Intensity is the Unfailing Way🔗

Whether we lead or whether we follow, in order to be fulfilled in whatever we do, we need to be intense.

A small story:

A Zen master and a disciple were walking along the banks of a river. The disciple, as he had done a few times before, asked the master very longingly, ‘Master, please give me enlightenment.’

Suddenly the master turned, held the disciple’s head in his hand and pushed it into the river. The disciple was shocked and started struggling to get his head above water. The master continued to strongly hold his head in the water. Now the disciple started gasping for breath. The master then released the surprised and completely shaken disciple.

The master asked, ‘Do you feel you want enlightenment with the same intensity that you felt you needed air to breathe when your head was in the water?’

Only when the urge becomes urgent, when the question becomes a quest, does the Ultimate happen. The key factor needed for enlightenment to happen is intensity.

You see, usually we feel a terrible restlessness towards the outer world, ‘I have not done this, I have not done that’ and so on. The same restlessness when directed to the inner world is called intensity.

A small story:

A prisoner escaped from prison after twelve years and reached his home. The moment his wife opened the door she started shouting, ‘How dare you come so late! You escaped from prison twenty four hours ago. Where have you been? You should have come straight back home!’

All that the woman was bothered about was why he was not back home right after he had escaped. She certainly was intense, but only in creating conflicts. Real intensity does not create conflicts. It is flowing but intense. Intensity is integration. Intensity is focus. Intensity is sincerity. Usually intensity leads to a solid feeling. You may be intense but you may have lost the ability to flow. Or you may be flowing but may have lost the intensity.

See, you may be intense but you may have lost the ability to flow – because you are driven by your ego. You are determined to achieve what you want but you have your own rigid ideas about how to get there. You fail to understand then that Existence can make events happen in a much more beautiful and effective way than you can plan.

I tell my disciples, plan in the best way to the best of your ability. Then, leave it. It may seem that all your plans are being completely trampled – don’t get frustrated at that point. Something much more beautiful than what you had planned will come to life.

The other possibility is that you may be flowing but may have lost the inten-sity. This is the case with people who have no focus and waste their energies getting distracted by anything that comes by.

Understand, water becomes steam only at 100 degrees Celsius. Even at 99 degrees C, it is still water; it does not transform to steam. Same way, if you are not integrated in seeking, all your energies are not integrated. The total trans-formation cannot happen.

Take up something and follow it with full intensity. Intensity does not mean acting rigidly without scope for updating and change. Only when you are open to change you can make your way like the river flowing intensely towards the ocean.

What is being? Being complete, total, integrated, expressing your full energy, is what I call ‘being’. If you are partial in your experience or expression, be very clear you are being hypocritical.

An interest can be lost, but never the intensity. Interest comes from the mind. Intensity comes from the being.

After a while, maybe short or long, you get fed up with your own interest. With intensity, it is a thirst of your being. It transcends the rationale of your logic. Intensity is a call from deep within. The more you have to wait for it, the more the thirst grows, the more the fire flares up.

See the difference between light and laser. Both are made up of the same light rays but the single-pointed intense focus of the laser comes from the coher-ence and the common frequency of the light rays.

The power of this intensity is what gives the laser the tremendous power to even burn a hole through metal. At the same time it is a controlled focus. This is what gives it the power to do even a delicate task like removing a cataract in the eye.

If in a desert your thirst for water becomes really intense, you are ready to pay with your life for a glass of water. When your thirst for realization becomes that intense, you are ready to pay with your life for the Truth.

A beautiful Zen story:

A student approached a Zen teacher to learn Zen. The teacher told him, 'Hear the sound of one hand clapping.'

The student tried for three years and did not succeed. He was depressed that he could not do what his teacher had told him. He came in tears to the teacher saying he had to leave because he could not do what he had been told.

The teacher said, 'Wait for one more week. Meditate constantly.' The student stayed for one more week and meditated. Nothing happened. The teacher said, 'Try for five more days.'

The student stayed further, yet nothing happened. The student came in despair begging to be released. Then the teacher said, 'Meditate for three more days. If you don't get enlightened, you had better kill yourself.'

The second day, the student was enlightened.

