify what is seen, is the next step. Elimination is breadth, identification is depth. The elimination process is like handling many files. The identification process is like going deeply into a specific file.

The process between the eye and the mind is logical and conscious. You are completely aware of this process. Now, the

quantum leap from the mind to the ego is mostly unconscious. That is the time when actual decisions are made and is mostly an unconscious process for you. It happens without your awareness. During this time, you simply decide illogically; you decide against your logical thought process. You make an illogical decision.

Why does this happen? Why do you decide unconsciously and regret it later?

The reason is that this unconscious zone is filled with restlessness and negative memories. All of your past memories, which we call samskaras in Sanskrit, are stored in this zone as different files. In the field of psychology the word engrams is used to denote these stored memories. There are so many of these files stored in this zone. Without any logical connection between each other, these memories or incidents are stored together here.

What happens is that when the incoming information takes a quantum leap to this zone, the heavy data stored here causes so much restlessness in you that the incoming file does not even reach the ego properly for a decision. The stored engrams just start playing on the information received. They just impose themselves and cause havoc in the decision making process. As a result, the ego makes a hasty decision purely from an instinct level, and passes the file back. It happens as an unconscious process.

For example, according to the data that you have collected, you know that smoking is injurious to your health; it is not good for your body or your mind. But once the mind takes the

leap to the ego, the engrams just instruct you to smoke; you simply decide to smoke! The conscious process says, 'No, it is not good for my health'. But the unconscious process says…actually it doesn't even say, it just makes the decision and you execute it!

It is because of your engrams that you repent what you have done and regret your decisions most of the time. You wonder, 'Why did I behave in that fashion? This is not me! How did I allow this to happen? How did I make that decision?' This happens because the unconscious mind that is filled with all your samskaras has emotional attachments to your memories. If you only remember the past in a detached way, you learn from it and the resulting intelligence is used to make better decisions in the future. But if there are positive or negative emotional attachments associated with your memory, what happens? You are not able to see anything objectively. You look at the present through the tinted glasses of the past, tinted by the memories of the emotions that you went through when so-called similar incidents happened in the past. You are not able to look at this incident as a fresh and new moment of your life.

The NSP is all about going deeply in and cleaning your deeprooted samskaras that are controlling and playing havoc with your life. We will understand in depth about the various layers or energy bodies that we have and which emotion or samskara each of them is ruled by. This intellectual understanding along with the actual cleansing of the samskaras is the essence of the NSP.

The NSP has a complete healing effect at the physical, mental and spiritual levels. People come and ask me how I heal through meditation. Please understand: I do not heal through my physical body. It is my presence that heals. When the sun rises, the lotus blooms by itself. The sun does not go and open the petals of the lotus. Similarly, in the presence of the master, healing happens. Be very clear that healing is not done; it happens.

I can heal your body, since it is in my presence. In the same way, if you open your mind too, it can be healed. In the NSP, that's what we do - opening of minds. You are asked to write down about yourself - about your pains, desires, guilt and pleasures. You will not be showing these to anyone else. It is for you, to know clearly what your deeply embedded samskaras are.

During the NSP, people ask me why I have them write down all this since they are neither expected to show them to me nor to each other. Understand: by writing it all down, you are opening your mind in my presence. You are opening your mind and hence I can heal your mind. If you open your wounds, the sun can heal them. Similarly if you can open your mind, the energy will heal all the wounds.

NSP opens up your energy layers one by one. Your pains, pleasures, guilt and desires are opened up. Once these open up and get healed, you experience a glimpse of God within you. At the end of the program, you don't even have to search for God, your mind will be so clear and relaxed that you will realize that God is already within you and is not something separate from you.

There are seven energy layers or bodies in us.

You need to understand three things.

The first thing is that it is because of these layers that you are not relating with reality as it is. The mystics always say, 'The world is God. God is everything. Whatever you see is God. Everything is God.' But we don't experience everything as God. We always see everything as evil! We always think, 'Everyone is trying to exploit us. Everyone is trying to enter into our territory. Everyone is trying to disturb us.' So what the mystics say is one thing, and what we feel is a totally different thing. Why do we feel this way? It is because we are not able to relate with reality as it is.

So the first thing you need to understand is that because you are not experiencing these layers as you should be experiencing them,

they just become a cancer. Whenever something is not becoming a part of your being, it becomes a separate growth, a cancerous growth.

Unless you express, unless you start living these layers, you will never have the satisfaction that you have lived. Because, if the major portion of your life is unlived, you will never have the satisfaction in your life - not only in spiritual life, but also in the material world.

One more thing: we will be working with so many techniques related to visualization; you will be asked to visualize so many things. Generally, we have a very deep disrespect for visualization. We always think, 'Oh… with my imagination, what can I achieve?' Understand: your whole life is nothing but your visualization. Your whole life is nothing but your imagination! So, it's like using one thorn to remove another thorn. If one thorn enters your foot, you take another thorn and remove it with the other thorn, don't you? In the same way, so much of imagination has entered without your knowledge, without your consciousness. To remove this, conscious imagination is going to be put into you and the process will be done. So, whenever meditation instructions are given, just put your total energy into making them happen. Don't bother about your opinion of them.

The whole motivation for the NSP came out of two incidents in my life.

The first one happened before enlightenment.

It was probably in the year 1999. I was in Varanasi – Kasi. There was an elderly sannyasi – a very old sannyasi suffering from cancer. He was in the hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit.

I had the responsibility of taking care of him. He was a great sannyasi, but not an enlightened person. He was a great

tapasvi – a spiritual seeker undertaking severe asuterities. Everyday I used to bring him food, take care of his needs and stay in the hospital.

One day, the person in the third bed from him was slowly passing away; he was dying. I was just sitting on the bed and watching the whole thing. The doctors were standing around him. They were trying their best to help, but they were not able to do anything.

Even though I was not enlightened at that time, I had had my conscious experience of death by that time - one of the most wonderful spiritual experiences I had ever had. Because of that, I was able to see what exactly was happening to him.

Slowly, he started suffering and struggling. First, he started suffering tremendous pain in the physical body. His face started showing the pain. Next, he became breathless. He

started inhaling and exhaling erratically. I was able to see very clearly the pain and the agony. The pain was what it would be like if one thousand scorpions were stinging him at the same time. His whole consciousness was being torn. Just imagine… if we cut our little finger with a blade, how much pain we experience! Now imagine… his six-foot body was as if it was literally being cut into pieces along its length. Imagine the suffering!

I was able to experience the pain, the agony, the feeling which he was undergoing. Of course, slowly, very slowly, he started moving away from the physical body.

Even though it is a little difficult to receive this whole thing logically, even if it is a little difficult to understand this intellectually, this is what really happened. Understanding this whole thing is like working with a formula like X x 2 = 4. To understand the formula, to understand how to solve it, first we assume some value for X. First we assume that X = 2. Then, we put 2 in the place of X. Then we understand: 2 x 2 is 4. Once the answer is right, we know X is 2. Until the calculation is done, we have to have a little patience. But when I say, let us assume X = 2, immediately if we start raising the question, 'No, why not 3? Why not 1? Why not 4?' we will not be able to proceed at all. Even if we understand it as a hypothesis, it is enough. At the end of the calculation, we will be able to understand how this whole thing happens. It is the same with what I am sharing with you. It may be difficult to understand it logically, but just relax and take it as a hypothesis for now.

I was able to see and experience the tremendous pain and agony of that being. It was an excruciating pain and deep suffering. The being started moving from the physical body

to the pranic layer, which is the second layer body. The Pranic layer is our breathing energy.

All these seven bodies are seven energies or energy layers of our being. When the being started moving towards the pranic layer, again there was deep suffering! Our prana shareera – breath body - is filled with all our desires. Our breathing and our desires are very closely related. If we change our breathing, our desires can be changed. Our desires and breathing are very closely related. So, when the energy was moving into the pranic layer, all the desires of the being started coming up. The being started suffering with all the unfulfilled desires.

Then, when the being started moving towards the next level body, all the guilt started rising - 'Oh! I should have lived that way, I should have lived in this way, etc.' In this fashion, slowly, the being moved layer by layer and finally died. I saw the whole death happening right in front of my eyes. I was able to see the whole process of death very clearly. But I was not able to help in any way. I was not enlightened at that time. I was not able to help. I just witnessed the suffering. But the pain created in me just by seeing the suffering itself was too much.

I started feeling a pain similar to what we might experience if we witness a nasty accident on the road. What will happen? Will we be able to eat for the next two days? If we see a terrible accident on the road, will we be able to eat soon after that? No! It was the same kind of feeling for me. In an accident, we see only one body. But I was able to see all the seven layers, all the seven bodies. Then imagine the pain I felt. The pain became so deeply engraved in me. It was recorded in my being so deeply that I was not able to eat or sleep for the next three to four days. Anyhow, after a few days, I Ieft Varanasi and wandered further.

I continued with the tapas and after about a year, became enlightened. Then, driven by the will of Existence, I came down to South Bharat. I stayed there for one or two years. It was around that time that again, I had one more opportunity to see death happening in front of my eyes.

Again I saw the second death in a hospital, and in an Intensive Care Unit. This second person did not suffer at all. He simply passed away, moving through one layer after another seamlessly. I was surprised. I asked his relatives if he was a highly spiritual person. They said that he was far from it; he probably never went to a temple all his life. Nor did he meditate or do anything remotely related to spirituality. I started analyzing, 'Why did the first person suffer and why did the second person not suffer?'

The death that I saw in Varanasi was so painful; there are no words to describe it fully. But the death that I saw the second time was so different! I saw that the person neither experienced pain nor did he have any suffering. He was moving beautifully from the first body to the second layer, to the third layer, to the fourth layer and so on! Like how a ball rolls in the snow, just like that his being was moving! I was surprised. As I was watching, his being slowly moved away and just disappeared. He became enlightened! He was liberated.

When I was pondering over these two incidents, suddenly the truth jumped up: the second man left his body in the presence of an enlightened being. That was the reason why he left the body painlessly. When the first person was dying, as I told you earlier, I was not enlightened; I had only had a conscious death experience myself. So, my presence did not

in any way influence his death. Whereas, when the second man left his body, I was there in his presence and the very enlightened energy caused him to leave the body easily.

No sooner did this revelation happen than did the means to design a program for human beings to leave the body painlessly and consciously come up! That is the formula based on which the NSP is done today.

Let me narrate to you my own conscious death experience in Varanasi. Let me describe exactly what happened within me when I had my experience with this technique. I always used to think that I should have an experience of death, that I should face death directly. But somehow, that thought never became a priority.

Any thought has to become the topmost priority, only then the corresponding experience can happen; it should not just be in one corner of your mind.

Usually on our 'to do' lists, we have washing, cleaning, paying the rent and phone bill, and finally if time permits, enlightenment also! And if time permits, meditation also. No! Enlightenment will not happen if it is this way. Only when it becomes a top priority, only when the urge becomes urgent, everything around you will start aligning itself for the experience to happen in you. And this is the case not just with enlightenment. With anything, it is true. Understand: if you are complaining that what you wish would happen is not happening, it is because it has not become the topmost item on your priority list, nothing else. Nothing else and no one else should be blamed for it. You will see that the moment it becomes the topmost priority, there will

be an energy play that comes into being and it will simply happen. Until then, it will wait for you, that's all.

A small story:

One man goes to the doctor and says, 'Doctor I tried to commit suicide by taking 1000 aspirins.'

The doctor asks, 'But what happened?'

The man replies, 'After taking two, I felt better and I stopped.'

Understand: only when the desire is in the absolute top position on the priority list, the experience can be achieved. The death experience was not my top priority and so somehow, it was getting postponed.

In my wandering days, I had been to Varanasi, the holy city for Hindus. It has the largest floating population in the world. Per day nearly 300,000 people enter the city and leave. Further, per day, 300 dead bodies are burnt in a place called Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. It is traditionally believed that if somebody dies or somebody's body is burnt in that area, they will be liberated; they will have direct enlightenment. It is not just a traditional belief. Ramakrishna confirms it with his own experience. He says, 'I saw very clearly, Mahadeva (Shiva) himself going near every burning body, taking the soul, unclutching it from the body-mind and liberating it!' So you can't say that it is a mythological belief; it is a solid experience.

I had the fortune of going to Manikarnika Ghat. Traditionally, it is not only believed, but it is true, that for the last 2000 years, the fire that is used to light pyres has never been put off.

Whether it rains or shines or there are floods, people never bring fire when they come with a dead body to Manikarnika Ghat. The fire will already be burning and they will just take it from there and light the dead body, that's all. The fire has never gone out. It just continuously burns the bodies as they arrive. Sometimes I would see that two to three bodies are burnt at the same time, so many bodies keep coming!

Especially in the evenings, the bodies will be more in number. From near the place where the person dies, they will start walking, carrying the dead body, chanting mantras such as, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai' (It means Rama's name is the ultimate and eternal truth). By evening, they will reach Manikarnika Ghat.

The scene there, the very experience of just being there, I cannot describe to you verbally; only you have to be there to experience it. To tell you honestly, the fear of death just disappeared from my system. You see so many bodies continuously being burned every day. You feel, 'I am also going to go like this one day, alright', that's all! You feel there are so many people giving you

company! It's like one more trip that you make, that's all; you don't feel lonely about death at all.

In your life, if you see maybe one or two bodies being burnt, then you will still have the fear of death. But in that place, there will be no ritual done. They will bring the body and straightaway dip it in the river Ganga three times while chanting, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai'. By this time, the fire will be ready, and the wood will be arranged. They will bring the body straight from the water and burn it, that's all!

One strange thing you can see there, none of the relatives will stay there and do any further rituals. The moment they dip the body in the Ganga, they will place the body for burning there and go away, that's all! The people who maintain things there will take care of the rest. You will not know how long it will take for the body that you brought to be burnt completely. There will be a queue and bodies will be burning continuously.

I thought to myself, 'Let me try to sit here and see what goes on.' I sat. In just an hour's time, I felt that death is no more a strange incident which happens once in a while only for some relative or friend. I was watching bodies arriving one after another. It was like: ok, next, next, that's all. Different sizes, genders, ages, communities, of people arrived to be consumed by the same burning flame.

When you continuously see dead bodies being burnt, you actually lose respect for death! Now you have too much of respect, too many ideas about death. That is the problem. It is actually nothing but this: the breath that goes inside the body doesn't come out, that's all. Nothing much can be done about it. Neither you can rewind it nor fast forward it.

As I was watching this scene continuously, initially the little fear that I had for death also disappeared and slowly it became interesting to watch. I went near the people who maintain the fire and started helping them. As I was helping them, I was thinking to myself, 'After all, this body of mine is also going to become like this one day.'

When you remember that death is going to happen to you, the respect that you carry for your ego will come down. Because, whenever you think that something should not leave you, it is just the ego, nothing else. When you know for sure that everything is going to leave you, then the respect for the ego just drops drastically. The respect I had for my ego dropped at that moment.

Then I decided, 'After all I am going to die. Either I should have a conscious death experience now itself and live the rest of my life without the death-fear, or really die, that's all.' But I decided that I have to see the death happening to me one way or the other. There was a small Shiva temple around the corner and a small tower above the temple. I went and sat in that tower so that nobody would disturb me.

I sat in that tower and from there I started seeing the dead bodies being burnt.

I still remember the strong click that triggered the whole experience that was to follow an elderly lady's body being burnt. She had a big belly; the cloth was consumed by the fire and the fat that was in the belly started melting and flowing. Sorry for describing this so vividly! I could see clearly that because of the fat flowing, the fire was burning with full momentum. That

gave a very strong click to me and I said, 'God! Yes, the same thing is going to happen to this body also. Let it happen!'

That click opened up a deep fear of death inside me. The fear spread all over the body, but I faced it consciously. I could see very clearly, the fear spreading all over the body, and when the fear met my awareness, when it hit my awareness, that became the death experience. I went through a conscious experience of my own death, and came out of it.

Whenever your fear is suppressed, it stays inside you as a suppressed fear. Whenever it comes out and you are not consciously facing it, it becomes a fear stroke, and shakes your whole nervous system and breaks it down. If it is faced consciously, it becomes the death experience, that's all!

If you just escape from the death-fear, when the fear happens, it becomes death. When you face it consciously, it becomes death experience.

Death-fear not expressed plus unconsciousness is suppression.

Death-fear expressed plus unconsciousness is a nervous breakdown.

Death-fear expressed plus conscious awareness is the death experience!

I have given a clear equation now. Understand again:

Death-fear plus unconscious-ness, is suppression or perversion.

Death-fear plus unconscious-ness means, you don't suppress but you don't face it either. You just get shaken, frightened, have a fear stroke, or a nervous breakdown.

Death-fear plus conscious awareness is a death experience.

I was able to see very clearly, the fear that arose. When I faced it consciously with awareness, it became my death experience. The body was dead; it was not moving.

For two and a half days I had no food, no water, no thought, no question, no doubt. The body was there. Only after the experience had passed, I realized that I had been like that for two and a half days! I could see with closed eyes that the body was dead, and there was no movement. Suddenly, after two and a half days, the click happened again, 'God! The body is dead but I still exist! I am there!' That clarity, when it clicked, became such intense ecstasy in me. The fear of death left me once and for all.

