DOORWAYS TO🔗

SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS

Working with thoughts and emotions

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Mind is not a solid thing, as you imagine.

Mind is an action!

It is not an organ, not a machine.

It is a constant happening, a continuous process that is dynamic and alive.

Mind is nothing but the continuous flow of thoughts happening in you.

Thoughts do not flow through the mind, thoughts are the mind!

As your thoughts are constantly changing, your mind is also in a constant state of flux.

There is no such thing as a constant mind.

As long as we are working with the body and breath, we are still in the realm of the physical. It is a familiar zone. We feel comfortable. When we turn our awareness upon the mind, we know we are taking a leap into a different dimension.

Mind is a very subtle vibration of consciousness. It is not accessible to any of our senses. We cannot see the mind, hear it, smell it, taste it or touch it. Then how do we know that mind exists? We know the mind only by the thoughts, words and emotions that are continuously bubbling up in our system. This constant flow is known as inner chatter, the continuous verbalization that is happening in us whether we are aware of it or not.

The inner chatter that can be understood through logic are known as thoughts. The inner chatter which does not respond to our logical analysis are what we call 'emotions'!

We are all familiar with the phrase, 'Seeing is believing.' We have complete faith in all the information that we receive through our senses. We don't know that what our senses perceive is not what gets finally recorded in our mind!

How does the mind perceive the world? Just try to understand the process.

Not only does the mind distort perception, it also filters whatever we perceive. Can you imagine, only about ten percent of what we perceive through our senses gets recorded in our conscious mind! Everything else goes directly into our unconscious mind. Just see in your own life. Do you remember all the buildings, all the trees, all the signboards you pass on your way to work every morning? No! But do you know, if you were put under hypnosis and asked the same question, you would recall each and every detail of your morning drive! The only thing is, all this information is not stored in our conscious mind. So long as this sensory perception does not interest us in some way, it does not get recorded in the conscious mind. Just think of the traffic jam in our minds if we were consciously recording each and every sensory perception!

What happens to those sensory perceptions that do get recorded in our conscious mind?

These impressions are sorted out by parts of our mind and identified. In the whole process of thinking, your conscious mind has a very small role! Suppose a person is standing before you. Your conscious mind identifies this person – it records whether he is known to you or not. That’s all! After this, the ‘file’ moves to your unconscious zone. In case you know the person, your attitude towards him and your actions are based on the samskaras (engrams) that you have already stored in your mind about him. Even if he is unknown to you, his appearance of that person may trigger some unconscious response in you.

Be very clear: it is your unconscious mind which makes the final decision about how you respond to a situation.

And the unfortunate thing is, we are not even conscious that we are unconscious! We think that we are making a very clear decision based upon our conscious understanding of the person. Actually, less than one percent of our decisions have a rational basis.

Understand, the more you cherish a certain kind of thought, the greater the chance that you will become aware only when such thoughts arise in your mind. The projector light which is inside you comes on, the awareness that you exist comes to life, only when those thoughts cross your field of awareness.

For example, if you enjoy lustful thoughts, it is only when lustful thoughts move across your mind that you become aware, ‘I exist’. If you are unconsciously cherishing violence, it is only when violent thoughts arise that you come to life!

If you empower a particular thought again and again, that thought becomes the stimulus for you to become aware of yourself.

Naturally, your inner space responds to strengthens only those kinds of thoughts.

This becomes a vicious circle.

The greater the load of samskaras in your system, the greater the possibility that your actions and responses will be arising from your unconscious mind. Meditation cleanses your inner space of the deep-rooted samskaras which decide your conditioned responses. In the superconscious meditative state, it is possible to relive and relieve your embedded memories, and removal and dissolution of these samskaras that bind us.

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A recent scientific study conducted by a leading spiritual organization in the USA has revealed that if a boxing tournament happens in a city, the crime rate in that city goes up by 30% within the next month! On the other hand, if a large-scale group meditation session happens in the city, the crime rate comes down by 67% within a month.

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With powerful cleansing processes, you can throw out all your accumulated samskaras. But if you are not alert, you will keep accumulating new samskaras to replace the old ones! The only way is to avoid this is to live and function in the present moment, in moment-to-moment awareness. Be very clear: every moment of your life that happens without your awareness is suffering.

Have you noticed that your thoughts are always about the past and the future? Your thoughts about the past are usually regrets or guilt about what happened, what you did or didn't do. Your thoughts about the future are all based on your desires, your plans, your worries about what is going to happen. This is the most useless activity that the mind can pursue – because you have no control over either the past or the future.

Can you alter the past by thinking about it? Can you alter the future by worrying about it? We feel, the past is gone, but at least the future is in our control!

Even if you want to control your future, are you going to do it by worrying? No! You will be shocked to know that 99% of your worries don't come true. 99% of your fears never materialize. And the 1% that does materialize is usually a good learning experience for you! But we are not so intelligent to learn from life! All we try to do is, we use our memories of the past to handle the future. We respond to life out of our past engrams, not out of our spontaneous awareness in the present moment. It is like driving a car looking only at the rear view mirror! You know for sure where you will end up!