When your whole being is burning with the single intense desire to realize the Ultimate, you will simply absorb the master's instructions. The magic of trans-formation is bound to happen. Only then will you be open to receive him. Till then it is just an interest. When you are without 'I' consciousness but having thoughts, you are in the dream state. In the dream state, your thoughts are at a higher frequency than your 'I' consciousness. That is why you have thoughts in your dreams but you are not able to control them.

When you are without 'I' Consciousness and not having any thoughts, you are in the deep sleep state. Normally, we are aware of only these three states – waking, dream and deep sleep. The fourth state is where you have I conscious-ness but no thoughts – turiya.

Intensity means being intense every moment in whatever you do. So first you need to be aware of yourself in all the states. Then only you can be intense throughout.

Now you experience who you are with awareness only during the waking state. You feel, 'I am a doctor', 'I am a lawyer', 'I am an engineer' and so on. Only if we are aware of the identities that we carry and enjoy in all the three states, we have caught the thread, the center line of all the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep. When we catch the thread of all these three states, suddenly we realize our identity in all the three states.

Somebody asked me, 'I don't think that in the deep sleep state I am aware.' Then who is the person who comes back and says it was deep peace during my deep sleep? Who is the person who is reminiscing about it saying, 'It was filled with darkness. It was as if I was not there at all'? Who is coming back and remembering even this idea, 'I was not there at all'?

If the person is not there in that state, then who is coming back to connect all these three states? No, we cannot say we were not there in the deep sleep state. We were there, but we were not aware of the identity that we had in that state.

Understand, a person who is aware of all these three states is conscious. If we are aware of the identity in all these three states, then we are conscious enough, our seeking is intense enough to be answered, we are intense enough to be initiated and blessed.

If we are not already aware of all these three states, if we have not experi-enced all these three states with the same identity, then naturally we need to now intensify our seeking.

An intense seeker will carry the identity about himself throughout all these three states. If even once or twice you have experienced your waking identity in the dream state then you are intense.

In the dream state suddenly sometimes you remember that you are beyond the identity which you think as you in the dream state. I have seen seekers going through this experience in the dream state. They will be dreaming and suddenly they will identify themselves with their identity of the waking state. Then they will think about the dream state, 'Hey, this is too small. This is nothing.'

If you have had the experience of your waking state identity in the dream state, understand, then you have the intensity. Your seeking is intense.

Understand: Question is a word. Quest is a feeling.

Man is born as a quest. The rest of Existence cannot reflect the Divine like man can. Man is like a mirror. He has the choice to face and reflect the Divine or to turn away. Man can make a conscious choice, which is why he can grow. Man can choose to realize the Divine through his human form. No other being in Existence has this choice.

If these words, 'How do I get enlightenment? I want to ... real bad and urgently,' have come out, if this question has come out as a deep quest, then you don't need anything.

Just boil, let the whole being burn with this quest. That is enough. Nothing else needs to be done. Let this boiling be intense.

Allow this boiling. Allow this burning. Allow this intensity. Allow this urgency.

Let the urge become urgent. Let the question become your quest. Let it just eat your ego, eat your inner space.

People ask me, 'Have you been enlightened by the divine grace or by your effort or by your quest?'

I tell them, your having the quest is the first sign that you are having the divine grace. Unless you have the divine grace, you will not have the quest.

Understand, this quest or seeking is like a seed. It is like a seed feeling suffocated inside the shell. See, the life that is inside the seed, unless it feels suffocated inside the shell, it won't open up and become a tree.

The moment the seed starts feeling that it should open up, the moment it starts feeling the seeking, the urgency and the quest to open up to become a tree, it means that already the tree inside the seed has started expressing itself.

If you have the feeling that you should get enlightened, the Buddha in you has opened his eyes. The Buddha in you has started waking up. All you need to do is open your eyes!

Allow this seeking. From morning till night let it boil, let it create a deep dissatis-faction in you. Let every pore in your skin, every nerve in your body, every cell in you vibrate with that intensity. Let it swallow all your depressions you may have in life. In life you may have so many other depressions and sufferings of not having so many things. Let all those sufferings be swallowed by this one suffering.

The technique is to get the right attitude of intensity. Actually, if you have high intense energy, you will automatically have the right listening. You will be just waiting to catch one glimpse. You will be just waiting to listen. You will be just waiting to imbibe.

