Pages 81–90🔗

Let me be very clear, however many years you may practice you can never make your mind concentrate on anything. Let me be open and clear. I tried my best. I spent years. I was not able to concentrate. Only two things happen. You either suffer with the shaft and die or realize that you are unclutched by your very nature.

The shaft doesn't exist by your very nature. There are only two choices. No other choices. You can never enlarge that shaft or stop that shaft because that shaft doesn't exist. The connection itself is imaginary. How will you fight with the imaginary enemy? If you have the shaft, you can enlarge or stop, but the shaft doesn't exist.

The shaft is purely your belief. The pain that you had 9 years ago, the pain that you had 10 years ago and the pain that you had 20 years ago are independent and separate incidents. When you start connecting them and try to create logic and try to create an understanding, then you create the shaft that 'life is pain'.

When you try to generalize your experiences you create a shaft of pain or joy. The moment you start believing in the shaft of pain or in the shaft of joy you have created hell for yourself. Then you will always be behind that shaft, either to enlarge or to stop.

Your whole life is nothing but playing with the shaft which doesn't exist. That is what Sankara means when he says 'life is maya'. Maya literally expands into 'ya ma iti maya'; meaning that which does not exist. You are fighting with a thing that doesn't exist. You are just fighting with imaginary shafts. You are trying to stop or enlarge the shaft that does not exist.

Let me be very clear, whatever techniques you practice to stop this shaft without understanding that the shaft itself does not exist, you will never be successful. Once you have this single understanding then you don't need any technique. This very understanding is a technique. You are liberated. With this very understanding any simple technique can liberate you. Without this understanding no technique can help you.

I have seen people chanting, 'Rama Krishna Govinda' or some such thing for years. Not years but decades, all they had is decay, nothing else; nothing else. See the people who chant sahasranama, the Lord's thousand and eight names. After a few minutes they will be singing the number; they will look at whether they have reached 200 or

300. What are they doing?

Honestly, tell me, is there any single person who doesn't look at the number when he chants sahasranama? I can't believe any one can do it without peeking at how far they have progressed. I know, because I have done it! I am talking the insider's view. It's not that I have not done it. I am speaking the insider's viewpoint. And nothing can be done about it.

A small story,

One young novice brahmachari, an initiate, young guy, he goes to an old monk and asked, 'Master, how can I control negative thoughts? How to get rid of these lustful thoughts? How long does it take to get rid of these lustful thoughts?'

The old monk says 'How long? I don't know how long it takes to stop, but not surely until 90'

So, be very clear, how long it takes I don't know, but even if you practice 90 years, you cannot concentrate. You mind cannot concentrate. No technique will help you unless you have this understanding. With this understanding there is no need for any other technique. Even if you practice a simple technique with this understanding such as lifting your hand or talking to somebody or just sitting quietly, you will be liberated.

This understanding is the base for the whole spiritual journey. All your thoughts are completely unconnected, independent, illogical, and irresponsible. Above all, they are unclutched.

If you write down your thoughts for just 10 minutes you will understand. Your thoughts are completely mixed up; sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometime this and sometime that. You don't know what is happening. You can always see that even in the peak of joyful moment there will be one negative thought and you try to think 'no, no, no, I should not think about this all this time. Let me divert my thoughts.'

Even in the time of some deep negative problem you will suddenly have a positive thought. Even in deep suffering you will have some positive thoughts; even in the worst suffering you will have some unconnected joyful thought. Even in the peak of joy you will have some unconnected negative thought.

By your very nature, you are unconnected. You are unclutched. When you start believing you are clutched by your imaginations and when you start believing you are connected and you start connecting the thought that happened to you 10 years ago, the thought that happened to you 7 years ago and the thought that happened to you 3 years ago and you try build the shaft, you are creating an idea about yourself.

You start creating an idea about yourself and you start creating an identity. The moment you create an identity, you have created a state of hell for yourself. You will try to work constantly to improve that identity. If you think that identity is painful you will constantly be trying to make it better. If you think that identity is beautiful you will constantly work to better it. The moment you try to create an identity, be it pain shaft or bliss shaft you have created hell for yourself. You can neither enlarge the shaft, nor stop the shaft because the shaft just doesn't exist.

