TIME, THE ULTIMATE THIEF🔗

Time is a thief who steals physical health, mental health and spiritual well-being from us.

At the physical level, as we grow older, we all believe that our health deteriorates. At the mental level, when we are continuously aware of it, time steals our peace of mind and creates stress in us.

Time can be perceived in two ways: chronological time and psychological time. We are all aware of chronological time; it is what we see on our clocks and is measured in seconds, minutes, days, etc. In India, we have a psychological concept of time which is measured by kshana, or the gap between one thought and another. All our stress is the result of internalizing chronological time, which is required in the outer world, and using it in our inner world, where it cannot be applied. If we understand this one idea, we can liberate ourselves from stress, without any technique. We may feel that being stress-free is too good to be true but it is possible. All our stress is the result of misunderstanding and confusing these two different concepts of time.

Chronological time is the time that we use for our daily activities and we all know it very well. For example, if you have to pick up someone at the airport at 11 pm, you say to yourself, ‘I will come home after the office at 7 pm, have a shower and be ready by 8 pm, have dinner by 9 pm and leave for the airport. I will reach the airport by 10:45 pm. This is chronological planning and is perfectly alright.

Now, let us analyze psychological time, which is the gap between two thoughts. Have you ever noticed that when you are with a friend whom you really like, you don’t realize how quickly time passes? On the other hand, if you are sitting with someone who is boring, you will check your watch every ten minutes and feel like time isn’t moving fast enough! This is because, when you are joyful with a person whom you like, there are not so many thoughts that pass through your mind. The kshana, or time gap between two thoughts, is large. And when this happens, a lot of time passes without your knowledge but, when you are with a person who makes you bored, your mind starts chewing on a lot of other thoughts and the gap, or kshana, between thoughts becomes very small, and you get the feeling a lot of time has gone past. The larger the number of thoughts you have, the more slowly time seems to move; the smaller the number of thoughts, the more relaxed you are and time flies. The more you think of time, the higher your stress level will become, the less efficient you will become, and the less likely you will be to meet your target, and this will result in more stress. Thus, we travel in a vicious circle, reducing our intelligence, skills and capacity, because we remember time, again and again. Stress not only affects your mind, it also affects your body. For instance, if you sit in your office and worry, even if you don’t do any work, you will develop shoulder pain! How many of you have experienced it? Come on, raise your hands. [Many raise their hands].

Stress is not just a mental problem; it becomes a physical problem, too. People often tell me, ‘I know it’s wrong but I get stressed all the time.’ The main reason for that is the large number of thoughts that continuously remind us of time and create stress. If our thoughts are reduced, we won’t notice time moving and we will be less stressed.

In ancient India, there was a practice called kayakalpa, to reverse the aging process. According to the philosophy, as you age, you become healthier, because your body and mind are better trained to live in the world. If you are trained in driving and become a good driver, you can drive without any effort. In the same way, as the years pass, you should master the art of living in this world and live better every passing day. They say, as you grow older, you are not supposed to fall sick or have stress, because you should know the logic of the world and, therefore, be more intelligent, healthy and spontaneous. However, that is not true from our experience! We don’t experience it this way. We experience more pain and more misery as we grow older. We complain more as we grow older.

♦ A small story:

A n old couple moved into the neighbouring city of their daughter in the USA. One day, there was a hurricane warning announced in the daughter's city, so she sent her two children to the grandparents' place to keep them safe. Two days passed and the hurricane did not happen but she got a telegram back, 'Take children, send hurricane.'

The older we grow, the more difficult we find managing things. Everything bothers us. Anything is a cause for complaint. What has happened? Where are we missing it? The missing link is our idea of time, and continuously being reminded of chronological time, because of the increased number of thoughts.

If we change two things, we can make it a reality: first, the perception of our body. We always think, as we age, our body gets old and diseased. It is not necessarily true but that is our perception. We may question it by saying, when we get old, we really do feel tired and it's not our imagination but you don't know the power of your mind. Your mind can simply make you old or young; it can make you tired or energetic, in just a few seconds. When you are in the peak of tiredness, it can make you energetic with just a passing thought.

During my days of wandering in my pre-enlightenment period, I went to a place in Tibet where the Lamas live. I was told that people there live very long lives. I saw an elderly man working in the fields. I asked him, ‘Do people here live long? Please tell me about it.’ He laughed and said, ‘Yes, it is true. People here live very long. I am 136 years old.’ I was shocked. That man was considered to be middle-aged there. And there were others who were 200 or more! There were medical records to show he was actually 136 years of age. And he was working on the farm at 136. I couldn’t believe it, just like you all now! They showed me a report by researchers from Wisconsin University, who worked with them to study their bodies and understand why they live longer.

According to the scientists, their bodies work just like ours; they are no different, even genetically. They conclude there is something beyond the body that makes them live longer. None of the Lamas could give any reason for their long lives but they all had a strong belief that human beings are supposed to live up to 300 years! That was the key to the whole thing! You need to understand this deeply. If someone died at 200, it was considered an unnatural death! Just the belief that humans are supposed to live till 300, actually made them live till 300! I later read a report by scientists that said our bodies continuously rejuvenate and replace themselves and can do so for 300 years.

So our perception about our bodies must change. Our mind has such tremendous power that, whatever we believe, we have the capacity to make a reality. That is why people who see horror movies, continuously, start imagining and seeing ghosts. If we watch one horror movie every night for ten days in a row, on the eleventh day we will see a ghost, or think we are seeing ghosts when a curtain moves. Our mind has the capacity to make anything a reality. The first basic idea or our perception of time at the physical level is incorrect. Our thinking that the more we age, the more we fall sick, is wrong.

