II. DEEPER TRUTHS OF SEEKING🔗

What you are really seeking is something, but we are seeking it in the name of something else! We seek in the name of so many things. And at the end of it, even after achieving all those things, we feel that something is missing.

Seeking can change your very brain map. It can change the very way your brain functions, the very way your brain cognizes. Seeking changes the very way you cognize things.

Keeping the possibility alive is what I call ‘being a seeker.’

I am defining who is seeker. Whoever moves in his life with the cognition of experiential logic, and keeps the possibility open and alive in his beliefs about himself and life, is a seeker. Keep your possibility alive. Only then you are a seeker. I am neither a guru who makes you seek for years and years nor the guru who promises everything quicker.

Life simply flowers when you keep the possibility alive. Move with experiential logic, not exponential logic.

The logic of experience is called ‘Experiential Logic.’ The logic of calculation, multiplying, subtracting, adding, and deleting is called ‘Exponential Logic.’

By understanding these two logics you will understand how you are missing some of the greatest experiences of life by getting caught in a blind logic. It is like, instead of wearing sun glasses, you are wearing no glass, just two black stones fixed in a frame! If you get two black stones fixed in a frame and wear it and think it is sun glasses, and say that whole world has become dark, who is responsible? So, if you are using exponential logic for experiential matters and go on claiming, ‘experience is not happening!’, who is responsible?

Sometimes, you stick to exponential logic and miss Shiva standing and pointing experiential logic to you. Shiva, again and again, comes to you as Guru and points out experiential logic, and you go on hold on to exponential logic and argue with him!

Because your logic has helped you in many places in your life, don’t think it can be a help forever. Because a boat helped you to cross the river which is really dangerous, do not think the boat can help you ever for travelling in your life.

In your life, so many times, you are playing with exponential logic, instead of looking at experiential logic. One of the unfortunate thing is that whenever you have pain and suffering, you will always feel your whole life is going to be like that. Because, with pain and suffering, the exponential logic works more. It gets more strengthened. With joy, experiential logic gets more strengthened.

I want you to look in and do an acid wash of your belief systems, whatever belief system you carry about you. For example, at four o’clock in the morning you will be tired, sleepy, and not feel like waking up and doing yoga. If it was your experience for one day, you will make that into exponential and start believing it forever!

‘Morning four o’clock I cannot do anything. By morning four o’clock I will be tired and no yoga.’ In the same way for Satsangh, ‘I don’t understand much, Swamiji speaks in English and that also in some level of English.’ One day if you make that as experience, you do not just hold on, ‘today I don’t understand, may be in next few days I may understand.’ You don’t keep that opening left for life to happen. You burn the whole land with exponential logic. So the possibility never grows.

A burnt land, unless it is ploughed again, no seed will grow. ‘Burnt land’ means, literally the land has become like brick. On brick no seed can grow, unless it is ploughed again, and it becomes loose, or it rains.

When you burn your future with your exponential logic, the possibility seed never grows, the enlightenment fruit never happens. Yes, no doubt, till yesterday you did not experience Shiva.

Yes, no doubt, till today, when Shiva gave the initiation, it went in one ear and came out through the other. But, you don’t have to make that experience into exponential logic saying, ‘oh, forever it is going to be like this only. So nothing can be done.’ Just giving up.

Measuring your life with exponential logic is what I call ‘illusion.’

Because, I did not experience Shiva yesterday, tomorrow also I may not, is ‘illusion’. Yesterday does not make tomorrow. Whoever believes yesterday makes tomorrow is not living. Whoever makes today, whoever understands today makes tomorrow, only they are alive.

Let experiential logic be alive in you more and more for your cognition and running your life, not exponential logic.

With experiential logic, you will always remember the possibility. You give the space for more and more possibility. Till yesterday it did not grow does not mean tomorrow it will not grow. Realizing Shiva can happen even today, even tomorrow, even in the next moment.

Your every suffering and every ignorance is because of your decision which you made due to some other vested interests. Why do you not want the transformation? Because, transformation means literally the earth on which you are standing for the last forty to fifty years will shake.

Many things with which you consoled yourself as your success, you cannot bear the truth that you are not successful. So you have to constantly make yourself believe you are a success.

To make yourself believe you are success internally, you go on planning, looking, altering, and continuously convince yourself to believe the ideas with which you built your life is right.

‘See, so many people my age and my colleagues don’t have all this, this, and this. I have all this, this, and this. So I am successful.’ But one corner of your mind laughs at you. ‘no, no!’ But the other side, ‘no, no, no, I am a success!’

