1. The Lion and The Cub

Krishna says, 'Fool! It is black, not green.' Arjuna says, 'Yes Krishna! It is black, not green.' Krishna asks, 'What has happened to you? When I say green, you say green. When I say black, you say black. What is going on with you?' Arjuna says, 'Krishna, let me be honest - I don't know what color that crow is. But when you said green I saw it as green. When you said black I saw it as black. I know nothing else!' Arjuna trusted Krishna's very senses. He trusted the Master's senses much more than his own! As of now, you trust your senses. According to your senses who are you? You are a man or a woman. You need to eat at a particular time. You need to sleep at some other time. You need to do some other things at certain times of the day. This is the force of habit. You have many identities like 'this country', 'this city', etc. This is what you are according to your senses. You feel you are nothing but your identity. But according to the Master, you are God! According to your senses you are a human being, but according to the Master you are a spiritual being! As long as you trust your senses, you will be a human being. You will trust only that identity. When you trust the Master much more than your senses, suddenly you will realize the Master's words. Your senses say you are a human being. But I say you are a spiritual being. If you trust your senses, you will trust yourself as a human being. If you trust your Master you will experience that you are a spiritual being. That shift is what I call the 'cognitive shift'. For that shift to happen, catch the meat - just swallow it and roar, that's all! In seconds, the bleating will become a roar. That moment of transition is the moment of cognitive shift. Krishna says, 'When you know about My life, you will be liberated', because when you listen to his life story, the cognitive shift will start happening in you. That is the reason why this time I choose to show to you my divine and personal experiences from my very birth. Now you need to prepare in a few ways. First, be completely open. Do not be frozen. Understand that life is a lot more than logic. May you all be completely open and aware. Second - and this is an important point: do not come here with a locked muladhara chakra. By this I mean, do not come with expectations and fantasies about the Master. If you have any ideas about the Master when you come to me, I will be the first person to break them! You may have seen me serving breakfast this morning to all the people gathered. People were stunned to see me doing this! I was sitting near the hot burner serving one and all. Some were amazed because only just ten minutes earlier I had blasted them for a task they had not completed. I appeared like a real Master to them at that time. The same person who shouted at them just ten minutes earlier is now sitting under the hot sun serving them food! It will be simply boggle your mind to digest the multi-dimensional emotions of the Master. I always tell people, prepare your self before going near the Master! The space of the Master will be mind boggling. He will be so alive, so exciting and so intense that you will lose your identity, even forgetting that you ever had an identity at one time. This is how the cub felt when he became a lion. For him, it had become a faint memory that once upon a time he ate grass, drank goat milk and played with goats. In the same way, once you have met the Master, your old identity will be stored only in your archival memory. In this archive your identity will be found. And you will even forget that you once had that identity. So be very clear, the Master is such a live energy that you will be transformed. You will be a new being, you will be a new energy and you will be a new consciousness. I can say it in just one statement: you will be new! You will be 'new' and 'clear' - you will be 'nuclear'! You will be new and clear because the dynamic diamond completely polishes you, shines you, makes you experience that you are also a diamond. Everything else except the diamond part in you will be removed from you. It will be taken away from you. It will disappear from you. You will feel very light. You will feel you have lost weight. Be very clear, you will not have lost any weight. But you will have lost the weight of the ‘tumors’ you were carrying that were not part of you, that were a disturbance in you. Something that is supposed to be an inherent part of you can never be a disturbance to you. And if it is a disturbance, it was never meant to be a part of you. It should never be part of you either. All disturbances are tumors. In these few days, you will have the Master Surgeon working on you - performing master surgery! So come with complete openness. I talk to people about their attitude towards the Master. In the Bhagavata (popular hindu epic with small stories about devotion), we have five attitudes with which to relate with the Master. One is the attitude of the mother towards her son. This is called vatsalya bhava - which is how Yashoda, Krishna’s adopted mother, related with Him. Another is the attitude of the child towards the mother or father. This is called matru bhava. This is how Ramakrishna related with Goddess Kali - looking at the Master as mother or father. The third is the attitude of a friend. This is called sakhabhava. This is how Kuchela and Arjuna related with Krishna. The next is the attitude of a servant. It is called dasa bhava. It refers to the Master disciple relationship wherein the disciple feels like a faithful servant of the Master. This was how Hanuman (the monkey God) related with Rama in the famous Indian epic Ramayana. Hanuman felt about Rama, ‘You are my lord. All I know is this, I will just do whatever you say.’ Understand the power of dasa bhava. By simply chanting Rama’s name, Hanuman was able to cross the ocean to reach Sri Lanka! But when Rama himself had to cross the ocean, he needed a bridge! Understand that Rama Nama (trust in the name of Rama) is more powerful than Rama himself! The trust in Rama on the part of Hanuman was more powerful than Rama himself. I always tell people not to bother about whom you trust. The very trust itself will empower you. Trust can transform you. You may think, ‘On this Himalaya Yatra I may not be able to walk much.’ You may think about me, ‘He is walking slowly.’ But I tell you, by trusting me you will fly. Understand, I am walking slowly because I have flown enough. I landed just to teach you how to fly. If I am constantly flying, you will not know how to fly. When I teach you how to fly, I have to land first and walk very slowly to show you the movements. Only then you will pick up these movements. So do not bother about whether I walk slowly or not; simply fly, that’s all! Understand, the trust on Rama is much more powerful than Rama himself. This is the power of dasa bhava - the attitude of the lord and the disciple. The ultimate is the attitude of the beloved. It is called madhura bhava. This is how Radha saw Krishna. This is how Radha felt about Krishna, the attitude of the beloved. Let me be very clear: the attitude of a beloved is in no way connected to whether you are a male or female. It is in no way connected to the body; it is completely beyond the body. It is from the Being. Do not think that only if the Master is female and you are male can madhura bhava happen. No! If the Master is male and you are also male, then too madhura bhava can happen. Or if the Master is female and you are female also, madhura bhava can happen. Madhura bhava is no way related to the physical relationship of the body. It is beyond the body. It has nothing to do with the body. It is a feeling of intense connection. You may be a male or a female. That is in no way connected to madhura bhava. The last is the maha bhava. It is all the other five bhavs put together and something more! That is what the Guru-disciple relationship is all about. Sometimes with the Master you will feel he is your son. At some other time you will feel he is like your father. Sometimes you will feel he is your lord. Other times you will feel he is like your friend. Sometimes you will feel he is like a comforting beloved, giving you so much comfort and making you feel that you are also worthy of love. The relationship with the Master is all these five put together plus something more. You can relate with the Master in any one of these five attitudes or bhavs, or all the five put together. Then you will be able to withstand the surgery the Master Surgeon performs on you. If you do not relate with the Master, if you do not feel connected to the Master emotionally, be very clear, you will escape during the operation. Because when I open the wound, you will feel dirty and you will say, 'I am feeling very dirty.' I will be drawing out the pus, so you will feel dirty. Please be patient and let me clean out the dirt. When it is completely cleaned out only then will I stitch it back carefully. Of course now I have also brought with me the latest technique of laser surgery! If the tumor is too big, I must cut you open. But sometimes there is no need to cut you open. If it is not too big, laser surgery will do the job beautifully! If you feel unclean, if you feel dirty, understand that the tumor must be opened and the pus has to leave your body. Constantly the surgery will happen in you. Sometimes I will not even be directly involved. All I need to say is one word and you will be completely disturbed! In so many ways, including many indirect ways, the surgery will happen. Simply allow things to happen and watch how you blossom into a new person. You will be 'new' and 'clean'. 'nuclear'. When you go back to your own home, you will be new and clear because the tumors and the pus will have been removed. So understand that when Krishna says, 'If you know My life you will be liberated' he is not being egoistic. He says it out of compassion for you. Those who live around me know how I bless people. If I say, 'I will take care' that it will happen. If I say, 'I will meditate for you, please pray to Lord Anandeshwara and meditate under the banyan tree', it means just a consolation. People ask me, 'Then why do you tell some people that you will 'take care' and to others you say to go and meditate?' I tell them that it is because people are not so simple to receive the words 'I will take care'. So I have to make it complicated for them. When I say, 'I will take care' they think, 'What can he do to take care! He is far too young. Somehow he has created an ashram - who knows how! And he says that he will take care. How can he take care?' The moment the question rises in you, the words 'I will take care' will not have power any more.

A disciple fell into the river Ganga. His Master was sitting on the banks of the Ganga. On seeing him the disciple shouted, 'Save me! Save me! God, save me! Master, save me!' The Master replied, 'Fool! Stand up. Save yourself.' The disciple shouted back, 'Teach me your Vedanta (philosophy) later. First save me. My life is in danger. When I reach the banks of the river, teach me all your Vedanta. But for now, just save me!' The Master did not even move. He repeated, 'Fool! Save yourself! Stand up.' The disciple cried out, 'I thought you were my Master. Save me, save me!' Now the Master got really fed up and said in a stern voice, 'Idiot! Stand up!' The disciple then got frightened and stood up... and saw that the water was only up to his waist! Understand, you all suffer because you have 'fallen into water' but do not realize it is only up to your waist. It is only when you stand up will you realize the water just reaches your the waist. Understand, when I say 'I will take care' I am actually saving you by giving you the stick with which to stand up. When the Master says 'I will take care' and if you doubt it, then the connection is broken right then and there. Someone once asked me, 'Master, we sing your name Nithyananda and enjoy ourselves. We understand that. But you are also singing and dancing with us, enjoying your name. How can that be?' Ramana Maharishi was also asked the same question. Someone went to him and asked, 'Bhagavan, what is this? We chant 'Ramana Satguru, Ramana Satguru.' But you chant the same mantra too. How come you do that?' Not only just that, Ramana even wrote a long and beautiful poem on himself! There was a disciple who was writing the Ramana Purana - a song in praise of Ramana. But he had what you call 'writers' block'. Somehow, whenever you write with ego 'writers' block' will happen. Anyhow, that