I was in such deep ecstasy, such joy, such bliss. I slowly opened my eyes and I was able to move the body. The first thing I felt was such a surge of ecstasy and gratitude. I went down to the

Ganga, sprinkled a little Ganga water on myself, took the Ganga water in the kamandalu (small water pot that I used to carry, as wandering monks do), took a little ash from the fire, and went straight to the Kasi Vishwanath temple. I went up to the Shiva linga, offered the ash I had brought, did the puja. It was done with such inexpressible gratitude. I saw that Vishwanath was alive there.

Understand, because I died Vishwanatha became alive! Until the day before that, because I was still alive, Vishwanatha was always an ordinary stone. I had always felt that to touch this stone, 300,000 people are coming everyday from so far away… what foolishness!

You see, when you touch the deity yourself, you will tend to lose respect for it. In South Bharat, you can't touch the deities in the temples. But in North Bharat, you can touch it yourself and do the offering. Anyhow, I always felt that the Vishwanatha deity was an ordinary stone. I felt that way because I was still alive. When I died, I saw clearly, He is alive! Only one can be alive, either Him or you. When you see the Truth, He will become alive. You will not be alive anymore as you now think.

The fear of death left me once and for all. I can say that this is one of the very strong experiences that transformed me to search for the ultimate experience of enlightenment.

– Passing through the seven layers…

There is a beautiful website on near-death experiences. An American doctor did this research. He started meeting people who had near-death experiences. 'Near-death' means those who are clinically declared dead and who come back to life after three to four hours. There are many such cases. In our Hindu villages there will always be four to five cases.

The other day a doctor was telling me, 'There are so many cases of those who are medically declared dead, and who come back to life after four to five hours.' In some persons' lives, it happens three to four times even, and they come back to life. This doctor somehow got interested in this subject and he started going all over the world, meeting these types of persons. He met people from all over the world and collected all their memories and their experiences of how they had their death experience. He did research for 30 years.

After analyzing all their experiences, he reached a conclusion. He made a statement, a beautiful statement that people on the planet earth, only when they live, they are Christians or Muslims or Hindus or Jews or Buddhists. When they die, all of them die in the way that is described by Hinduism. We may be a Hindu, Muslim, Jew or Christian, but when we die we are a Vedanti (person who seeks the Truth).

In the Kathopanishad (ancient vedic scripture), there is a clear description of death. This researcher says, in all these people's experiences which he collected, everybody's experience exactly matches with what Kathopanishad describes!

Let us see how exactly death happens. First, we move away from the physical body. You may be thinking, 'I came to learn how to live, but he is teaching all about death!' Understand: unless we understand the mysteries of death, we will not have a clear idea about life. Our concept about death totally changes our concept about life. Our philosophy about life changes when our philosophy about death changes.

See, in the East, nobody cares for time. Things will happen at their own pace, taking their own sweet time. Why? Because all the eastern religions believe that humans have many births. They have eternity in their hands! If not today, tomorrow, that's all. If it is not coming today, tomorrow, otherwise, next birth, so relax!

All western religions talk only about one birth. They say that after death we don't have any rebirth. That is why western people are so time conscious. Whatever has to be enjoyed has to be enjoyed in these 70 to 80 years. Nothing else can be done. We have to finish it. That is why their life style, everything is organized around time consciousness.

The idea of death changes the whole idea of life. So never think that learning about death is a waste of time. It is the basic lesson everyone has to learn.

First, a person moves from the physical layer, that is the body which we are having, to the pranic layer, which involves inhaling and exhaling, that is the energy or the air movement, the prana movement inside our system. Prana refers to the life force that is brought in by the air into our system when we breathe. It is the

life sustaining energy needed for us. Air is just a medium to bring prana in. Prana is what is needed to sustain life.

When we move from the first layer to the second layer, all our desires, our unfulfilled desires, all the ways in which we wanted to live but did not live, all those things usually come up. When this happens, it is almost as if in a room, ten people are standing, kicking a football around. What will happen? Just like how the football is kicked from corner to corner, our consciousness will be kicked from all corners. In each corner, some desire will be standing and kicking it. At the time our consciousness is trying to leave the body, all our desires will be forcing us to enter back into the body so that we can fulfill and enjoy them further.

On one side, our desires will be forcing us to enter into the body again so that we can live and enjoy, while on the other side, the body will say, 'No! I am tired. I can't host you anymore, just leave!' On one side, the body will say, 'I am tired; I can't host you.' On the other side, the pranic layer that houses our desires forces us to live inside the body. That is what causes the pulling and pushing at the time of death. Pulling and pushing is nothing but the fight between our desires and the body.

Somehow, if we manage to move away from the pranic layer, we enter next into the mental body. When we enter into our mental body, all our guilt rises! All the guilt that we had about the way we felt we should have lived our lives but never lived, all the mistakes that we committed, all of our regrets, etc.

Please understand, desire is about the future and guilt is about the past. But actually, both are one and the same. The same thing, when it is about the past, it is guilt, and when it is about the future, it is desire! The way in which we want to live is desire,

and the way in which we wanted to live but didn't, is guilt. I always tell people, guilt is nothing but reviewing our past decisions with updated intelligence.

Our intelligence is continuously being updated. The problem is that with this updated intelligence, we try to review our past decisions. For example, as a seven year old, your mother comes and calls you to eat your food. She says, 'You have played enough with your toys. Put them away, and come eat.' What do you say? 'No, I don't want to eat. I want to play.' If your mother comes and tries to snatch the toys, what do you do? You not only cry, you even curse her! But all these years later, now, you know that the toys are not so important as your mother is to you, is it not? Now, your intelligence is totally different. At that time, toys were so important to you that you cursed even your mother.

Now you know your mother is much more important. With this updated intelligence, is it good to create guilt? 'Oh! At that time, I cursed my mother. I feel so ashamed.' No! At that time, we had only that much intelligence. All our decisions are made with the available intelligence at that given point in time in our lives.

If we start reviewing our past decisions with updated intelligence we will always create guilt. All our guilt is nothing but trying to review past decisions with updated intelligence. All the guilt that we collect over our lives rises as we pass through the mental body. Then, if we move a little away, a little deeper , we come to the etheric layer that is related to all our sufferings. All the suffering that we went through during our life is stored here. Like this, each and every layer has got its own samskara or stored memories. Actually, traveling through these layers is what we can think of as hell. There is no other separate place called hell. Hell and heaven are not geographical locations; they are psychological spaces.

One more thing: when we enter into the dream layer and start dreaming, we have seen that this whole world in which you live in now becomes black and white because we are in the dream world. We forget this whole world and the dream world becomes multicolour. If we come out of the dream, this whole world is again seen in 4 dimensions, like 4D.

Now, when we are in this physical layer, this whole world is seen as 4D. We experience this world as 4D, in multi-colour. When we are in the dream world, we experience that world as 4D. So, when we are here, the dream world becomes black and white, and this world becomes 4D, and when we are there, the dream becomes 4D, and this world becomes black and white.

In the same way, when we move away from the physical layer to the pranic layer at the time of death, this whole world will become black and white. All of your achievements, your pride, your efforts, your sorrow, your happiness, everything will appear in black and white. You will wonder 'Why did I do all this work? Why did I think of all this as a base for my life?'

Let me explain why this happens. When we are alive we invest in our personality; we build up our personality based upon a few pillars. There are a few pillars or foundations on which we build our personality. Those pillars are money, name and fame,

relationships, pride that we have a big community, support circle, etc.

If somebody asks you, 'Who are you?' what will you say? 'I am an engineer', 'I am a doctor', 'I am a lawyer'. Or you will say, 'I am the owner of four houses.' Or, 'I am such and such a person's husband or wife', or 'I am her husband', or somebody's son, or somebody's daughter, or somebody's wife. Our personality is built on these few foundations.

When we move from the physical body, all these foundations will be completely shaken. We can't sign our name on our cheques any more. Our signature is not accepted. Our bank balance is no more related to us. We can't handle our bank account. Our car will not be useful to us. At the most, only the ambulance will be useful! Our house will be filled with all our relatives. They will be weeping to see us dead. But neither our house nor our relatives will be useful to us. We can't even relate with our relatives. We can't talk to any of them. If we try to they will run away!

Your wife will come up to the last point in the procession and weep. Your son will come through to the end and do the last rites and rituals. But who will come after that? Nobody! Nobody can come. Only the conscious glimpse can come with you. In this way, whatever is the foundation for your being, that whole foundation will be shaken. When the foundation is shaken, naturally you don't have anything to hold on to.

Understand this one thing; if we suddenly hear of some loss in our business, we will feel that our whole body is suffering. The suffering will not be just in one portion. The whole body will be suffering. It will be almost like our being is crushed. We can see

in our life, if we just sit in our office and worry about something, we don't have to do any work, if we just sit and worry alone, we will have shoulder pain! If we just sit and worry for ten minutes, what will happen? We will have shoulder pain.

So understand that when something moves away from us, our whole body suffers. When we move away from the physical body the same suffering starts happening in us. Whatever we thought was a foundation for our life is shaken.

As of now, this whole world will appear in 4D. All this talk about spirituality, meditation, growing the inner being, consciousness etc will appear as black and white. That is why, when I call people for meditation, they tell me, 'I don't have time to meditate. Let me finish all my work and then come. I have a few more years.' Never say, 'I don't have time to meditate.' Be very clear to yourself and say, 'I don't feel that it is that important in my life right now.' If we are ready to say, 'I don't think meditation is so important in my life,' then we are honest. But if we say, 'I don't have time,' then we are just fooling ourselves. Everyone has got the same 24 hours on hand to do what they feel they should. It is not that the few who are meditating are jobless. It is just a question of priority, of what we want in our life. If spirituality and meditation appear as black and white to us now, we will not divert our energy in that area, that's all.

But what happens is that when we move away from the physical body at the time of death, whatever we thought of as 4D when we were living will totally disappear, everything will be totally shaken and appear as black and white! At that time, they will not have any basis at all. In them, we will not be able to find

Part 2: The Door to Enlightenment

any space where we can rest. That is the reason why death is always a suffering. But at that moment, if we can have a conscious glimpse, or glimpse of consciousness from our past, then we can consciously enter into death!

Let me explain further. If we understand this concept completely, we will not develop attachment to whatever we think of as 4D. We may enjoy them but our personality will not be built on them. We will become intelligent, and when we are living, we will create at least one part of the foundation or one pillar in the other dimension that is spirituality!

You see, now we are in two dimensions, the material world and spirituality. Right now, what is happening is that however many pillars we build our personalities and life upon, all those pillars are based on the material world which appears to be 4D. Not a single pillar is based on consciousness or our inner space. Our whole personality is built only based on the outer space - our name, our fame, what society speaks about us, etc. Our complete personality is structured only on what society speaks about us. If everyone's opinion of us is that we are great, what do we think? We think we are great. If everybody says, 'You are useless', what happens? We start getting depressed.

This happens because not even a single pillar of our building is based on spirituality, our inner core, our being. The entire thing is based on the outer space. That is the reason that when those pillars are shaken by anybody, we start suffering terribly. If we have even one pillar from consciousness, we can depend on that to stand straight without suffering. One more thing: these outer world pillars are not in our control at all. Anyone passing by can easily shake them. Even if a small child comes up to us and

says that we are a fool, we will get a little shaken, is it not? That child might have even said it only to try a few new words that he is learning! But you get shaken. So understand that these outer world pillars are that weak.

That is what the Bhagavad Gita says: what comes and stands in our mind at the time of leaving the body will alone decide about our next birth or enlightenment. If we have at least one pillar on consciousness, naturally we will not have suffering when we leave the body. All the other pillars will become black and white. But even if the other pillars become black and white, this one pillar will be there in multi colour – 4D. This one pillar will be there to take us through the process.

As of now we have no pillar to take us through, that is the problem. As of now, our whole personality is based on the outer space. All our pillars are made up of what we think is 4D now. And there is no inner space for us either. That is why, like a football, people can kick us from corner to corner in the outer space. Anybody can just throw one word towards us to make us depressed. If somebody says we are mad, we shout at them and prove that we are mad! A single word is enough to make us mad. Nothing much is necessary. We are almost like the street dogs - if we just throw one stone at it, it becomes mad.

If anybody throws one word at us, it is enough to make us mad or depressed. This happens only because we don't have strength in the inner space. Please understand that if we build at least one pillar based on our inner space, this pillar will shine in 4D at the time of death and help us leave the body beautifully.

Another important question arises here. 'Forget about dying… what about living?' Please be aware that as of now all the seven layers are not so clear as you think they are. It is like seven coats that you are having. If you are wearing the seven coats properly,

you can remove them whenever you wish to and hang them on the wall. But as of now, you are not wearing these seven coats properly. The first coat button is locked with the seventh coat. The third coat button is locked with the first coat. The second coat button is locked with the fourth coat and so on! You see, if you can remove a coat whenever you want, it can be called a coat. If you can't remove it, then it is not a coat; it is a bondage.

If you have had a single conscious experience you will not be continuously tortured, pulled and pushed by your samskaras or engraved memories. If you look back at your whole life you will be able to understand what I am saying. If you look back at your whole life with a little intelligence, you will be able to understand that you never really lived. Only your engrams (engraved memories) lived through you. For example, suppose you have created a samskara that in the morning, at 7 o'clock, you need to drink coffee. At exactly 7 o'clock, you don't have to even see the watch, from inside you the alarm will sound, 'Coffee!'

Like this, you have many samskaras. For example, every morning at nine o'clock your mind will automatically start worrying about your office. In the evening at five o'clock you will start worrying about your house. In the night at eight o'clock you will start worrying about your kid's education. If this becomes a routine, even on Sunday, you will start worrying about your office at nine o'clock. Even if you don't have to go to office, you will start worrying about it. Suddenly, you will remind yourself, 'No, no. Today is Sunday so don't bother about it. We don't have to go to office.' Even then, you will continue to have that same low mood during that time. Even your worry, your mind, is nothing but recorded samskaras.

Never think you are really living. Your samskaras are living through you, that's all. These samskaras are recorded in all the seven layers. Only when you cleanse your samskaras, your mental habits, do you really begin to live.

When you can't sit with yourself, you miss a major dimension of your life. When I say, you can't sit with yourself, I mean when you can't sit enjoying your own reality, your own Self. And why can't you enjoy your own Self? It is because your samskaras are enjoying you. Your samskaras are living through you. You are not living. That is the reason why you can't sit with yourself. You are driven to continuously do something.

During these few days, all we are going to do is only one thing - work intensely and cleanse the samskaras and have the 'conscious experience' - at least one glimpse of 'thoughtless awareness'. Just one glimpse of thoughtless awareness is enough. I request all of you to please put your complete effort into this. Remember that as of now, whatever you think of as 4D, your precious life, will lose its value at the time of death. Internalise this truth completely. Your whole being, the very root, will be shaken the moment you move from the physical layer at the time of death. It is almost like you are building your own resort there, in the inner world.

The way in which you enjoy your whole life will decide how your last moment will be.

One more important thing, please understand. This might be shocking to you, but it is the truth. Only after seeing the first death was I able to realize this statement: even your paapa (sin) or punya (merit) doesn't come with you or count for anything, at the time of your death. Please understand: even your sin or merit

doesn't come with you. Don't think that your sin or merit comes with you. Don't think that if you do some charity here, if you give some money to some temple here and get a receipt, you will be given a VIP pass there! No! There is no exchange offer between this world and the other world.

Then, the next question comes – 'If that is true then can I commit any sin?' Understand this truth: if somebody commits 100 murders, the attitude of committing murder goes with him upon his death. The exact number of murders does not go with him. The attitude goes with him. And one more thing: never think that because you commit sins you will therefore go to hell. You commit sins because you are in hell! A person who is happy will never be violent. If you are happy, will you torture others? If you are happy, will you be violent? When you are established in goodness, even if your staff or employee makes a mistake, what you will say? 'Alright, leave it!' So understand this important point: hell is not where you will go to. It is where you are. If you understand this, you will take back your question about committing sins!

In the same way, never think that you will do good things and therefore reach heaven. You do good things because you are in heaven. The mental setup that you have when doing an activity is what makes up your experience of hell or heaven. While doing something wrong, whatever mental set up you have that created your attitude and choice, that suffering itself is the only hell. While doing a noble thing, whatever mental setup you have that initiated such an action, that setup and feeling is heaven. So don't think your sins or merits come with you. Only one thing comes with you – the conscious experience that you had in your lifetime.

All of humanity can be categorized into just two categories: people who have had the conscious experience when they were living and people who have not had the conscious experience, that's all! All other concepts of hell and heaven are just beautiful stories. Please be very clear – there is no hell or heaven as you understand it to be. If at all you can carry something with you, there is only one thing that you can carry and that is this conscious experience. Either you can become enlightened, or you can come down for another birth according to your choice.

Please be clear, there are many people who are thinking, 'If I give this much money to that particular temple, that powerful deity will be standing there at the gates of heaven to take care of me.' Or, 'If I give this property to this church, God will be waiting with a special pass into heaven to let me in. Nothing like that will happen! People generally think, 'If I give this much of money to Venkateshwara Swamy, He will send a special flight from Vaikunta (His abode) for me.' No! This will never happen.

