INTENSITY – THE FIRST AND LAST MANTRA🔗

In anything that you do, if intensity is added, you will see that you are continuously raising the frequency of your consciousness, you are continuously elevating yourself to higher states of consciousness. When you work intensely to raise your consciousness towards turiya, the fourth state, naturally your body and mind start getting healed. Then your entire life will have the quality of meditation! Intensity is the most essential quality of spiritual life... I don’t even want to call it ‘spiritual life’, because the term is loaded with too many different meanings. Three things are needed for a successful life. The first is intensity. The second is intensity. The third is intensity!

Sometimes people feel dejected because they are unable to gather intensity in their spiritual practices. I tell them: feel intensely that you don’t have intensity, that's enough! We constantly feel restless in the outer world, ‘Oh, I have not done this, I have not done that...’ Just direct the same restlessness towards the inner world, and you have intensity! If your energy flows towards the outer world, if your consciousness is constantly moving towards the outer world, it is called restlessness. If it is moving towards the inner world, it is called intensity. Your restlessness should become intensity. The deep dissatisfaction about what is there in the inner space is what I call intensity. Intensity is the feeling that something needs to be done immediately, to break free in the inner world.

You may be thinking, I am supposed to teach satisfaction; why am I teaching dissatisfaction? I tell you, your dissatisfaction directed now towards the outer world has to turn towards the inner world, then it will lead to satisfaction. Intensity is not about something in particular. Let it become the quality of your life! When you are talking, let the intensity be there. When you touch somebody or something, let the intensity be there, even in that touch. In your relationships, in your decisions, in your memory, in your thinking, in your desires, even in your fears, be intense without escaping from this moment. That is what I call intensity.

Q. How to develop intensity?

There is no ‘how’ to develop intensity. If I give you the method ‘how’, the whole intensity will be lost! Intensity will increase when you have the desire, but not the technique! That's the right way to develop intensity. The moment the technique is given, your mind will start working around the technique. The technique gives your mind a chance to escape. Your mind will start saying, ‘Oh, I have done the technique, that's enough. That is all I can do.’ If a technique is given, you start using it like an allopathic medicine that you can swallow and forget about! In Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of medicine, when the doctor gives the patient the medicine he always tells him, ‘This medicine is not enough. You need to work with this medicine the whole day. So, you need to be intense, telling your body and mind to heal itself.’

Q. Doesn't living continuously at high intensity cause tiredness?

No! Intensity is the fuel that can keep your inner dynamo constantly running at high energy, without experiencing fatigue. Be very clear, when you focus intensely, totally, on whatever you are doing at the moment, there is no scope for greed or fear to play in your inner space. You will be acting purely from your being, out of sheer inspiration. You will be working without carrying the load of past and future. You will see, your inner space will be light, and you will be making decisions in a clear, relaxed way.

MOVING FROM DREAM TO REALITY

There is a very beautiful story, a Zen story: One day, early morning, a Zen Master came out of his bed and started crying. His disciples were surprised to see him crying. They gathered around him and said, 'You are an enlightened being. Why are you crying? It is really surprising to see that you are crying.' The Master replied, 'Last night I dreamt that I became a butterfly.'

The surprised disciples asked, 'It was only a dream. Now you are yourself again. You are out of it. Why are you crying now?' The Master says very beautifully, 'Because now I do not know whether I am a Zen Master who dreamt that I had become a butterfly, or whether that butterfly is now dreaming that it has become a Zen Master!'

Understand, there is no scale, no proof to say if the state in which you are in is the authentic reality. There is no scale!

When you move from the deep sleep state to the dream state, you understand that the deep sleep state was illusory when compared to the dream state. When you come out of the dreaming state into the waking state, you understand that the dream state was illusory, that it was not real. When you move from the waking state to turiya, you will realize that the waking state is also not reality! You will realize that the waking state is not what you thought it was.

Again and again and again, you get a glimpse of this Truth every time you face a deep depression or low mood. During deep depression, this understanding starts rising from within. But we are afraid of allowing the psychological revolution to happen in us at that time, because too much is at stake! Too much of the life that we know, that we are clinging to, is at stake. If we allow the psychological revolution to take place, who knows what might happen? What will happen to all our cherished desires and goals, our cherished ideals and ideas? We are afraid that we may have to let go of everything! So we manage not to allow the psychological revolution to happen in us. Every instance of depression is actually an opportunity to allow the upheaval to happen, but we miss it. The moment you hear that your whole life is an illusion, naturally you become afraid.