‘Which side can I support? One part of me claims and consoles me I am success. The other part of me claims and condemns me as a failure. Which part should I support?’ If you are in utter confusion, be very clear, the seeking has started in you! If you have not yet faced the confusion, the possibility for transformation has not yet opened.

The first thing any person has to face in life for enlightenment is utter confusion: ‘am I successful or am I a failure?’ As long as you are convinced you see what exists, you will not have this confusion. And we are afraid of entering into the confusion. We do not want to rock the boat.

‘No, it is all going well! Why unnecessarily create a problem?’ You do not want to come to terms with the reality. You do not want to take any argument which is rising in you to the logical conclusion.

How many of you cognize, how many of you postpone taking any logical arguments in you due to this logical conclusion? When the arguments rise, you postpone it, you push it aside. You don’t want to take it to a logical conclusion. You suppress it. You push it under the carpet. How many of you do this in your life?

It is life! Look in. Anything you push under the carpet without taking it to the logical conclusion becomes a mechanism which restrains your possibility.

The pattern of not reaching to the logical conclusion is what I call ‘life imprisonment!’ Constantly pushing things under the carpet! You don’t understand, under your carpet is a big volcano in there! You are sitting on a volcano! How will you be able to rest? How will you be in restful awareness?

That is why you are not able to sit with you. Religion has to start from the space of restful awareness. Conflict resolution is the ability to take our logical thinking to the logical conclusion.

We have to start with restful awareness. We have to start with carrying the right space.

Seeking reorganizes and rejuvenates your inner image. It beautifully evolves a very powerful inner image, a very powerful outer image, and a very powerful life image. Living with the people in whom seeking is awakened is Kailayai, Kailasa (abode of Lord Shiva).

Seeking is the Hindu grand narrative. Before expanding on this new word, which I uttered, 'the Hindu grand narrative,' I wanted to acknowledge and thank Sri Rajiv Malhotra, it is from his article that I picked up this word 'the Hindu grand narrative' and the concept of Hindu grand narrative.

The grand narrative means that every civilization has a collective identity. Sometimes artificially created with integrity, and sometimes artificially created without integrity.

The grand narrative is the collective inner image each civilization creates. Each civilization adopts their own grand narrative. Sometimes the grand narrative evolves spontaneously and sometimes the grand narrative evolves in an organized way.

just spontaneously the grand narrative started, and it has spread all over the world as Shirdi Sai movement.

Organized way grand narrative is Bhagavan Swaminarayana's movement. Hindiuism has multiple grand narratives. All major countries have their grand narrative, all major civilizations have their grand narrative based on their need and time.

So this grand narrative is one of the most important thing to guide the existing civilization or to bring any revolution in the civilization or to guide the flow of the civilization, or even to revive any civilization. For anything, you need a clear-cut grand narrative so that your inner image can be beautifully aligned.

My grand narrative was Arunagiri Yogiswara and Annamalai Swamigal (my Gurus). All the time I will remember only these two. Any practical actions, I will remember Annamalai Swamigal. Any of mystical things, I will remember Arunagiri Yogishwara.

If I have to move mountains or do something great, then immediately I fall into the space of Arunaguri Yogishwara. For any ordinary action I will think about, 'at this moment, how Annamalai Swamigal will respond?' That is the way I grew up, until the age of twelve. My Grand Narrative was Arunaguri Yogishwara and Annamalai Swamigal. Every situation I will think, 'how will he behave? How will he respond? How will he react?' So they became my grand narrative inside.

You need a grand narrative only then can you align your inner image to it. Your need for Guru is nothing, but your need for a grand narrative. Whoever accepts Me as their Guru, for all of you I have become the grand narrative. This is the way the grand narratives get built.

We had thousands of grand narratives in each locality. For example, for Maharastra, India Sant Gnaneshwara was the Grand Narrative. For Karnataka, India Bhagavan Bassavanna, was the grand narrative.

If I look at what is the grand narrative of Hinduism, it cannot just be a concept, it has to be a person, very physical, down to earth, which people can perceive in their level and play with their visualization, and use it to align themselves.

If a concept can be a grand narrative of Hinduism, then seeking is the grand narrative of Hinduism.

Seeking is the grand narrative that can be cherished, enjoyed, and visualized, with which you can play with your visualization, which can inspire you to align your inner image, which can remind you again and again the highest purpose of your Existence. Seeking which can raise you to the space of seeking, again and again.