There is a beautiful story in the Upanishad, about a rishi by name Jadabharatha. One rishi called Jadabharatha somehow became attached to a deer. From morning till night, he used to spend his time taking care of that deer. When he was dying, he was not able to forget the animal. He started worrying about that animal, 'Oh! Who will take care of the animal? What will happen to it after my death?' He started worrying about all these things, because he was so attached to that deer. When he died, in the next birth, he was born as a deer. Beautifully the verse says that whatever you think in the antima kaala - in your last moment - you become that!

Some people think very cleverly, 'Let me live my whole life, the way I want to live. In the last few moments, I will chant Hare-Rama, Hare-Krishna or Govinda-Shiva and enter heaven somehow.' Or you may think, 'I don't have interest in spiritual things. I'll deal with it on my death bed.' It is not so. Only that which you thought of in your whole life, only that will come up when you leave the body. Don't think that at that moment you can play the game! No! Actually, when you leave the body your whole system will be in such agony, because 80 or 90 years of your life will run through in a fast-forward mode. All that will be seen are the scenes being fast-forwarded. Whatever experience you had intensely, or whatever you enjoyed intensely, only that will come up in multicolour. All the other things will run past in black and white.

If you have lived throughout your life only eating, then naturally, only that will come up in those last moments. When it comes up, what will you decide? 'After all, I am going to only eat in my next birth, so let me take birth as a pig!' You will think, 'Why take birth as a human body?' Suppose that you spent your whole life sleeping, you will decide, 'Why unnecessarily choose a human body and go to office? Let me take birth as a buffalo!'

I am not joking! It is only based on the way in which you enjoy your whole life that you decide in the last moment about your next birth. In the last moment, the whole thing will come up in fast-forward mode. What you enjoyed deeply, what was an intense experience in your life will appear like a pop-up; that will come up and appear in multicolour. All the other things will be in black and white as the background. If you had a single conscious experience, a single instance of thoughtless

awareness in your life, naturally when you leave your body only that will come up in multicolour because that is the strongest experience anybody can have.

Please understand that 'thoughtless awareness' is the strongest experience you can have in your life. All the other three states are only shallow. Even for a single moment, if you had that experience, that is enough. Naturally, when you leave the body that will come up. That will come up and you will simply move into the light. That will act as a light and you will be able to move into the consciousness.

One more thing is important to understand about the time of death. If you had met with an accident and died prematurely or committed suicide, if you did not have the conscious experience before your death you have to wait for the remaining years you might have lived before you can enter a new birth. For example, when you took this body, if you decided to live in this body for 90 years and then committed suicide at age 60, then for the next 30 years, you have to struggle, waiting for the next body. If it is a natural death, then there is no problem. Of course, disease is a natural death. But death due to murder or suicide will have to wait with a lot of suffering to get into the next body.

Never contemplate suicide. Why do we normally contemplate suicide? Because we think of this life as torture, as suffering. But if you commit suicide, only then you will understand that what you are going to go through will be a much worse torture. Never ever contemplate suicide.

If I have to describe the torture in a way, it will be like this: you will have sweets in front of you, but you will not have a tongue to taste or hand to take it and put it into your mouth. How

much of suffering it will be! In the same way, the whole world will be in front of you, but you will not have the body to enjoy it when you float around waiting for your next body after having committed suicide. That is why I say never contemplate suicide.

A recent research report says that if a mother dies at a very young age, the child is prone to paralysis attacks. If the mother dies at a very young age, the child is prone to paralysis because that part of the energy given by the mother is not nourished by her presence, by her nearness. That is why in our ancient system until the age of 14, children were always kept in the nearness of their parents. They were allowed to sleep in their laps.

Till the age of 14, you should hug your children. Put them to sleep in your lap. Keep them always around you. Never put them in a boarding school. If you put your kids in a residential school before the age of 14, you need to get ready to go to old age home in your old age! They will put you in an old age home when it comes to that. If you put them in boarding school before the age of 14, they will put you in old age home later, that's all. There is no other way, because by putting them in boarding school, you would not have built a relationship with them. They will put you in the old age home at the time you need nearness. So please give them your nearness.

Within three kshana of death a person takes another body. It happens within three kshana. Kshana does not mean one 'second' of time. In vedic mathematics or vedic time calculations, the gap between one thought and the next thought for that particular person is one kshana. Kshana is determined by the individual and their thought flow. It is subjective to the person and not an objective calculation of time as we would think of one second on a clock.

If you lived a peaceful life, your kshana can be even two months. If you have lived a restless life, your kshana will be one microsecond. If you have lived a restless life hurrying and worrying, your kshana might even be one microsecond. If you have lived a peaceful life, a relaxed and especially conscious life, if your life was with a conscious experience, your kshana could be even three to four months. It can be extended to even one year.

There are two things - chronological time and psychological time. If you are sitting with somebody whom you really love, or who you really care for, you will not notice time pass. Even if you sit for three to four hours together, you will feel that the time flew by. Whereas, if you are sitting with somebody who doesn't interest you, whom you don't really care for, after every five minutes, what will you do? You will check your watch. You will wonder why time is not moving. You will feel so bored.

If the number of thoughts is too much, then the number of kshanas passed will be more and you will feel that too much time has passed whereas only a few minutes might have passed. This is what happens when you are with someone who doesn't interest you. Your mind becomes restless because of that. If the number of thoughts is fewer, the number of kshanas passed will be fewer and you will feel only a little time has passed, whereas a lot of time would have passed by. This is what happens when you are with someone whom you love. That is why we always say that if the number of thoughts is less, you are in heaven. See, for

devatas (heavenly beings), our earthly one year is one day for them! Have you heard this before? Our entire year is one day for them! How is this so? It is because their number of thoughts is so few. So they don't even know how the chronological time moves past so quickly.

That is why in the Chidambaram temple in South Bharat, which is considered to be the temple belonging to the heavenly beings, the presiding deity – Nataraja, will have only six abhishekas (ceremonial baths) in a year. He is worshipped by the devatas. In regular temples, usually we do six pujas per day. But in this particular temple, only six pujas are done in a year itself, because the calendar of the devatas is totally different. The number of thoughts for them is less; they are in heaven. So naturally their kshana, the time between two thoughts is more.

This concept of kshana should be understood clearly. From this we can understand how our one year is only one day for the devatas. The people who are residing in the sixth layer, the spiritual body, are called devatas. That space itself is called heaven.

If you have lived a restless and continuously worrying life, the moment you leave the body, you will feel so restless that within three kshanas, you will take the next body. You cannot be without a body because you are so dependent on the body and mind to survive. You must quickly get another body so that you can continue to try to fulfill desires.

See, all along your life, your ten pillars, your foundation, were in the outer space of the world. Your attention was always directed outwards. So naturally you are dependent on the body to survive. You can't be without a body. What will you do? You will be in a great hurry to take another body. It is like this example. You wait in the railway station just to get into the first train that stops. You will not be bothered about which train is coming, which way it is going, which platform, etc. You will simply jump into it, that's all. If you have lived a simple life, a peaceful life, if you have had one glimpse of consciousness, a single glimpse of this turiya state, then when you leave the body, you will leave it beautifully, and you will have a VIP lounge there to wait in. There is no hurry and you take another body at your leisure. You will not be pushed and pulled by desires, guilt and painful experiences of your life. You will not be forced to take whatever next body is available. You can have a beautiful and relaxed way of living. You can wait and decide whether to take a certain available body or to wait further. It will all be your choice. All you need to do is work towards one conscious glimpse in this life and in this body.

If you have learnt to live without your body and mind for even a moment, that is what I mean when I say 'thoughtless awareness.' You will have the same thoughtless awareness at the time of leaving the body also. If you master the art of living with the body and mind, then, you will have the maturity and experience to know that whatever is taken away from you will not be you. You will have your inner space safe all the time. It is clear and there is no suffering. As of now you don't have that inner space. As of now, all we think as 'we' is based on the outer space only. Our inner space is simply corrupted with everything

we encounter in the outer world. We never protect our inner space, our greatest treasure. That is the problem.

Ramakrishna says beautifully, 'If you put a little curd into milk and keep it in a corner for two to three hours, it will become curd. Then, you can churn or shake the curd. You will have only butter; nothing will go wrong with it. But immediately after putting the curd into the milk, if you keep on churning it, you will never have the whole thing as curd; the curd will never happen.' Now understand that for these few days, you need to keep your outside world connections away from your inner space so that the curd can form. Once the curd has happened, you can go back into the world. Then, anything may be done to you; nothing will shake you. But in these few days when the process is happening, please cooperate. We will be working intensely here.

Even if you try to get some information from your home or office, whether it is good or bad information, the problem is, your whole office mental setup or home mental setup will come back to you. And in just ten minutes, you will come down and become like how you were earlier. It is like this, even if you see a single encounter on the street, it is enough to create a chain of thoughts in you, is it not? So, please understand, in the next few days, even though it is a little difficult, try to avoid cell phone conversations. Avoid even the incessant mental chatter, the mental thoughts about your office, house, etc.

Whenever you remember this instruction, quickly bring your mind and consciousness back to the present moment. You can

watch your breath or you can feel your whole body in order to bring yourself to the present moment. Continuously, come back to the present moment, just for these few days.

It is said that meditation is like exposing your film directly to the sun. If the camera shutter opens for just one moment, whatever is in front of the camera will be recorded in the film, is it not? If the shutter is left completely open, what will happen? If the sun's rays directly fall on the film, what will happen? Whatever is recorded will be erased.

Now, when you took birth, for one moment the camera shutter opened, and life entered your body. So whatever was there in the scene got recorded. It means that whatever planetary positions existed at that moment got recorded. That is why the time of birth is very important. It is only based on that, your consciousness functions.

Now, consciously, I am keeping the shutter open for quite a bit of time during this program. So naturally, whatever is recorded… what will happen to that? It will be erased, meaning all your past karma is erased. That is why it is said that when you take birth it is like opening the camera shutter for one moment. When you are initiated, the shutter is completely opened. Naturally, the sun's rays enter and all your karmas are wiped out. That is why, when you are initiated, you are called dvija – twice born. You take a second life, a new life. And the one who operates your camera to hold the shutter open for that extra time is called the Guru.

Based on all the intelligence that you have when you leave the body, you decide what type of a body you want to take next. It is based upon the lifetime you just completed. With the 'file' created by the experiences and impressions of the past life, you review the entire file. You ask yourself, 'What is the best experience that I wanted to have in my life?' Then you refer to the past life to see all the experiences you had in your life. Whatever you think was the best, even if it was just a glimpse, you choose. In order to repeat the same peak experience, you decide on the sort of place that would be good to be born in. Then you decide what type of father and mother are needed. After considering all this, you take birth. That's all.

Even poverty is a conscious choice! Please understand: poverty is a conscious choice. It is very difficult to understand this, but it is the truth. When you don't want to take responsibility of having and guarding money, you choose to be in poverty. Having money means a lot of responsibility. You are always in danger; anytime you can be harassed. You can be kidnapped and your money can be taken away from you. These are all the risks money will bring in life. Therefore, you may choose to be born in poverty! That is why we say even poverty is a conscious choice.

Why are we supposed to balance the body? Unless you balance your body, your mind will be continuously in the body. There is a beautiful saying by Patanjali: sthiram sukham āsanam. Patanjali is a great, enlightened master from Bharat, known for his yoga science. The meaning of these words can be interpreted to mean 'When the shoe fits, the feet are forgotten!' Or, when the belt fits, the belly is forgotten, or when the chain fits, the neck is forgotten, or when the ring fits, the finger is forgotten. If the ring doesn't fit, you will be continuously remembering the finger, is it not? If the chain does not fit, you will continuously be remembering the neck; if the shoe does not fit, if it is either too

Stand with one and half foot space between your feet. Close your eyes and tie the eye band.

• 1. Inhale and exhale slowly and deeply.
• 2. Concentrate on your feet; forget all other body parts. Tense your feet. Visualize your body as a bean bag. Tense your feet as intensely as possible.
• 3. Now relax the feet completely (2 minutes).
• 4. Next, tense your calf muscles as intensely as possible… Relax.

Actually, as of now, you are solid matter. But we will be making you totally porous to the energy of Nature. Mostly, all of us resist the energy of Nature. Understand: in the part of your body where you feel cold, where the cold air is touching you, if you don't resist and just allow the cold air to pass though you, you will never have a problem with Nature's energy around you. I walked in this very same dress when I lived in the Himalayas during my pre-enlightenment period. I walked in the Himalayan snow. Of course I never even wore sandals at that time. All the wandering ascetics live this way in the Himalayas, in the snow.

If you have this basic understanding, if you have this basic relationship with Nature, you will not fall sick due to cold and such things to do with Nature. At least that much you can manage. So this balancing will help you. And moreover, becoming energy will make you porous to Nature.

Sit down cross legged on the floor with your eyes closed.

Visualize that you have lost all your possessions, all your name and fame, all your wealth. See yourself as a nobody in society. Visualize that the people who respected you earlier no longer respect you. You have lost all money and have become a beggar begging on the streets. See clearly that you have become a nobody in society.

(10 minutes)

Visualize that you have lost your near and dear ones physically. Visualize that your most cherished relationships have broken to an extent they cannot be repaired.

(10 minutes)

Visualize that you have lost your body parts in an accident or through some disease. Your physical health has deteriorated to a great extent.

(10 minutes)

Bring in your fear of the unknown like the fear of ghosts, spirits and darkness. Live the fears to the maximum extent possible. (10 minutes)

Get ready for your death. Lie down on your back keeping your eyes closed. Your toes and feet are slowly dying…They are dead. Your calf muscles and knees are dead. Your thighs are now dead. Your hip is dead. Your upper body and your arms are dead. Your neck and face are dead.

The soul leaves your body through the sahasrāra chakra (on top of the head). You are dead.

Watch your dead body being surrounded by your relatives and friends. They are all grieving your death.

Watch your body being carried to the cremation ground by your family and relatives. Watch your body being prepared for the cremation.

Your body is now being burnt. It is burning and becoming one with Existence.

(A few minutes pass)

Now, enter back into your body and sit up. Open your eyes.

Prana is the life energy that sustains us every moment of our life. Understand, it is not the same as the air you breathe in and out. Prana is the life energy that is carried by the air. For example, if you have to carry a truck of mud from one place to another, the truck is just the carrier. The mud is the real content you are interested in. Similarly, air is the carrier which carries the real content, prana. We don't need air to survive; prana is what is needed.

Prana is associated with five different types of movements or circulation in the body. They are: prana – inhaling of prana, vyana – prana staying inside the body, udana – prana spreading all over the body to every nook and corner, samana – prana leaving the body*,* and apaana – cleaning of the system.

Please understand that when your desires change, your prana flow or your air flow will change.

For example, if you are caught in lust or any intense desire, your inhaling and exhaling will become intense. The prana going in and coming out will increase.

Desire is nothing but energy. How should we handle this desire energy?

Mahavira, a great spiritual master, says that when we are born on planet earth, we bring with us all that we need to survive and achieve those desires for which we took birth. Yet, why do we feel we do not have enough? For instance, we take ten thousand dollars and set out to buy a car.

We meet someone on the way who talks of the latest television that one should buy if one can afford to. What happens? We are carried away by the friend's words and enthusiasm for the TV, and we end up buying the television. Then we find that we do not have enough money to buy the car that we actually needed! This is how we experience the inadequacies in our lives.

Those desires that you bring with you to fulfill in this life are called prarabdha karma. But after you are born, society imposes thousands of desires on you. You pick up desires from each and everyone whom you meet in life and from commercials and try to fulfill them. All the time, you are fulfilling someone else's desires and not your own, like the example of buying the latest television. You are caught in a trap. You do not have energy, money or time to fulfill all these desires. Therefore, forgetting that all those desires were really the ones that you picked up from others, you blame life and God for not being able to fulfill

When you infuse energy into the pranic layer, only your real desires will stay. The borrowed desires will leave you! As with a tree when you shake it, the old and dry leaves fall while young leaves of energy stay, when you do this meditation, other people's desires will all fall away and only your dreams, your desires, will stay. Understand that your own desires that you came with, into this life are already imbued with the energy to fulfill them. Borrowed desires are not so deep and energy filled. But what happens is that you use the energy you came with to fulfill these borrowed dreams and complain that life does not supply you the energy you need to fulfill your desires. When you work on energizing the pranic layer, all the desires imposed on you by others will drop.

You design your desires when you are born. When other desires are imposed on you, your breathing changes; it becomes shallow. If you have observed kids when they are asleep, you can see that they breathe with their whole body. When social conditioning happens, your breathing becomes shallow and confined to the nose.

Prarabdha karma is your own samskaras that you brought with you. Borrowed samskaras change the way your prana happens. When you readjust your prana, all the false desires fall off. The purpose of this meditation is to strengthen your own desires, not to drop all desires.

As we said earlier, your prarabdha is the desires that you bring with you when you come. Let us now analyse how exactly these borrowed desires take shape. It is not necessary that you yourself pick them up. Society also imposes them on you. Society is the one that first teaches you how to pick up desires from others. At a very young age, parents sow the seed of comparison in you for small things like academic performance, following cleanliness, keeping your things neatly and so on. They know to teach only by comparing you with others in all these contexts. They never just tell you the importance of it and leave it at that. This is how you learn how to borrow desires from others.