Please understand, neither the past nor the future is real. The past is dead and gone. The future has not even happened. The only moment available to you is the present moment. But just observe yourself. Are you ever present in the present? Only your body is in the present moment; your mind is continuously oscillating between past and future. You are always jumping, even when you think you are resting. Your mind never wants to rest. If your mind rests for a moment, you will know you can do without it! When your mind rests for a moment, you will see that you are in a state of bliss. That state is the present moment! Your mind is always trying to escape the present moment.

You don't understand, the only thing you can actually experience is the present moment. You cannot experience the future until it becomes your present! All your future has to happen in this present moment. It is what you decide now in this present moment that makes your future. If you take care of the present moment, if you live this present moment consciously, you have taken care of your future. Not only that, you will no longer have cause to regret your past. When you live in the present, you take care of both past and future.

Every moment, the future is slipping into the past. At the junction of past and future is the present moment. When your mind is filled with thoughts of past and future, you don't catch this moment! Again and again, you miss the present moment.

In the diagram, the shaft in the center represents 'time'. Your thought frequency is measured in terms of the number of Thoughts Per Second (TPS). The greater the frequency of thoughts, the further you are from the awareness of the present moment. For example, if you have 100 TPS, it means that your mind is doing nothing but jumping between past and future. (Of course, the numbers are just to give you an idea; who knows, you may be having even 1000 TPS or 5000 TPS!) As your TPS comes down, you come closer and closer to the present moment. You start relaxing into the experience of the present moment.

When this happens, you have a clearer vision of the past and the future. Don't think that being in the present moment means forgetting about past and future. No!

The present moment is all-inclusive. Being in the present means, bringing both past and the future into the present, and handling them while remaining rooted in present-moment awareness. Understand: only when you can relax totally into the present moment will you have clarity about your past and future.

You may wonder, what is there to gain clarity in the past? One can understand that the future may not be clear, but why the past? I have lived it, so why should it be unclear? Be very clear, what you now remember of the past is only your judgment of the past, not the way it actually happened! We saw how mind filters reality and creates its own idea of every event. This distorted idea is stored in our mind, and recalled later as the ‘past’. How many times we talk about the golden past! We don’t realize, there is nothing particularly golden about the past. Just like the present moment, it was also a mix of joy and sorrow. We just choose to remember the good parts, so it looks golden!

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Have you ever experienced this? Suddenly, for no reason, you think of a person you haven’t met in years – maybe an old friend. A few moments later, the telephone rings – and it is that person on the line! Or you are at a party, and suddenly you get a strong feeling that something is about to happen – maybe a particular person is going to walk in, or a certain person is about to drop something – something like that. And immediately, exactly what you expected happens! Usually, we brush off such incidents as coincidence. No!

If it happens to one or two people, it can be called a coincidence. But more than 80% of people have experienced this at least a few times in their lives. Why does this happen? When you are in a relaxed mood, your TPS naturally drops. You come close to the bottom of the time shaft. Then for a few seconds, you actually fall into zero-TPS – the zone of enlightened consciousness. It is at such moments that you suddenly catch the signals from your past and future. You are able to see at least a few seconds ahead!

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As your TPS goes down, you relax into the space of intuition. Intuition is not the understanding of the future. Intuition is clarity in the present moment. When you have clarity about the present moment, naturally you will act to shape your future also in a clear way.

Understand: time is nothing but your mind! All your thinking is nothing but the movement of your mind between past and future. Actually, mind cannot exist in the present moment. When mind falls into the present moment, it can no longer be called mind. It is the state of pure awareness. When your TPS touches zero, you step out of mind.

When you step out of mind, you step out of time. Understand, you cannot control or suppress the mind. It is not a permanent solution. At the first chance, your mind will spring back again!

You can only transcend the mind. When you transcend the mind, it can't play games on you anymore! Not only that, you can play with the mind and make it behave as you wish. Meditation liberates you from your mind.

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In meditation, we work consciously to free ourselves from the continuous movement of the mind. But all of us, whether we are meditators or not, are trying unconsciously to jump out of our minds! At least for a few minutes, we want to break free of our minds. Our obsession with sex, extreme sports, horror films – all these are for the same reason! In moments of extreme desire or fear, the mind stops for a moment. When the continuous flow of thoughts is broken, the bliss that is naturally in us bubbles up to the surface of our consciousness. In those moments, we become aware of ourselves, we taste ourselves. The ‘high’ that we get out of these activities is nothing but the bliss of our own Self!

