DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY🔗

Ebook ISBN: 979-8-88572-312-1

Elevate Your Life. Transform Your World.

JAICO BOOKS

www.jaicobooks.com Religion & Philosophy

ISBN-13: 978-81-7992-902-5

9 788179 929025

Rs. 250

J-1837

Paramahamsa Nithyananda

JAICO

I

DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY

Some time ago there was a popular song that went like this:

Don't worry, be happy! Don't worry, be happy!

It became an instant hit. There is no wonder in this; we all want to be happy all the time.

But we don't experience happiness all the time. We experience only mood swings - from high to low to high again. We feel there is something preventing us from being happy and cheerful all the time. What is it that prevents us from being happy? Why is it that we spend a good part of our time worrying and harbouring negative thoughts?

We all carry a laundry list of worries with us all the time. It is very difficult to predict when we are likely to be joyful, but it is quite easy to say when we will be worried! When we run out of worries, we create new worries!

We worry when we have no money. We also worry when we have money. We worry if we have no children. We also worry when we have children. For different people, different types of worry exist!

Two girls were spending an evening together. They were catching up on each other’s lives after a long gap. One of them said, ‘I am getting married soon because I am tired of watching television by myself, eating by myself, paying the bills by myself and what not. The other girl calmly said, ‘I got divorced because of that.’

Worries follow desires just as night follows day! Just as desires have no end, worries, too, are endless, or rather, we choose never to end them.

In one of his famous works titled Bhaja Govindam, the great Hindu Master and philosopher, Sri Adi Sankara, sang this verse:

‘vruddhastavat chinta saktaha’

Once you are old, all you can do is worry. When you are a child, you just spend your time playing. When you are a young man, you chase the opposite sex and develop worries regarding that. As you grow older, there are no sound reasons to worry because you will have finished all your responsibilities. But by that time, worrying would have become a natural thread running in you, so you simply pursue worries without any reason! I am reminded of a joke:

One old man was sitting with his grandson in the garden. He suddenly looked at the grandson and cried, ‘Oh God! I can’t hear what you are saying!’ The boy was surprised and replied, ‘But I am not saying anything; I am chewing gum!’

Anyhow, what Sankara said thousands of years ago still holds true today!

The problem is that all these worries have no purpose. And even when they seem to have some purpose, they are really meaningless if you look deeply into them.

♦ A small story

A young and successful New York investment banker visited his psychiatrist doctor one day for relief from stress. The psychiatrist prescribed a vacation and told him to relax. He also suggested he should go fishing as it is a deep relaxation technique.

The young banker bought himself some nice designer clothes and special fishing shoes, and the most expensive fishing equipment available, including designer bait. He flew to the suggested fishing location and checked into a modern hotel. The next morning, he woke up early and, following the recommendations of the hotel concierge, he walked down to the riverbank. He chose a shady spot, sat down, and started to relax with the fishing rod in his hand and a pipe in his mouth. Minutes passed by, and soon one hour had gone past. He wasn't getting even a nibble.

He was starting to get irritated.

Then he noticed an old man ambling down in worn-out shorts and a worn-out vest, holding a fishing rod made out of some tree twig. The old man settled a few feet away from him downstream. He smiled to himself at the comic picture that he saw of the old man.

As he was still struggling to make his first catch, he suddenly noticed that the old man was catching fish at regular intervals and throwing them back into the river. The banker watched for awhile and got furious. But there was nothing he could do, so he just sat, sulking. Looking up after a while, he noticed the old man smiling at him from where he was. He was shouting out a friendly, 'Hi!'

The old man then walked up to the banker's place. He made a few adjustments to his tackle, replaced the designer bait with some squirming worms he was carrying and soon, the banker too was catching fish!

Excited about the turn of events, the young banker asked the old man what he did for a living. The man replied that he did nothing! He just fished and relaxed. The banker couldn't believe his ears. He started explaining to the man how much he was missing by not working as a professional like him in the big city. He told him that he too could make a lot of money by training people to fish, and that he would be happy to introduce him to a whole bunch of rich people.

The old man asked the banker what he hoped to do after making all his money. The banker said, 'I plan to make lots of money, to marry and to have children.' 'And then?' asked the old man. The banker said, 'I will build a big house and travel on luxurious vacation tours.' 'And then?' asked the old man. 'Oh, I will finally relax and spend all my time fishing,' the young banker said, 'just as I am doing now.' The old man looked at him and said, 'But, that's what I'm already doing now!' We always live with the notion that we need to struggle and worry and we reserve enjoyment and relaxation for old age times. Be very clear, if you live with this attitude, when you are ready to relax, you will not know how to! We also feel that living a hectic life is the only way to spend our youth usefully. We can live a hectic life. There is no problem in that but we need to live with awareness. If we live with awareness, we will not be giving such advice to the old man. We will have such equanimity of mind that these lopsided ideas will not enter us.

If we keep running, our worries only pile up, and depression happens. We forget that in the rat race, even if we win, we remain a rat!

♦ Another small story

One lady was moving house. She had a number of expensive curios that needed to be well-packed and shifted. She had hired some packers, and she was supervising them carefully. As she was watching the men packing up her belongings, she noticed one of them was handling her expensive antique vase carelessly. She warned him, ‘Please be careful, that piece is over a hundred years old.’ The man looked at her and understood her anxiety. He said, ‘Don’t worry ma’am, I will handle it like it’s brand new!’ Each one’s worries are different. Each one’s worries are based on his or her perceptions; based on individual desires.