Next, at the psychological level, again and again remember-ing time will stress us out and disturb our whole being. The more thoughts we have, the more they remind us that time is ticking and that we have less time. That is why we call hell, ‘eternal hell’. There is a wonderful Zen saying, ‘If you want to delay anything, do it as fast as possible.’

When we have too many thoughts, we do not have the satisfaction that we have lived our lives. Whatever products we deliver, even if we do it on time, will be of much higher quality if we are less stressed. If the concept of chronological time is not internalized, our unleashed potential will be much higher.

By nature, the concept of time is negative. Especially in the West, the passage of time indicates you are moving towards the negative aspects of your life. The other day, an old lady came late for the meditation program in the U.S. I asked her why she was late. She explained she had to do her hair and make up. I asked her why she would bother with it at her age, when she knows the chemicals are harmful for her body. I was shocked to hear her say that in this society, you need to look young and compete with youngsters! The more time passes, the more you face the negative aspects of life.

When we remember time, again and again, we unconsciously infuse dullness into our being; the very remembrance of time is enough to pull our energy level down and increase our stress. We are just pulled and pushed; we never live in the present. Psychological time steals our peace. That is why I call it the ultimate thief.

When we come to the present, our number of thoughts reduces; we don't realize how time rolls, and automatically, the idea of time disappears. When we are in the present moment, a tremendous potential will be unleashed and we will be rejuvenated. When we are like this, our productivity will amaze us. So much will get done without our knowledge of the passing of time. Also, the quality of work will baffle us. When we look back, we will wonder if it was really us who did all that in that short span of time. It is a liberating experience to work in this zone. If we get a glimpse of this, we will know how to slip into it at all times.

In Zen, they say, 'Whatever is, is energy.' We are in energy and we are inhaling energy. The Hindu scriptures also say the same, isa vasyam idam sarvam: 'Whatever exists is energy.' Mystics claim the older you get, the more energetic you get. That's why in the East, youth is not worshipped; elders are worshipped; we turn to them for guidance. When rishis say everything is energy, why can't we experience it? What is the missing link? It is because we are caught up with the past and the future, which are not reality, only imaginary.

What we perceive as past or future is not reality. Whatever we remember as our past is only our idea of it; it's not really our past. We always feel, 'My childhood days were golden and my college days were heaven'. Be honest. Was it great when you actually lived it? No! You would have been grumbling about each and every thing you had to do at that time but our mind projects it and makes us think it was great. Whatever we remember about the past is only our perception of it, not reality, because we never remember the past in its entirety; we only remember bits and pieces of it as it suits us, as we choose to remember.

♦ A small story:

One lady was walking with her three grandchildren. A passerby looked at them and told her, 'What beautiful grandchildren you have!' The lady smiled at her and said, 'You should see their photographs. They are dolls!'

Everything, except reality, is beautiful for us! Likewise, the whole of the past up to the point of present is beautiful for us! That is the problem.

All our ideas about the future, our worries, fears and insecurities, are only our perceptions, not the real future. I have seen so many people who worry continuously. Initially, we worry because of some reason but, after some time, we master the art of worrying. Then, even if we don't find any reason, we start worrying because we become habituated to do it.

I did a small study with a group of fifty people. I asked them to write whatever worries, fears and insecurities they had about the next six months of their lives. Even according to psychologists, you can't visualize more than six months of your life. And that time period is reducing now because social, political, and economic changes are happening at a faster rate these days. Anyhow, I collected their list of worries. After six months we all met again. I asked them to mark all their worries that had become a reality. You would be surprised that a maximum of only 3% of their worries had come true! The remaining ninety-seven percent of their worries never came true! Can you imagine how much of your mental energy is wasted in worrying?

One man visited his doctor who told him this same logic about worries. He asked him, ‘Now, out of the 10 worries that you had yesterday about today, how many actually turned out to be true?’ The man replied, ‘None.’ The doctor asked, ‘Then why are you still worrying?’ The man said, ‘But I am worried about why they did not happen.’ This is what I mean when I say worry has become a part of you. The more you worry, the less you create, the more you are stressed, the less you are expressing. All your concepts about the future are only your concepts; they do not really make your future.

Only the present moment, which is in our hands, is reality; all else, is only our perception. The moment we relax into the present moment, our body and mind will have a new energy that will circulate with renewed vigour every moment.

Try this small exercise for a few minutes: go into a room, close the door, sit down and say, ‘I accept my life as it is: my life, my relationships, my body and mind,’ and come to the present moment. As you do this, feel every word that you say deeply, from within. The moment you make a conscious decision, a sankalpa, and start relaxing, you will be amazed to see the energy that happens to your being. As long as you are bothered about the future or thinking about the past, you will be away from the source of energy, your inner being. The moment you come to the present, realizing that that is all there is, there will be a gush of energy in your being. Then every moment will become a potential moment for you to experience in totality.

Physically, the concept of time makes us old, sick and uneasy. Mentally, the concept of time gives us stress and boredom. Boredom is mainly due to the notion of time.

♦ A small Zen story:

A great Zen Master had some problem in his stomach. His physician advised him to eat a certain food with herbs everyday. He ate it for ten years. One day, the disciple who cooked for him asked, ‘Master, are you not bored of eating the same food everyday? I’m bored of cooking the same food everyday!’