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We can also reach this state in the presence of an enlightened being. This is the easy way! It is the shortcut to living enlightenment! The enlightened master is always in the zero-TPS state. That is why, in his presence, your own TPS also drops. Just by being in his space, you can imbibe his state. Awareness in the master’s space is natural meditation

THE TEN-MINUTE EXPERIMENT

Try a very simple experiment for just ten minutes. Take a sheet of paper and a pen. Sit down alone and close your eyes for a few seconds. You will see that many thoughts are rushing through your mind. Now, open your eyes. Whatever thoughts are coming, just start writing them down. Don't change anything, don't edit anything. As the thoughts rise, just keep writing them down. If you think no thoughts are coming, write that also. Honestly write whatever goes on inside. After ten minutes, just read all that you have written down.

You will be shocked! Just from these ten minutes, you can get a clear picture of how your mind works. You can clearly see that there is no logic in the way your mind works! For example, your first thought may be of a dog you saw on the street that morning. Then somehow, you remember the dog you were afraid of when you were young, or the one dog used to play with when you were young. The next thought could be about your childhood. Then your mind goes to the teacher who taught you when you were a child. Then you recall the house where your teacher used to live... Where is the logical connection between the dog that you saw on the street and the house of the teacher who taught you in school? But in just a few seconds, your mind has gone from the dog to the teacher to the house! You can see clearly that your thoughts are simply jumping from one thing to another, continuously moving from one thing to another.

We can't even call this process 'thinking'! It is just 'association', that's all - and that too, not a logical association. Actually, if all your thoughts could be heard, it would sound like a conversation among the inmates of a madhouse! Understand: your mind is nothing but a constant flow of utterly disconnected, illogical thoughts. And this is the mind to which you have trusted your life!

The biggest obstacle to understanding the nature of the mind is this: we all believe that the mind is a solid thing, a biomechanical machine, an object. Then we search for ways to conquer the mind. Even the greatest scholars and doctors miss this truth: Mind is not a thing, as we imagine.

Mind is an action!

The Sanskrit word for mind is manas, which means, a constant happening. Mind is not an organ, it is not a machine - it is a continuous process that is dynamic and alive. Western psychology bases all its studies of the mind on this one idea

If you observe, thoughts arise one after another in your mind just like bubbles in a fish tank! Just like that, something arises, then something else arises; next, something else is arising... thoughts are flowing, words are flowing. Because your mind is usually functioning at high TPS, these ‘thought bubbles’ follow one another in a rapid stream, creating the illusion that it is one unbroken flow. Because you are not aware of the gaps between the thoughts, you feel that your mind is a solid phenomenon. When you allow each thought to rise and die, you can take on any amount of stress at the physical and mental level without getting stressed out. Your consciousness will remain light and blissful. When we focus only on the thoughts and not the gaps of silence in between, we feel as if we are taking on too much. We start feeling burdened and stressed.

Actually, as you saw in the five-minute experiment, there is no connection at all between our thoughts! You do not even know why one particular thought is following another. There is no logical reason. But your intellect cannot accept that you are nothing but a bunch of independent, random, unconnected thoughts! It is too frightening. You are afraid to live with such an undefined mind! We base our whole identity on our idea about our past and our future. So we cannot accept that there is no connection between our past life, our present moment and the future. Be very clear: your idea about your life as a series of logical events exists only in your mind. There is no logic in Existence! But we try to ‘make sense’ of our mind by creating a false connection between these disconnected thoughts.

We create an imaginary shaft of pain or joy to connect our thoughts, and think we are giving meaning to our life.

In the picture, these different thoughts are represented by different shapes of varying lengths, breadths, and colors. Each thought is about a separate incident in your life. Some thoughts are memories of joyful events, some are painful, some are a mix of both. Your life is a mixture of some joy, some suffering, some guilt, some pain...

But when you recall your past, you selectively recall only the incidents related to suffering and create a ‘shaft’, a connection between them. By connecting all these memories with a ‘pain shaft’, you come to the conclusion that your life is nothing but suffering! For example, the depression that you experienced ten years ago, the depression that you experienced five years ago, the depression that you experienced three months ago and the depression that you experienced yesterday, are completely unconnected and independent incidents! All these happened for different purposes, different reasons, at different times and situations. But what do you do? You connect all these unconnected incidents and say, ‘My life itself is nothing but depression.’ Understand, in each case of depression, the reasons would have been different, the situations would have been different. But when you connect all these low moods and decide, ‘My life is full of depression,’ you have created hell for yourself!

The moment you start believing that your life is depression, your life indeed becomes depression. Once you create this pain shaft, you set the scene for more and more painful incidents to be added to your life!

Whenever you believe in something, you start unconsciously collecting more and more experiences and arguments to strengthen that belief. Whatever we believe to be our past, we reproduce exactly that in the future. We all know from our past experience that we can’t fly. How can we believe that we can start flying from tomorrow onwards? We can’t! Whatever we believe to be our past, only that we will believe can be our future. So once we start believing that our past was filled with depression, we have the unconscious faith that our future will also be depression. When we believe that the mind is consistent, a solid thing, we have already created hell for ourselves.