Desire is not harmful in itself. Desires are energy, as long as they are our own deep and genuine desires, but the problem is that most of our desires are borrowed desires; they are the desires of other people. Our desires are born from jealousy and greed and have nothing to do with our real needs. It is said that this universe can cater to the needs of its every single inhabitant; however, it cannot fulfill the desires of even one single person!

Just think of all the things that you wish you had right now and make a list of them. Then, make a list of the things that you already have. Now tell me, of the two lists, which one makes you feel happy, and which one makes you feel sad? The answer is obvious. You feel happy about the list of things that you have and sad about the list of things that you don’t have. So why can’t we choose to be happy? Instead of worrying about what we don't have, why don't we offer our gratitude to the universe for providing all that we have? Whether we want to continue begging for more or to be thankful for what we have is our own choice. We can choose between happiness and sorrow. It is purely our choice to be sad or happy. We have no one to blame. And even after we have acquired something new, what happens? We are happy, but only for a short period of time because once we have obtained whatever we wanted, it loses its importance; it loses significance to us. It is no longer worthy of great joy. So, again, instead of enjoying it, we fuel our greed and move on to other desires, more possessions, that give us no more enjoyment, no more fulfillment. If we understand that each of us is on a different path, we will understand that it is absolutely meaningless to pick up desires from others. It is a big blunder to pick up others' desires because their desires are themselves not based on their true self but picked up from others! For example, you may not be the type who needs a boyfriend but, unconsciously, when you see your friends having boyfriends, it becomes your own desire to have a boyfriend also. You don't even know that you have picked it up from them. You just watch them and imbibe the desire, that's all. The truth is, having a boyfriend is their desire, not yours. And that desire must have come to them through a series of happenings and interactions in their lives.

But what happens? It has now become your desire. Then you start pursuing it and suffer all that needs to be suffered through that desire. This is how 90 percent of your desires take shape. And one more thing, every time a desire gets fulfilled, the first thing that happens in you is guilt! If you observe yourself closely, you will note this. When your own desire gets fulfilled, there will be fulfillment and no hangover emotion. There will be no trace of that desire left. But when a borrowed desire gets fulfilled, there will not only be no complete fulfillment, but there will also be a trace of guilt.

So, if you look deeply into this process, you will clearly be able to tell from whom and how you imbibed every desire and how you have allowed it to play upon you. Once this starts happening in you, desires will start to drop, and you will not pick up desires from others also.

If you distinguish between your needs and your wants, things will become alright. Once you are able to do this, you will find that you already have what you need! And this is what all the great philosophies have been saying time and again. Awareness of the truth, that we are one with the universe and that the universe bestows upon us exactly what we need when we need it, is enough to go beyond desires.

Meditation is a key that can open this awareness in us. Continuous meditation will open a space within us for these truths to enter. Then there will be no need for any philosophy or book or guide. You will just know from within, that's all.

2

COSMIC INTELLIGENCE

Thirty years ago, if someone had told us that information from around the world would be available with a single click on our computers, we wouldn't have believed it, but today it has become a reality. Not only that, most of us cannot do without the Internet. What would not have been believable and provable a little over three decades ago, is day-to-day reality now.

We have problems in believing what our ancient sages, the Rishis, said many thousands of years ago because we do not have scientific proof that what they said exists. We do not believe it because we have not experienced that reality. However, once we find a way to experience the truth of what has been said, however implausible it may seem, it becomes reality.

I am now proposing a theory similar to what our rishis experienced. Of course, it is not just a theory; it is the truth, as experienced by many rishis and yogis. If we work on it, not only can we understand it but we can also experience it!

Let us try to understand the term, cosmic intelligence. When I say cosmic intelligence, I don't mean the data or information from or about the universe. You can get that from a website. Cosmic intelligence is all about processing the right data at the right time. It is the capacity, the energy, and the power to deal with information at a very elevated level. Generally, any information is recorded in matter or media and can be passed on easily. Intelligence, on the other hand, is pure consciousness, which humans are unable to create, even at the level of artificial intelligence. Computer intelligence is not human intelligence, no matter how much data the processor can crunch, and however fast it may crunch it.

Let us look further at what I mean by cosmic intelligence, how to access it and how to make it a reality in our lives.

There are many living entities present on Earth, such as plants, animals and even rocks. (Science has determined that these inanimate objects, too, possess some life form and basic intelligence.) According to the yogis, the human body is the most evolved and intelligent system, because consciousness happens only in the human system. Therefore, only humans have the potential to evolve into the next higher dimension. Somebody asked me, 'Why should we meditate? We evolved from monkeys into humans, and, based on the theory of evolution, we should naturally evolve into super humans. What is then the need for meditation?'

I told him that until we became humans, we did not have consciousness, only instinct, and that was how the natural growth or evolution happened. But humans have one more dimension, called intellect, which controls instinct. Natural growth will not happen anymore just by biological evolution; now it has to be your conscious choice to move towards higher intelligence. A buffalo cannot become a Buddha, no matter how hard it tries. Only human beings can achieve the ultimate consciousness to become a Buddha.

Patanjali, the father of the yoga system, says, 'When you were a tortoise, all your past life memories were stored in that body. When you died and were born again as a higher level animal, all of that past life was then stored in the animal body. As you gradually evolved to the level of a human being, memories from all your past lives were stored in you. If you know the technique, you can actually tap into any of those memories. This may sound like a theory but it is true. In fact, this theory is the basis on which they say humans can fly and swim without any training. The past life memories just need to be tapped to be able to do these things.