disciple came to Bhagavan (Ramana Maharishi was addressed as Bhagawan) and said 'Bhagavan, I am not able to write further, please help me.' And Bhagavan said, 'Put that paper down and leave. I will talk to you later.' The disciple put the paper down and went out. The next day when he came back, he saw that the whole poem had been completed! Ramana Maharishi had written 300 lines Himself. When the book was printed, the writer enclosed those 300 lines within quotes and below he put a footnote, 'These 300 lines were written by Bhagavan Himself.' Bhagavan saw the book and asked, 'Oh! So then, the other lines are written by you? All right!' Just that one comment was enough for the disciple to become enlightened! The disciple Muruganar is one of the four disciples who became enlightened when Bhagavan was still in his human body. He wrote 16,000 verses on Ramana Maharishi, published as more than twenty five volumes! Muruganar wrote in his memoirs, 'I had only one ego: that I am a great singer and poet. All other egos had left me. That was the only samskara, subtle engram, (engraved memory) which was hidden in me. I did not even feel it was an engram.' The big problem is that the engram will not allow you to acknowledge that you even have an engram. It will justify itself because for it, it is a question of survival. That is why I always tell people, 'When you are caught in an engram, never make a major decision.' Just be in the Master's presence. Do not miss this. This is such a wonderful opportunity. You will be completely healed and you will be able to come out of it. Never escape from the Master when you are caught by engrams. Whenever somebody is depressed and leaves me, I feel so much for them. It is not because I have one person less in the mission. No! Actually, if I have one person less, it is less of a problem for me. If this same person leaves me when he is happy, it is all right. It is perfectly all right. It is beautiful. It is a normal relationship. He will carry me in him wherever he goes. But, if he is in a depressed state, not only will he not grow, he will never come out of that engram also. That will become a serious wound in him like a cat that is burnt by hot milk. It will never again go near milk. I always tell people: never leave when you are depressed. If you are depressed, that is the right time to be around me. Trying to move away from me at that time is just as if you are sick and you do not want to be in a hospital. This is actually the right time to be in a hospital. If you are feeling low and caught by engrams, then you should be in the hospital. Anyway, Ramana's disciple Muruganar writes in his memoirs that only one engram was left in him when Bhagavan asked, 'Oh! The other lines were written by you!' He says 'Something simply broke in me. Tears rolled down, and I just dropped at the feet of Bhagavan and never got up again.' Bhagavan also used to sing his own name. Somebody asked Bhagavan, 'How come you are singing your own name?' Bhagavan replies, 'Why are you reducing the great name Ramana to this six feet body? Ramana is the energy using this body, not this body. So, just as you enjoy this body, I enjoy it too!' In the same way, Nithyananda is not this body - Nithyananda is the energy using this body. That is the reason why I always tell people, not only do I sing, but I am the first person to look at my own photographs! When they show me an album of my photographs, for the next two days that album will be on my bed. I sit and look through the album at all my photographs and enjoy them. Only after two days do I send the album to the archives. Sometimes, people ask me, 'What is this Master? You enjoy your own photographs so much!' I tell them it is because I don't take myself for granted that I am able to do it! I don't have the feeling that I am this body. If I have that feeling, I cannot enjoy those photographs. I don't feel I am this body at all. Just like you enjoy my form, I enjoy it too. When you people can enjoy it, why not me too? In the same way, when I say I will take care, it is not from my ego. Just because you live an egocentric life, you think I also say things from my ego. That is why I always tell people, when I say 'God' it is a true experience for me. But when I say 'I', it is just an empty word. But in your case, when you say 'God', it is an empty word for you. And when you say 'I', it is a strong experience for you. Whatever you think you know about God is only a concept that you know about God. It is not God himself that you know. Be very clear, whenever you say the word 'God', it is only a hollow word. Only when you say 'I', it is a solid experience for you. In the same way, for me, whenever I say 'God', it is solid experience. When I say 'I', it is simply a hollow word. If you say 'God', only your ego is being represented. Whatever you think of as God is nothing but your ego. That is why a poor man is always attracted to Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth. By imagining whatever he does not have, he feels fulfilled. Since he does not have money, he thinks of Lakshmi all the time. Similarly, a dull person feels drawn to the Goddess Saraswati, the Goddess of learning, because he wants only wisdom. A man who does not have confidence will feel attached to Goddess Kali, because he needs courage from her for him to feel fulfilled. In this fashion, you try to fulfill what you do not have. Be very clear, even your God or Goddess is a only projection of your ego. That is why even when you say 'God' it is only your ego. In my case even the 'I' is the projection of God. That is why whenever I say 'I', it means God. It means the Divine. That is why whenever I use the word 'I', be very clear, it does not refer to my six foot body but the energy which is behind this body. When Krishna says, 'Know My life and you will be liberated', this is what he means. Now, know My life and be liberated. May you all know My life and be liberated. Let you know Nithyananda. Let you know the life of Nithyananda and live the life of nithyananda - eternal bliss. Let this whole experience transform you and may you receive great blessings. May you feel connected to the Master. Let your being transform and may you achieve and radiate Eternal Bliss, nithyananda. Thank you.