Hindus have denied the need for a grand narrative for at least last two hundred years. We have not realized we need a grand narrative. That is the collective identity for all of us.

We are trying to push this problem under the carpet, saying, 'no, no, no, if you create the grand narrative of Krishna, all the Shaivaites (Shiva devotees) will be dropped out. If you create the grand narrative of Shiva, all the Vaishnavaites (Vishnu devotees) will be dropped out. If you create the grand narrative of Devi, all the other traditions will be dropped out.'

Hindus are intelligent enough to move from one Ishta Devata (chosen deity) to another Ishta Devata. If you have not had at least six to seven Ishta Devatas, you are never a seeker. If you are a seeker, you would have had at least six to seven Ishta Devatas. Because, every time you evolve, you will connect with the next level of definition.

If you receive Shiva as the embodiment of Enlightenment, at the age of seven you may not have felt connected with Him. At the age of seven, you need a Ganesha who nicely eats and roams around and jumps.

Then at the age of fourteen, the grand narrative of Subramanya would have been more appealing for you: youth, beauty, valor, and visor than Ganesha.

Then after you have had two to three girlfriends, then you need Shiva – the grand narrative of Enlightenment. You will simply feel connected. So at different times when you evolve, you will feel connected to the different grand narratives.

If we can make 10,000 people enlightened without the Hindu grand narratives, then with the Hindu Grand Narrative, we will be able to make easily 100,000 people enlightened.

That is the away to take away people's depression, to take away the people's fatigue, and to take away the people's boredom.

Human beings live in the intoxication of grand narrative, and intoxication of the grand narrative is required to go through forced depression by the narratives given to you by society. As a mother you should be this, this, and this. As a father you should be this, this, and this. As a brother you should be this, this, and this.

This all forced on you and your bio-memory is made to believe it. When you face some difficulty and problems, b ecause of these social narratives about you, the intoxication of grand narrative takes away the depression. Grand narrative is the antidote for all the s ufferings you created based on your social narratives. It is such powerful inspiration to remove your mental fatigue, tiredness and boredom.

The grand narrative is required to keep the seeking up and alive and active, and make you enlightened.

Prayer is an important component of our life especially if you are a seeker. Just like breathing, prayer becomes a very important part of you. Prayer just becomes you! I am not saying to you, for you. This means that one part of you should become a prayer.

Prayer is very important component, very important part of your life, especially if you are seeker. But you always need to know the right context and understanding you need to hold during prayer.

When you pray to a deity or Guru have this context: I am praying to the source where you and me are one and the same.

I do not know whether that source is here or there, because in the beginning when you are too much inside, the source will be outside. Slowly, slowly when you start becoming lighter and lighter, the source will move inside.

In the beginning when you are too much occupied inside, the source where you and the Guru or God meet will be outside. Because you are too much inside, how can the source be here? But, slowly, slowly when you become lighter and lighter, more and more have completion, the source moves inside. So pray, ‘Oh the source, where you and me are one and the same, I pray to you, you make this into reality.’ Whatever you want to say, say it.

In this way, you will never feel cheated. If you have too much incompletion inside you, naturally the source will be on the Guru’s being. If there is less incompletion, more completion in you, the source will start moving towards you. When you become completely complete, the source will be centered on you.

So you don’t even have to worry where the source is. Just say, ‘Oh the source, where ‘me and you’ are one and the same, make this prayer into reality.’ Ask for whatever you want to make it into reality.

You can also put a footnote, ‘if something I am asking is not right for me, then give me the intelligence to develop myself’ or you can also say, ‘even if you think it is not right, I want only this..’ You have a right. All I am asking you is: have the right understanding so that the prayer becomes a beautiful process for you to experience Oneness, Advaita.

Whether we understand or not, catch it or not, the reality is SO’HAM ASMI. Whether you got it or not the reality is SOH’AM ASMI, I Am He. In this way, your every moment of prayer will be a process for you to achieve Oneness, Living Enlightenment. Go on praying, even if you have not got what you wanted, you will get what HE wanted. Prayers should be put in the right context.

Your life should be a long prayer from the context of SO’HAM ASMI. From the wrong context, prayer will always be painful. With the right context, prayer can be an amazing process for Oneness. Prayer can be amazing spiritual process f or you to experience Oneness.