In Japan, research was conducted where the moment children were born, they were put in water and they started swimming automatically. As children grow, if adults do not tell them that they can't fly, they will also try to fly. The moment you condition them by telling them that they can't do it, they simply settle down to that as reality. By nature, we have all the required intelligence in our human body. The difficulty is, we strongly believe we are limited. In addition, we don't know the technique to tap into all the dimensions of our being.

I am going to explain, using a small diagram, how our mind resists opening itself to the innate intelligence available to our being.

This is the Time Shaft diagram. Consider time as a shaft which is continuously moving, moving from the right to the left; the future is constantly flowing and becoming the past. The time shaft represents incidents, memories, or cosmic intelligence.

Usually our mind wanders between the past and future, jumping back and forth. If we decide not to think about either past or future, we cannot have thoughts, because a thought is nothing but a jump from past to future or future to past. Every thought is to do with some past incident or some future idea. If we take 10 jumps in one second in this fashion, we can say that our TPS or Thoughts Per Second is 10. A person who is restless will have a higher TPS, say 50 TPS. These thoughts are so subtle and swift that it is difficult for us to believe that we actually harbour so many thoughts in one second! But it is true! The mind is like a drunken monkey that jumps from one thing to another without any rhyme or reason.

The higher our TPS is, the further away we are from the time shaft, as indicated in this diagram. If we are continuously jumping between the past and the future, we cannot become truly aware of the real past or the real future. To become truly aware of our past, we have to be in the present moment, which means we have to lower our TPS and come nearer to the time shaft that is available to us with the past and future. Great Masters have access to the entire time shaft because their TPS is almost zero! They can clearly see the past and future. Being able to harness the time shaft is what cosmic intelligence is. When we are able to do this, we are actually in tune with Existence and its play. Once we have access to the time shaft, we can go back in time and get any information. All our past is available before the present moment (left side of the time shaft), and all the future is available after the present moment (right side of the time shaft). The present moment is where the future and past meet.

The lower our frequency of thoughts is, the fewer our TPS are, the closer we are to the time shaft, and the more clearly we can see our past and future. People may ask, ‘Even if we are restless, we seem to remember the past. How do you say that only with fewer TPS we can see the past more clearly?’

With our normal TPS, we may see the past but we see it only as we want to, not as it really is. We see only a few incidents in a few moments and only in the way we recorded it in our system through our own perception. Whatever got recorded in our memory, we will be able to recall or access. But this is not what we are talking about. What we are talking about has nothing to do with memory. It has to do with straightaway accessing the time shaft at will, that’s all. It is a technique. And the time shaft has all the incidents that have happened or are happening, clearly, as they are. With our ordinary TPS, whatever we recall are incidents that remain in us because of some connection with our mental setup. For example, if we have a party in our house, when the party is over, we will create a file with what all went wrong at the party, what moments gave us pleasure, etc. We then store these things in our memory. Through this process, we won't repeat our mistakes again and, also, the moments of pleasure that were recorded give us some happiness when we recall them later. So what got recorded is completely our own perception and that, too, is a small subset of what actually happened during the entire party, in front of our eyes and behind it. Now, the time shaft gives access to this second part we are talking about. As the TPS comes down, we will start seeing things as they actually happened, irrespective of whether they happened in front of our eyes or not. We will have a clear idea of all the events that really happened, and of the future too, because the past and future are nothing but two dimensions of time.

When we touch the time shaft, we will learn wonderful lessons. We will start seeing life with a completely new perspective, with no preconceived notion about anything. We will just take every moment as it comes.

One of the great enlightened Masters, Vivekananda, beautifully says, 'If you know a handful of clay completely, you will know about all the clay available on Earth.'

If we have clarity about the past, we will have clarity about the future. If we do not have clarity about the future, be very clear that we only remember fragments of the past, as we want, and not as things happened.

I don’t mean the past in this life alone but the past in all the lives that we have lived. Whether we believe in reincarnation or not, we have had many births; that is the truth, and that intelligence is there in us.

Through techniques like meditation, we can lower our TPS drastically. We can be completely in the present moment, and we can touch eternity. Past, present and future put together is eternity. We cannot touch it in the past since it’s already gone; we cannot touch it in the future since it is yet to happen. We can touch it only in the present moment. If we can totally relax in the ‘here and now’, we can touch eternity and become aware of the whole past and the whole future.

Whatever I am saying is from my own living experience. I have no other investment in promoting this concept, except to inspire you to understand that it is possible for you.

It is like this, a tree is waiting for the seed to rupture, and the seed is waiting for the tree to happen before it ruptures. A seed has to rupture first for the tree to happen, or else the tree cannot happen. A Master is one who has become a tree and tells you that you, too, can rupture and become a tree. The Master is proof and he gives you the courage. It is a simple courtesy. If someone is ahead of you on a busy road, and you call them on their cell phone wanting to know the traffic situation, won't he have the simple courtesy to tell you about traffic conditions? Similarly, it is simple courtesy for me to tell you this honest truth. It can happen in your life, too, with your courage to explore and penetrate the present moment.

Whenever we experience intuition, or have a déjà vu experience, knowingly or unknowingly, it means that our TPS has suddenly dropped; we become very calm and relaxed, and we get a glimpse of the future. When we are in a truly happy mood, our TPS comes down. This is also why, when we are with a good friend or beloved, time seems to fly but, when we are with someone boring, time seems to move very slowly. When the TPS is high and we are restless, we feel time is moving slowly. In those moments also, suddenly our TPS can take a dip, and a glimpse of the future might be revealed to us.