The shaft doesn't exist. Every moment you spend in trying to improve your identity and your personality is a waste of time; all this self development is pure rubbish. Your self cannot be developed. You are completely unclutched. You may be given an idea that your self is being developed.

Let you be very clear. Because you carry one thought that your self is not good, I can just take away that understanding and give you one more understanding that your self is beautiful. You are instantly developed.

I always tell people, people come and ask me ‘Swamiji, how do you heal us? You take away so many negativities, so many karmas, how do you heal us, please tell us Swamiji.’

Now I tell you clearly the whole business secret, let you all be very clear. The very first thought that you have, the idea of body mind is by itself is an illusion. When you come with that illusion then you have some pain or some disease, I just take away that illusion and give you one more illusion you are healed, that’s all. I just take away the illusion that you have disease and give you another illusion that you are healed. You are so strongly attached with the first illusion that you naturally get attached to the second replacement illusion and become alright, that’s all; nothing else.

Please understand first that the thought that you have a body itself is an illusion by itself. That’s the first thought shaft that you create and suffer as a result. Now, neither do I stop that shaft nor I enlarge that shaft because neither can be done. I just add one more shaft that ‘you are healed’. And now you struggle with this new shaft. You leave the old shaft and you catch hold of this new shaft. Of course, you think that this is little better shaft. You are made to believe that this shaft is little better shaft.

One guy says, ‘I was rich, now I am poor, I feel richness is better.’ Same way, you were healthy and then you suffered with disease. You believed the health shaft is much better, so I just take that disease shaft away from your space and insert the wellness shaft, that’s all, nothing else. The new idea about yourself straightaway creates your new body.

Let me tell you another personal experience.

I lived in the forests of Central India during the days when I wandered as a monk. I lived with some tribal people for a while. I saw once that they erected a new hut in one corner of the village. A pregnant woman went into it in the morning and after a few hours came out with a baby. Then they celebrated. I was within hearing distance of this hut and there was no screaming, nothing at all. Then the woman came out with the new born baby.

I asked one of the elders in surprise as to how the delivery took place with no pain at al. in did not hear the woman utter any noise.

He was surprised at this question. ‘Pain, what pain?’ he asked, ‘Why should a pregnant woman feel pain while delivering a baby?’

In that culture there was no conditioning. There was no connection between delivery of a baby and pain. This amazed me till I understood how this happened.

Recently, I read a beautiful book by Dr. Bruce Lipton called Biology of Belief. He says clearly ‘your body is not controlled by cells and tissues as you are made to believe. Your body is controlled by your positive and negative emotions and your belief systems’.

Be very clear, he says very clearly that your body is created and controlled by your thoughts and not by cells or tissues. If you believe that you have disease, you create a disease body. When you are made to believe you are healed you start creating the healthy body. It is purely the shaft with which you are playing, nothing else. Nothing else is there. You first play with that shaft and then you play with this shaft.

That is why I tell you that in every gap you create your body. In every gap, in every neutral space you create a new body. But if you again and again bring your old identity, you will be again creating the same old body. Biologists say that once in every 6 months you have a new liver; not even a single cell or atom of the old liver exists in you now. Once in every 21 days your whole intestine becomes new. Your whole body is replaced within one year.

Whatever body you had a year ago you don’t even have a single cell from that body today. It is completely new. ‘Then why are we carrying the same diseases, Swamiji?’ you may ask. When you believe that you are same person and when you believe that you have the same identity you also carry the same disease.

When you bring the same old identity, by your faith, by your imagination, by your connection and by creating the thought shaft, you also bring the same body. You reproduce the same body that you had one year ago. Constantly you are creating your body. If you create the same personality by connecting and creating the shaft, you will create the same body.

If you start experiencing the truth that by your very nature you are illogical, irresponsible, independent, unconnected and unclutched, you will start creating a new, alive and fresh body, like that of a child. Kids are so alive because every moment they create a new body. They are not stuck with a shaft so they don’t have any idea about themselves.

That is the reason why even if yesterday you fought with them, today they will be smiling at you and they will be laughing. They don’t carry records in their minds. They don’t carry identity. They don’t have shafts. They do not connect with yesterday's fight, day before yesterday's fight and the fight that happened one month ago. They are free from the shaft.