That is why masters speak again and again and again for years over years. I started speaking only a few years ago. Buddha spoke for over forty years. But, the message was the same. His first sermon and the last sermon are almost the same.

You may then think why thousands of disciples sat everyday and heard the same sermon again and again. Because, the click happens only when you are in intense energy. Only with intensity it clicks. You just catch the flame and the awakening happens.

For the spiritual experience to happen, two conditions need to be fulfilled. One is that you must be completely open and available to the surroundings. The other is the intense energy field.

Sometimes even if you are open, if you are not in the intense energy field, the first cracking of the coconut of your ego does not happen. The first spiritual experience is just like breaking open a coconut. Once the first opening happens, it is not difficult to break the rest of the coconut. The first opening needs an intense spiritual energy field.

These two factors are what resulted in my first spiritual experience. I was open and available to the surroundings, and I was in the intense energy field of Arunachala. Fortunately, I was attracted to the beauty of that hill. Normally, if you see a hill or a river or an ocean every day, you will take it for granted. Somehow I never took that hill for granted. I never thought I know about it. I was continuously open, available.

Understand, being open and available every time, seeing it every morning with the eyes of freshness or with the mind of openness is what I am calling 'being open and available'. Many times, we completely close ourselves to the society.

We just come to some conclusion, some understanding and after that we never update our understanding or our effort with the result.

Every day, the Arunachala hill was living for me. Every day it was never the same old hill that I saw yesterday. I had a very funny routine. In the morning when I got up I would not open my eyes. I would slowly walk from my room to outside the house holding the parapet wall. I would come out and stand in He came out of the river and sat under the tree. He was frustrated but the difference between ordinary frustration and Buddha's frustration was he was complete and intense in his frustration as well.

There was not even a grain of hope he had. He completely gave up. There was nothing to achieve, nothing to look forward to.

It is said that on that night as he looked at the sky ready to sleep, he attained nirvana.

The one factor that resulted in Buddha achieving It is intensity. So many of us claim we are doing everything but nothing is happening. Look little deeper and see how integrated you are in your thirst and seeking. Whatever you may seek, integrate your energies completely and go for it. You will then see the universe open up to you completely.

I had mentioned about my deep spiritual experience where I felt one with Exist-ence and had a 360 degree vision of everything around me. There are so many people practicing so many different meditation techniques. What is the differ-ence, what is the reason why the experience happened to a small boy?

I can say that one important reason is that my whole inner space was ripe, ready for this small technique to awaken and open it. Constantly I used to be in that high frequency of the masters without even my conscious awareness.

See, especially in the young age, whoever inspires or impresses you becomes the hero of your inner space. These great masters impressed me so much that in every situation I would think, 'How would these great masters behave?' For example, if I had some fear, I would remember, 'How will Annamalai Swamigal face this fear? He won't bother. He is enlightened. Let me also be like that.'

The inner space was so inspired and impressed by these great masters, that before every step I took in my life I would think, 'How will he behave? Let me also do that.' The inner space was so pure also at the young age and I had no heroes other than the masters. At every step I used to think, 'How will he behave? Let me behave like that. How he will do? Let me do like that.'

I used to go for a circumambulation of the Arunachala hill. It is more than 12 kilometers around the hill. I used to go late at night. When I had a little fear I used to say, 'How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? He won't bother about fear. Then let me also be like that.'

Let me tell you about one incident.

It was raining heavily that night as I went around the hill. I had some fear seeing the heavy rain, thunder and lightning. Immediately I thought, ‘How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? He won’t bother. He will just walk. Let me also do the same way.’

I was walking through the traditional crematorium. In India both cremation and burial are done in the same place. I was walking in that place because when you go around the hill the path goes through that crematorium.

Suddenly I saw a dog biting something and eating. When I went near, the dog started barking at me. At first when the fear came up I thought, ‘How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? He won’t bother. Let me just go.’ I started moving. Anyhow when I started moving the dog got scared and ran away.

When I got nearer I saw that it was a dead body which was not completely buried. It had come out in the rain and it was lying on the road. Just imagine a twelve or thirteen year old boy, alone at midnight, seeing a dead body without a head, since the dog had the head in its mouth.