People who are time-conscious are in hell. They may achieve whatever they need to achieve in life but inside they will be in hell. Time-bound awareness is a good discipline socially but it is a bondage. Whenever you are attending a business meeting, you need to be time-bound, since you need to be socially responsible. But whenever you can, when you finish your business, relax from the time-bound awareness.

Just as we relax when we remove our coat and shoes, learn how to relax from time-bound awareness. Do this after you have completed what you have to as a time-bound responsibility. Only when we drop out of time-bound awareness can we see and enjoy a different dimension of life -the low TPS state. Being time-bound is good for business but not for living, because life is more than just business.

I know an enlightened Master who lived in India. He had twenty-five clocks, each set to a different time. When I visited him the first time, I thought he had devotees all over the world and each clock was set to a different time zone because of that!

I asked him why he had so many clocks. He replied, 'If I want the time to be 12:30, I choose the clock showing 12:30 to be the current time. If I want it to be 4:30, I pick the one that shows that time. If I want a special time that none of these 25 clocks show, I set the time on another clock and use it!'

He was not just a Master; he ran his institution like a CEO. I asked him how he managed it. He said when he left his room, he had a watch that showed the chronological time and he would follow all routines as required: administering, returning phone calls, etc. But the moment he entered his room, he would remove the watch and live with the many clocks. He was able to use time as a tool at his will.

If you can live at least for a few days without the awareness of time, you will open yourself to a new dimension of your being. That dimension will be tremendously liberating. And once this happens, when you need to get into time-bound awareness, you will do it perfectly! I did a study and found that, whenever we are not bound by time, our adrenalin level is very low, and we feel a sense of well-being. Whenever our adrenalin level is high, we are constantly tense. We can live all 24 hours of a day in time-bound awareness, but we will naturally always hurry and worry and our adrenalin level will go up, which will lead to heart problems and all kinds of other problems. By the age of fifty, we will be all set to die and have eternity available to us.

One who is time-bound can't have a vacation. When he's worrying at the office, he calls it work; when he's worrying at home, he calls it homework, and when he's worrying on the beach, he calls it vacation, that's all. The place may change, but the time-bound mental setup of worrying will not change.

People ask me how I speak for many hours without any notes. I tell them it's because I'm not confined by time-bound awareness. Time-bound awareness is the worst conspiracy that society inflicts on you. Slip out of it at least once in awhile and you will understand what I call intelligence. Read about any great discovery by any scientist. All great discoveries were made only when they were not under time-bound awareness, when they simply allowed themselves to enter into a new dimension of existing. Where did Archimedes discover his principle? Where did Newton discover the theory of gravity? Scientific discoveries are nothing but eruptions from the cosmic intelligence. When we are time-bound, we are good businessmen or engineers but only when we reach timeless awareness, and our TPS drops, can we become artists or poets or make radical discoveries. All great truths, scientific and mystical, are discovered only when we are beyond time.

The technique to drop from time-bound awareness is what I call meditation. When we drop out of time-bound awareness, even one idea, even one thought that hits our consciousness, can transform our whole life and the life of humanity. Whatever we can achieve with time-bound awareness throughout our life, we can achieve a thousand times more with one moment of timeless awareness!

For example, can you equate all that you have created with your life's earnings with the productivity of the theory of gravity (which resulted from just one moment of timeless awareness)? Apart from personal comforts and material benefits, timeless awareness can give you a sense of tremendous fulfillment that you have lived your life completely.

A single glimpse of zero TPS is enough to give us the deepest possible fulfillment. That's the ultimate vacation! Unless we know how to lower our TPS, even if we are in the world's happiest place, we cannot have a vacation. If we can lower our TPS here and now, our whole life will be a vacation.

When I was in USA, I saw a signboard that said, 'Disneyland, where the party never ends.' Why do we need a separate place and time to be happy or to celebrate? Our whole life will be nithyotsava (eternal festival) if we can drop our TPS. We will be able to penetrate our whole past as it happened and our whole future as it will happen; we will have tremendous clarity.

The past binds us again and again. Our future is nothing but an updated version of our past. From the past, we don't want some incidents so we remove them; we want some incidents, so we add them or repeat them. We try to create the same past in the future, with some alteration, more conducive to us. If we don't know our past completely, as it really happened, we will repeat the same things in the future. If our TPS can come down and we understand our past as it happened, we won't repeat the same things in the future and we won't be bound to the past, as well.

With our ordinary memory, we carry the burden of our past with a strong attachment to it. But when we have access to the entire time shaft, we will neither feel any attachment to anything in it nor we will be influenced by it. We then become karma mukta, liberated from karma, the burden of our past actions, intentions, desires and memories. As of now, we are all under karma bandha, under the bondage of karma, because we have not lived our past completely.

For example, our childhood always seems golden and many people have the idea of a golden past all the time. We may feel our life in college was great, but when we were actually in college, we would not have really felt that way. Why? Because we feel that our suffering has become too much now, and in comparison, the past seems very nice! Now, we attribute joy to our past, and if given a chance, we want to repeat it, but actually when we lived through it, did we experience joy? No. If we come down to zero TPS, we will understand it wasn't as great as we think.