The Master was surprised. He replied beautifully, ‘Who told you I am eating the same food everyday? No, it is not the same food. Once I eat it, it’s over; it is new food everyday. I never eat the same food everyday!’

It is only when you have a concept of time, do you think, ‘Oh God! Same office, same house, same wife and same life!’

♦ Another small story:

A national football champion was visiting his hometown and decided to pay a visit to his college. The college authorities felt honored to have him, so there was a grand reception for him. After the reception, he told the principal he would like to visit the dormitory where he had stayed as a student. When he reached the dorm, he looked at it and said, ‘Same old building!’ One student ran ahead to make sure the room was presentable. He found his roommate having an affair with a girl. Since girls were not allowed in the men’s dorm, they quickly hid the girl in the closet, hoping no one would open it.

When the champion arrived at the room, he said, 'Same old room.' He looked at the furniture in the room and commented, 'Same old bed and same old table!' He then opened the closet, saw the girl inside and said, 'Same old girl!'

To this, her boyfriend replied angrily, 'No, she's not the same old girl; she is my girl!'

The champ replied, 'Same old lie!'

This is how our mind works. We tend to think 'same old... same old...' even when things have changed. With such an attitude, we fail to notice the subtle changes that are constantly happening in and around us. As a result, we lose our taste for life itself. We miss the beauty of the ever-changing Existence. A child, on the other hand, does not have this attitude and explores every moment as fresh and everyday as a new beginning!

When we are caught in the emotional attachment to the samskara (unfulfilled desires) of the past, we feel that the same past is repeating itself again and again. It is just our conscious choice to liberate ourselves from the past and future and come to the present. The concept of psychological time gives us stress, takes away our peace, reduces our efficiency and creates the idea of boredom, the attitude of 'the same old...'

The concept of time disturbs us physically and mentally. If you can, open yourself to a new way of thinking and perceiving time. First, don't believe that you have to fall sick when you get old, because, as you age, you can master the techniques of living in this body and in this world in a better and better way. Next, try to live in the present moment, instead of being pulled and pushed by past and future. These two things will automatically help you in your spiritual growth and well-being.

I pray to the Ultimate Energy to guide us all to understand the concept of time, kshana and go beyond kshanika (slowly disappearing from this existence) and give us real health, peace and eternal bliss, nithyananda.

Questions and Answers:

Q) We all have to work with deadlines and time pressure. When you say, ‘Don’t think of time,’ please explain how we can manage our tasks. When you have time consciousness, are you able to manage?

A) Yes

If you can manage your tasks with time consciousness and stress, then you can definitely manage your tasks without the stress of time consciousness, also. You will be more creative without stress. A person who is stressed cannot create anything new; instead he will work in a programmed way. Just be aware that the task needs to be completed within a particular time and then don't be continuously aware of the time alone. Shift to the job in totality. That way, you will find the job gets done quickly, creatively and without stress.

If you scan your life, you will notice that in your own house, you won't use many rooms. When you leave work and go home, you will go and sit on the same couch in the same room everyday, eat dinner in the same place, go to the same spot on your bed and go to sleep! Even your vacations are clearly programmed. This is because of your unconscious awareness of time.

There are two kinds of people: those who can manage with time pressures and deadlines, and those who cannot. If you're in the first group, if you can manage your activities with stress, you can surely manage without stress. If you belong to the other group who are unable to manage deadlines, can you really manage better with stress? Then why have stress? Either way, whether you can manage it or not, stress is not going to help you. We sometimes think that stress can make us handle things better. That's not true. Only creativity and unleashing your potential can help you handle things in the best possible way. Stress stalls the whole process. Understand that clearly.

If you drop your stress and manage without it, you will be more creative and produce much better results. Stress can only make you less efficient. Becoming more efficient can happen only by clarity, creativity, and dropping stress. You may say, 'This stress management is all just theory. I have tried it a lot. I have read a lot about it. I don't think it really works. I remember all the concepts for two days. It's nice but after that I'm back to the same routine and lifestyle.' If it fails again and again, it means your understanding is not deep enough; it means you have not taken in these words fully.

Someone told me, ‘In the last one year alone, eleven times I stopped smoking!’ It means eleven times he started again! That means his decision to stop smoking was not strong; his understanding was not deep enough. It is your own mind after all! If you can understand and penetrate your being and decide consciously to drop the stress, it will work for you. Make it very clear to yourself by telling yourself, ‘I hereby decide to live without stress, the way I want to.’

Understand that stress cannot help you become more efficient; it can only make you inefficient. Again and again, you are taught to remember time and pressure yourself. Just observe yourself. The moment you think about people who add pressure to your life, when you remember their faces or words, your energy is drained. Then, how can you be successful based on stress? If you can come down to the present moment, reducing worries, minimizing the number of thoughts, reducing your frequency of thinking, it can unleash your potential energy and you will see a different dimension of your life. It needs some courage to experiment. Try this: for the next eleven days, tell yourself, ‘I will not bother about my past or future. I will live in just this moment.’

One more thing, when you remember your past, you will remember only your failures. It is like measuring the strength of a chain by its weakest link. For a chain, it is the right thing to do but that logic cannot be applied to yourself. If you consider your life as a chain of incidents, and you measure yourself with your greatest failure, it is a wrong calculation, because you have touched peaks of success. Then, how can you measure yourself with failures? Be a little loving toward yourself and take an average, but you never do this. Everyone will have valleys and peaks. If you have to measure yourself, take the average, if not the peaks, but our mental setup is such that we measure ourselves only with the valleys.