Never ever a prayer uttered from the right context goes to waste or unheard. Never think, never doubt, it goes waste or unheard. You can shake the sun and you can move the moon, with prayers, you are not just a developed version of a monkey.

Prayer from the right context will directly lead you to Enlightenment without any of the feeling of being cheated. If you have wrong context about prayer, then only will you feel cheated. ‘Oh I prayed for ten years for this, He did not give it to me.’ When you pray from the right context, He may not give what you asked for, He would have given Himself to you.

Remember the right context of prayer and pray. He will give Himself to you. The words uttered during prayer gets bolted in your muscle-memory, the context you hold gets bolted in your bio-memory. Whatever gets bolted in your bio-memory becomes Reality.

When you enter into the search of spiritual knowledge, seeking, you will have such liberating truths about freedom.

All powerfulness! All these great truths will be told, but be very clear, unless they become experience, don't try to mess up with the concepts of freedom.

Without becoming Paramahamsa, try to live like a Paramahamsa, really without getting to the space of non-attachment, trying to live as if unattached. This is a dangerous game people will play. But of course, nobody else needs to punish them, they themselves will be punishing themselves.

Incomplete knowledge makes you arrogant, and makes you lose your seeking, makes you egoistic, and growth gets stopped by the incomplete knowledge.

Many people are trying to grab the powers of Enlightenment without taking the responsibility of Enlightenment, and without having the experience of Enlightenment.

Understand, Enlightenment is not expertise, it is experience. People start thinking, if they learn how I behave, how I live, and expertise my behavior, they can become enlightened or they can show themselves as enlightened.

Enlightenment comes as experience, not from expertise. It is from experience.

The definition of an Enlightened Being is that His level of seeking will be totally different from your level. He will continue to be seeking, because seeking is the only way He will be alive. That's the only way He even makes you understand He is alive, that's the only qualification of His existence.

See, you can prove you are alive by so many things: eating a sweet, having physical pleasures, through all of that you can prove that you are alive to yourself and to others.

But an Enlightened Being is alive only in his seeking, that is the only way He reminds himself He is alive, and He proves He is alive to others. To that level, His very core will be seeking. His very core will be seeking!

There are two logics. Understand, this hall has two doors. This is the first statement. The second statement is, one door is open. The third statement automatically you will assume that the other door is closed.

This is human logic which has a flaw. Unless you check you can't say that the other door is open. But 99% of the time, you will assume it is. The fact that the other door may be opened or maybe closed can only be confirmed after checking.

But your logic is such, that the moment you hear the first statement: this hall has two doors, and the second statement: one door is open, the third statement you will assume: the other door is closed. It is irrational rational logic. What you call as rational, but irrational.

This is the same logic with which you operate your body. If your eyes can see out, you automatically come to the conclusion that they can't see in. Yours eyes have the capacity to roll 360 degrees. You can see anything inside your body and outside, in any way.

When you believe you can see any distance in the sky outside, you automatically shut down the possibility you can see in. The irrational rational logic. If one door is open, automatically you come to the conclusion the other door is closed. You don’t even go there and see and then decide.

The logic you believe in your normal life that is the same logic with which you handle your body, and your body’s capability and abilities are developed. If you believe, you can see up and in from the beginning, your body will develop these capabilities.

If you believe you can only see up and not in, you will only have that power, the other power will be forgotten. Understand, your beliefs about life will naturally impact, in a very strong way, your beliefs about your body. Your beliefs about your body will impact the abilities and capabilities your body can experience and express.

If you believe you can only see out, you will be praying, ‘Oh God, where are you? Show me.’ Only if you understand, you can see out and in, you will declare, ‘Yes, Oh Lord, where are you? Reveal who is in me.’

A man who decides if the first door is open, the second door will be closed, is an atheist. A man who thinks, let’s check and then tell, whether the second door is open or closed, is a Seeker.

A man who has realized not only the second door is open, even the first door will open the moment I touch it, is Enlightened. The man who can see whether the door is closed or open, is an Incarnation.

Understand, what you call as rational logic is not reality. That is why I insist, again and again, anything which limits your belief about life is out of incompletion.

Simply if your beliefs about life and you can be recognized, you can walk out of tons of problems, and you will start expressing extraordinary powers and capabilities.

The solutions lies in the re-cognitions, not in anything else. Solution is re-organizing your beliefs, and re-strategizing your understandings. Re-strategizing your life based on new understandings and reinventing yourself.