Now, Shiva says, very clearly,

When the energy of breath neither moves out nor enters, meaning it is neither incoming nor outgoing and when the center unfolds by the dissolution of thoughts, meaning when the neutral space is happening in you, become unclutched.

Realize that you are already unclutched. This thought and that thought don't have any logical connection. Except for your belief that you think that they are connected nothing else is working against you.

People come and ask me 'Swamiji, how to break my habits?' Be very clear, 2 days ago you were smoking, 10 year ago you were smoking, or 20 years ago you were smoking. All these three incidents are completely independent. They are not connected. Mentally, when you start connecting, when you start believing that you have the habit of smoking and that you are addicted to it, this is the belief that creates a shaft.

You then start fighting with the shaft that doesn't exist. Understand this one truth. The shaft that you create doesn't exist. You connect the smoking of 10 years ago, 9 years ago, the smoking of 3 years ago and how you smoked yesterday. You connect all these and create a thought shaft, a belief system that you have the smoking habit and that you are addicted to it. Then you start fighting with it.

If you believe it is joyful experience you continue to smoke more and more. If you believe it's a painful experience you start fighting with that shaft. Either way you don't win.

Even if you believe that smoking is joyful, try to smoke without restraint and see for yourself how you feel. When you smoke and inhale it can never be a pleasurable experience. It is not joyful. You can see this in your own life.

The definition of addiction is this. If you don't do it you will feel terrible that you are missing something. If you do it you won't feel the joy. If you do it, it will not be great; it is mechanical. If you don't, you will feel that you are missing it. If you start believing that smoking is joyful, if you don't smoke you will miss it.

When you do smoke, in that moment, see what is happening in your inner space. You are not enjoying anything; you are just trying to escape from something. You are just running. You are restless, that's all. You are not relaxing. You just believe that smoking is joyful. Even if you don't feel joyful when you are smoking, you try to squeeze joy out of it. You try hard to squeeze joy out of it.

See, deeply scan and screen your life to see whatever you think as joy even if you don’t feel joy. Whether it is sex or greed or taste, any pleasure, even if you don’t feel the same joy as you perhaps felt the first time, you try to squeeze joy out of it. You try to console yourself ‘no, no, this is joy. What else is joy?’ You try to cover the frustration by your belief that it is joy. You try to cover the frustration that it is not joy. You are not ready to believe it is not. You want to believe it is joy.

Same way, if you decide something is pain, if you start believing something is pain, even if it is not painful, you try to force yourself, you try to imagine, you convince yourself it is pain and continue to struggle.

Whether it is the habit of addiction or the concepts of joy or concepts of pain, everything is purely unconnected, unclutched and illogical thought shafts. You connect them. Now you have a tremendous fear ‘If this is true, how I can live? My whole life is messed up now. Some thoughts are coming, some thoughts are going.’

Please be very clear, because you believe some thoughts are connected and that they are joy, you start giving life only to those thoughts. If you believe some thoughts are painful, you try to take energy away from those thoughts. You are not able to live your whole life, you are choosing with which part to live. You are breaking your life into parts. You are choosing.

If you understand that you are unclutched and that you are full of independent, illogical, unconnected and unclutched thought shafts, suddenly you will feel deep integrity in yourself. Suddenly you will feel that you are elevated to a different plane. Suddenly you will feel a discipline happening in you that doesn’t need to be monitored.

You don’t need supervision and rules. You don’t need any balancing. You are flowing in a totally different way. As of now, you are afraid. ‘If it is true that I am unclutched and unconnected, then what for am I running? Then where am I running? What for I am going? What for I am living? What is exactly happening? Then how will I live my life?’

Tremendous fear rises in you. You start thinking, ‘if I am unclutched, how will I go back and do my work? How will I go back and live my life? Somebody may take away my property. Physically, I may be swindled, and mentally, I may lose my balance, I may start doing anything and everything, because I am unclutched, unconnected.’

Be very clear, these are fears created by your mind. Your mind never allows you to trust yourself. The moment you trust the gap, the neutral space, you will lose respect for the thought shafts. You can have trust either in the thought shaft or in the neutral space. Both the neutral space and the shafts influence you. If you trust the neutral space, then you won’t be able to trust the shaft. If you trust the shaft, then you won’t be able to trust the neutral space.