Neither remembering the past nor worrying about the future will transform you. Come to the present and become one with your energy. The Gita says, 'You have the authority to work but don't bother about the results.' Krishna doesn't mean, 'Don't take your salary.' No! It means you can always have your salary but don't keep thinking about it and visualizing it all the time. Continuously visualizing the fruits, or results, will paralyze you; you won't be able to walk on the path. When you choose the right road, just walk the path and you will reach the goal.

♦ A small story:

One guy was in a ferry to cross a river. Once the boatman started rowing, he started walking up and down. The boatman said to the man, 'Please be seated. I can't row if you walk around.' The man replied, 'I have no time to sit. I have to reach the other side urgently.' All your stress is like walking inside the boat. It can never help you; at the most, it can disturb you and hinder the growth. Look into it and be more intelligent.

Q) How do you unlearn the past?

A) Make a conscious decision for eleven days to live in the present moment. Surely in eleven days you won't lose your life, although your mind will say, ‘I have this project; I have that project; I will do it after that.’ For the next eleven days, make this commitment to yourself. ‘Whenever I remember, I will decide to drop the stress and drop the faces and words that create stress in me. I accept myself completely as I am. Whatever comes out of it, I will face it.’

I assure you, the only side effects will be increase in efficiency, the ability to achieve your goals and the experience of bliss. When I say this, I take responsibility for these words. In the last two years, I have met 250,000 people individually. We have 2000 trained healers spreading meditation, working in 1000 centers in 30 countries, touching 10,000 people everyday. From my experience of directly touching people from all walks of life and backgrounds, I can say your decision to live in the present moment can transform your life.

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WHAT IS HEALING?

How old is the healing science? We can't say how old the healing science is; it may be as old as human beings are, or humanity is, or perhaps much older.

What exactly do we mean by the word 'healing'? When a sick kitten gets healed or becomes alright when the mother cat licks it, at that moment, you can say healing takes place.

Buddha gives a beautiful explanation or definition for the word 'healing'. He says healing is our way of expressing our compassion, expressing our care towards somebody to help cure him.

Healing is nothing but helping a person restore his physical, mental and emotional well-being. At any level, healing can happen; we can help somebody to restore their physical well-being. We can help somebody restore their mental well-being or we can help somebody restore their emotional well-being. In other words, giving someone a feeling of well-being is healing. According to me, allowing Him to work on us is healing. When I say Him, I mean the Divine personality, the Divine Energy. We may call Him by various names but allowing Him to work on us is healing.

If we can give a few courteous words to others, a few good words to make them feel comfortable, which make them feel joyful, even that can be termed healing.

An experiment was conducted in Ohio University in the 1970's to study heart diseases. A toxic, high cholesterol diet was fed to rabbits to bring about a blockage in their arteries. All the rabbit groups showed consistent results except one group. Strangely 60 percent fewer symptoms resulted in this group of rabbits. It was found that the student who was in charge of feeding this group of rabbits was in the habit of fondling and petting them. He used to hold each rabbit lovingly for a few minutes each day before feeding them. It was amazing that this alone seemed to enable the animals to overcome the toxic diet. When experiments were repeated with one group treated neutrally and the other lovingly, the same results were brought about.

So let us look into the major healing systems created by the great Master, Patanjali, in ancient India. There are thousands of great Masters, rishis and mystics who were healers. Almost all the spiritual Masters expressed their energy only in the form of healing others, only in the form of healing the people, healing the sick. There was, and is, no Master, mystic or rishi whose life was not associated with at least one or two healing miracles, always human beings. Especially Indians have gone to Masters or rishis, to be healed. Not only that, to qualify as a Master in the eyes of the common man, a person has to exhibit healing powers.

There are thousands of records, proofs, and testimonials to show that there is something called 'healing' happening. Whether at the physical, mental, emotional, psychological or being level, healing continues to happen through so many Masters in so many ways. Let us see the healing system created by the great Master, Patanjali, one of the greatest Masterminds of healing. Of the thousands of Masters who were born in the East, Patanjali is one of the greatest.

According to Patanjali, there are seven energy centers or seven charkas in our body. These seven energy centers are the Masters of our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, intellectual and being level activities. Our entire physical, mental, emotional, psychological, intellectual and being level activities are managed by these energy centers. They can be broadly associated with certain glands in our bodies. Of course chakras are not glands but they can roughly be associated with some of the medical glands. Chakras are the energy centers which make medical glands work.

We may wonder, 'What is the proof that something called a chakra exists? The concept of energy centers within the human system may have been dismissed a few decades ago for the simple reason there was no tangible proof of their existence. In recent times, Kirlian photography and other techniques have demonstrated that these chakras exist and they are the energy fields in us. This new kind of photography, called Kirlian photography, was made popular in Russia. With this, just like X-rays, you can discover a bone fracture, tuberculosis or any disease related to the bones. Just like X-rays, Kirlian photography is also used as a diagnostic system.

Through this Kirlian photography, you can photograph the aura body of every single individual. Aura means the subtle light that is continuously emitted by our body. Our body emits a subtle light continuously. By photographing that light, Kirlian photographers are able to diagnose, six months ahead of its symptoms, any disease which is going to manifest in a person. Sickness can be prevented even before a person has any idea that he is going to be sick. This way we can be cured even before we have any knowledge of our illness on the physical plane. The energy aura will look shrunken.