Very rarely, some people connect all the happy memories of their past and create an imaginary ‘joy shaft’. These people believe that their life has always been a joy. They are also making the same mistake. Understand, they are as far away from the truth as the opposite group! If you have a clear picture about your past, it will become a solid experience. It will not be a load; it will become strength. Undigested past is a load, digested past is strength. We don’t digest our past. It just stays on us like a load, like a headache. When you connect all the painful incidents and create a pain shaft, you create an enemy who does not exist and spend your life start fighting with him.

Understand, you are doing the same thing! You are fighting with an imaginary enemy. If you believe that your life is suffering, you will be struggling to break free of this suffering. First you create the belief, then you try to break free of it! Unconsciously, you will be continuously adding to the pain shaft, but consciously you will be trying to break it. In the same way, those who believe that life is a joy will be continuously trying to elongate the joy shaft. This is equally foolish. Can you hold on to your joyful experiences always? No! They won't stay forever. Even if you try to reproduce the same ambience, the same people, the same place, even the same temperature again and again, you cannot continuously experience the same joy. The main reason for people falling into addiction is this: believing that the joy or ecstasy they experienced at some time in the past came from a particular object or person or situation, they continuously try to reproduce the same thing again and again, even though the same joy or experience does not come back again. Some people are addicted to partying, some people are addicted to smoking, some people are addicted to drinking, and some people are addicted even to the daily newspaper!

The simple truth is, you can neither break the pain shaft, nor can you add to the joy shaft, because both the shafts do not exist! Both are created just by your selective memory.

Understand, it is not just your state of mind that is affected by this attitude. Your very body, even your chronic physical diseases are consequences of this imaginary pain shaft!

People come and tell me, ‘Swamiji, I have been suffering from pain in the knees for the last twenty years.’ No, it cannot be! Please, understand, it cannot be. I am not disregarding your suffering by saying that all your problems are in your head. I am just telling the truth: all your problems are in your head!

Whether you believe it or not, medical science has proved that your body continuously rejuvenates itself. Do you know, once in 47 days, your intestine gets replaced completely! Your brain cells, your skin, your internal organs are all replaced, cell by cell, within a particular number of days. So if you are carrying the same disease for years, it means only one thing: you are carrying it in your mind.

Your unconscious belief that your disease is a continuous experience forces your mind to bring back the same pain and disease again and again.

When we worked on the body, we saw the power of intention. If a simple intention can change the very cellular structure of your body, why can’t it heal your chronic diseases? All you have to do is allow the self-healing to happen naturally.

The moment you hear this new word, ‘unclutching’, your mind will leap to the conclusion: Oh, this looks like a new technique. Swamiji is asking us to do something new! Understand, I am not asking you to do anything. I am only asking you to do stop doing whatever you are doing right now! I am only asking you to stop connecting your thoughts and creating suffering for yourself.

Actually, you don’t have to do anything to be unclutched. Unclutching is your very nature! By your very nature, you are a free, unclutched, blissful being. Just the simple understanding of how your mind is playing tricks on you is enough! Just the awareness of how you are continuously connecting your thoughts is enough to liberate you from both the pain shaft and joy shaft. It is not a technique for you to sit down and do for a particular period of time. It is a continuous, 24-hour process. If you are unable to keep this awareness continuously alive, you have to keep returning to it again and again. That is when you call it a practice!

What exactly do I mean by this word ‘unclutching’?

Just sit silently and watch your mind. You will see so many thoughts coming up. Your first instinct will be to connect all these thoughts together. Unconsciously, you struggle to make some logical connection between your thoughts.

Understand: your thoughts are not holding on to you, as you imagine. It is you who are clutching onto them and connecting them! When the thoughts come up, do not try to connect them, to give meaning to them.

The moment you give meaning to the words that your mind is throwing up, either you will try to suppress them or you will try to execute them. Or else, you will try to go beyond them – which is just one more thought! Instead, just remember, ‘Let me disconnect from this thought. I am not going to empower this thought by following it, or by fighting it. Let me unclutch from it.’

Again, in two seconds, another thought will come up. Again say, ‘Let me unclutch.’ After few minutes, you will see you are continuously repeating the thought ‘unclutching’: ‘I am unclutching,’ ‘I am unclutching’… Now, unclutch from that thought too! When a thought arises in you, instead of giving meaning to it, just unclutch from it, just relax into its source.

Relax into the silent space inside from which the thought arises. Whenever you remember, unclutch from yourself. Unclutch from the very idea you are carrying about yourself.

For ten days, try this continuously, whether you are eating, driving, whatever you are doing. Whenever the thoughts arise, unclutch again and again, come back and rest. If it does not change your life in ten days, you can forget about it. But I tell you, it will work! I have seen how it can just transform your life.

When you continuously turn your awareness to your inner space, you will realize a great truth: no thought, however strong, can have total power over your inner space! We always think that our mind is too powerful to control. We live in terror of our desires and our fears! We feel we can never escape from our suffering.