Unfulfilled desires are what I call samskaras. Samskaras will pull us to travel on the same route, again and again. That's why they say history always repeats itself. Not only the history of humanity, but even yours and mine! Take an oath never to repeat the same mistake again and you will never be able to commit any mistakes, because we don't have the intelligence to commit new mistakes! We only repeat our past mistakes because we don't truly know and remember our past.

All meditation techniques are ways to bring down our TPS. The vision about the entire past and the entire future is what I call cosmic intelligence. If we bring down our TPS to zero, relax in the present moment, what mystics call cosmic intelligence will become a reality in our life. And no one can dispute the concept of timeless awareness. Just because some news is not in the newspaper, you cannot say it didn't happen. Similarly, just because we didn't experience timeless awareness, we can't say there is no such thing.

What we know is different from what is. If we can relax in the present moment, at zero TPS, for at least 11 kshana, we will penetrate the time shaft and alter future incidents.

Kshana is the time gap between one thought and the next. For each person this time gap is different. The higher the TPS is, the lower the kshana will be and vice versa. If we can stay in zero TPS for 21 kshana, (that is based on our regular TPS state) we will penetrate the time shaft and the future is in our hands. These statements are mystical and based on words of great rishis. Even if we disregard these truths, we can experience it directly.

If you sit in front of a person who meditates, or in front of an enlightened man, you feel fresh and attracted to his presence. People often ask me, ‘When we sit in your presence, we don’t know how time passes; we feel happy. Why is that?’

This is because, in the presence of a Master, your TPS drops. If you ordinarily have 100 TPS, and you come into the presence of someone at zero TPS, your TPS will drop to 50; if you were at 80 TPS initially, it will drop to 40 TPS, because the energy is infectious!

That’s why Sankara, the great philosopher says:

It means, when we are in the presence of a man who lives with zero TPS, as in a satsang (satsangs are conducted in the presence of great Masters, living or who have left their body), we become nitsanga. Our restlessness comes down and we are free of attachments. When restlessness reduces, intelligence is active, the mind is clear and we become desire-less and delusion-less, nirmohatvam. We then reach nishchalatatva, which is total stillness of mind with no thoughts, and finally, jeevanmukti which is the zero TPS state, or the state of enlightenment.

If we can bring down our TPS, we can penetrate the complete past, future and present. The whole cosmic intelligence will be available to us just like the information from around the world is available on the Internet at a browsing center! I call the third eye or the brow center (ajna chakra) the browsing center! If we can relax in the third eye energy center or the brow center and experience zero TPS, all the past, present and future of our life and others' lives will be available to us. So the brow center is the browsing center.

Questions and Answers:

Q) When we die and the brain stops working, do we have zero TPS? If so, what is the difference between that zero TPS state and achieving the same through meditation?

A) At the time of death you don't achieve zero TPS state. The brain not working does not mean that you are in zero TPS. The brain may not receive information from the senses and process it but it can work on past memories. Even when your eyes are closed, during dreams, no information is received from the outside but information is processed inside the mind without input from the outside. In the same way, during death, you don't receive information from outside but process information already collected. Death is not zero TPS; only enlightenment is zero TPS. If you browse the website on NDE, (Near Death Experience), www.near-death.com, you will see that an American doctor researched more than ten thousand people who had a NDE. His conclusions prove the great truths of the yoga shastra, which I just told you.

The whole Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP), that I personally conduct over four days in India and two days outside of India, is about this one question; what is death and how to be aware at the time of death.

In the Bhagavad Gita, there is a profound statement; at the time of leaving the body, if you are aware or conscious, your next birth will be according to your choice, or you won't have a next birth, and you will become enlightened! It is not a mere statement; it is the solid truth.

In these four days, I program your mind so that the moment the pain of death happens in your being, you will become aware of the pain and restlessness and come to zero TPS. It is not that this meditation will help only during death. Even while living, you will be able to reproduce the zero TPS state whenever you wish to.

A scientist creates a formula to reproduce an experience in the outer world, like the theory of gravity, for instance, while a mystic creates a formula to reproduce in others the same experience that happened inside him, in the inner world. A Paramahamsa is a man who is able to put people in the same experience that happened in him spontaneously, without much effort on their part.

All I’m trying to do in these four days is to give you the formula, a meditation technique, through which you can have the same experience that happened in me spontaneously, when I meditated and became enlightened. I try to create the same space in you through a proper technique that works on the seven layers of your body, to give you a glimpse of that experience during NSP.

Q) Sometimes we get caught in unpleasant situations, where we need to speak up, but we don’t. I’m always being pushed around and don’t know how to deal with it.

♦ A) A small story:

Two friends, both drunk, are sitting in a pub and talking. One guy, fully drunk, says, ‘I am scared to go home. My wife will open the door and start screaming and throwing things. I’ll have to run inside and hide. Please tell me what to do; how do I escape from her?’ The other one is surprised and says, 'In my house, it's the opposite! I bang the door open, throw my shoes noisily around, bang the utensils, eat in the kitchen, bang the bedroom door open, shout, and still she acts if she's sleeping!'

Two different situations: in the first one, the guy is afraid; in the second one the wife is afraid! Any situation depends on how you deal with it. I am not telling you that you should exploit the situation. No! But when the situation calls for intelligent handling to allow certain things to happen and, when people are causing difficulty in making that happen, you can easily make things work your way, that's all. This is a typical example, although the subject used here is not appropriate.

So, it is up to you to choose to create the first or the second situation. Don't always choose to be in the first situation; decide to create the second situation also sometimes. It is just intelligent handling with complete awareness about what you are doing.