Research has also shown that if a person is depressed or dull, the chakras are seen only as button-sized energy centers. However, if the person is joyful, blissful, ecstatic or in a meditative state, these chakras seem to expand to the size of a car wheel even! When photographed, they appear as the size of a car wheel; that is, they expand almost sixty to seventy times. Through this photography, scientists have proved one more thing, that our emotions play a major role in the chakras; our mind plays a major role in our energy What is Healing?

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centers; our mind matters. The play of mind over matter, that is the play of mind over our body, is proven by this Kirlian photography.

There are thousands of other pieces of research recorded by various scientists who are working on the various spiritual healing systems. They have all come up with a big discovery, that the mind plays a major role in the body. Dale Carnegie says, 'Whether Jesus saves or not, we do not know, but prayer saves, because the very attitude of praying, the very attitude of meditating, creates positive vibrations in our being, in our body.'

Each and every one of our chakras is related to some emotion in us. For example, love is related to the anahata chakra, the chakra in the heart center. In almost every language around the world, heart and love are two words that are synonymous. It's not that God created all the languages on a single day and made phonetic packages and dropped them, no. The different languages were created in different places, by different people and in different situations but it is a strange coincidence that in almost all languages, heart and love are two words that are synonymous. Of course, such a major thing can never be a coincidence. There must be some reason behind it.

For example, you see one of your friends, a childhood friend, with whom you have cherished loving memories. You see him after ten years at the airport or in a mall. The moment you see him, you can feel something flowing from your heart region. The experience of this feeling is what we call love.

Similarly, the navel chakra is related to worry. If you receive some news that is shocking, which you are not able to put up with, immediately you will feel the first blow in the navel region. The first problem will be a stomach upset. Again, in so many languages, when people hear sad news, they say, ‘I can’t stomach it.’ The stomach is very sensitive to our thoughts. The moment worry starts in your system, it will express only in the stomach. The stomach is very closely associated with worry. You will always notice that people who are ambitious, who are perfectionists, will have ulcers. Too much perfectionism will lead to stomach trouble and ulcers. Ulcers mean that we are continuously grinding out worries. Continuously chewing on worries will lead to ulcers.

Each and every emotion is related to one of your energy centers, one of your chakras. If that emotion is used properly, the chakra functions well. If the emotion is abused, the chakra shrinks and disease prevails.

Rishis have declared that the very nature of man is bliss. Bliss can be defined as unchanging, everlasting happiness. It is our nature to experience bliss, even though most often we don’t experience it this way. Children are always in bliss and progressively lose it as they grow up. Bliss is continuously happening in ourselves, yet we do not experience it at all. Why? We are constantly stopping the flow of energy that results in bliss; that is why. We do this through a bundle of negative emotions. We actually stop the flow of bliss. And this, in turn, causes blockages in our chakras.

Several negative factors like childhood traumas, cultural conditioning, restrictive or exhausting habits, physical and emotional injuries, or even just a lack of attention when you are craving it, all contribute to the blockage of the various chakras. For each difficulty perceived in our life, we develop a coping strategy. When the difficulties persist, these coping strategies become chronic patterns, anchored in the body as defense structures. And this, in turn, prevents the free flow of energy in our system, in our being. So we stagnate and become a closed system with the chakras blocked. It is important to recognize the blocks we carry, find ways to understand their source and meaning and find ways to heal them.

All the chakra blockages are due to emotional imbalance only and emotional imbalance is nothing but the play of mind over matter.

When our chakras are blocked, disease happens to us. If our body and mind are at ease with each other, we feel the easeness in us. If our body and mind are not at ease with each other, we feel the dis-easeness, the disease. Disease happens to us if our body and mind are not at ease with each other. The dis-easeness between the body and mind expresses as a disease in our body. For any disease, we can find the root of the disease from this disturbance of the associated chakra. Today, the modern day psychologists have proved that more than eighty percent of diseases are psychosomatic, meaning they have their root in the mind. They originate from the mind and then come to the body. The root is the mind, not the body.

One lady was always worried about her health. As much as her family tried to convince her that nothing was really wrong with her and that it was all a play of her mind, she would not listen. One day, a visitor came to her house. As usual, she started complaining to him about her ill health. The family sat around in silence. The visitor said, ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you look fine to me. I don’t think you should think this way about your health.’ The lady cried out, ‘What are you saying? I would collapse now if I was not so weak!’

You see, the mind, beyond all logic, keeps telling us that we are sick. Actually the mind and body are two aspects of the same phenomenon; mind and body are not two different things. That is why the body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body and the body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel. When we suppress something in the mind, the body will begin a suppressing path. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything.

What we do not realize is that even our thoughts have power. The Hindu scripture, Brihadaranya Upanishad says, ‘As our thoughts are, so is our will; as our will is, so is our action; as we act, we become.’

Our lives are driven by our thoughts and thoughts are energy. The cosmic energy is linked to individual energy. The separation we see is only our illusion. It is possible for us to tap into the inexhaustible cosmic energy, instead of which, we choose to live in a shackled compartment of depleted energy.

When the chakras in our body are disturbed because of the suppressions in the mind, we see we are in disease. There are several techniques to release these blocks that will result in a healthy body. When the body is pure, when it is healthy, we see tremendous new energies flowing, arising, new dimensions opening before us, new doors suddenly opening to new possibilities. The body has much hidden power. Once it is released, we will not be able to believe that the body carried so many things in it, that it has so much potential in it. Joy and fulfillment keep us healthy and extend our life.