For example, when you are on your own at home, you will feel grateful for all things that you own and are blessed with. You will feel a pleasant feeling engulfing you, and a beautiful sense of gratitude overflowing from you. But the moment you open your eyes to the outer world, if you happen to pick up some

Similarly, there is a difference between your needs and wants. Your needs are already taken care of in some way. It is possible to satisfy your needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your wants because they are changing and unclear all the time. Every time one want or desire is fulfilled, a hundred more come up. It is our nature to want endlessly, because we are continuously getting input through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch! The more input we get, the more we want.

Do you see how simple this technique is? But anything simple is complex for the human mind. To begin with, all simple things need you to be simple yourself. This is the basic requirement, or the pre-requisite to understand or internalize the technique.

Here Shiva directly says, 'Whenever a desire arises in you, consider it.' He means, 'Just see, don't judge'. Simply be an unbiased witness, an observer, not a judge.

If you judge something as right or wrong, you will not be able to drop the idea or desire. The moment you say that something is wrong; you have unconsciously begun to enjoy it because right from a young age you have been trained to derive pleasure in enjoying what society labels as wrong. The moment you judge something as right also, you start enjoying it because it is right!

Shiva says, 'See it, and the moment you see it, unclutch from it!' He is teaching renunciation - simple and pure. People may ask, 'How can this be possible? How can we renounce?' I tell them, 'Then follow the method that you know to overcome it, that's all, simple!' You either learn from an enlightened master, or life will teach you. Life is going to teach you. If you learn from the master, it will be a lot easier for you because he will talk to you

We handle desires at three levels. In the first level, we have too many desires that are always self-contradicting. Even if there are only two desires, they will contradict each other. In the second level, there is only one object. You fulfill that but still feel emptiness. You do not feel completely fulfilled. In the third level, there is no object, there is just overflowing energy. Desire without any object is bliss. In kids energy overflows as desires.

Pure desire is desire without any object. It is overflowing energy for no reason. Pure desire is actually just an overflowing, that's all. It is a causeless overflowing. When you further purify this with awareness, you come to the stage of satori; you get a glimpse of samadhi; that is, you are in a state of pure awareness. You reach this not by suppressing, but by being aware, by purifying it.

What is the root cause of desire? We feel we have to achieve something, some goal in life all the time. We feel we need to fulfill the purpose of life. All desires are to reach towards what we think is the goal of life at that moment. That brings us to the important issue of renunciation…

This is a million-dollar question!

The answer to this is:

The whole of Existence, the whole universe, is purposeless!

Of course, it would be very shocking to hear this. From a very young age, we are taught and socially conditioned to believe that life has got some purpose. We are made to run towards some goal, towards some purpose, all the time.

'What is life without purpose?' you may ask. Any activity, let alone one's entire life, has to have a purpose, a definition, and an end point, to make it meaningful. That purpose is what drives us, motivates us and provides energy to carry on with our dayto-day activities.

So to hear a statement such as 'Life has no purpose', might confuse you. You would say, 'All our lives, we have been brought up to believe that we are here for a purpose.' This is because at every stage of our lives, a different purpose is drilled into our heads and we are made to work towards that purpose. As children, we are expected to do well in school. Once grown up, we are supposed to be married happily, and bring up children.

We may wonder why we exist when there is no goal to work for or look forward to.

We have to understand an important thing. When desire disappears, the energy behind the desire still remains. Man as such is energy. That should not be forgotten. We have always been trained to think that man is matter.

The first line of the Isa Vasya Upanishad is 'Īśa vāsyam idam sarvam' - All that exists is energy. Desire is also a form of energy. That is why you can turn one desire into another. The desire energy at one point may be a manifestation of greed; in another moment, the same energy may transform into anger. In another case, it may transform into depression.

Energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. This is what science also says.What happens when we transcend desire? It cannot now be manifested as greed or fear or anger, which are all due to external causes. The whole energy manifests itself as pure causeless compassion! You cannot create compassion. It happens because of transformation of energy. Then the whole energy starts overflowing causelessly! That is the beauty and definition for compassion. It is the causeless overflowing of energy. It is causeless because there is no cause like greed or fear or anger or anything. It just IS.

An important thing to understand is that desire can exist only in unconsciousness. Only when you are unaware can desire exist.

A fundamental law of Existence is that you and your desires together create the reality around you. Existence responds to what you desire. For example, if you are afraid, that very desire of having fear will invoke the desire to frighten you in the other person. If you are not afraid, the desire in the other simply disappears.

Existence simply responds to what you ask for. Constantly, It is giving you what you request. We only need to have the intelligence to know what to ask for.

Your thoughts and energy directly affect your body, your cell structure, your decisions, your capacity to fulfill your decisions, the outer world incidents, and even accidents. Currently you are always centered in either greed or fear. Every action that you do, is out of either desire or fear. It becomes very easy for others to exploit you because of this. You become very vulnerable. You create a mental setup that creates and attracts similar incidents to you. You also corrupt your energy flow with this.

If you can change your mental setup from this type to one of bliss, or ananda, then your energy flow will start brimming and your thoughts will be much clearer and more in the present. When you do this, you have every power to control the outer

When you light the candle of understanding, desire disappears. It is not a question of what you desire. The very act of desiring itself is misery. When you are desireless, the 'I' or the ego disappears, so the misery disappears.

All desires must disappear. Only in a desireless moment, will what you are asking for happen.

When we hear this, the next thing that occurs is your wanting to be desireless! But this is one more desire! You cannot desire desirelessness. You must simply understand the futility of desire. Through the understanding itself, the greed for desirelessness drops.

Watch every act that you do. Watch every thought, every desire that possesses you. As you watch, your chattering mind chatters less, because the energy that was earlier chattering and fuelling the desire is now being transformed into watchfulness. When this happens, clarity arises and the desire dissolves. Actually, the attachment to the desire drops.

Sit down on the floor. Whatever you understand by these words let that sink into you.

See clearly that you are just liquid. See very clearly what prevents you from realizing this. See where you are stuck: whether it is your social position, or it is your fear of losing your health, or it is the fear of losing your relationship, or the fear of losing your wealth. Just see where it is getting stuck and stopping you from experiencing that you are liquid, that you are fluid. At least understand that which stops you from realizing it. If nothing stops you, then relax into you.

You are not the same person as you think you are. There is no need to protect you, because you don't exist. You are just the greatest illusion created by you, and supported by worldly illusions.

Forget about tomorrow. There is no need to bother about it. Realize this truth now; that is enough. Don't bother about the consequences of this realization. Don't analyse whether it is positive or negative. Relax bother about the consequences; just see the truth. Don't worry about how many times you missed in the past. Even if you have missed ten thousand times in the past, it is alright. Now there is a possibility, you can capture it! Just catch it.

(After the meditation…)

So, we have gone through the meditation to drop the entire past. Now you know where you are stuck. Whatever thought came into your mind repeatedly during this meditation, that is where you are stuck. That is what you need to drop.

When you are finished with all these seven layers, the final touch will happen by the master's grace. Actually that is what happens when you put in your entire effort. If your effort has been intense, the master's grace happens automatically. When you open up and throw out everything, the master will be there to heal everything. This is what happens during the meditation in all the seven layers. You throw everything out and the final touch is given by the master's grace.

Now we are going to have only these two sessions: the session of expelling everything from the past and receiving the master's grace. The meditation which we are going to do now is called vraja homa. It is the meditation done by the people before taking sannyas. Don't worry; I am not going to give you sannyas now! This is normally the meditation done by people who are taking sannyas.

Of course when I introduced this meditation to the public, some traditional swamis criticized me. They asked, 'How can you give this to everyone? It is specially for us.' I said, 'Only because of this secrecy, we lost the real science of Ayurveda medicine; we lost the real science of Siddha medicine; we lost all the ancient surgery methods; we lost so much of our knowledge. So I believe that when something can give results, it should be shared with the whole world. This is such a highly powerful meditation technique that can transform beings; why not give it to the whole world?' Therefore, I brought it out!

Now I am giving it in all our NSPs. After all whose property are these meditation techniques? They are all our ancient rishis' (sages) property. Why were they created? They were created for the sake of the whole world. It is not meant to be monopolised by some small group of people. It belongs to the

An important difference you should understand between normal human beings and enlightened masters. A normal person doesn't have the ability to make his body alive out of his will. Either a normal person's body is alive or it is dead, that's all. It is not under his control. But for an enlightened person, it is under his control. He can either make his body alive, or relax. Because of this ability, he can make another body also alive! When he chooses to make a stone or metal alive, it becomes a representation of his very self.

All the deities in our major traditional temples are those energized by enlightened masters. Masters like Arunagiri Yogeeshwar from

Tiruvannamalai, Patanjali from Chidambaram, Karurar from Thanjavur, Konganavar from Tirupati and Meenakshi from Madurai have energized the deities in these temples. So deities are considered to be the very bodies of the enlightened masters, and disciples start serving the deities even after the master leaves his physical body. The body of the deity is considered to be the body of the master himself. That is the reason why the deities receive the same respect offered to an enlightened master.

For example, all the disciples initiated by Arunagiri Yogeeshwar will worship the Arunachala temple for generations together. You will see that whatever is done to the master, the same thing will be done to the deity also.

The deities possess independent intelligence. Energizing the deities is a big process. It is like giving birth. So understand, these energised deities directly will respond to your prayers. They will directly relate with you if you are open in relating to them.

If you see our puja (offering), and our ashram routine, you will see that in the morning they will play the appropriate song to wake the Lord up. Then they will give oil and tooth powder: a small cup of oil for His hair and a small cup of tooth powder for Him to brush His teeth! Then they will give Him a bath and offer fresh, ironed clothes, just like how they offer to the master. Whether it is in Bidadi or Ohio or LA or Hyderabad, in all our temples, you will see the same routine. Then they also offer food and perform the evening arati (ceremoniously waving lit lamps and other items in front of the deities). Five times a day, they will offer puja. In the night, they will put the Lord to bed in a ceremonious way again.

I will now explain about how karma and rituals are directly connected, how our prarabdha, agamya and sanchita karmas and rituals are connected. I will tell you about these three karmas, and how performing rituals can directly eliminate the negative influence of these karmas, these samskaras orengraved memories. You can come out of them with this understanding.

Rituals are very powerful tools, powerful techniques. Many people ask me, 'You are enlightened; why you should perform rituals?' I tell them, 'Because I am enlightened, I am teaching people exactly how and why to perform rituals!' No ritual is needed for enlightened beings.

Let me tell you a small story:

One man went to a hotel and started eating idlis (Hindu dish made of rice flour).

He ate eight idlis, and after the ninth idli his hunger settled.

The waiter came and gave the bill for nine idlis.

This man said, 'What is this? I will pay only for one idli the ninth idli which put my hunger off! The first eight idlis did not do the job; only the ninth one did the job of satisfying my hunger. So, I will pay only for that idli!'

Doesn't it sound strange? In the same way, people who reject rituals are actually rejecting the first eight idlis. People who think that rituls are a waste and that they will go straightaway to meditation and spiritual experience are doing nothing but rejecting the first eight idlis. Understand that the ninth idli worked because of the first eight idlis. So, your meditation will work because of you having gone through ritual worship sincerely! If you reject all these preliminary things and think that you can directly eat the ninth idli, will it ever happen? Will your hunger ever get satisfied? Whoever thinks that they can directly eat the ninth idli will be just sitting and starving. Not only that, because they did not do things in a proper way, they will not experience what they should experience, and instead they will think, 'Maybe this is all that the experience is.' Such people are called Vedantis - the so called meditators. If you see them, there will be no sign of joy on their face. They will perpetually appear depressed and be missing something.

Ramakrishna beautifully says, 'As long as you think you have a body, you will be able to relate to the cosmic energy only through

In the Guru puja – the offering to the master*,* just the maanasa puja mantra (verse which pays obeisance to the master through inner visualization) will remind you of all the clicks.

The first line of the maanasa puja mantra says, 'Hridpadmam aasanam dadhyaat' - my heart is a seat for You. This very line implies that our heart has to be clean! It is an inbuilt reminder, a click!

'Sahasraar achutaamrutaihi | Paadyam charanayor dadhyaat' –

sahasraara amruta means when you overflow with gratitude, you will have a deep sweet taste in your tongue, and in your throat. During Ananda darshan you can feel this. How many of you have felt? In Ananda darshans, you can see suddenly that whole throat becoming so sweet; that is what is sahasraara amruta – the nectar that happens out of deep gratitude*.*

For this, we need to clearly understand these deep yet fundamental Truths about life that will change the very way we look at life.

First thing, all our minds are not individual separate pieces of the universe. They are all one and the same. All our minds are interlinked. Not only interlinked, they directly affect each other. This is what I call 'collective consciousness'.

Your thoughts are as infectious as your cold. People may escape from your cold. It is not so infectious, but your thoughts are so infectious, much more than your cold is. If you catch a cold from someone, you might suffer physically for a few days and then get over it. But when you catch thoughts from people, not only do you suffer mentally, but the suffering is also forever. Similarly, anything that you think affects the people staying around you. It affects not only those who are staying closely around you, but everyone living on planet earth.

Your intellect might resist, saying, 'How can this be true?' But the truth is, all of us are not different beings, or different minds. We are all totally interlinked, closely networked. Any of my thoughts can transform you; any of your thoughts can touch me. We are not separate individuals, we are not an island. There is only one whole thing - collective consciousness.

The second truth is that you are connected not only at the mental level, but even at the deeper conscious levels. The deeper you go, the deeper you are connected. We are all actually connected in the levels of all the seven energy bodies.

Now, in the physical layer, you, God and I can be represented as three different points quite far from each other, say 120 degrees away from one another. In the physical layer, the distance is so much.

If you come down a little to the pranic level, the distance is reduced. The three points come a little closer. If you come down deeper to the mental level, the distance between you and I is further reduced and so is the distance between you, God and I. When you travel deeper and deeper, and finally reach the nirvanic level, these three entities merge into one!

During the entire Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP), you will realize that you are a part of the collective consciousness. It will not stop there… You will realize that not only are you a part of, but you are the collective consciousness.

Remember that you are not just an individual consciousness as you think. As you start traveling deeper and deeper, layer by layer, the realization will dawn that you are just one with everything. As a result, you start feeling a sense of well being in the mental layer, the pranic layer, the etheric layer, the physical layer, and all the other layers, and automatically all diseases disappear!

When you really experience that you are the boundary-less consciousness, it is an unbelievable experience that is difficult to describe.

I have seen people at the end of the program in such ecstasy, that they forget their name, their identity, their social status, their education, their qualifications, their wealth, their religion… everything that they are and that they have! They respect every other individual in the hall with such flowing love and gratitude. All of them fall at each other's feet!

I have seen the father-in-law falling at the feet of his daughterin-law. In Bharat, this never happens. It is too much to ask, as per

the traditions followed in Bharat! However, this has happened at the end of the program only because he is able to see the divinity in her at that moment. The mother-in-law sees the divinity in her son-in-law and falls at his feet. Grand parents touch the feet of grand children. Bosses or owners touch the feet of the people working under them.

This experience of oneness or collective consciousness makes us forget all differences in name, wealth, social status, and prestige. Whatever we think of as ourselves, all of it just disappears, and what we truly are is revealed. I have seen that by touching the feet of their worst enemies, people simply forgive and forget the past. They experience such a deep level of consciousness, such bliss, that the ego literally disappears!

They just go around and see God in everyone, and they are in bliss, ecstasy, collective consciousness. Mind you, it is not that they are visualizing or hallucinating. When the experience happens, the whole group realizes that they are all one and the same; that they are not different entities.

A small story:

There was a farmer who grew superior quality and awardwinning corn. Year after year, his corn won honor and prizes in the state fair.

One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him. The reporter wanted to find out something interesting about how the farmer grew the best corn. During the interview, the reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors.

Our thoughts and energy flow have the capacity to create and attract incidents and people of the same nature. There is a beautiful research you should know about.

One Japanese doctor Masaru Emoto has done a beautiful research on water and published a book called, 'Hidden Messages from Water'. It is a beautiful book. He is a great scientist. He is not only a scientist, but a person who works on different possibilities untiringly, working on the power of the mind over matter.

He took many cups and filled them with water. All the cups were filled with water of the same chemical composition. Chemically, the water in all the cups was the same. He kept the cups in several rooms. All the environmental conditions like the room temperature, humidity etc. were the same. Everything was controlled perfectly.

Everyday he would enter each of the rooms and relate with the cups of water. In one room, he would create some positive thoughts like peace, bliss and joy for five minutes and come out. He would then go to the next room and create some violent thoughts like war, terrorism, violence and anger and come out. He would go to the third room and chant some words from the Dhammapada, Buddha's teachings. Finally he froze the water from each of the cups and took pictures through a microscope.

His results are published in his book 'Hidden Messages from Water'. The results are simply shocking. The water on which he used positive words was shining like a diamond. The water on which he used negative words looked like a ghost - dark, distorted and dense. The water on which he used Buddha's teachings looked divine and beautiful. Not once or twice, but he did this experiment several hundred times and found the same results. If you find time, go through that book, 'Messages from Water'.

Understand: if your thoughts can affect the water in the outer world - water in a small cup, can't it affect the blood which is flowing in your body? The first thing is to understand that your thoughts can affect the outer world. The second thing is that if you can affect the water in the outer world, why not the water flowing in your body? 80% of your body is filled with water – blood!