From a young age, through your school, college, university and office, everyone has taught you to trust the thought shaft and to develop the thought shafts, work on the thought shafts. You call this self-development. Now you know the meaning of the self-development. Constantly you are taught to work on yourself and on your thought shafts that do not exist. Even if you try to develop yourself, even if you attend thousands of seminars, unless you understand this truth, your self can never be developed.

You cannot develop the shaft that you think constitutes the self because it doesn’t exit. How can you develop anything if it doesn’t exist? It is purely your imagination. Somebody asked me, ‘Then how do we feel so good when we go to these self-development courses, Swamiji?’ You have the idea that you have low self-esteem and they just take away those words and give you new words. It is just the feel-good factor, nothing else.

Somebody goes to Ramana Maharishi, “Bhagavan, I’m so happy to see this Arunachala, I’m in heaven, the moment I see this Arunachala this whole beautiful energy field and space.”

Bhagavan says “Be here for three days, everything will become alright”.

Three days after the self development course you are back to normal. That is what it is. All these are feel good factors, nothing else. Do not be cheated by the feel good factor. Please understand the truth, the reality, as it is.

By your very nature, you are unclutched, unconnected, illogical, random and independent thought shafts. When you understand this, suddenly you will see that witnessing consciousness is rising in you.

When you understand you are neither this space nor that space, when you understand you are neither the incoming breath nor the outgoing breath, when you understand you are neither the breathing space, nor the neutral space, you will realize that you are just this paper where both are written and when you understand you are neither the pain shaft nor the bliss shaft, then suddenly you realize you are the witnessing consciousness in which the whole drama is being played.

When you understand you are neither this shaft nor that shaft, suddenly you wake up to the reality that on you all these shafts are drawn. You realize you are not the movie that is being played but that you are just the screen on which the movie is going on. If you are engrossed, if you are completely lost in the movie you forget the screen.

When you open up, when you wake up you realize that you are not the movie but that you are the screen on which this movie is getting played. Your mind will never allow you to believe that you are unclutched because of two things: Whatever you possess as your identity, your outer-world, your wealth, relationship, everything is based on the idea that you are connected thought shafts. This is your collective identity. If you relax from that identity you may lose all those things, who knows? That fear is the first thing.

Next thing is your morality, your idea about what you should be doing, is it right or wrong? If you lose the identity, if you don't trust that you are connected thoughts, your identity about yourself itself will be lost. The identity that you show to others will be lost and the identity that you have about yourself will also be lost. How will you then realize what is right and what is wrong for you? There is no basis to judge. Mind will never allow you to believe that you are unclutched.

Be very clear, as long as your mind doesn't let you trust you are unclutched, it can control you and it can play its games on you. The moment you trust yourself and trust your consciousness, your mind cannot control you and it cannot play its role on you.

One important thing, even you can see in your profession is this. The person who wants to exploit you will first make you believe that you can't run your business without him. He will give you the impression that you cannot survive without him, that's the first thing. Then he can go on exploiting you and he can play all his games. You can't do anything about it. The moment you start believing that you cannot survive without him, you will put up with him.

Same way, the first thing your mind does to you is to convince you that you cannot be alive without it; that you cannot survive without it. It makes you trust that you cannot survive without it. The moment it convinces you that you cannot survive without it, you are lost; you've created your hell. The moment it convinces you of this, then nothing more can be done. Then you will never try to drop the mind. You are caught with the fear. You are gone. You are finished.

Your mind will not let you believe so easily that you are unclutched. It'll try to bring all possible logic and if it can't bring any logic it will bring tremendous fear: 'What will happen to my property, what will happen to my personality and what will happen to this and that?'

Be very clear, nothing bad will happen. Everything will happen in a much better way and much more smoothly. Just understand this one simple example, and then you will be able to understand what I mean by the fear of mind.

Understand this one simple example. In Indian forests, hunters will place a stick on a string to catch birds. To catch parrots and sparrows they will just hang a stick tied by a string between two trees. When the stick is hanging between the trees the parrot will come to sit on it. The moment the parrot sits, because of the parrot's weight, what will happen? The stick will just turn topsy-turvy, upside down. The moment it turns upside down on the stick, the parrot will start thinking 'Oh, if I let go I'll die!' and it will hang on to that stick.