Generally, we all carry this opinion in our minds, that our senses are destroying us, that the body is our enemy. We are taught from a young age that the body is our enemy and we have to control it. From childhood, we always hear statements such as, ‘Don't go out in the rain. You will catch a cold. Don't play too much; you will feel tired. Don't overeat; you will have indigestion. Don't go out in the sun; you will get a headache’...and what not. When you start loving your body, you don't have to control it. You will have a deep relationship with it.

Someone asked me, 'Don't we have to control the senses?' Yes, but how can you clearly tell the difference between the two? The only thing we know clearly is the gross body, so we start controlling it. Gradually, with a lot of practice, you can succeed in controlling your senses but you only become insensitive. When do you feel the need to control someone? When you don't trust them. You control your body because you have lost trust in it. You could end up losing all your sensitivity, your joy of life, without attaining anything.

Instead, it is best to enter into a relationship of deep love, of respect, not only with your body, but with everything. By entering deeply into the system with love, clarity and compassion, we can get out of the negative aspect of it. So, the right thing to do is to cooperate with our body, to trust in our body wisdom. Drop all negativity, all hostility and all ideas of controlling the body from our mind. This will slowly free us from the idea that we are our body.

Someone asked me, 'Swamiji, how can we drop control?' The truth is, whatever is controlled will express itself in some other way. It will refuse to be controlled! We just have to drop the negativity and see!

♦ A real incident:

O nce a young man came to me and asked me to help him stop smoking. I asked him how he had picked up the habit in the first place. He said once he had gone out with a group of friends who were all smokers. Unfortunately for him, he met his father on the road that day. Seeing him in the group, his father assumed that he, too, had been smoking. When he returned home, his father yelled at him, refusing to believe that his son had not been smoking. The next day, the boy said, he smoked a whole pack of cigarettes, just to spite his father! In that way he gradually got addicted.

When he asked me how to drop it, I told him, ‘Don’t drop it. Go ahead and smoke but don’t do it to prove anything to anybody. Don’t do it to spite your father. And don’t imagine that you have become mature and independent by smoking! Every time you pick up a cigarette, do it silently. Be conscious of why you are smoking. You will realize on your own.’

After just a few days, the boy returned to me. He said, ‘Swamiji, I’m not able to smoke anymore! Doing it consciously, I realize that I was not smoking for the sake of smoking. Smoking is not that important to me.’

Then he added something which made me very happy. He said, ‘Swamiji, I realize now that I have been abusing my body all these days, by pushing smoke into my system!’

When we become conscious of what we are doing, many things drop on their own. This is the only permanent solution. Of course, it may take a few days to awaken the intelligence. The patience to wait till then is what is called tapasya, the penance. In the meantime, don’t fall back on second-rate intelligence that you have picked up from society, from the moral codes set up by society. Have trust in your body!

We always live in deep fear of our bodies. We feel as if we are sitting on a volcano. The moment we sense a cold or fever coming up, the day we have the slightest headache, we reach out for a pill. It has become totally accepted for us to swallow pills for no reason. Most of our common ailments can be easily handled with a little care but we don't credit our body with the power to heal itself. When our body can digest food, pump blood, mend broken bones and perform a thousand other complicated tasks without help from outside, can't it take care of a fever or a headache?

Allow your body to function according to its own intelligence and you will see for yourself how much wisdom your body has! There is actually something called body intelligence but we cannot see it until we drop the doubt! We must have the courage and trust to test it in our life; then we will find there is tremendous body intelligence available to us; there is no need to control the body at all. So by realizing the body intelligence, we become aware of our negativities and we can work towards removing them.

If we can get the right technique, make enough time to use the right technique, unlock the chakra or open the chakra, and remove the blockage in order to come out of the disease it has caused, the disease disappears but some of us may not be able to get the right technique and make enough time to meditate or may not be able to make enough energy to put into the meditation. For those kinds of people somebody else who is a meditator, who is a Master of meditation, can meditate and pass the energy onto the energy centers of the person who is in disease.

The energy can be given. Here comes the question, 'How can energy be given?' There are a few people who are ready to believe that energy can be created by meditation but they are not ready to believe that somebody else can give that energy. Einstein said, 'Whatever exists is energy.' After Einstein developed his theory, physicists and a whole group of scientists turned towards spirituality because he was the first person who proved the truths declared by our ancient sages, the rishis. He said, 'Whatever exists is energy.' There is no borderline between matter and energy. The solid energy is matter; subtle matter is energy. We cannot have any boundary line between matter and energy. Matter and energy are one and the same at two different levels.

Now, the modern-day physicists have come up with this idea of quantum physics. The atom, or part of an atom, is static and moving. Static and moving both are one and the same and happen simultaneously. Initially, the first group of scientists declared there were two particles; one static and the other moving. The next batch declared that the same particle is static at one time and moving at the another time. Now the next batch, the next group, has declared and proved, that it is static and moving at the same time; it is not static at one time and moving at the other time. It is static and moving at the same time; there is no time gap. There is no space gap and there is no time gap.

Whatever you call matter is nothing but energy; whatever you call energy is nothing but matter. According to Einstein, energy is matter, matter is energy and whatever exists is energy.

If you notice, from this conclusion, if matter can be given to somebody else, why can't energy be given? If I can give this kerchief to you, why can't I give you energy also? The only thing you should know is the right time and the right method of giving it. If this kerchief has to be given, it has to be lifted, and it has to be precisely handed over to your hand. In the same way, energy has to be given; it has to be channeled properly, given to your being. If a person knows the right technique of channeling and giving, energy can be given and it can be taken.