Be very clear: even if you want to, even if you try consciously, you cannot possess or hold onto your suffering! Understand, this is a subtle truth. Even if you try to hold onto your suffering, you cannot - because continuously, your suffering is also replaced by other thoughts. Even the worst suffering, the worst depression, the worst fear, is continuously being replaced with new thoughts. Fortunately, you can have only one thought at a time. So if you feel your mind is too powerful to conquer, just face it one thought at a time!

The moment a new thought enters inner space, it means that the earlier thought has already lost its influence over you.

They say you can’t step into the same river twice. I tell you, you can’t step into the same river even once! By the time you put your foot into the water and it touches the bed, the water has already flowed on!

This understanding is what I call a click, an initiation. This single understanding can totally transform the way you handle your mind.

It is the key to go beyond all your fears, all your worries, all your phobias! You have already seen that each and every thought is being constantly replaced by others in your inner space.

Now, all you need to do is repeat this process consciously!

Can you say that this is difficult? Actually, you cannot even say that it is easy – because even ‘easy’ means it needs a little effort. But this process is already happening in you, constantly, naturally. Now just be aware that it is happening, that’s all.

Once you realize that a thought can only occupy your inner space for a few seconds, will you be afraid of it anymore? Will you respect a phobia that can be wiped out in a moment by another thought? For instance, if the thought of death comes up, why should you be afraid? Simply replace it, that’s all!

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A person once came to me and said, ‘Swamiji, I am haunted by the fear of death. Please tell me a way to come out of it!’ I told him, ‘Every time the fear of death comes up, just decide to have a cup of coffee.’ He was shocked! He said, ‘What do you mean, Swamiji? How can that help me?’ I said, ‘The moment you are able to think of having a cup of coffee, it means the thought about death fear has already left your inner space. Am I right?’ Then he said, ‘No, no, Swamiji, it looks too simple! And even if I do that, the death fear will come back! Then what should I do?’ I said, ‘If it comes back, have one more cup of coffee, that’s all!’ He protested, ‘No, no, you don’t understand how serious this is for me. You are playing with me.’ I said, ‘I am not playing with you. Now you know the method how to replace the death fear once; do the same thing again and again, that’s all.’

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Why are you afraid that you will bring your old thought back? It is like trashing your e-mails and then bringing them back from the trash bin. Why would you do that?

Relax

You have the intelligence and the independence to replace any suffering, any fear, any negativity that enters your inner space.

If a thought can be replaced once, it means that it can be replaced as many times as it comes. If you can replace it ten times, the eleventh time the thought will not arise; the frequency will come down. This is the truth.

Fortunately, you have a pure inner space which can never be corrupted by the thoughts that flow through it. Your inner space is simply like a screen on which your thoughts are projected for a few moments and then fade out. If you project a scene of fire on a cinema screen, will the screen itself get burnt? No!

In the same way, your inner space can never be polluted or possessed by any particular idea or thought. Understanding this deeply can completely liberate you from all the sufferings you create for yourself. It can bring tremendous self-healing to you, tremendous freedom, tremendous courage and confidence. If this one truth clicks, it can destroy the root of ignorance, the root of the mind. Nothing else is needed.

You are not needed to run your life!

Unclutching is a natural process that is going on in your inner space every moment. But the moment you hear the word, a powerful fear comes up! Because deep inside, you realize that living in an unclutched manner means living without the mind. And you are afraid to live in such an undefined way! Without your mind, you are terrified that you will lose your identity. So you ask, If I constantly live in an unclutched manner, how will I run my life? How will I handle my job? Who will maintain my family? Who will pay my bills?

But your actual question is, If I live without mind, what will happen to my identity? You are not even so worried about losing your life, as you are about losing your identity. You don't realize that your identity is nothing more than a bunch of ideas you have about yourself!

Don't think that the mind only filters and distorts the external reality that we perceive. Your very identity is nothing but a few ideas about yourself that you have chosen to pick up and nurture. And all your life, you have struggled to protect your identity - both your outer-world identity and your inner-world identity. Understand, you are not carrying a single integrated sense of identity, as you imagine! Each of us carries two distinct identities. One is called ahankar - the identity that you project to the outer world. The other is mamakar - the identity which you believe in your heart to be the real you. Ahankar, how you project yourself, will always be much more than what you actually are. Mamakar, what you believe as yourself, will always be much less than what you actually are.

Your so-called identity is nothing but a struggle between your ahankar and your mamakar.

In the world, we carry a superiority complex, but in our hearts, we all carry a deep inferiority complex. Both these identities are constantly in conflict with each other. That is why we have to be so careful when we talk to anyone – because we never really talk what we think. The enlightened master Sri Ramakrishna says, if the way from your heart to your mouth is a straight line, you are living a spiritual life. He means that when we can directly express what we feel in our heart, that is true spirituality. Understand, this is not simple morality.