You feel you may renounce, you may leave everything, and life may change drastically. But I tell you, when you understand that what is in front of you is not complete reality, you will renounce only one thing - your suffering!

When the psychological revolution happens, tremendous inner healing happens in you. With inner healing, naturally, outer healing also happens. Without the psychological revolution, every day that you live, every moment, will only be pravritti - going outwards, towards more suffering, low moods and difficulties. With the psychological revolution, it will become nivritti - moving towards reality. You will become more and more relaxed, more and more restful, more and more aware. With psychological revolution, with every decision that you make every day, the aptapramanaas - the experiences of the enlightened Masters, will become atmapramanaas - your own experiences!

Q: Swamiji, if we don’t have dreams to fulfil, then what is life?

Understand, this is one of the worst lies taught to you! Just because your schools, your universities, your society can’t teach you how to experience the superconscious state, they teach you the daydreaming state. I tell you, please don’t compromise, please don’t waste your life daydreaming! Don’t miss the Truth, the reality, just for your daydreams. Live your life with superconscious vision, not with dreams! Daydreams put you in a state of deep restlessness until you fulfil them. But after they are fulfilled, all you will experience is emptiness.

When you function out of the state of thoughtless awareness, whenever a vision or desire rises, you are also empowered with the clarity necessary to fulfil it. You are shown the direction. And after fulfilling the vision, you experience deep satisfaction.

There are only two choices: either you live a superconscious life, or a life of daydreaming. If you are not living a superconscious life, be sure, you are just living with your daydreams!

But there is a great fear, ‘If I stop dreaming, how will I plan my life? How will I know what my next step should be? What will I do with my time?...’ Your mind has convinced you that you cannot run your life without it! Just like a worker who first convinces his boss that he is indispensable, and then uses this idea to exploit his boss, your mind has convinced you that you cannot take a single decision without it. Please be very clear: when you plan, you are limited by what you already know.

When you plan, you can only expand your vision to the limit of the known. All you can do is reproduce the past into the future. You are actually limiting your growth by planning! When you trust your vision, your intuition, and work, you tap into your limitless potential. Have the courage to live spontaneously, with the spontaneous revelations happening in your life every moment.

Just try this for ten days. In ten days, your whole life can’t be taken away from you. In ten days, if everything you have can be taken away from you, then it is not worth having, let it be taken away!

When you work with your spontaneous inner vision, naturally the dilemma, the mental oscillations and mood swings will be much less. Because your decisions arise naturally from your inner space, they won't drain your energy. Your decision-making becomes sharp and straight. So, just for ten days, don't plan anything. Don't lead life – allow life to lead you! Use your intuition instead of your intellect. Live by your vision instead of your dreams. You will see the power of spontaneity.

Q: Every morning I wake up to the same world. But every night, I don't return to the same dream. Can't this be used as a scale to say that the waking world is real?

Very intelligent question! This is a wonderful concept which we need to understand and internalize.

Have you ever had an experience in which you have lived fifteen or twenty years in one night's dream, in a span of a few hours? I am sure many of you have experienced this at least once! The dream may start from your college days, and move slowly step by step and move on to your marriage, your having a son, your son's marriage and so on! In this way, you live many years of your life in just one night's dream, am I right?

One more thing: scientists are now saying that you don't sleep continuously at night. You spend a maximum of 30 minutes in the deep sleep state. Then you go to the dream state and go through some dreams.

Again you fall asleep, spend about half an hour in the deep sleep state, then again you come back to the dream state. In this way you keep moving from the dream state to the deep sleep state and back. In theVedic Tradition, the maximum deep sleep time is 30 minutes, but in the West they say that it is only 16 minutes.

So your one night's dream is actually a series of separate episodes! In the first episode, you see in your dream you are in college. In the second episode, when you come back to the dream state after your spell of deep sleep, you see you are getting married. In the third episode, when you re-enter the dream state, you see you have a son. Maybe in the fourth episode, you see your son getting married. An important thing you need to understand here: in these different episodes, you do see the same world even in the dream state! Am I right? You do see the same world in the dream state.

So please understand: just because you wake up to the same world every morning after the night's break, it cannot be the scale to define this world as reality. This happens even in the dream state!

Sometimes people ask me, ‘Swamiji, I'm not the only one seeing this world, all the people living around me are also seeing this world in the same way. So how can you say it is a dream?’

Understand: in a dream, if you are visiting a particular city along with your family, your dream family will naturally see the same city as you are seeing - because they are also projections of your mind!