Let us look a little deeper into guilt. What is the root cause of guilt? It is our idea about right and wrong, our understanding about what is right and wrong. Only from that, the guilt starts. What is right? What is wrong? Let us start analyzing.

After all, what is the scale to measure right or wrong? In Hinduism, vegetarianism is considered right. In Christianity, non-vegetarianism is thought to be right. In Hinduism, you can marry only once. In Islam you can marry several times. In Hinduism, you can't drink alcohol and liquor. In Christianity, Jesus himself consumed wine.

There are so many rules and so many regulations in different places, different situations, and different societies. In South Bharat, fish is considered non-vegetarian food. In Bengal they call it gangāphal - fruit from the sacred river Ganga! Bengali Brāhmins,

a priestly class of people eat fish. Every Bengali house has a small fish pond in their house. They grow fish. They eat fresh fish. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa used to eat fish. For Bengalis, fish, sweet, and tobacco are the basic things in their life. Ramakrishna used to smoke. Vivekananda used to smoke. Of course, they smoked not as an addiction but for various practical reasons. Where is the scale for so all the so-called morality? It is just local customs! In the course of time, they become the morality.

If you read the ancient scriptures or the epics of Bharat, in the Mahabharata, Draupadi was married to five men! So many kinds of life systems, so many different customs are there. Mother Kunti had five sons from five different men! Draupadi lived with five men!

At different times, different rules were formed by different leaders. In a particular society, certain things that were considered morality were considered to be immoral in another society! Here in America, there are similar moral standards that I saw. In one state, casinos are allowed, whereas in the neighbouring state, casinos are illegal. A river separates the two states, and the border line between the two states passes through the river. So, inside the river itself, there is a big casino! On one side it is legal, and on the other side it is illegal! So, where is the scale of right or wrong? For one person, a particular food is amṛta (nectar), whereas for another person, the same food is poison!

Where is the scale to measure what is right and what is wrong? There is no scale. Please understand that morality should happen out of integrity, not out of guilt. Guilt is a wedge inserted into your inner space. It makes you schizophrenic. It makes you take on double standards.

What do I mean by integrity? Being in the present moment and being only ONE and not many; seeing reality without the play of the mind. Once the mind steps in, duality also steps in. Just by being intensely aware of the present moment, you can achieve integrity where there is only ONE and not two or three or many, fighting in you. When you are aware, you will be ONE and moral. When you decide to stray from awareness, you will be many and immoral. Morality has to do with awareness, not with any other social rules. Awareness causes you to spontaneously take the right action in the right situation. Morality can very well cause you to do the wrong thing in the right situation because it doesn't have the right base. If you integrate yourself, you will be centered upon awareness. If you remain fragmented, you will depend on morality for guidance.

People who create rules and regulations in order to create guilt in you, are the ones who hide their personal lives under covers because their personal lives would be totally nonconforming to the rules set up by them. But they set up the rules so that they can rule you and exploit you. Once you have the idea of guilt sown in you, you can be cheated and exploited easily by society. That is why guilt is the first thing that society sows in you. With guilt, it is easier to control you.

In Santana Dharma (another name for Hinduism), we have two main scriptures – the shruti and the smriti. Sanatana Dharma is the only courageous religion to have two kinds of scriptures. In all other religions on the planet earth, they have only one scripture, only one book which is considered to be the ultimate! No religion allows its holy book to be updated. But Sanatana Dharma is one of the courageous religions which says its book can be updated.

The main scriptures are divided into two portions: shruti (Vedas) and smriti (traditional sacred books). Shruti means the ultimate laws about enlightenment - the concept or realization about the universe. Smriti means the social laws, day-to-day rules and regulations which, when followed, will take one along the path to realize the goal of the shruti. The courageous people declared that smriti can be changed. From time to time, enlightened masters can create new smriti, because we know that no morality can be morality forever. No law can be law forever, because morality and laws are based on the situation, on the type of people and culture at that time.

For example, if the deer population increases too much, you are allowed to hunt deer. In the same way, once upon a time in Bharat, there were too many cows. That is why they started offering cows in the ritualistic sacrifices. Once the cow population became too low, they started to worship the cows.

The rules are created to maintain equilibrium in society and nature, to maintain harmony in the society. When we all live together we need some basic understanding and rules to happily co-exist. For example, you will not try to kill me so that I will not kill you. That is all. Then both of us can live happily without fear. Like this, a few basic things are assumed and come into being. Slowly, by and by, they become rules. They become morality.

The problem is that as long as you understand the root of the moral rules, you will neither behave immorally nor will you get

disturbed by them. When you don't understand the rules, once the rules are just spoon fed, when they become a set of forced rules, then not only will you try to escape from the rules, but you will also create a deep guilt in you with regard to them.

First, you try your best to escape from it. Next, you create a deep guilt inside your being for escaping from it.

A small story about how we get caught up in superstitions:

An economic forecaster was known to have a horseshoe prominently displayed above the door frame of his office.

One of his colleagues saw it one day and asked him why it was there.

The forecaster replied, 'It is a good luck charm that helps in my forecasts.'

The colleague was surprised and asked, 'But do you really believe in this superstition?'

The forecaster replied, 'Of course not!'

The colleague was confused. He then asked, 'Then why do you keep it?'

'Well,' said the forecaster, 'it works whether you believe in it or not!'

Just see how strongly influential superstitions can get! It virtually destroys the intelligence in us. This is how we start making up rituals and following them with no clue about the truth behind them. We give in to a set of blind rules in our lives and fight with them as well.

Another small story:

One great pundit (learned man) wanted to take a bath in the sacred river Ganga. He had a kamandalu (small water pot) with him. He wanted to keep it in a safe place where no one would pick it up. He looked around, but found nobody trustworthy enough to hold the kamandalu while he went to take a bath. So he then made a small pit on the banks of the Ganga, put his kamandalu in the pit and covered it with sand. To mark the spot, he put a heap of sand on top of the pit. He then went to take his bath.

There was a farmer who watched the pundit from some distance. He thought to himself, 'Oh, before taking a bath in the Ganga, one should make a small sand heap!' He proceeded straight to the banks of the river, made a sand heap next to the pundit's and went in for a bath.

Another man who was going to have a bath saw the farmer doing this and thought, 'Oh, it seems like a tradition to make a sand heap before taking a bath in the river Ganga.' So, he too made a small sand heap and went for his bath.

By and by, all the people started making heaps before taking a bath in the Ganga.

The pundit finished his bath and came out of the river. When he came out, he saw hundreds of sand heaps all over the Ganga banks! He was shocked! Not only that. Now he had a big problem: where was his kamandalu? Which heap was it under? He started searching. He started to destroy the sand heaps to look under them.

Suddenly the farmer came by and shouted, 'Why are you destroying our Shiva lingas (symbol of Lord Shiva)? Why are you destroying them? You are a pundit. You should have some sense! Don't you know that you are supposed to make a Shiva linga before taking your bath? And not only that. You are disturbing our Shiva lingas! Don't you have sense?'

The pundit was shocked at the farmer's words and knew instantly what had happened. A heap of sand naturally looks like a Shiva linga! The pundit thought, 'What I did to save my kamandalu has become a Shiva ritual now! I seem to have started a ritual!

Of course, the pundit had to leave without his kamandalu.

If you look into your life, there are so many sand heaps that have entered in the same way! There are so many speed breakers and so many obstacles that have entered your life without your understanding. In the course of time, many regulations that had meaning earlier, have become rules without any meaning now!

In Bharat, during the times before electricity, clothes would not be sewn after sunset since sewing was done by hand with a needle and the tailors had only dim lanterns with which to do their work. Naturally, at the nighttime, in the dim light of the

candle or lantern, it would be a strain to sew. Therefore, the work was always confined to daylight hours. But even now in Bharat, the eldery people in the house will say, 'It is not a good thing to sew after dusk!' The very reason for not sewing at night doesn't even exist anymore. Electricity and bright lights are there! But it has become a ritual for them without any connection to its original purpose!

When you do not have or are not given the right understanding, things become dead rules in your life. When you have understanding, any rule can become a technique to live life happily. Rules and rituals are actually techniques for your own enlightenment. When I say enlightenment, I mean a blissful life full of clarity. Of course, when pursued deeply, it will lead to your ultimate enlightenment. When you are given the right understanding, you will understand that any rule was created just for you and others around you to live a happy and blissful life.

When the spirit of the rules is understood, there won't be any problem falling in line with it. And the juice will be there in your action or commitment to it. But if the spirit is missed, everything is missed. It becomes like setting out with the wrong foot. Take meditation, for example. Meditation itself is done to go inwards irrespective of the outer world scenes. I have seen some people, before starting their meditation routine, they will create so much noise in the house. They will go around telling everyone to keep quiet. They will practically take the whole house to task just for going about its normal routine when they are going to meditate! If they understood the spirit behind meditation, they would not be doing this. Only when the spirit is missed, things become dead rituals. They miss and mess!

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

For example, people repeatedly tell me, 'My son is not taking care of me.' Be very clear that your son may be your foremost enemy because you have given him so many rules, so many

regulations throughout his life. You must have given him so many laws. You would have been almost a master for him when he was young! Naturally, while one part of his mind will have respect for you, the other part will always harbour a revenge towards you. Don't think this is something new that I am telling you or this has to do with your son alone. No! This is a basic fact in society. It is not spoken about because it is too much truth for people to bear! Which son or which father will agree if I told them this fact? See, this fact is such a deep rooted one that most people are blissfully oblivious of. But it is my duty to draw your attention to such base level things.

There are a few people who try to give you rules in a very subtle or cunning way. They exploit your fear and greed by showing you ideas of hell and heaven and create the desire for heaven and a fear of hell. They create so many concepts of hell and heaven and sell them to you. They say, 'If you practice these things, you will be rewarded with heaven; if you practice those things, you will be punished with hell.' This concept of heaven and hell is a subtle way of exploiting your being. When you are given rules based on greed and fear, you start creating a deep guilt in yourself.

There is a subtle relationship between fear and guilt. It is like this: when you accept fear, you go beyond it. But when you suppress the fear, when you reject it, it transforms into guilt. Anything suppressed, anything that is dealt with against nature, leads directly to guilt. The feeling of not being true to oneself is the root cause of guilt.

Many times you justify your guilt by labeling it as responsibility. No! How does one differentiate between guilt and responsibility?

If you get into a low feeling when you think about it, it is guilt. If you feel intensity and integrity, it is responsibility! So you cannot confuse the two and try to escape. This is the clear scale. If you are pulled to low energy at the thought of what you did, then it is guilt. But if you feel good about it, then it is responsibility.

A guilty person can never be at ease with himself. He will always lack self-confidence. He starts looking for a leader for guidance. This is where religion steps in and exploits people. It exploits the deep guilt through a set of moral codes, through a set of do's and don'ts. The same religion can work in a positive way to get you out of guilt. How can it work? It can work through the power of prayer. You can exercise the power of prayer to intensify and integrate yourself. Prayer has immense power, especially when you are looking to integrate yourself. Instead of following religion as a set of rules, you could take it up as a technique to integrate yourself. As a sheer outcome of the power of prayer, the guilt in you will dissolve.

If you live from moment to moment, there is no question of repenting for what you have done; guilt will have no place. Guilt is not real. It does not have existential reality. You can choose to drop your guilt at any time because it is not natural. We carry the load of guilt most of the time because of our convoluted thinking.

An important thing… This is one of the ultimate laws that is very difficult to understand, but one of the ultimate laws. Nobody can live their life based upon any law. When I say nobody, I mean NOBODY. When I say any law, I mean ANY LAW. Life

is much superior to laws. Any law, rule or regulation is based on a certain understanding of life. But life is beyond all our understanding and logic! That is why.

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

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

Life is natural. Laws are societal. Life is physical. Laws are mental.

All your ideas, all your do's and don'ts, all your morality, all your 'rights or wrongs' are given to you by society. You are called a saint or a sinner only by society. As long as society labels you a saint, you are a saint. The moment society labels you a sinner, you are a sinner.

If you kill someone in the society, you will be called a murderer; you will be punished. But if you kill someone on the battlefield you will be called a hero. You will be given a big award!

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

into your morality. You will realize that it is only skin deep. Society's morality is only skin deep, whereas consciousness comes from the very being.

Your consciousness is always trying to break through your conscience. Your consciousness continuously fights with conscience. Conscience is societal. Consciousness is natural. Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness.

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

Guilt is the reason for greed also. It works like this: when you are habituated feeling guilty for most of your expressions or actions, you stay away from freely expressing yourself and doing things. Although this may save you from falling into guilt, you unconsciously develop a greed for real life. Over many years, the suppression causes greed to build up in you.

If you have the intensity to break free from your guilt and express yourself, then you are liberated. But most often you won't even have the clarity that it is the guilt that is causing the struggle within you. You will simply fall into depression because you can't pursue the goals of your greed.

When greed arises in small doses and you are taught to deal with it with awareness, fulfilling the greed consciously can be a joyful experience. But what happens? When greed arises, society starts labeling it and condemning it. You start feeling guilty about all your desires. You start suppressing. Then the problem starts. The suppressed greed becomes either depression or some other aggressive expression.

You might have noticed that when you were harbouring guilt, if you got angry, the guilt reduced. The moment you express your anger, your guilt is released. This happens because anger and guilt are two sides of the same coin. The moment you become angry with the person who created the guilt in you, you come out of the guilt. If you created guilt based on somebody's opinion of something, the guilt is basically because of the respect that you have for that person. If you did not have respect for that person, it would not cause such a deep guilt in you. But the moment you become angry, naturally the respect is lost. So when the respect is lost, the guilt also disappears. You understand that you have been exploited and hence disturbed.

I am reminded of another incident that I share often at my discourses. One American woman brought her son to me with a complaint. She said, 'My son is not obeying my words, Swamiji. Please advise him.' I felt a little awkward. I myself never obeyed my mother when I was a boy! How can I advise him to obey? The boy looked very intelligent. But I had to do the job.

So I started talking to him, 'Why don't you obey your mom? She even made me obey her just now.' The boy asked, 'She herself

is not happy. If I follow her words, where will I end up? I will also end up in the same way as her. Why are you asking me to obey her? Why are you asking me to listen to her?'

I was shocked. He made good sense. Somehow I managed to convince him. I think the next generation kids might even sue their mothers or fathers if they fall into depression. They will say, 'These people didn't give me the correct mental setup. That is why now I am very depressed.' So watch out. If you try to sow the wrong seeds in your child, you might be in trouble later in your life.

We have to find out some method by which we do not create guilt in the kids' minds. According to me, intelligence is more solid than morality. Consciousness is more solid than conscience.

Of course you need a little patience to create consciousness in the child. You need to work with them, explaining every step to them. You can't give consciousness in teaspoons. You can give conscience in teaspoons - just do's and don'ts. But consciousness, you can't give in teaspoons. You need to work with them. Unless you have that much patience, think twice before bringing children to planet earth. Some people tell me, 'But Swamiji, children are not in our hands. God gives us.' Just imagine! Only when you shed responsibility, you will talk these nonsensical things.

Some people tell me, 'It is very difficult Swamiji. If you have one kid, it is ok. You tell us all these things, but it is very difficult to manage them, very difficult to patiently give them intelligence. Naturally, we have to create guilt and give them rules.' Well, as I said, if you can't take responsibility to have patience and groom them, think twice before you decide to give birth, that's all.

Ask yourself, 'Have I solved my life's problems? Did I find solutions to all my problems?' If yes, then go ahead; bring the next generation to planet earth. Otherwise, wait. There is every chance that the next generation will catch you and ask, 'What are you doing? Why did you bring me here?' Already, kids have come to the level of remarking, 'She herself is not happy. Why should I follow her?' So think before you decide.

There are three kinds of guilt that take root in you:

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

These are the three major kinds of guilt that kill your intelligence.

The mental layer which is related to thoughts is specifically associated with the feeling of guilt. Guilt is nothing but your past decisions and actions being reviewed with your updated intelligence. For example, when you were in school, you might have said a few mean things to one of your friends which caused a relationship to break. Now, so many years later, with the kind of intelligence that you have presently, is it right to review that incident and feel guilty? No! At that time you had only that much intelligence and so you behaved in that fashion. Now, you have updated intelligence. But you can't review the past like that with your present intelligence.

Before the age of seven, guilt is created by your immediate family. Rules are imposed by the family because they cannot logically answer and make you understand issues. This leads to guilt. The guilt about sex is created most definitely by the immediate family. That is the first guilt. The guilt based on greed is always the first guilt that is created by the immediate family.

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

The third guilt is the worst - that which you create for yourself. When you internalize the guilt based upon greed and fear, you create new types of guilt for yourself. If you analyze the situation, whenever you are stuck, these three kinds of guilt will be there in you.

There is a certain guilt that is useful for you: a guilt, which if pursued intelligently, can cause you to move forward in life. It is like this: when you see that you have the potential to do something, when you feel that you have so much potential which you are not using at all, then, if you are intelligent, guilt will happen in you! This guilt can spur you on to take steps to implement what needs to be done for you to reach your potential level.