The science of giving energy to a person who is sick or diseased or to a person who is in need is what we call healing. The energy can be given to any chakra, any energy center, that needs it and the energy center responds to it. Apart from the intellectual explanation of healing, we have thousands and thousands of records, medical proof and research reports done in our own ashram, to prove the science of healing, to prove how the energy is given and how and where it works in the system. It has been recorded and how it heals the disease has been proven. Let me tell you who can give energy and who can receive energy. The man who has realized himself as energy, who has experienced himself as something beyond the body and mind, is the only person who is authorized or qualified to give energy. When you experience you are something beyond the body and mind, only then can you radiate energy. Until then, you cannot radiate energy. Once you experience that you are beyond the body, you are beyond the mind, you are pure awareness, you are pure energy; then, naturally, you start radiating the energy. You start expressing the energy which has become your experience; it will start oozing out and expressing around you. A man who has experienced that energy in his own being is the person qualified to give that energy.

Whether we believe it or not, whether we accept it or not, whether we want it or not, we are in energy. Even if the fish fights his best with the ocean, he will be in the ocean. He may try his best to avoid the ocean; he may try his best to push the ocean away; he may try his best to escape from the ocean; he may try his best to jump from the ocean but he, again, will fall into the ocean. Whether he swims with the current or against the current, the fish is in the ocean. Just like that, whether you understand or not, whether you experience or not, whether you believe it or not, you are in energy. The person who realizes it is the one who is qualified to give energy; he is the one who is qualified to share his energy.

People ask me, Swamiji, do you chant any mantra when you heal? Please teach us; we will also do the same.’ I tell you, there is no other secret. I don’t chant any mantra. When I touch, I just become the touch, that’s all. My whole being touches; my whole being feels the energy. Your being is nothing but energy; whether you believe it or not, your being is energy. If your being is not energy, how would you be alive? You are alive; touch totally, that’s all. It’s the totality that heals; totality is always energy.

Who is the one who is authorized to receive energy? Anybody who is in need can receive energy. There are a few who quickly use it. There are a few tips that can be given to use the energy very easily and quickly, to receive the energy in a beautiful way. People who are basically open-hearted, with an open mind, receive energy more easily and more quickly.

Many people ask me, Swamiji, should we have faith to get healed.’ I tell them, ‘No, there’s no need.’ To know the apple is tasty you don’t need to believe; just have a bite, that’s all. You will know it is tasty. To know the sun is rising in the east you don’t need to believe; just open your eyes and see. You will see, there is no need to believe. To understand or to have healing you don’t need to have faith. You need to have only one thing: an open mind, an open mind to experience. You don’t need to have anything else. People with open minds, people with open hearts, receive and experience more easily and more quickly.

◆ A small story:

One full moon night, an enlightened monk, a sanyasi, was sitting outdoors and enjoying the beautiful scene; the night sky, the stars, and the cool breeze. In a nearby hut, he heard a man complaining bitterly about the miseries of life. So he went and called the man saying, 'Come out, and enjoy this starry night, this full moon!'

The man refused to believe that there was anything beautiful in this life. 'No,' he said. 'I don't trust your words. First, show me the moon, the stars; prove to me that they are beautiful, and then I'll come out!'

The sanyasi cried, 'Just come out, and you can see for yourself!'

But the man refused. Before even coming out, he wanted proof! How can you see unless you come out?

So, after a minute, the sanyasi suddenly started shouting, 'Your hut is on fire!' Immediately, the man came rushing out of the hut.

Then, suddenly, seeing the moonlit night and starry sky, he became lost in the beauty. He totally forgot that his house was supposed to be on fire. He started to tell the sanyasi, 'Oh, it is so beautiful! When you told me I didn't believe you but, now, I understand.' Then, suddenly, he remembered, ‘You told me that my hut was on fire. You lied to me!’

‘Yes,’ said the sanyasi. ‘I had to tell that lie to bring you out of your hut.’

There is actually something called body intelligence but you cannot see it till you drop the doubt! You must have the courage and trust to test it in your life; then you will find there is tremendous body intelligence available to you. There is no need to control the body at all.

When I say people with an open mind, people with an open heart, we always have the wrong idea that they are people who trust anything. This is the opinion of people who work and live based on logic and find it hard to trust anything. All our colleges and universities help us sharpen our logic but they have forgotten to help one of the major dimensions of human beings; their emotions. They help us sharpen our intellect; they help us sharpen our logic. They do everything to sharpen our intellectual and logical thinking but they have not done anything to help us grow emotionally. Because we have not grown, we have not experienced the emotional intelligence, the emotional existence of our being.

We lack one major dimension of our life. If a man is born without eyes, born a blind man, can you explain to him what he is missing? No, you cannot explain to him what he is missing in his life. Similarly, the man who never experienced the emotional aspect of himself, the man who never trusted something, can never understand what it means to have a deep trust, what it means to have deep emotional intelligence, what it means to have a deep open heart. It is very difficult to make him understand what it means to trust something or somebody.

In India, you will see that every village will have a small shrine and most of the shrines are nothing but one small stone under a tree. Under the tree a small stone will be installed with turmeric, some ash and sandal paste applied on it; that will become God. And you will see hundreds of people going to that stone and getting healed, coming out of their physical diseases, mental illnesses, coming out of their problems. Nothing but simple stones under the tree, worshipped as God, heal people. So many people go to the river and pray to the river; they go to the sun and pray to the sun. They go to the temples and pray to the Gods. There are a few places where they go to the trees and pray to the trees. Trees are worshipped as Gods. Praying to the trees, praying to the stones, praying to the rivers and people get healed. How is it possible? How can this happen?