Understand, it is a very subtle point! If you can catch this, it will really lead to a very big clarity. It can really revolutionize the way in which you think about your life, the way in which you try to solve the problems of your life. There is a beautiful story:

A person is dreaming. In the dream he sees a tiger chasing him and starts screaming, 'Oh, a tiger is chasing me! Save me, save me!' His friend is sleeping next to him. He wakes up and he sees that his friend is screaming for help in his sleep, What is the best help he can offer his friend? Just wake him up! Instead, if he tries to hand his sleeping friend a weapon to kill the dream tiger, can you imagine what will happen? The right solution at that moment is just to tell him, 'Wake up!' If you try to find any other solution, it will only lead to more and more problems.

Who knows, this life in the waking state can be another long dream! You may wake up in a few minutes and discover that your entire life till now was just a dream.

When you realize this possibility, that what you call life can be one more long dream, naturally you will turn much of your attention and awareness to the center, to the consciousness.

I can say, this is the first step in spirituality. This is the first step towards the psychological revolution. Again and again, our sufferings are giving us a clear statement: we are holding onto emptiness. All our suffering is nothing but a clear statement from reality: you are not living with the reality.

The ultimate Truth is: the stuff out of which your dream world is made is the same stuff out of which this waking world is also made.

If your attention is centered on the stuff, naturally the inner healing cannot happen. If your attention is equally distributed on the consciousness and the stuff, that is what I call healthy life, balanced life. You will have physical health, mental health, and a vibrant life. If your attention is totally centered on the consciousness, that is what I call jeevanmukti or living enlightenment! Simply understanding that this whole world is one more dream brings tremendous inner healing to you. Whenever you are facing a big difficulty or depression in life, if you realize very clearly, consciously, that this whole thing is a dream, you will simply relax, and the inner healing starts happening in you. That inner healing is what I call meditation. That restful awareness which happens in you is what I call satori, the first glimpse of samadhi.

Q. If enlightenment means waking up from the world-dream, why do so many enlightened Masters display siddhi (thaumaturgical powers)? Are these powers not expressed in the material world?

First thing: All siddha may not be enlightened, and all enlightened Masters may not display siddhi! When a person gets enlightened, he wakes up from the dream of this world. Then, he has a choice to consciously re-enter the dream and play as he wishes!

Let me explain:

Did you ever have an experience, where in your dream you suddenly became aware, 'Yes, I am dreaming!' And because of that awareness, you would have been able to change some of the dream scenes as you wished – for about two to three seconds.

Understand, for a few moments after you became aware that you were dreaming, you would have been able to move a few things around in your dream as you wish. But if the awareness increases further, suddenly you will be awakened!

In the same way, in the waking state too, if the awareness about 'I', the center, increases, you will realize that the whole world which is in front of you is just a 'waking dream'. Just because of this awareness, you will be able to move and arrange the incidents in your life as you wish to! This is what we call having siddhi – mystical powers.

When the frequency of 'I' consciousness increases, you will suddenly start experiencing the waking state as a waking dream, and you will have the energy and freedom to change the incidents of your life.

When this starts happening, if you get caught in the changing of the incidents in your life, by and by, the awareness of the 'I' will come down, and you will fall back into the same waking state again, and these special powers will also disappear. But if you are not too attracted to changing these scenes, and you remain centered on raising the consciousness, you become enlightened!

And after enlightenment, if you wish to re-enter the dream and play in it, you can do so with complete freedom. The world is no longer a bondage, but a game. That is why we say, an enlightened Master’s life is just his own leela (blissful play)!

Q: If my life is just a dream, how can a Master appearing in my dream pull me out of it?

Wonderful question! It shows you have been thinking, you have allowed my words to start churning your inner space. You are asking, ‘If life is a dream, how can a Master appearing in that dream pull me out of it?’

The enlightened Master Sri Ramakrishna says, the Master is like a ‘simha swapna’ (lion-dream or nightmare). Suppose you are sleeping, and suddenly you start dreaming that a lion is chasing you. What happens? When the fear becomes too much, suddenly you wake up, you jump out of the dream! Understand, the lion that is chasing you has appeared only in your dream, but its sheer presence in your dream is enough! It can make you leap out into the waking state.

Just like the ‘simha swapna’, the Master who is happening in this dream can also wake you up into enlightenment. Appearing in your dream, he can wake you up from the dream. Understand, the Master is a simha swapna. Once you are in his jaws, you no longer have a choice. You simply have to wake up, that’s all!