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

This type of guilt has the ability to immerse you in terrible misery. Because of that, it also has the property to drive you to do what needs to be done! Because of its very nature, you cannot harbour this guilt for long. You have to get over it. And the way to get over it is by doing what needs to be done. Once it is done, the guilt also disappears. As long as you harbour this guilt without taking steps, you will remain in misery. That is the simple logic of this guilt.

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

Guilt itself is a pull and push between the past and future. When you think of past incidents with updated intelligence you feel guilty. Similarly, with guilt, you anticipate the future, and destroy the future also. Either way, you miss the beauty of the present moment because of guilt.

The other day one of my close disciples was asking, 'Master, you are so casual, so innocent, so playful. But when it comes to teaching us, any word that you utter, simply becomes true! How can so much intelligence and intuition happen continuously?' He asked out of pure awe...!

I had a class that day. Before coming to the class, I was playing chess with one of our devotee's daughter. We had not finished the game, so I told her I would come back after the class and play. It was then that this disciple asked me, 'How you can be so playful, so joyful on one side, and on the other side, your words are so clearly becoming reality!'

One thing you should understand: you are not able to experience this intuition because you are not able to fall into the present moment. You are always pulled by the past or future. Either you work and worry about the past, or you work and worry about the future. Something or the other is continuously going on in you.

Time is like a shaft. Visualize this one thing and understand: time is like a shaft. You are pulled to either this side of the shaft or that side of the shaft. But eternity penetrates time only in the present moment, at the center.

Because of your pull and push between past and future, you never feel relaxed. A deep craving exists all the time, either to achieve something in the outer world or inner world. Please understand that the craving to achieve something in the inner world is also craving for the future. Your craving for enlightenment is also a worry about the future. When you leave the past and future to be in the present, you will see that you relax from this craving.

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

Just try this small experiment:

Just relax for three days with complete acceptance. If you relax for three days without the pull and push in the inner and outer worlds are you going to lose all your wealth? Surely not! So there is no problem. In three days you are not going to lose anything. Why don't you give it a try? Just for three days,

sincerely, utterly, accept everything in your life one hundred percent!

If you are not able to accept one hundred percent then accept that you are not able to accept one hundred percent. Even the acceptance of 'I am not able to accept myself in the inner world and outer world,' will make you drop from the pull and push between past and future. The moment you understand, 'I am unable to free myself from the pull and push. I am not able to accept my reality,' that very understanding will start doing its job.

The moment you accept something, you will simply fall into the present moment. The moment you fall into the present moment, the time shaft will become a servant for you. As long as you are below the time shaft, it will rule you. You will be pulled or pushed by the time shaft. The moment your consciousness is raised to the present moment, you will see that you are penetrating the time shaft.

When you penetrate the time shaft, the future is also clearly known to you. The past is also clearly known to you. The tremendous realization comes to you that the time shaft is only your projection! Try this experiment just for three days. If you can fall into the present moment, relaxing from the outer world and inner world things, in three days you will have a glimpse. 'What is life? What does it mean to live in the present moment? If this happens to you, you will experience such ecstasy, such a different space, such a different life that you have never experienced before.

Just for three days, don't try to alter anybody in the outer world. You have lived based on your philosophy for the last 30 years.

Give me just one simple three-day trial period. You will see that when you experiment with such great techniques, they work miracles in your being. They start a great alchemy process in your being. If you are not able to be sincere, accept that you are not able to be sincere. Even that sincerity is enough. You will start seeing a different space in you. That different space is what I call nithya (eternity).

Many women face the guilt of killing a life when they go through an abortion. Please understand that when they decided to abort the pregnancy, their intelligence was only at that level. If their intelligence gets updated soon, it is not their mistake.

Once a guy came to me complaining, 'I am suffering. I have 14 children.' I asked him why he chose to have so many children. He replied, 'Why? God gave me!' The problem is, we do all that we want to do in the name of God! We use Him as our 'dustbin'. We do all the possible nonsense and place the responsibility on Him.

So it is also with the guilt related to extramarital affairs. Be very clear that extramarital affairs show disrespect to another being. You have no right to disrespect anyone. Will you let the other person do it too? What is the meaning of the relationship then? Man is centered on muladhara chakra – lust energy center, and woman is centered on the swadhishtana chakra – fear energy center. That is why man gives in to lust easily and woman gives in to fear easily. During the traditional marriage ceremony, in front of the sacred fire, the man promises to the woman, considered to be a representation of God, 'I shall give you security and release you from insecurity.' The woman promises to the man, 'I shall give you love and free you from lust.' Both of them

decide to liberate the other from their weaknesses. But what happens once the ceremony is over? You start playing on the weakness of the other person. Knowing the other person's weakness should make you compassionate towards that person. Instead, the man exploits the woman's fear and the woman exploits the man's lust in cunning ways.

A mature person cannot disrespect another person as if they are a commodity. If you see your wife as a commodity, you will continue to play your game with her. If you see your wife as a being, you will realize how much she has contributed in your life. You will never think of extramarital affairs. It is disrespect to your own body and inner space too. People who sell their bodies have no respect for themselves. When you do it, you reduce spirit to matter and that is disrespect, because you are not just matter as you think. You are energy or spirit. Understand: when man faces insecurity, the woman should become a mother. When the woman becomes centered on fear, the man should adopt the role of father.

Understand that all guilt is foolishness. Why do we feel guilty? Because we feel we have done something wrong. But in truth there is nothing called 'right' or 'wrong.' In Existence, the basic law is mangalatva, such a beautiful word. Mangalatva means 'everything that happens is auspiciousness!'

Good or bad cannot be defined. It cannot be decided with your logic. Your logical ideas of good or bad are limited only to what you know as life and limited to the people directly around you.

But life is not just limited to you and the people who are around you. If you look a little deeply, you will experience that life is beyond your logical comprehension and your logical understanding.

In Sanskrit we have a word 'Shivam'. The word means 'auspiciousness.' You may think that the activity of Shiva is 'destruction' according to Hindu mythology. In the vedic tradition the word Shiva means auspiciousness… causeless auspiciousness, or energy. That is the exact translation of the word 'Shiva'.

Of course, the work of Shiva is destruction, but it is not destruction as we know it. In Sanskrit, there is a beautiful appreciation for the process of destruction. Actually, it is not destroying; it is creating space for new things to happen! That is the work Shiva does. Understand that you can see destruction as destruction or as creating space for new things to happen. If you see destruction from another dimension, it is actually creating space for new things to happen. The destruction energy from the other angle is nothing but the possibility for rejuvenation. It continuously keeps the whole thing alive! That is what Shiva does. His work is continuous rejuvenation.

You see, if you look at things with your logic, with a narrow vision, you can always complain and blame that whatever is happening cannot be called auspicious. If your vision expands, if you start looking at life as a bigger picture, from a bigger perspective, from a greater understanding, you will realize the truth that whatever is happening is auspicious.

The person who feels that the whole of life is auspicious or mangala, is enlightened! He is liberated. He doesn't have fear. He doesn't have difficulties. He doesn't have problems. He

doesn't need any help. The very understanding that whatever happens is auspicious is enough for him. He has solved his life.

There are only two kinds of people on the planet earth. One is the spiritual type that feels 'whatever is happening is auspicious and nothing needs to be added to it.' The other is the materialistic type that feels, 'whatever is happening, there is always something lacking or needing some adjustment.'

A small story:

A preacher gave a long and very inspiring talk about charity.

Then he sent his hat around for a collection.

The hat went around to the entire group and came back empty.

The preacher simply took his hat back and said, 'Thank You, God, at least my hat came back.'

Be very clear that you can make anything auspicious. When you are really in tune with the all-pervading auspiciousness, you will understand that whatever is happening is auspicious. The best thing possible is happening every moment. Whereas if you trust your logic, you will always be complaining. If you trust the cosmic Intelligence, the cosmic logic, you will always be relaxing and appreciating.

You can feel the cosmos as either order or chaos. It is your freedom, your choice. You can feel it as being a beautiful order. Just look around. Do you see any traffic light in the cosmos? No! All the planets are moving so beautifully. Digestion is happening in your body so beautifully. That is also part of the cosmic activity, is it not? Are you making an effort for the bread that you eat to

get converted to blood? No! It happens in spite of you. Even if you sit and vegetate after every meal, digestion happens, does it not? That is what I mean. On the other hand, you can also say, 'There is so much chaos, so much fighting in every home, so much trouble in every house. The world is in chaos.' You can look at it from this angle or that angle. It is your freedom.

Whatever is happening is auspicious. In all our lives, at least once or twice we must have experienced this. Just look back at the moments when you took a major positive decision in your life. In those moments you would have had such confidence and courage. At some point in time you would have surrendered either out of joy or high energy or the decision that nothing better or nothing greater can happen in your life. You would have thought that whatever is happening is auspicious. On the contrary, when you are in the middle of some low mood it may be difficult to see that what is happening is auspicious. But when you come out of it successfully and review the entire situation, you are more likely to see that everything that happened was auspicious, was a good lesson and opened the door to new, beneficial experiences. If you remember this the next time a low mood strikes you, the depression is less and you recover sooner. You can open yourself to realize this truth of Shiva.

If your inner space is clear, you will be able to see everything as causeless auspiciousness and automatically, you will also work towards auspiciousness. All your fear, all your greed, all your guilt, all these things exist because your energy is taken away by the past memories that are occupying your inner space, just the way high resolution pictures occupy your computer's memory.

So how do we keep from getting caught in the trap of guilt? Respond with your intelligence to any situation. When a situation presents itself in life, instead of deciding based upon what you have learnt that you 'should do' or 'should not do', decide based on your intelligence, with a deep feeling of responsiblity. That is enough.

So, carry this understanding with you in your life. Guilt is baseless. Live out of your understanding of life, not rules. Everything happening in life will then be auspicious. Existence wants you to be your true self every moment - which is eternal and pure bliss - nithya ananda.

Pain is that which is born out of resistance to the present moment. Pain is always born out of resistance to the present moment.

Pain can be physical, mental or emotional. Physical pain is the least of our worries. It is, in a way, a basic necessity for the body. Just imagine if we could feel no pain in our physical body. We might start styling our faces and limbs the way we style our hair today! Pain is the symbol of bodily wisdom. Pain is what makes us integrated human beings.

Contrary to what we believe, most of us are not 'living' with our entire body. We 'live' only in the upper parts, neglecting the lower parts of the body. Just try this: close your eyes and imagine yourself, your being. Call your name. Which part of your body comes to your visualization first? It would definitely be your face and upper limbs, certainly not the lower body parts. This clearly shows that we are not fully alive in every cell, in every limb of ours.

Even in our minds, we make this distinction. The upper limbs are the masters, the lower limbs the servants. When you create this separation, unknowingly, your energy or life force is channeled only to the body parts that you focus on with importance. Just touch your cheek. Doesn't it feel sensitive, alive? Now touch your foot. Does it feel the same? Notice that you are not as alive in your foot as in your cheek. Why is that? It is purely due to your lack of attention to your feet. You never feel your lower body parts in the same caring and responsible way in which you feel your upper body parts.

On the emotional and mental level, pain is usually the result of some form of judgment that is constantly going on inside you.

Research reveals that emotional imbalance can deeply disturb the physical body. For example, sexual repression can result in back pain, or the sense of shouldering too much responsibility can cause pain in the shoulders.

A small story:

In Calcutta there were two small ashrams whose presidents were not on good terms with each other. One day a person of some authority arrived in one ashram and invited the president to join him in visiting the other ashram. The president was in distress. He could not refuse, but he didn't want to go either.

Suddenly the president developed a high fever which prevented him from leaving the place!

I saw this with my own eyes. As soon as the other person left, the temperature came back to normal again.

Haven't we all experienced 'Monday morning blues'? Whether we are children or we are adults, we experience this! When we are children, we display bodily symptoms of illness when Monday arrives after a long weekend. When we are adults, although we don't openly express our feelings, we do feel uneasy about having to go back to office on Monday mornings. When the mind and body pull you in opposite directions, there is every chance that dis-ease happens in you.

Every time you experience pain, it leaves behind a residue which becomes lodged in the body. By and by, this accumulated residue creates a negative energy field around you, which we call the 'pain body'. The 'pain body' is responsible for and controls most of our pain patterns.

If physical pain is perceived as the absence of your attention, then the remedy must be your presence. There is a simple and beautiful self-healing meditation technique that channels your 'presence' into the diseased limb. It is definitely a better option than painkillers, whose side-effects sometimes prove worse than the original complaint!

Let us say that you have limb pain. Lie down in a dark room. Focusing only on the part that is causing you pain, make a conscious effort to forget about the rest of your body. As you experience your painful limb, deliberately drop the word 'pain' from your mind.

Your mental chatter will continue to tell you that you feel pain. Switch it off. Feel deeply; experience with an open mind. Look into what is happening inside your mind in the context of the pain. You will soon see that your mind was just exaggerating the pain. Put all your awareness on the center of the pain, and it will soon shrink to become just a tiny pinpoint of pain. Concentrate completely on this point, and you will discover in a sudden moment that the pain has disappeared, and in its place is pleasure, or bliss.

When you observe your pain deeply, innocence opens up in you. For the first time, you become aware that you are not the body. No pain can touch the real 'you'. Once you realize that you are beyond pain, you transcend pain to become a dukkha ateeta one who has gone beyond suffering. You experience the rare freedom that arises with non-attachment to the body that you have carried all your life. You transcend your mundane life and enter into a spiritual plane. You then exist in the world as an atman, an enlightened master. The whole material world disappears and another world arises – of incomparable beauty, innocence, joy and compassion.

As the Bhagavad Gita says:

He who is ever established in the self, takes woe and joy alike, regards a clod of earth, a stone and a piece of gold equal in value, is possessed by wisdom, receives the pleasant and the unpleasant in the same spirit, and views censure and praise alike.

With awareness and practice, pain can become the magic portal to enter into nithyananda - eternal bliss.

Just to see with intense inner clarity the nature and cause of pain will make pain evaporate because it no longer has a reason to exist in you. And this realization brings with it a state of absolute bliss, which is the state of enlightenment.

Enlightenment allows you to see for the first time that what you called happiness and contentment earlier were not true happiness and true contentment. Enlightenment showers real bliss upon you, real ecstasy. It gives you a taste of the real.

Many people come and ask me, 'I get angry and hurt easily when someone insults me. How can I avoid this?'

I tell them, 'Why do you try to avoid it? To suppress pain, anger and humiliation will only cause it to stay in your system in a repressed form. Suppressed emotions can be dangerous - a little anger, a small feeling of hurt, can fester over time into a deep and lasting hatred. Try accepting your emotions without judging yourself.

Are you feeling hurt? Ok, now enter completely into the hurt feeling. Don't avoid it and don't reject it. Sit by yourself and enter into it.

Neither give yourself sympathy nor direct the hurt against the person who hurt you.

Simply watch the emotion as it plays out in your system, that's all.

If you decide to do this sincerely, the process may take a while maybe a few hours, even a few days. But at the end of it, you will see a transformation you never imagined! After all, emotion is energy, tremendous energy and pain is the strongest emotion in you. How long can so much raw energy circulate in your system? The moment you accept your pain with no rejection, welcoming its role in your life, the whole quality of pain changes. The same energy that was pain, anger or suffering is transformed into the blessed emotions of love and bliss. This is compassion, the silent force that moves in each of us, the force that transforms the ugly into the beautiful. And compassion brings its own reward. Just give yourself a chance and you can experience what I am saying! I don't speak philosophy. I speak out of experience.

Why do love and pain always seem to go hand in hand?

In the first place, isn't your idea of 'giving freedom' to your beloved a very wrong one? Love itself implies giving the other total freedom, unconditional freedom. To say that you are giving a certain amount of freedom to the other itself shows that you are holding back a certain amount! No one understands that.

It is natural to want to possess your beloved; that is the play of the ego. It is difficult to imagine that your beloved may need space and time away from you. You try to do the right thing by 'giving freedom' to your lover. But when she actually uses that freedom, you end up feeling exploited. Actually, you never expected that she would ever use that freedom to do what she

wants and be with whom she wants to be with. When you see her giving time and energy to something or somebody other than you, you start feeling possessive and cheated.

The reason that love usually brings so much pain with it is that lovers unknowingly force each other into the golden cage of their own expectations. But true love can never blossom in captivity. You try to imprison your lover and she does the same, time after time, until you end up feeling that love is so much misery that perhaps it is better not to love at all.

Love can be a door to joy and freedom, or it can become a living hell. To experience love as pain is to miss the whole point of love. There is a saying, 'If you love someone, set him free. If he is yours, he will come back to you. If he doesn't come back, he never was yours anyway.' This is the freedom any relationship deserves. When you understand this, you will start respecting the other person as an individual. You will not try to possess them as though they are an object.

There is one thing you need to understand: when the Kali age took birth (the fourth quarter of time as per mythology), it was deemed the age of darkness. All the sages and rishis were praying to the Lord, 'Oh Lord! Now the Kali age has entered, the enlightened masters will not be available to the society. Living masters will not be available to the society; only very few will be here. Then how can society maintain the equilibrium? How can we save society? How can humanity be saved? Only with the living master's grace can people learn and live blissfully. Only with their guidance can people learn spirituality and live a real life. Now that Kali has entered, how can the people be saved? Who will teach them? Who is the master?'