Also, there is no need to give in submissively when you are being pushed around. When you give in, two things are happening: one is that you don't know the knack to handle the situation. The second is, your passive ego gets in the way and protects you from getting into an unpleasant situation, so you give in. This needs to be looked into with a deep awareness. The reason why you don't want to deal with the situation is you are afraid your ego might get hurt in the process of confronting the situation. This is the truth. This is what we call passive ego. Passive ego cunningly wriggles out of a situation, so that your ego remains intact.

But outwardly, you will appear to be the helpless victim of the situation. Just come out and bravely confront the situation. Decide not to let the situation suffer because of your passive ego. Let your ego get hurt a little; what is there in it? If you do this a few times, you will not only learn the knack of working around an issue, you will also let go of your defenses and feel free because of it.

Q) How do we know which path is right or wrong in general?

A) There is no right or wrong in any path. It all depends on individuals and situations. Instead of focusing your energy on analyzing whether the path is right or wrong, if you focus your energy on doing what you do with totality, with awareness, then automatically your intelligence will grow and you will develop a tremendous conviction about anything that you do. Then, what you do will be right; no other go! That is the way.

Q) What is 'mind' and what is its purpose?

A) The mind is nothing but a constant movement from past to future and back. The purpose of it is to do chronological planning but it is used for everything other than that. For example, you need to drive your car and reach a place at a particular time. Chronological planning is simply planning how to go about doing it. You can plan, 'I will get up at 6 am, get ready and get into the car at 7 am and leave, so that I will reach that place, crossing the traffic, by 8 am which is my appointment time.' This planning is alright. But what happens is, you will not stop at that. You will start worrying, 'Will I get up when the alarm rings? Will I cross the traffic on time and reach the place prior to my appointment? What if a cop stops me and gives me a ticket? Will my appointment work out?'

This is psychological worrying, over and above chronological planning. The mind has been reduced to only psychological worrying. It is actually a tool given to you to live more happily, but you use it to give you everything except bliss. I always say, mind your mind, and then you will become no-mind!

3

DE-STRESSING – EASIER THAN YOU THINK

How is stress created in our being and how do we avoid it?

Stress is nothing but handling too much information without the capacity for it. When we don't know how to handle the large amount of information that we are constantly receiving, we miss and mess up the whole thing! Studies of the brain have found that the brain receives and processes about 400 billion bits of information per second, but we are aware of only 2000 bits of that information. This means we integrate only a negligible fraction of the information received.

Let me present a diagram of how we process information and how stress is created. These are great truths discovered by ancient Masters, and they belong to the whole world, not to one religion or community. Thomas Alva Edison discovered the light bulb. It does not mean that light belongs to him and to his particular community. Similarly, these are great truths discovered in the inner world by great Masters. Once discovered, they belong to the whole world; they are nobody's property and they are beyond religion.

Here is a simple illustration of how we receive information and how stress begins to build up.

Consider, as an example, we receive some information from the eye; you are seeing me now. The information from the eye goes to something called the chakshu, which is like a Digital Signal Processor or DSP. The moment you see me, the visual information is sent to the chakshu, where it is converted into digital signals. Next, the data is taken to the memory or chitta, which starts analyzing the data. It identifies through exclusion, i.e. it decides that the data is not an animal, it is not a plant, it is not a stone, etc. It identifies by saying, 'This is not; this is not.'

Then, the whole file goes to the mind or manas, which starts asserting the truth about what you are seeing. It says, 'This is a man; he is a Master; he is teaching meditation', and so on. Mind makes a positive identification of 'This is it; this is it.' Finally, the file takes a quantum leap and goes to the ego. The ego does the analyses of, 'What is in it for me? How will it benefit me?' And based on this, the final decision is made.

Between the mind and ego, many processes happen; you start analyzing your past experiences with people who were wearing saffron colored clothes. If you had a good experience with them, you will decide to sit and listen to me; otherwise, your ego will decide that you should get out of here. You decide based on what happens in this zone. I call this the unconscious zone.

Unfortunately, at the conscious level, only information processing is done; all decisions are made at the unconscious level. That's why, even though you know smoking is bad for your health, and all the available data processed by your conscious mind points to it, you still decide to smoke. Suddenly, you discard all your conscious level guidance and pick up a cigarette.

How does stress happen? We not only receive information through the eyes; we also receive it through smell, touch, taste and sound. Sometimes, we don't even need information from outside; stored information from our memory (chitta) alone will start working. The unconscious space doesn't have enough capacity and energy to process all this information that we are receiving. So it gets clogged and gives out illogical and wrong decisions.

If we can expand the unconscious zone and infuse silence into it, the stored memories will get burnt out and the stress will be relieved, because decisions will be made not out of any chaotic memories but out of a superconscious or intuitive zone.

This unconscious zone which stores the chaotic memories is also called the reactive mind, because it only reacts; it does not respond. Reaction is almost like a reflex action, not coming from any reasonable logic. Responding is coming up with the right response to the input fed. For example, if you have been hurt by someone wearing saffron colored clothes, when you see me, you will suddenly get that memory and you won't feel like sitting here, because in the reactive mind the memory is still alive. The reactive mind is not conscious; if it were conscious, you would realize that I'm not the same person who hurt you; you would not generalize.

The problem is, we keep generalizing. We have to live in a localized way, not in a generalized way. There is a big gap between reality and our way of living.