There was beautiful research done by one of the American universities. I’ve read the results. They say they took one hundred patients with the same disease and medicine was administered to all one hundred. What they were given was not really actual medicine, but colored water. Neither the doctors nor the patients knew what the medicine was. Just colored water was given to all hundred patients. They say that after five or six days into the study, results showed that more than forty patients were completely healed. They were cured, and another thirty patients were more than sixty percent healed. This research was conducted not once, but eleven times in eleven different places. They did this research and said that at least forty percent of the people got healed. That is not a small number.

This kind of therapy is called placebo therapy. A placebo is a false, pseudo medicine with probably no medicinal qualities in it at all but it has to be given in such a way that the patient thinks it is medicine, and even the doctor has to think it is medicine, so his gestures don't reveal the truth that it is not actually medicine.

And so, the conclusion of this research is that whatever the diagnostic method, whatever the medicine, the very faith, the very belief that they are taking medicine, heals them. The very faith works miracles in human beings. After this research, the medical field has opened its eyes to spiritual healing, or towards the science of spiritual healing. Now we have started looking deeply into the science of spiritual healing. They started saying faith is one of the major aspects to get healed or to regain your health. Faith and trust are major aspects of your health. The very faith, the very trust, can do miracles in your physical system and forty percent means more than one-third of humanity can be healed just by faith. The energy of the emotion can work wonders.

But the problem is that, in all our educational systems, all our universities, all our colleges, they train us to think in a logical way; they help us to grow our intellect. They help our intellectual growth but none of them has taken any concern to help the emotional part of our being. Mystics, the rishis and Masters are the people who know about the whole aspect of human beings. They know that just intellectual growth is not enough and sometimes, it can be harmful. Just intellectual growth without enough emotional growth is harmful and that is what is happening today to society, to humanity. Just intellectually, scientifically, we have grown; we did all the scientific research and made discoveries but we forgot to develop our emotions: love, compassion, and all these higher emotions.

There is a beautiful saying in the Mahabharata. 'We all have three bala, three strengths.' One is physical strength; another is mental strength and the third is spiritual strength. Physical strength means physical health, physical well-being, physical power. The second is mental strength, mental power and intellectual power. The third is spiritual strength, the love and compassion – all these things.

If a man has only physical strength without spiritual strength, he will become just a rogue, a rowdy, a criminal. If a man has only intellectual strength without spiritual strength, again, he will become a cunning, criminal person; he will not do any good. Only when you are endowed with spiritual strength, the other two strengths will become useful for humanity. Somehow, we miss the emotional strength, the emotional being, which is why certain aspects of science have turned towards destruction.

Today we have atomic weapons on planet Earth, which can burn this planet Earth not once or twice but seven hundred times over! All the countries have piled up atomic weapons which can burn planet Earth seven hundred times. Of course, this is a report from five months ago; now, it can even be seven hundred and three times or seven hundred and four times. What is the reason? It is the right knowledge in the hands of the wrong people. This is what happens when shakti works without buddhi. It is the surest way to destroy humanity.

Our intellectual growth without emotional growth leads to more and more danger. We all have worked towards the intellectual growth but have forgotten the emotional dimension. Our rishis, our mystics and our Masters have worked on the emotional dimension, on the development of emotions; that is why, in India, every village will have a big temple, a bigger temple than the school of that village, even bigger than the basic necessities of the village; all other things are secondary. The temple is the primary thing for any village or settlement to be created because they have worked continuously to develop the emotional dimensions of a human being. Mystics know that the development of emotions is the basic necessity for holistic growth, for holistic development. Once a man is developed on the emotional level, he will have everything; his life will be heaven.

Sarada Devi, wife of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, says in one place, ‘Live with deep trust; live with deep faith; live with deep love.' Of course, when you love, there is every chance you can be cheated. Sarada Devi says, 'Even if you are cheated, if you live with love, you will live like God on planet Earth. On the other hand, even if you are not cheated, if you live without love, your life will be deeply dry and dead.'

Your life will be just a dull, dead leaf. Without love, even if you create all the comforts of life, you may have a bed but not sleep. Only with love, trust, compassion and faith can you have deep sleep. Somebody asked me, 'Swamiji, in India, our ancestors wasted all their energy by building temples; every village has got big, big temples. What is the need of having such big temples? In other countries, they have all built big, big universities and scientific research centers; they've all built beautiful infrastructure: roads, bridges, all the possibilities for economical growth, but our rishis, our Masters, only built temples. What is this? They've wasted their energy.'

I told them, 'Fools, you do not understand the rules of yourself. You do not know the greatness of the rishis and mystics. You say they wasted their energies in the temples; you do not know these temples are the root cause for our emotional development. Because of these temples, our country is out of psychological disorders and diseases. India is such a big country, yet only one percent of the population takes any medicine related to mental disorders, related to mind.' However, in the other developed countries, we know the ratio. In some countries, two out of every three patients are diagnosed with depression and take psychological medicines. People are very proud to say, ‘If I don’t take my pills, I cannot live.’ It is emotional development, emotional growth, that gives a holistic growth to your personality. If you are whole, you are holy. Anyone who has grown emotionally, who has opened their heart, is qualified to receive healing.

So open your heart and receive the healing energy of the Divine and get healed physically, mentally, emotionally and ultimately, spiritually, by the Divine Grace, by absorbing His energy. May you feel and experience, be in, be one with, nithyananda – eternal bliss.

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