Then the Lord said, 'Don't worry, I will teach the whole world continuously in the form of pain. Whenever pain happens to you, either physical, psychological or emotional pain, any pain… if you look at it, if you work on it, if you approach it with love and the mood to work on it, you will see that it is the greatest teacher. It will teach you and transform your life.' Have you ever wondered how we could look at pain with such a loving and learning mood? If you can internalize this one statement, then you have found the solution to all your problems. You can try it as an experiment to start with. The next time you experience pain, try to remember this statement and put it into action. You will see that it simply transforms your whole outlook.

A small story:

There was a big marriage ceremony between two lions. Suddenly in the centre of the stage, a rat came up and started dancing.

After a few minutes, somebody interfered and said, 'Hey, this is the marriage of lions. How dare you come up here and dance?'

The rat raised his head and said, 'Hey, before marriage I was also a lion!'

If you learn one lesson, if you can learn from one pain, you can learn all the lessons!

Anyhow, whenever pain happens you will see that the pain teaches you a lesson. If you don't learn the lesson, if you are insensitive, then you will continue to live in the same pain.

Teach children also to look at their pain objectively and deeply. Don't teach them to suppress their pain. Teach them to handle it and look into it. One more thing, never beat your children. They are forms of God living with you! They chose you for their journey. They trusted you to be their guardians. THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM chose my parents. When I died in my last birth, I was totally in a meditative mood. So I had the conscious choice and chose my parents carefully, as people who would help me to reach my enlightenment in this lifetime. I chose people who would not disturb me in my growth or progress, who would let me walk in my path undisturbed.

In the same way, every child chooses you and trusts that you will be their guardian. So never beat them. Beating is not the

You are bliss by nature. Every time you breathe in, you are taking in prana from Existence. Prana is the life energy that air brings into our system when we breathe. It runs our very life and is the causative factor for us being alive. Air is only a medium that brings in the prana. We need prana, not air, for survival. Life energy is pure bliss. So in this meditation we will visualize that we are breathing in bliss every time we inhale.

You should understand a big difference between visualization and imagination. Visualization is not the same as imagination. Imagination is day-dreaming; your mind creates situations that can have no existence in reality. For example, you are sitting in the office physically, but your mind is in Hawaii imagining that you are enjoying yourself on the beach. Body is in the office but mind is somewhere else, just fantasizing. Imagination clearly means that you are not completely in the present; you are out of touch with reality.

Visualization, on the other hand, is seeing that which exists in reality but you find difficult to realize practically through your physical body. Visualizing yourself actualizing your potential is

an example. Your potential is reality. Because of your own conditioning, you find it difficult to actualise your entire potential. But as a step towards actualizing it, you can very well visualise that you are actualizing it. That is visualization.

As of now, you have not experienced bliss as your very nature. But bliss is your nature. There are people, enlightened masters, who over the ages have declared that you are bliss. To experience this truth, this reality of Existence, you can take the help of visualization, which is a very powerful tool that we underestimate.

As of now, because we don't realize the truth of our very nature, we are unconsciously contributing to the collective negativity by breathing out our negative emotions and suffering into the world. Now we are going to break this negative cycle and reverse it.

Get ready for the meditation. Close your eyes. Tie your eye bands.

In this meditation, we are going to do just two things with full awareness.

When you breathe in, visualize clearly that you are inhaling the suffering from the world. Because your very nature is bliss, visualize that the fountain of bliss spontaneously happening inside you is transforming the entire suffering into bliss. Visualize the bliss energy spreading to every part of your body, penetrating every pore, and every cell of your body.

When you breathe out, visualize the bliss energy from inside you just radiating out to the world.

We originate from the darkness of our mother's womb, and we also get rejuvenated every day in darkness when we fall into deep sleep, and ultimately, we disappear also into darkness at the time of death! Darkness is energy. In the vedic tradition, Mother Kali is represented as dark energy. Kali in Sanskrit means darkness.

Each and every one of us by our own nature has a layer of darkness around us. This body is called the causal body.

We should understand what happens exactly when we fall into deep sleep.

Whenever your body needs rest, automatically the mind is pulled down and inserted into the causal body. It is like a battery; when it is discharged, that battery is taken out and inserted into the re-charger. There is also a particular time for recharging. In the

same way, after your excitement for the day, the mind will be automatically pulled, because it needs some rest. It will be inserted into the causal body.

In the causal body, you are in darkness, but you don't want to rest in darkness. So what do you do? You continuously jump around in your mind. When you fight with darkness, when you don't want to rest in darkness until you get recharged for that recharging period of half an hour or one hour, you create side effects which are called depression and worry.

Actually, depression is a natural phenomenon which is supposed to happen, which gives you the rest that you need. Nature gives you rest for you to get back your energy. If you can go deeply into depression, you can go deeply into excitement also.

Please understand: A person who can't get depressed can never get excited. If you know how to travel with the low mood, with the low current, then you will know how to fly with the high mood also! If you don't know how to travel with the low current, you will never be able to go to the peak of the high mood also.

Darkness is the causal body. It is the place where you actually get rejuvenated. It is the layer from which you actually receive energy. When you sleep, you feel so totally refreshed because you are actually inserted into the causal body, into the darkness.

Two things happen when you cooperate with the darkness: one is, you don't resist depression if it happens. Also, you will not create depression at all.

Be very clear: depression can never depress you if you simply depress the depression! As long as you resist it, it is depression.

As I said earlier, your mind is like a re-chargeable battery. It is like a battery getting discharged. It will be simply removed and put inside the charger for recharging. But the battery is not ready to wait until it gets fully recharged. It wants to again jump and play inside the toy. Understand that when you don't allow the recharging to happen, when you resist the recharging process, you create depression.

If you don't resist but allow the process to happen for a few moments, then depression will drop you. You will see that once the batteries are recharged, they will be simply bubbling. You will have the total energy to experience the ultimate excitement.

The time for recharging differs for each person. But once you know the knack of how to cooperate with the recharging process, then the time will be reduced and the quality will also improve. So it is the knack of cooperating, the method of cooperating with the darkness that you need to learn.

You see, this is the darkness, the ultimate darkness.

If you allow yourself to be recharged for a few minutes, you will come out of the depression. If you allow yourself to be recharged, if you cooperate with this darkness, you will come out of sleep also. If you work totally on the darkness, you can come out of death itself, because all these three are the expressions of the same thing: that is darkness.

Understand that depression, deep sleep and death are all the outcome of the same darkness layer. If you know how to work with the darkness in ordinary life, the depression will disappear.

Also, the third thing, that is the fear of death, will completely disappear from your system. When this happens, you will not fall into coma before you die. You will die consciously. As of now, 99 % of us die only after falling into a coma. This is the worst kind of death you can have… falling into coma and dying.

Don't think that coma means 'no pain'. The whole death process will start with pain. You will have pain. From the outside you won't feel the pain, but inside, it will be excruciating. When the pain becomes too much, you have a built-in mechanism of a pain killer. To make you forget the pain, coma is the built-in painkiller system.

Whenever your body needs rest but your mind is continuing in an excited and restless mood, your body cannot rest. Unless the mind itself is pulled inside the causal layer, the darkness layer, your body cannot rest. Unless your mind is black, your body will not become black. You will not allow your body to be black. So your whole body and mind will be pulled and inserted into the black hole. If you resist that moment and think, 'Oh, I have depression,' you create depression by thinking you have depression. If you don't resist that moment, you will simply go inside and come out with a fully regenerated feeling. So it will be more like a complete rest rather than depression.

The causal layer is also called the kāraṇa śarīra in Sanskrit. It is the layer which we are stuck in when we want to do something but we end up saying, 'I know it is right, but I am struggling. I know but…'

The reason for my first deep spiritual experience is that I never had that schizophrenic attitude in my inner space. One of my great inspirations was Annamalai Swamigal. I was so inspired and impressed by all the masters and mystics I was associated with in my young age. Also, the inner space was so pure at that young age, and there were no other heroes in my space except these masters. The masters were my heroes and in every step, I

used to think, 'How will they behave? Let me behave like that. What and how will they act? Let me act like that.'

I used to go for a circumambulation of the sacred Arunachala hill very often. The circumambulation is totally 16 kilometers. I used to go late at night. When I had a little fear, I used to ask myself, 'How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? He won't bother about fear. Then let me also be like that!' and I would continue the circumambulation without fear!

Let me tell you about one incident:

One day, maybe around the time I had my first experience, it was raining heavily. I was doing the circumambulation. There was heavy rain, thunder and lightning. Immediately I thought, 'How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? He won't bother about it. He would just continue to walk. Let me also act in the same way.' I continued to walk.

As I walked on, I was passing through the common crematorium where the people in that place were cremated. In Bharat, both cremation and burial are done in the same place. I was walking in that place because when you go round the hill the path goes through that crematorium also. It is the town's cremation ground.

Suddenly I saw a dog biting something and eating. When I went near, the dog started barking at me. At first, when fear arose, I thought, 'How will Annamalai Swami behave? He won't bother. Let me just move on then.' I started moving. Anyhow, when I started moving, the dog got scared and ran away.

When I went closer, I saw that what the dog was biting was a dead body which had not been completely buried and had

I wanted to express to you the deep impact the NSP program with Swamiji THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM had on me. The experience was profound even though I still haven't fully comprehended its scope, as the process continues to unfold. Swamiji touched my heart and every part of my life, and left me in a state of bliss.

Dr. Tom Glew BSc. ND.

During the Shiva Sutra meditation, upon my first meeting with him, I was in the back of the room and Swamiji said, 'Now feel my energy'. I was suddenly consumed by light and bliss. I felt as if I was floating in space with the biggest smile across my face - like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland!

During the NSP program, we covered the 7 energy bodies. Part of our exercise was to write down all our desires, our past guilts,

Actually if you see, the moments of happiness or joy happen when the mind stops. This may happen for just a few moments, but the impressions and the relaxation from the dropping of the mind will be tremendous. When I say the mind stops, I mean, the mind gives a gap sometimes. For example, when you see

Deepak Chopra says 90% of the people who live with faith in God live more joyfully and happily. They have much less depression than those who had no faith in God. Even if the concept of God cannot be proved by spiritual people, even if faith in God is only a hypothesis, it helps you to live with tremendous joy and happiness. He says that even if it is a hypothesis, it is perfectly alright because it supports life and joyful living. It makes living on the planet earth very satisfying.

You drink because you wish to escape from yourself. Man pours to fill; women eat and fill. Men drink, women eat. Addiction to food is because you feel empty inside. Once you understand the purposelessness of what you do, you will lose these addictions.

When you wake up in the morning, just laugh! If you cannot feel free to laugh in your own home, where else can you laugh! Laugh at how purposeless everything is. Release yourself from the nagging restlessness. There is no need to sell your inner space to have outer space. You can retain joy inside and still have the outer space to enjoy.

You need to understand an important thing about renouncing: you don't need to renounce any thing. People come and ask me, 'Should I renounce everything to achieve enlightenment?' I tell them, 'Don't renounce what you have. Just renounce what you don't have. That's enough!'

You carry so many things that you don't actually have, like your fantasies and your fears. Greed gives rise to fantasy, and

fear itself is nothing but negative fantasy. We are living with so many things that we don't really have. Our fantasies, our fears, our worries - all of these things that we are living with, we don't really have. They are creations of our mind.

So just renounce what you don't have. That is enough. Then automatically, whatever you have, you will live with. Understand, the shaft which you have created for yourself is the original sin that you have committed. By connecting thoughts, by clutching onto your thoughts, you commit the first sin.

Understand that by your very nature, you are an unclutched being. By your very nature, you are an unconnected, independent, causeless being! You don't need to renounce anything because by nature you cannot hold on to anything. It is only when your mind plays up, you start thinking that you need to renounce many things. Actually you can't hold on to things even if you wish to. People come and tell me, 'I am so depressed. I don't know how to come out of it.' I tell them, 'Just try to hold on to it!' You will not be able to!

For half an hour, sit and try to hold on to the depression. You will see that you can't. Try your best to sit and meditate on your depression. Suddenly you will come back and tell me that you are not able to meditate on it any more because it is not there!

By your very nature you are unclutched. What do I mean by this? You see, any thought will come up only if the previous thought has died. No two thoughts can co-exist. Until the earlier thought is renounced, you can't have a new thought. The fact that a new thought is happening in you proves that the earlier thought has been renounced. Fortunately you can't have two thoughts at the same time. Even if you suspect you are

Try your best to create something based on ahankar - 'I', and feel fulfilled; you will never be able to. In the same way, try your best to create something on your mamakar – 'mine', and feel fulfilled; you will never be able to. There is a story of Brahma and Vishnu searching for the head and foot of Lord Shiva respectively. This incident is part of a mythological recording. It happened in my native place, Tiruvannamalai where the sacred Arunachala hill is. It is a spiritual nerve centre. I call that place a spiritual incubator. Just like how premature babies need an incubator to supply air and all the basic things, so also for enlightened beings to land on the planet earth, you need a spiritual incubator to protect and help them, and allow the whole expansion to happen before they settle down in their body. Tiruvannamalai is such a spiritual incubator.

The story says Brahma had to find Shiva's head and Vishnu was asked to find His feet. If you know the background of Brahma and Vishnu, you will be able to see how beautiful the story is. Who is Brahma? He is the husband of Saraswati. Saraswati is the Goddess of learning or knowledge, symbolically signifying intellect or the head or the 'I' ahankar.

Who is Vishnu? Vishnu is the husband of Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth, symbolically signifying possession or the 'mine' mamakar. The story says Brahma started searching for the head, the sahasrara of Shiva. Vishnu started searching for the feet.

Vishnu came back after some time and said, 'I am not able to find Your feet. Please forgive me. I realize no one will be

able to find it either.' He understood the truth and surrendered.

But Brahma who was going upwards to find Shiva's head, continued. Suddenly, he came across a flower (called Tazhampoo in Tamil) which was falling downwards from Shiva's ear. He learnt from it that it had been traveling for four ages of Brahma in order to reach this point of travel. Brahma realized the futility of his own mission but did not want to accept the situation. He requested the flower to come as a false witness to Shiva to say that Brahma had seen the head of Shiva. The flower agreed. Brahma went to Shiva with the flower and the story. Shiva at once knew the truth and got angry. He cursed Brahma and the flower for lying. Later, when Brahma understood his mistake and surrendered, Shiva graced the two of them.

You need to understand the story well. Vishnu is the embodiment of wealth, Brahma of intellect - ahankar and mamakar, that is, I and mine. Neither by wealth nor by intellect you can achieve Neither by wealth nor by intellect you can achieve enlightenment enlightenment… enlightenment that's the truth of the story.

One important thing, if you dig in the line of wealth, mamakar, you will get frustrated like Vishnu. You will face the depression of success and you will become humble. You will fall, only to understand the truth. You will surrender easily if you dig in the line of mamakar. Very soon you will realize that wealth cannot take you to God. That is why Vishnu surrendered so quickly to Shiva in the story. That is the real significance of choosing Vishnu, beholder of wealth, for this role.

On the other hand, the intellect is so strong like Brahma, that you will not only be unable to find Shiva, you will not be willing to surrender either! But once you complete your ego trip and

Part 6: The Door to Enlightenment_English_part_6.md

Almost all these self development techniques are done to give you a feel-good feeling; nothing but a feel-good feeling. First thing: understand that your self can't be developed because it doesn't exist the way you think it does. Try your best. I have conducted hundreds of self development programs. With that authority I am telling you this. With that clarity I am speaking.

I can give you some simple tips and techniques to develop your own self-development program. All you need to do is make sure

that the person who is attending the program should feel good for two to three days, that's all. You will be successful, nothing else is necessary.

There are best sellers on how to maintain relationships, how to influence others, how to stop worrying and start living etc. These books talk about how to live happily with your wife, how to stop suicidal tendencies. But you will be shocked to hear, that the authors of these books themselves would have committed suicide in their lives, or would have had the most unhappy of marriages!

Writing best sellers or delivering a self-development program is very easy. Just three tips are enough. Write what you can't practice! Second: write it in such a way that you will only talk about the problem. Third: never give a solution! Just with these three tips, you can become a self-development guru. Nothing else is necessary. Write what you can't practice; try to complicate it as much as possible; never give a solution. These three are more than enough.

You see, your self can't be developed because it does not exist. If you have done enough of spiritual practices you will understand what I am saying. Second, if you have done enough of techniques to keep you in one shaft, be it verbalizing or visualizing, then you will understand what I am trying to say. Verbalization means chanting mantras. Visualization means meditating on various forms. If you have tried any of these intensely, you will understand the truth of what I am expressing. If you have not tried, then please try.

If you have tried enough, understand the truth that by your very nature, you can't connect things and create a shaft. I have

Painful memories get registered because you need to learn lessons. You need to update yourself, you need to develop yourself. Maybe for that reason you start recording the painful memories. When you refer to them again and again, it becomes a painful memory itself! Memories that you record in your system are not wholly true. You record only what you need.