You will have the courage to speak exactly what you feel only when there is no conflict between your ahankara and your mamakara, only when you go beyond these two identities. As of now, your thoughts are governed by your inner-world identity, while your words are governed by your outer-world identity. Your whole life is nothing but the fight between these two identities. What you don't understand is, neither of these identities is the real you! The reality, the real you, is much more than these two identities. You are beyond these two identities. As long as you are swinging between these two identities, you are caught in samsara. When you go beyond these identities, you enter the space of enlightenment. But you are afraid to live without identity! I tell you, don't bother about these hypothetical fears. Mind exists only on these hypothetical fears! Have the courage to live in an unclutched way. Just opening up to the truth, though it feels like suffering in the initial level, will always lead you to greater awareness and joy, because sat, by its very nature, leads to chit and ananda. By its very nature, the truth (sat) leads to awareness (chit), and awareness (chit) leads to bliss (ananda).

Understand, your being does not need your mind to run your body. When you trust your being instead of your mind, you will see an unchanging, authentic Self arise in you. Your life will unfold in a more spontaneous, joyful, intelligent way. This is what I call ‘living enlightenment’.

Please be very clear, your life does not happen because of you. Your life happens in spite of you!

Only if you have suffered enough in your life with your mind, you will understand what I am saying. Only if you come to the verge of suspecting your own identity, can you understand. What you think of as your identity is not needed to run your life!

Your innate intelligence, your prarabdha (bio-memory), is powerful enough to handle your life using your body and your mind.

Your bio-memory is intelligent enough to maintain your body, expand your wealth and take care of your life. Trusting this truth in every moment is what I call bhakti, devotion.

An incident from my wandering days: When I was wandering in the villages of northern India, I had often noticed the villagers using a novel trap to catch birds.

They suspend a stick horizontally from the branch of a tree. The stick will be hanging from the tree by a rope tied around its middle, that’s all. This stick is the trap! You must be wondering how a stick can trap a bird!

Understand, when this stick is hanging freely, it is in a horizontal position. When a bird comes and sits on one side of the stick, the stick goes down on that side because of the weight of the bird. Like a see-saw, one side of the stick goes up, the other goes down, and the stick becomes almost vertical.

The bird will end up hanging topsy-turvy, upside down!

The poor bird is terrified of hanging upside down. But it thinks that if it lets go of the stick, it will fall head-first onto the ground and die! I have seen birds clutching at the stick for hours together, afraid to let go. It will be fluttering its wings, shaking its whole body, trying its best to get back to the earlier position. But it won’t dare let go of the stick!

Have you ever heard of a bird falling and breaking his head and dying? No! But the foolish bird does not know that if he just lets go, he can fly...! He can be liberated. After a few hours, the hunter comes along leisurely, simply catches hold of the bird and puts it in his cage.

Understand: this is the exact story of you and your mind! Just like the bird, you are hanging onto the very thing that is putting you into suffering! Because the bird feels that the stick is its security, it hangs onto the stick. But when the hunter comes, not only does the bird lose the stick, but it is captured and caged too. In the same way, you hold onto your mind, onto your life. You think these things are your security. But when Yama, Death, comes, not only does all your so-called security become worthless, you are also put to death.

Rarely, a bird which was once stuck in the trap but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back to save the other birds. It nudges the bird which is hanging upside down, saying, 'Let go! Do not be afraid. Once, I was in the same state as you. But when I relaxed my hold, I just started flying! I became liberated. All it will take you to regain your balance is a few seconds. Have courage and do it.'

Since the bird is hanging topsy-turvy, when it lets go of the stick, maybe for a couple of seconds it will start falling. Then it will just simply turn upwards and start flying. Courageously facing those few seconds, that chaos, is what I call tapas.

When you unclutch, there will be a revolution in your life, your thinking, your decision-making, your lifestyle. Courageously going through that transformation is tapas.

Understand, if the bird lets go, if it relaxes, it will be soon enjoying its freedom. If you have the courage to let go, you can become a Paramahamsa this very moment. I tell you this boldly with the courage, the authenticity, the Truth of my own experience. When the words come from the inner space of genuine experience, even if your logic is fighting them, don't bother. You will have the experience anyway. Whatever arises from the space of Truth will touch the same space within you - your true Self, your being. All you need to do is just let go, and you will live like a Paramahamsa.

Life lived in an unclutched way is what I call 'living enlightenment'.

May you all live enlightenment!

Q. Whenever I try to unclutch, my whole system feels a slight tension. The moment I stop unclutching, I become relaxed, but I lose the awareness also!

A. Understand, trying to be unclutched is not causing the tension, it is only making you aware of the tension that is already there inside. Whenever you start witnessing your thoughts, whatever is there inside starts getting highlighted! Normally, you are always carrying a subtle tension in your body and mind. Your entire system and way of functioning has become combative. You feel you need to protect yourself from the whole world. All your outer worries are nothing but excuses to bring out the tension which is already inside. You feel stupid accepting that you are tense without any reason, so you find some reason, that’s all! So if you are now becoming aware of your tension, that is good. Now just unclutch from the tension also!

Q. If I can see a ten-year dream during ten hours of sleep, does it mean that the movement of time itself is different in different states of consciousness?