We have too much load on our unconscious layer and that creates stress. If we can reduce the load and infuse silence in that zone, then, instead of stressing out, we will be creative and make strong decisions with conviction. A person who is stressed cannot be creative; one who is truly creative will be full of life, because creativity comes from deep silence. If you can infuse that silence into your being, not only will you be stress free, you will see one more dimension of your being – intuition!

The unconscious zone can be used in three ways: at the instinct level, at the intellect level and at the intuitive level. If there is too much stress and not enough silence or patience to even receive information, we use the unconscious at the instinct level: for example, the decision to smoke. It is almost instinctive. If we have a bit of silence, we will apply our intellect and use it for decision-making. Then, the decision will be made after exhaustive logical thinking. When we have total silence in the unconscious, we use it at the intuitive level and experience what we call revelations.

All great revelations have happened to people who touched the intuitive plane for that moment.

I once met Dr. Charles Townes, Nobel Prize winner for LASER and MASER technology. He said to me, when discussing his discoveries, 'It came to me as a revelation when I was totally relaxed. Suddenly, a revelation happened to me. I knew the conclusion but not the steps! Later I had to work out the steps to present it to the public.'

De-stressing - Easier than you Think 35

Infusing silence into the unconscious is what I call meditation or prayer, whatever you may name it. Even prayer can infuse silence. There are so many methods and techniques to do this. With silence, you can handle much more information in a much better way; the quantity and quality of information handled will be higher and you will never experience stress.

Studies conducted on meditators and non-meditators, to measure and compare their brain activity using PET scans, have shown that the more a person meditates, the more coherently the brain seems to function, in addition to getting more parts of the brain working!

On the other hand, if you just sit in one place and stress out, you will have shoulder pain; you don't need to do anything physical! This clearly shows that stress disturbs you physically and mentally. Infusing silence into the unconscious can transform your whole life. Let us analyze this concept with your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Q) When is the best time to meditate?

A) Early morning is the best but, in the modern day, we are so busy at that time, so any time that is convenient for you is a good time. For good things, anytime is a good time! If you can sit undisturbed, any time is a good time.

Q) The silence in meditation takes me to such a high but lately, due to a constant ringing in my ears that distracts me, I can't meditate anymore. What can I do about it?

A) When I say meditate, I don't mean concentrate, because the moment you try to concentrate, there will be distraction, and you will feel more disturbed than before! You don't have to control your mind. When I say meditate, just allow the unconscious to be without any information for a few minutes, that's all. Even without outside information, the unconscious will already have information. Just relax until that evaporates. You need to have some patience until then.

Allowing the unconscious to evaporate is the meditation. Here is the Master key for meditation - don't create a thought, don't support it with your attention and don't destroy it. Just let it be. You will see that silence will simply be infused. The moment you start fighting it, you create more confusion and thoughts.

The ringing in the ear, etc. will drop on its own when this happens. The ringing is mainly due to forced concentration.

Q) Some people take out their stress by physical exercise; they don't really need to meditate. What are your comments on that?

A) When you do something physically, without your knowledge you give your mind rest; unconsciously, you give rest to your unconscious. When you work out rigorously physically, you give your mind rest. But it will become an addiction. It will be that, unless you have your workout, you cannot de-stress. This is not good.

Also, when you talk and engage yourself without the pressure to achieve something, you give rest to your unconscious. The unconscious is disturbed when you are under pressure to achieve.

Whenever you do anything without expecting results, it relaxes the unconscious. If you can consciously create that relaxation, the unconscious will be totally under your control. If you have to de-stress only by talking to others, you have to depend on others. Then it can be a problem to find someone who is willing to listen to you. Keep in mind that he also wants to unload; that is another problem, because everybody wants to unload what’s on their mind!

We need to understand an important thing – when someone talks we don’t really listen; we are only preparing our reply in that time. We are just waiting out of politeness so that he will allow us to talk. So it’s very difficult to get people who will listen to us. Instead, it’s better to learn a conscious method that will infuse that silence.

Q) Classical music relaxes me. How does that work?

A) Music is nothing but an expression and experience of meditation. You should understand these two things – at a deep being level, it is an experience and, when it comes out, it is an expression. Not only music, anything that makes you deeply silent or comfortable, like beautiful scenery, or just sitting by yourself, can reduce stress. However, you are again dependent on something external. Anything that is external can reduce stress only up to the level of memory; it cannot touch your whole being. Anything done from the inside alone can transform your whole being. So it is good, but not better than meditation, because meditation heals you to your core and transforms you.

Also, music, in a way, only soothes you. It doesn’t cause any transformation. Soothing is temporary. It is like a temporary relief from a sore, that’s all. The real thing has to happen from within. You can use music as a tool to inspire you.

Q) Would you consider journaling as a form of meditation?

A) Anything done with your being, in the present moment, can become a meditation, even swimming, jogging, etc. Anything done without bothering about the results can give you silence and peace. If you write something down in a journal, without any ulterior motive, just to be in the present, to enjoy the present, yes, it can be meditative.

But on the other hand, if you write with an attachment to the diary, with an attachment to recording things, it is not ok. If you remain unperturbed, even if the diary gets lost, and, at the same time, when you record, if you record with totality, then things are perfectly alright. That is the scale to see. Q) How do you get to it instantly, like in a car?

A) Just as a car has a brake, you have a brake for your mind, too. How long did you take to learn to drive a car?