The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance it will feel totally shaken and just catch hold of that stick. It will hold on to that stick and hang on to that stick. It will think ‘If I unclutch my feet, if I let go, what will happen? I’ll fall and die’, because it is hanging upside down. Now, because the bird thinks, ‘If I let go, I’ll fall and die or hurt myself’ it will just catch the stick tightly, and hang on to it.

The hunter will come leisurely after 4-5 hours and will pick the parrot up, put it in the cage and go. The foolish parrot doesn’t know that if just relaxes, he could have flown out and be liberated. He doesn’t know that he can just open up and be liberated. This is not fiction. I have seen this done with my own eyes.

Similarly you do not know that if you just leave your mind, at that moment you can become paramahamsa. At that moment you can be liberated. At that moment you can start flying. The same fear that the parrot had is what you are having now. Your fear and parrot’s fear are one and the same. The parrot believes that he can’t let go and if he relaxes he will die. Similarly you too hold on to your mind and you feel, ‘I can’t let go, if I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent and illogical thoughts’ I am lost.

You will have the fear, ‘what will happen to my identity that I project to the outer world, what will happen to the identity which I’m projecting to myself?’ The tremendous fear that the parrot experiences, is the same fear that you feel; nothing else. One important thing lesson is that the parrot is not flying by holding on to that stick out of fear. What is happening? Slowly the hunter will come, take the parrot away and put it in the cage. The parrot neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance.

In the same way, Yama, the god of death, will come to remove you from your identity. You will neither be a paramahamsa, a liberated soul, nor will you be able to hold on to the identity that you have. You will neither have the freedom nor will you have the stick that you are holding.

Be very clear, the hunter is Yama. He will come for you, for sure. When the hunter comes, the parrot will lose the freedom it had and the stick that he held. He will lose both. Same way, when Yama comes, you will lose the freedom that you had, the inner space, or the consciousness and the identity that you hold on to now tightly. Both will be lost.

Let you be very clear, just the same fear the parrot has, you too are having. You too are holding on to your identity and hanging for dear life. This moment, trust yourself, do not bother about losing your identity, trust that you will never have any problem, just trust yourself and let go your identity. You will become paramahamsa straight away and you will be liberated.

All you need to do is to trust that you are unclutched. Even if you don't trust that is the truth. Even if you don't trust, that is the truth, nothing can be done! But you have a vested interest in your false identity. If you trust that you are unclutched, it is too much to believe. Your vested interests are getting shaken.

Let you be very clear, even if you try to avoid the truth because of your vested interests you cannot save yourself. The hunter will come today or tomorrow, just pick you up and put you in the cage. You are exactly in the same situation as the parrot is. You are just a parrot hanging with the identity, nothing else. You believe so seriously that if you let go you will fall and hurt yourself or die and so you hold on to your identity.

Let me tell you, if the parrot lets go and relaxes, just for a moment or two it may flutter to balance; one or two moments it may have to balance itself but it will never fall and die. Let you be very clear, let go and you will never fall and die; you will only become paramahamsa.

To become paramahamsa all you need is trust; to trust yourself and let go. You will never mess up anything and you will never miss anything because you have never tried even once. You never had anybody to tell you.

Let me be honest, I tried. I relaxed. I never missed anything. You never had anybody around you to advice. Now you have. Relax and let go. You never had any courageous words. You never had anybody before to tell you. Relax. Let me tell you, I was in that space and I know what will happen. You will never fall and die and you will never hurt yourself. All you need to do is to let go and you will beautifully start flying. You too will become a paramahamsa.

Society can never accept what I say. It cannot tolerate your freedom; that is why it never gives you the courage. You cannot then be enslaved. You cannot then be manipulated. You cannot then be exploited, if you are a paramahamsa.

If you are in their cage, they can play with you and they can make you repeat all the words that they want you to. They can feed you when they want, what they want. And they can make you fly as they want. They can make you sit on their shoulder. You will be useful. You will just be a utility.

That is why you are never given the confidence that you are a paramahamsa. You are paramahamsa. Just relax; you may have one thousand fears rising in you about losing your identity; don't worry. All those fears are just those parrot fears. Even if the parrot falls two three feet and then balances, it is worth risking. It is a worthy risk. Understand, even if you fall for few minutes, if you are not able to balance for a few minutes, nothing wrong. It is worthy risk. May you let go and be liberated.

May you all become paramahamsas.