The fear started but it did not even reach my being completely. The shock, the fear stroke did not even happen completely. As soon as the first thought started coming up, with intense awareness I thought, ‘How will Annamalai Swamigal react now? He will just walk around and go. Just walk around and go.’

I continued to walk. That’s all. I took a detour and walked away. I did not even turn back and see. The fear stroke, which was like a bubble, which was about to start, did not even open up, did not even reach my body. The heat or the shivering from fear was not even there in the body. It just died.

Intensely, the whole conscious inner space was ready. That is the reason, just a punch, just a small inspiration was able to put me into that experience. That is what I call ‘Living Enlightenment’.

When you live the master’s body language you live enlightenment.

Whenever any thought came into my inner space, whether it was related to clothes or food or anything, the first thing I would think was, ‘How will Annamalai Swamigal behave? Naturally he won’t have any desire. Then forget about it!’

If I felt a little lazy to meditate or to circumambulate the hill, I would think, ‘How will Annamalai Swamigal think? How will he handle this situation? Natu-

Actually this is what I call relationship with the master. Relationship with the master is not just doing some worship or putting some flowers or worship-ping him once in a while. No!

Relationship happens when you are thoroughly impressed by the master. Whenever anything comes up, say fear or insecurity or greed or anger, just see, ‘How will master behave?’ Simply it will disappear. It will just disappear.

Many times I tell people, just feeling strongly connected with the master is enough. You don’t need anything else. It is not just your ordinary relation-ship. In an ordinary relationship, you neither try to understand nor imbibe the master. Just some feeling is there. I can’t even call that as a relationship. It is an ordinary, regular interaction.

Feeling connected to the master means just living him. When you live the master, then you feel intensely connected to him. Only then you are expanding. Only then something is happening to you. This has not happened in most of us because of so many other relationships. So many other persons occupy your inner space and so many others have inspired you or impressed you or given the idea that they are heroes. Just fill your inner space with the master and watch your problems simply dissolve.

Be intense in whatever you do. Whether you eat, sing, dance, pray or work, be completely into that, in the moment.

Intensity is enlightenment. As of now, some part of you is intense while some part of you is lazy. Being hundred percent intense is enlightenment.

The first thing you need for living enlightenment is intensity. Intensity is the sword with which you can break the mind.

It is just like awakening from the dream. The first thing you need is the intention, the idea that you should wake up. So now you need to have the intense idea to wake up.

Understand, the intensity with which you work towards wealth, relations etc., if you just turn a little towards enlightenment, you will awaken.

Intensely decide, ‘I will wake up from this life that I call life.’ Create an intense will or prayer. When you create a will and direct it towards you, it is called a will. When you create a will and direct it towards the Divine, it is called a prayer.

Intensity is a strong intention to wake up, the strong intention for fulfill-ment, for living enlightenment, for eternal bliss. The only gap between you and enlightenment is intensity.

Remember how intensely and anxiously you run behind things that give you joy. Suppose I tell now that whoever prays intensely will get a ten million

To be intense

This is a very powerful technique from the Shiva Sutras. The aphorism or sutra says, Die into the infinite void where you are no more Moving beyond the senses into Shiva Consciousness

This technique is called the Shanmukhi Mudra. As it will be difficult to maintain this posture for a long time, you may sit on the ground and support your hands on a chair to maintain comfort. You can put a chair in front of you and turn it facing towards your side to support your hand. Alternatively, you may sit in a chair and support your hands using the chair in front of you. By supporting your hands on a chair, you will avoid shoulder ache.

This technique closes the doorways to your senses. This should only be practised by people who have some experience in meditation. As in all meditations sit comfortably cross legged or in a chair with back, neck and head in one vertical line.

When you are in Shanmukhi Mudra, the energy flow to the outside world through the seven openings of the face (two ears, two eyes, two nostrils and one mouth) is blocked and turned inwards. Your hands are very powerful. The energy centers in the hands are so powerful that they can stop the energy flow, turn it into a concentrated beam of energy and direct it towards the ajna chakra or third eye.

Normally our breath goes in and out chaotically. By closing the nostrils partially with your fingers, you can reduce the air flow and balance it.

The Shanmukhi Mudra firstly stops the energy flow towards outside.

Secondly, we are turning the senses inwards.

Thirdly, we concentrate them towards the third eye.

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