One year

You don’t even need a year – just give me one month! You took a year to learn how to apply the brake in your car; within just one month, 20 minutes a day of this meditation, you will learn how to apply the brakes for your mind and learn how to drive your mind. Even a month is too much!

Q) Where does the breath come between mind and body?

A) Breath is the bridge between your mind and body. The physical or gross level part of the mind is breath; the subtle part of breath is mind. Both are related. You can’t get angry and keep your breath calm at the same time. If you breathe calmly, your anger will disappear automatically. That is the connection. That is why there are so many breathing techniques.

If you can perceive your breath and be aware of it, you can tremendously control your mind, too. There are so many Masters who have attained enlightenment through breathing techniques.

Q) How do we reduce stress and anxiety induced by certain bad memories? A) You don't need to reduce the memory; you only need to reduce the emotional attachment to that memory. That is the real cause of the disturbance. That again belongs to the unconscious, as we have discussed. The more you are attached to a particular memory, the more you will replay and relive it. Meditation will heal and integrate your being, and the emotional attachment to the memory will be cleared. Automatically, stress will also reduce.

Also, if you have a certain vested interest in replaying that memory, in being emotionally attached to it, then, although you say you wish to get rid of it, you will subconsciously harbour it. If you really wish to get rid of it, you will get over it in no time. Sometimes we like to get into a hole of self-sympathy or some other egocentric emotion by clinging on to some memories. Then meditation first has to clear that mental set-up about it and then clear it.

♦ A small story:

A man went to a nearby village for work and was returning home the next day. From a distance he suddenly saw that his house was on fire. He started weeping and shouting for help. His son came running to him and said, 'Don't worry father, we sold the house yesterday.' He was relieved and started laughing.

Then his second son ran to him and told him, 'We sold the house yesterday but we don't have the money yet.' Then again he started weeping uncontrollably, shouting for help! After a few minutes, his wife came and told him that they had gotten the money that morning, and it was safe in the bank. On hearing this, he started laughing once more!

Just observe: it is the same scene, same person, and same situation; the difference is just the attachment! His attachment was causing suffering or happiness! It is not even the memory but the emotional attachment to the memory that is the problem. Only meditation can help, because it is like fumigating. It will completely cleanse your being so that any amount of information sent in will be processed beautifully. Meditation is like widening the road. It removes emotional blocks and allows a free energy flow.

Q) Does it help with physical pain and ailments?

A) Of course it does but, apart from physical pain, the suffering is reduced. Suffering is the idea about physical pain. When you get hurt, there will be pain and suffering. The suffering can be completely removed. Here is a simple technique that you can try. If you have a knee pain, relax and put your awareness on that area and remove the word ‘pain’ from your mind. Continuously, in your inner chattering, you will be uttering the word, ‘Pain, pain, pain.’ Just remove that word and be aware. Just like a child looking at a rose, with all curiosity and inquisitiveness, look at your knee with curiosity about what is happening in your knee. It sounds impractical, but try it for a few days; not only will the pain disappear but you will start feeling pleasure in the same area. I can assure you, from my experience of personally meeting a quarter of a million people individually, that this technique works.

You see, pain is nothing but energy gushing to the affected area to heal it. By looking at it with awareness, you are allowing the energy to do its healing work. And, when you allow this to happen, you will feel pleasure, because healing is very soothing. Instead, if you tighten up with the word ‘pain’, the energy is not allowed to do its work and you will land up only in suffering.

Q) Many elderly people develop frontal lobe damage in their brain. Does a lifetime of meditation prevent it?

A) Yes, it will surely prevent damage done not only to your mind but also to many other parts of your body. Our lifestyle is such that we abuse our body and mind so much that I sometimes wonder how it is still running! Falling sick is not surprising given how much we abuse our body, but, the fact that it is running despite all that, is amazing!

Q) How are meditation and illness related? Is cancer a psychosomatic disease?

A) Thousands of studies have shown that stress is the main cause of all psychosomatic diseases. In my experience, cancer is psychosomatic. I see thousands of patients and, in India, we have thousands of testimonials and case studies. We are also trying to do research here in the U.S. I can say that psychosomatic tendencies and stress play an important role in cancer. From my own study, I have concluded that, whenever you feel someone else is beautiful and you are not happy with your body, that gap between your mind and body is the main reason for cancer. From talking to patients I have healed, I have arrived at these conclusions but I can't quantify it with figures. We have more than 2,000 trained healers, doing healing as a service in 20 countries. Everyday, 10,000 people are touched by our healers. From all this, I can tell you that stress is one of the most important factors in most diseases.

Q) Can a young child be taught meditation?

A) If the child is at least seven years old, he can be taught meditation. Before they turn seven, children don't need meditation; they are already in meditation. By age seven we disturb them; we start exercising conditioning over their innately meditative state. Then we have to give them meditation.

Q) My daughter is extremely difficult to get along with. She is extremely restless. Even in her sleep, some part of her body is moving.

A) How old is she?

Five

Then it's just pure energy Ma. We don't have to control it; why should we control it? It will settle down on its own.

Q) These days, people are very busy. Whether they are 15 years old or 80 years old, is it really important for them to make time for meditation?

A) We always give appointments to everyone but never to ourselves. We must find some time to give an appointment to ourselves, if at all we want to live happily.

Q) Does it mean anything when I see colors during meditation? I see the colour purple when I meditate.

A) These are experiences that happen during meditation. Purple is supposed to be a healing color. It means you are creating silence in your being; you have grown to a certain level in meditation.

4