A. Yes! How you experience time depends entirely on your state of consciousness. In fact, time differs even from person to person living in the same dimension. Or even the same person experiences time differently when he is in different states of consciousness. That is why, in the Vedic system, time is considered a psychological phenomenon, not a chronological phenomenon.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Just like a ten-year dream happens in ten hours, there may be a different calendar where your 70 years of life may be just seven hours for somebody who is in a different space! If the number of thoughts per second (TPS) is more, you will feel as if you have lived through a longer time. If the TPS is low, you will feel that the time is flying!

For example, if you are sitting with someone with whom you are completely in tune, you will feel that time is moving very fast, because your TPS at that time will be very low. But if you are sitting with somebody with whom you don't feel connected, what will you do? Every five minutes, you will keep looking at your watch! You will be restless. Your TPS will be high. So you will feel as though a lot of time has passed. That is why, in the Vedic tradition, the unit of time is called kshana. It is not measured as a chronological second. According to Western understanding, chronological time is calculated in seconds. One unit of time is equal to one second. In the Vedic tradition, the unit of time is kshana. Kshana is the gap between one thought and the next. According to the Western calendar, your one second and my one second are the same. But according to the Vedic calendar, your one kshana and my one kshana will be different! This is because the gap between one thought and the next will be different for me and you. Here, time is not chronological, it is psychological.

In the dream state, you have too many thoughts or a high TPS. That is why you feel as if you have lived for a long time. In the waking state, there is a medium number of TPS. That is why it seems like time is moving at a normal speed. For someone in the superconscious state, e.g. for the celestial beings, the TPS is very less, and that is why their one day will be one year for us! You can see this difference in the Vedic calendars.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Q.I can see the truth of your words, but my ego is too strong. It is not accepting...

A. Understand, your ego is not as big as you think! Your ego itself is an illusion. Just like we want to be at the top in everything, we want to be at the top even in our suffering! All seekers love to think that nobody can have an ego more powerful than theirs. Then they struggle to conquer the ego. When you create a powerful enemy for yourself, you feel very powerful. You feel solid. Be very clear, this whole thing is the clever game of the ego itself! You are creating an imaginary enemy and fighting with it, that's all. The ego itself is a pure illusion. Ego is nothing separate from your thoughts! It is just a name we give to the process of creating the shaft. Ego is the shaft you use to connect all your thoughts. When we create a shaft and connect our thoughts, it gives us a false sense of personal continuity. This gives us the illusion of the ego. Are you able to understand? Your thoughts themselves are random and disconnected. The shaft that connects them is imaginary. The joy and suffering arising from it are also imaginary So how can the ego that is built on this base be real? If you really look deeply, you will suddenly see that what you think of as your ego does not exist. By your very nature, you are free, unclutched and already enlightened. Your ego is too small to take away your enlightenment! Stop giving so much importance to it, that is enough.

Q. Unclutching is ok in spiritual life, but how can it work in the material world? Even if I try to live in an unclutched manner, the people with whom I need to relate will be living life in the same way...

A. First of all, there are no two separate worlds called material world and spiritual world. Wherever you are living, if you are carrying an identity, you are in the material world. If you are not carrying an identity, you are spiritual, that's all. If you are carrying an identity, you are in hell, if you are not carrying an identity, you are in heaven! The moment you drop your identity, you enter into bliss. There is no need to renounce anything externally. If you can renounce your identity, it is enough. The identity you are holding on to is the only reason for all your fear, all your suffering. When you live in an unclutched manner, every incident is new. Every experience is fresh. You stop taking people and things for granted. When you are unclutched, nothing can make you suffer.

Understand, I am not saying that if you live in an unclutched manner, you will never have any problems in your life. No! Every single person experiences both pain and pleasure in life. We don't have a choice in that. But we have the choice of not connecting these experiences and creating imaginary shafts. Understand, nothing or nobody can disturb without your silent permission. You are attached to a person or thing only because you have already created a shaft about them in your mind. Because of the shaft, you have expectations about what you can get from that situation, from that person or from that relationship.

And if the reality turns out to be different from what you imagined, you suffer, and blame the other person for your suffering!

Especially in your close relationships, you will see this happening all the time. I always say, when you meet a new person, you experience them as they are only for the first few weeks or months. During that time, you form your own idea of what the person is like. After that, you will be relating only with your idea of the person, not with that person himself! For the next twenty years, you will be relating to an idea, not to a person. In the same way, the other person would have formed an idea about you, and will be relating to his idea of you, not to the real you. Can you imagine the confusion?! You don’t realize, the relationship which you shared with someone three years ago, the relationship which you shared one year ago and the relationship which you are experiencing now are independent events. At each instant, you are experiencing a new relationship! Because we are unclutched by our very nature, at each instant, two new people are relating with each other, experiencing each other. The real problem is not caused by pleasure or pain. It is caused by our creating shafts and trying to break or extend them. In the life of an enlightened person also, there is both pleasure and pain. But the big difference is, he does not carry them inside. If there is pleasure, he will enjoy the pleasure and forget it. If there is pain, he will suffer the pain and forget it, that’s all. So he is always open to the future as it unfolds. When you create a shaft, it means you already have an unconscious expectation of what the future will be, with a particular person or relationship or thing. You are not open to the experience as it unfolds. You only experience it through the filter of your own ideas. Opening yourself continuously to the present moment is what I call living enlightenment!