Also, you don't need to renounce them. Whenever you try to renounce them, you actually strengthen the memory. You don't need to create a law for yourself that you should not refer to your memory either, because by your sheer unclutched nature, you will forget it the next moment. It will simply disappear! For example, the moment you decide to stand up, you renounce the decision to sit. Am I right? You are constantly renouncing. So if you allow the process to happen, your painful memories will simply disappear. But by consciously trying to renounce them, you only strengthen them further. They are strengthened when you try to renounce them. People come and tell me that they constantly repeat positive affirmations such as, 'I should stop smoking, I should stop smoking,' but it is not working. Why?' All these creative visualizations create only more and more trouble. Because in the very words, 'I should stop smoking,' the word 'smoking' is there as a contradicting word. You are not only empowering 'I shoud not', you are also empowering 'smoking'. That is why by repeating this so called affirmation you are unable to quit smoking!

No evolution will help; only revolution will help. This moment of touching the nirvanic body is the moment when the seed takes the decision to sprout. When the seed is sprouting, the seed will experience agony. In Christianity, this is called as 'The dark night of the soul'. The moment when you take the decision to make the jump, you take the decision to go beyond. You take the decision with all your consciousness, with all your energy, to go beyond the body and mind.

When you realize that everything you are experiencing is just your own conditioning, you suddenly wonder, 'Is this life really worth living? So many desires, so many sufferings, so much of guilt, so much of pain… Only one layer of joy, and that also is through the layers of pain!'

Look at your whole past. Read what you have actually written. Almost for everybody, the past is more like a wound which needs to be operated upon, or thrown out from the being.

When you consciously decide to drop the past, you can actually drop it. Understand a few things: your past is simply your conditioning. When you understand it is only conditioning, can't you drop it? As long as you think it is you, you can't drop it. But if you understand that it is your conditioning, you can simply drop it. When you psychologically drop it, even physically the whole thing will change! That is the beauty of it.

The nirvanic layer is the layer that the master is always in. So how do we relate with the master? When you come in front of the master, just feel a deep love, that is all. Feel a deep love in front of him, that is enough. Nothing else is needed. Nothing else needs to be done. There is no other code of conduct to be followed.

Many people come in front of me and do all sorts of things like either showing off too much or displaying too much humility. The ones who show too much humility are the cunning ones. The really innocent ones will just come and sit on the seat on which I am sitting or just next to me! And I always find that these innocent people are not only good to me, they are good to

everybody. People who put up all sorts of show know only how to act, not how to be. So there is no need to know how to act, just be, that's enough.

A small story from Ramana Maharishi's life:

A farmer went to Ramana Maharishi's ashram and tried to sit with him. Because he had knee pain, he sat on a small stool. Some of the ashramites shouted, 'Oh, you cannot sit in front of Bhagavan on a stool. You are to sit only on the ground.' Bhagavan gestured to them and laughed. On the roof, a monkey was sitting right above Ramana's head. He asked, 'What will you do about this monkey? He is sitting right above my head!'

So understand that all these codes and protocols are just foolishness. I don't see any juice in it. When you can have tears of love, tears of gratitude in your eyes, that is the real thing. That is the real way to conduct yourself in the presence of the master, nothing else is needed.

If you really understand whatever is taught and whatever is spoken, will you be the same person when you go back? No! You will never be the same person. So naturally when you meet the master, you will be reborn. You will have a second birth.

There are three types of garbha (womb). One is the garbha which is carried by the mother - which gives birth to a child. The next is the hridgarbha. If you carry a great ideology in your heart, if you give birth to a book, or a painting or a great scripture, these are all from your hridgarbha. If you carry the master's presence or the deep gratitude in you, you give birth to yourself through gnanagarbha – the womb of wisdom. So the master totally destroys your past. He makes you drop from your past, and gives you a new life.

Only a total disconnection from the past can help you grow. There is no question of evolution, it is always only revolution. Evolution can never happen; only revolution can happen. So just drop from your past, just decide totally, consciously, and drop from your past. Don't think, 'Oh, I do not know how to put this whole thing into practice.' No! Simply throw the old personality out. Don't respect your old habits that threaten to come back. Don't respect the old body; don't respect the old mind; don't respect the old conditioning. Simply decide, 'This is how I am going to live from now onwards. This is the way I will live… over!'

A small story, which is a very powerful story:

Once there was a rat in a king's palace. The king wanted to kill the rat.

One day he called his soldier and ordered him to kill it.

When the soldier entered the room, suddenly from somewhere the rat jumped on to his face. He lost his balance, got frightened and ran out of the room, shouting, 'No, no, no! Oh king, the rat is too big. I do not think the rat can be killed by anybody.'

Seeing the frightened and shivering soldier, the king got frightened and thought, 'Oh, this rat is something totally different, I do not know what to do.'

He called the palace cat and ordered it to go and kill the rat.

The soldier told the cat, 'Don't think it is an ordinary rat. I went and was totally shaken, so be careful.'

Anyway the palace cat got ready with all his paraphernalia. He exercised for two to three days at the gym and took a special diet of food. On the day of the fight, he entered the room. Again the rat jumped on the cat's face. The cat got totally frightened, lost its balance and ran out.

Now, the rat became a challenge for the whole country. Even the palace cat could not do anything about it! So the king announced, 'Anybody who kills the rat will be given a special prize. So, many cats were brought. They tried to catch the rat but just couldn't.

In a remote village, an old man had a cat. He thought, 'Why not try my cat?' He asked the cat, 'Will you kill the rat in the king's palace?' The cat said, 'Why not? Let us go.'

The man brought the cat. It was a very lean cat. He let the cat inside the room. The cat simply killed the rat, and came out!

The king asked in utter disbelief, 'How did you do it? Even the palace cat could not do it! How did you have the courage? How did you do it?'

The cat replied, 'What? I am a cat. It is my nature to kill a rat. I just caught the rat, that's all!'

Understand that while your nature is so clean and straightforward, simply being influenced by past experiences and undue conditioning only makes you spoil your real nature. You always think, 'No, the last time I tried and things were a failure. Nothing worked. I think this time too, the same thing is going to happen.' Don't have all those past things in your memory. Even the idea 'the last time I failed' is past. Cut it from the very root. Drop from the very root of the past.

Someone came and told me, 'Swamiji, last year alone, I stopped smoking 27 times!' Just imagine. Understand: it is you who gives energy to the past. The past can never control you on its own because there is no entity called 'past'! The past is actually dead. It is you who gives it life.

Even if you apply your strong logic you cannot find the purpose of Existence! The purpose of Existence is bliss, that's all.

How can we enjoy without possessing, without making something our own? We are like water bubbles on a wave in the ocean. Each bubble catches hold of a few more bubbles and calls them wife, husband, father, son, and collects shells thinking they are jewels. The bubble does not understand that it can burst any moment and once it bursts, none of this will hold good.

When you are ready to digest that everything is purposeless, whether material, relational or spiritual, only then life acquires meaning. The moment you have a goal, you miss the path.

The mind always waits for something to happen. It waits for salary - weekly, monthly, yearly, five-yearly. If someone offers you 100 years' salary and asks you to die tomorrow, will you die? When you measure your life by paychecks, you reduce your spirit to matter. Your ego is stuck on what you see as a purpose in life.

An elderly lady came to me with her son. She wanted me to take him into the ashram as a brahmachari. I was surprised since usually no parent would like the child to be a sannyasi. Vivekananda is great, but no one wants his son to be a Vivekananda. I asked her why she wanted him to be at the ashram. She said that he is mentally not sound. I told her I run an ashram not an asylum!

We have many reasons why we cannot do things. By the time you finish one responsibility, you will have ten more waiting for you. Running becomes your conditioning, not relaxing.

When you are young, you tell yourself that you will relax after you graduate from university; then you shift the goal post to marriage; then to children; then to educating children; then to their marriage. Can you relax after you are 60? By then you have missed the path itself.

The primal sin you can commit is to miss the path of life by following goals. When you live, allow your being to be blissful. When you start hurrying, think about what you are hurrying for; do not allow restlessness in you, thinking that it will settle down. That will never happen. If you are not able to relax into the present moment, even after fulfilling your responsibilities you will not be able to relax. Whenever you run, just think why and what for.

You may have a big house, drive a big car, and people around you might always be praising you. But can you carry anything

of this with you? Can you carry with you even one single cheque book? No! It is all purposeless. When you understand the purposelessness, healing happens. If you allow this understanding to happen, even if you are abused, you will heal. The understanding itself will guide you.

You may be thinking, 'All my life I have had a purpose, and my life has been fine. But now you say everything is purposeless.' Whether you like it or not, that is the truth.

Your seeing me is a dream. Scriptures say that the moment you see an enlightened master, you become enlightened! Understand, see seeing me is not the same as looking at me, which is what you do. Looking is with eyes; seeing is with the being. The closer you come to the master, the more your understanding of him changes. Your maturity allows you to see me differently as you grow.

People get a shock when I tell them about the purposelessness of life. Restlessness hides the purposelessness from you; it hides the path with the goal. Please understand this and be healed. All your dreams of the future, and all your guilt of the past will disappear; all ephemeral joys and suffering will vanish.

In Tiruvannamalai, my hometown, there was a saint by name Yogi Ramsuratkumar. He was as innocent as a child. Whenever people came to him, whatever their problem was, he would say 'Alright'. When someone died, he would say, 'Alright'. If someone's son was getting married, he would say, 'Alright'. I asked him, 'Swami, why do you say alright to everything?' He said, 'Everything is just purposeless. Whatever you think has a purpose has no meaning.'

Whenever you remember the truth of purposelessness, healing will happen, and suffering will disappear.

You need courage to pursue the truth. Life will then take on a different path. You will live as a liberated soul. You will never drop your job, relationship or wealth. You will drop only what you do not have. You will drop the mental associations. You will drop the fantasy of a throne and start enjoying the seat on which you are sitting. When purpose is dropped, meaning will happen.

You actually become tired not by doing things, but by thinking of how much you have done. The play of the mind makes you tired and dull. You constantly struggle; you are restless. Once you understand why you feel tired and dull, you will switch track. When you switch track, you will never think that you are doing anything great. You think you are doing something great only because the mind makes it out to be so. The moment you understand this and your mind loses its power to do this, you will start working without ego and you will work ten times more! Then your inner space will be so pure. Even if you have achieved great things, you will not bother about it.

We just finished installing the largest Venkateshwara deity in the USA. In fact it is one of the largest stone statues here. All it took was a phone call. I do not think I did anything big for it. By the time you finish the word building game, you will become tired. Instead, you can finish the work itself.

If you work towards a purpose, you calculate at every 10% step of the job. By the time you reach 50%, you are tired. You start thinking that you are doing something big.

Now it is time to enter into the nirvanic layer – the seventh body. Actually if you travel up to the seventh layer, there will be no suffering that can hold you back from enlightenment or from relaxing into Existence.

Only one thing will be there: the remaining seeds of karma - just the old memories or a little bit of emotional attachment to the old memory; that's all, nothing else. If you have the courage to move on from your emotional memory or your emotional attachment, this nirvanic layer also will be cleansed. There is nothing in this nirvanic layer which can hold you back.

Actually if you do this whole program intensely, it is a straight route to enlightenment. Do as much as possible, and it will enrich your life. It will cause tremendous physical and mental healing in you. But the aim of this program is not just physical or mental healing, but the healing of your entire being.

I have designed this program to get you out of the bhavaroga – worldly life. If you are intense, this single technique that you are going to do now, can completely liberate you from the entire past. In the nirvanic body, all you need is the courage to take the jump.

All you need to do in this nirvanic layer is to break free from the past. One important thing: just take a few minutes and think back…Now practically you have your complete

biography in your hand, am I right? You have your biography in the papers that you are holding in your hand. If you have written properly from as much of your life as you remember, you will have your entire biography in your hand. Now ask yourself: the way in which you lived in the past, is it perfectly alright or do you feel there is a need for some improvement? Naturally you will feel that you should improve or develop it, am I right? If at all you think, if at all you feel there is a need for development, that there is a need for transformation, please understand that you have to drop the whole past mental setup. You can't say, 'No, there are some good things that I will take, and all the bad things I will drop.' No! Either you erase the whole program or you live with the whole program, that's all! There is no such thing as taking a little bit and leaving the rest.

Be very clear: if you think it is garbage, you have to dump the whole thing; or you have to carry the whole thing in your head. You can't say that you will pick up pieces of the garbage, arrange it nicely and put a little perfume over it and live with it. No! Either you throw the whole thing out or keep the whole thing with you. If you consciously decide that you need transformation, then throw the whole thing out.

Immediately the next question will be, 'If I throw away everything, will I forget where my house is? Will I forget who my wife is?' Will I forget who my relatives are?' Be very clear, you will not forget where your house is or who your wife is, but

you will forget the loaded memories or the loaded emotions associated with the house or wife.

When you forget, when you drop the emotional attachment to your memories, you are free from the 'burden' of the past. All these words appear to be too big, but I tell you your visualization has enough power, enough capacity, enough energy, to achieve this state.

The big problem is that we don't believe we have something called inner space. Just as you have an outer space, you have something called as inner space. Consciously you can clean this space.

All that we are going to do in the seventh layer is, consciously keep the inner space clean. To tell you honestly, it is not that you can throw away all the negative engrams. Whether it is desire or guilt or suffering or joy or anything else, it is not that you have worked on all the engrams completely. There will be a little bit remaining in some corner. Now it is time to dig deep in all the layers at once and throw them out. Re-live completely all the six layers, and relieve them! Reliving is relieving.

You are not here as a citizen of some country or belonging to some caste or creed or related to some religion or belonging to some community. You are just a liberated individual being, pure consciousness, who is supposed to relax into the bliss within you.

Somebody has given me a letter. It reads, 'Master, please show me the way to intense and eternal peace.' This is the way. It is time to drop layer after layer of conditioning. You are continuously made to believe you are male, you are female; you belong to this religion or that; you belong to this state, or you belong to that country; you have this much of wealth or you are poor. Now it is time to relax from these ideas.

The moment you understand that there is no need for any protection of your identity, there will not be any suffering, and you will understand that the whole thing is happening just like small bubbles in the ocean! Any minute, the bubbles will disappear!

There is nothing to protect. There is nothing to care for. There is nothing to grow. Understand that you are just liquid. The very understanding that you are liquid is enough to liberate you. Just a simple understanding that you are not as solid as you think you think you are is more than enough.

Contemplate on this one thing and relax from whatever you think of as you for the next half an hour; you will emerge as a new being. At least you will have a glimpse, one glimpse of who you are. When I say 'you' I mean capital letter Y-O-U, not small letter 'y-o-u'. Please sit as you are and close your eyes. Allow these words to merge in you. Whatever understanding happens let it happen.

The master is there to awaken this understanding in you. Ramana says: The master is a simha swapna - a nightmare where a lion is chasing you! You will wake up even if you are in your deepest dreams in the waking state. However thick the veil of illusion may be, you will wake up.

Your body is not the same body that was there yesterday. Your mind is not the same mind which was there yesterday. If neither your mind nor your body is the same, then who are you? How can you say that you are the same person who was here yesterday? How can you say that?

If your body is not the same thing which was here yesterday, and if your mind is not the same thing which was here yesterday, how can you say that you are the same person who was here yesterday? What you think of as you now is not the same you that you thought you were yesterday. Then how can what you think of as you be true even at this moment?

Yesterday is different from today. Then how can you think that there is some continuity in you? When you think that there is some continuity in you, you start protecting yourself; you want to protect the continuity. You want it to be saved, preserved… and the problem starts. Just understand that you are fresh and different every passing moment.

Understand that you have enough innate intelligence to handle your life. You take the body with inbuilt intelligence. Not only that, the more years you live on planet earth, the more experienced you become and therefore you should feel that much more confident to conduct the remaining years of your life on planet earth. You should not bother about protecting your being, about protecting your ego. Just trust your innate intelligence swa-buddhi – and live an open life. Then automatically only auspicious things will happen in your life.

One more thing: to understand the whole thing as 'Nothing', you don't need much spiritual practice. All you need is simple knowledge of English - to understand my words.

Listen carefully:

The great enlightened masters are the Paramahamsas who touch the planet earth from time to time taking a human form, with a mission, from time to time. A Paramahamsa is one whose spiritual awakening leads to enlightenment even before adolescence. Such a being never touches the ground; his spirit soars high well before it is enmeshed in the web of worldly reality. Paramahamsas are rare beings whose innocent wisdom pierces even the most hardened heart and mind.

In such beings, the divine kundalini energy, which is the universal energy that flows through every individual, that is stored in the muladhara chakra (the energy center at the base of the spine)

never moves downwards as it does with normal beings at adolescence.

In all humans, this energy moves downwards, leading to sexual awakening and the desire to fulfill the need for procreation. In the case of the Paramahamsa, the kundalini energy is awakened before puberty, and it moves upwards instead of downwards at the time of spiritual awakening, without causing any desire for sexual pleasure.

The energy within the Paramahamsa stays pure, uncorrupted, and exceptional. Their purpose in life is to communicate to the rest of humanity this truth that has been gifted to them, in the hope that at least some of the others would get a glimpse of this truth for themselves. Each Paramahamsa communicates this message in his own inimitable style. Ramakrishna, forever in divine ecstasy, inspired others through devotion or bhakti. Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi, another great Paramahamsa, communicated his message mainly in silence, through a process of discrimination. There are others who by their touch and at times by a mere glance imparted their wisdom to disciples who were ready to receive the truth. In whichever way they may impart the truth, it is not to be forgotten that they happen on planet earth for only one reason: the hope that at least a few of us will look up and see the look up Truth, and become That.