Q. Swamiji, you tell us repeatedly that we are already enlightened. But when I look in, I am not feeling a bit enlightened! What am I missing?

A. Not just you ma, this is the problem that every single seeker faces! No matter how many times we hear it, how many times we read about it, we can never believe that we are enlightened. Not only that, we never even feel that we are qualified for enlightenment! I tell you, the most difficult task for the master is to convince the disciple that he is qualified for enlightenment! The idea of being a limited individual is so deep-rooted in us, it takes lifetimes to be free of it. Actually, the only thing you need to liberate yourself from, is the idea that you are in bondage! You need to liberate yourself only from the idea of bondage you are carrying.

Both bondage and liberation are just ideas created by your mind. But as long as you think you are bound, the masters will have to create techniques for your liberation! Whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not, whether you accept it or not, you are always enlightened. You have never been in bondage.

When the individual wave rises from the cosmic ocean, when it reaches its peak, when it starts to subside, and when it falls and merges with the ocean – at all times, it is nothing but the ocean! It is nothing but water. When you rise as an individual consciousness, when you live as a separate being, when you seek and struggle to return to your source, and when you finally merge in it – at all times, you are nothing but enlightened consciousness.

A Zen story: A disciple once went to his master and asked him, 'Master, when will I become a Buddha? How long will it take me to become enlightened?' In reply, the master gave him a hard slap on his face! In that moment, the disciple awakened to his true nature.

How long can it take you to become something which you already are? What practice can you do to become what you already are? Whether you try to move inward or outward, as long as you are going somewhere, you are missing the truth. The very process of traveling takes us away from the truth. Truth is here and now! There is no need to go anywhere, to travel anywhere. The very idea of traveling shows that you have created a shaft. You are seeing some progress. How can there be progress, when there is no individual who is progressing? The individual is dying at every instant. Then who will progress? When you are unclutched, naturally the question of bondage and liberation will not arise. Actually, your true self can never be improved by any practice. It is perfect and untouchable. Your true self needs no improvement, and your imaginary self can never be improved! Some people work on self-development. What self will you develop, when all you think of as 'you' is a sequence of unconnected thoughts?

If you try to develop this false self, you will be creating one more shaft, that's all! You will have the idea that your self is developed. It will be one more thought, one more shaft. Maybe it will give you a good feeling, but it will be just one more joy shaft! Really speaking, the self cannot be developed. The imaginary self can only be eliminated. When you unclutch, your false identity has nowhere to stand. It just disappears for that moment. In those moments, your true self is revealed. You get a glimpse of your own enlightenment. Be very clear, you are not missing anything. Nothing needs to be added to you. So relax from your frame, your idea of what enlightenment should be like.

You are already enlightened - just express it, that's all!

AWAKEN LOVE

Overflow with love

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

The best way to experience love is to become love! The more we give of an emotion, the more we allow it to circulate through us. When you give love, you create the space to receive love as well. But when you become love, there is no longer the idea of giving and receiving. You just flow in love, you radiate love. You love because you cannot help it!

DURATION: 21 minutes

Step 1: Sit down comfortably by yourself and close your eyes. Focus on your heart region. Exclude everything else. Focus only on the heart. Visualize your heart as an endless reservoir from where blessings can flow. Feel every heartbeat deeply. Let every beat resound throughout you. Between the heartbeats, feel the energy of love happening. In the deepest parts of your body, mind and soul, the love energy is waiting to be acknowledged. Invite the love energy of the heart to flow and fill these deepest parts of your body, mind and soul.

Step 2: When you are feeling completely fulfilled within, allow this love to overflow from you. Don't try to decide to whom it will flow. It will go wherever it is needed! Don't be afraid to love! You have enough love inside to embrace all of Existence. Allow yourself to become a river of love. Let the love flow from you and embrace everyone, everywhere. When you are completely soaked in the sweetness of this love, slowly open your eyes. Carry this expanded mood inside you wherever you go.

This meditation is one of the ways to open your heart center. The heart is the portal through which you can enter reality. This meditation is especially useful if you are a head-oriented person, if you are more based in the intellect than in the emotions. Actually, almost all of us are head-oriented. Heart-oriented people can't survive very long in today's world. So we have all made our minds strong. Our heart center is weak, because we don't give it enough exercise! We don't operate from the heart, we don't act from the heart. Try looking at the world from your heart, and you will discover a unity in the world. The mind sets up barriers, the heart dissolves barriers. Activating the heart center naturally creates a gush of love in your life.