THE PATH OF A SEEKER

When you are tired of dreaming or you can't handle dreaming anymore, you decide to wake up. If there is a nightmare, if there is a fantasy dream, where the dream becomes too sweet or too harsh to handle, then you will wake up.

In the same way, in the waking state, if you make it too sweet or too harsh, you will become awakened.

Making it too harsh and becoming awakened, is the lifestyle of a renunciation. Making it too sweet and waking up, is the lifestyle of devotion.

In the dream state, if you see two tigers chasing you or two snakes chasing you, it is too harsh to handle, you will wake up. In the same way, if it is too fantastic, exactly the same place where you always want it to be is there, the same person with whom you want to be is there, you will suddenly wake up.

If it is too sweet, you will wake up. If it too harsh, you will wake up. So the dream state is sustained in the struggle, not in the extreme. Only in the struggle, the dream continues, not in the extreme.

In the same way, in the waking state, if it is extreme sweetness, you will wake up or extreme harshness, you will wake up.

But as long as there is a struggle between these two, the struggle between the extreme sweetness and harshness, between greed and fear, you will continue to maintain this waking state. If any one takes over, it is all over.

Allowing the lifestyle of extreme harshness and getting awakened, is the lifestyle of a renunciation, a Naga, Aghori. Allowing the extreme sweetness and awakening, is the lifestyle of devotion, a Shavaite. Using both of the process and getting awakened, is the lifestyle of a Nithyanandaite.

I use all available, possible methods, process, kriyas to help you into awakening, whether it is a nightmare or a fantasy dream, you will wake up.

Neither fantasy dream nor nightmare will allow you to continue to sleep. In the same way, neither extreme harshness nor the extreme sweetness will help you to continue your waking state. It will lead to awakening.

If life itself brings the harshness and awakens you, if life itself brings that sweetness and awakens you, you will be wasting a lot of time. You voluntarily getting into that state, cooperating for your awakening, is what I call Seeking.

It is not that every night you wake up with the nightmare or fantasy dream. Many nights you wake up because you are too tired. In the same way in your life also, it is not that all the time you can get the extreme harsh dream, harsh reality or extreme pleasant reality. Creating either extreme harshness of reality or extreme pleasantness of reality, leads to your awakening. Cooperating with the life to create the extreme harshness or extreme pleasantness, is Seeking.

Either with the concept of Shiva, you can make every moment of your life extremely pleasant. You know this is the place Sadashiva walked, this is the very air He breathed, this is the very forest He and Devi spent so much of time. Every tree here is the descendent of the trees, which had the fortune of having darshan of Sadashiva. Still the moon and the sun is a living witnesses. You can go on cherishing this and get into the extreme pleasantness, that will lead to awakening.

Your self-doubt, self-hatred, self-denial neither allows you to experience extreme harshness or extreme pleasantness. If you go through pleasantness, you doubt it, ‘No, no, no. This cannot be permanent or eternal.’ If you go through harshness, you build a hope, ‘No, no. I will get out of it and I will have pleasantness, joy one day.’ Hope stops you from going through the extreme harshness. Doubt stops you from going through the extreme pleasantness. When you don't allow both, and continue to enjoy your struggling state, incompletion, you will only maintain your ordinary waking state.

Sleep is the base material out of which dreams can be dreamt. Confusion is the base material out of which this waking state can be perceived. Only when you are in the state of sleep, you can dream. Only when you are in the state of confusion, you can see this waking state.

That is why confusion is a very precious investment for you. Let confusion not become your most precious investment. In every step, every line, every inch of your life, if confusion becomes your basic stand, basic foundation, then imagine the amount of time you are wasting, and energy you are destroying.

There is a beautiful verse in the Taitirriya Upanishad: anando brahmeti vyajānāt – Bliss is God, don't waste it.

You may think, what do they mean by don't waste it. Don't waste it by attributing it to your confusion. If you think confusion is bliss, if you maintain the stand that confusion is bliss, you are wasting your life, destroying your life. You are wasting the bliss, destroying bliss.

Your day to day habits get recorded into your muscle memory. Your lifestyle patterns, like what you feel about you, all that, gets recorded in your bio-memory. Cleaning up your muscle memory can be done by building good habits.

Cleaning up your bio-memory – what do you feel about you consciously, can be done only by awakening the Seeking.

Seeking either leads you into extreme pleasantness or extreme harshness of the Reality. In both ways, it awakens you, whether you get into completing your individual existence, or whether you get into expanding your individual existence into cosmic existence.

If your individual existence becomes cosmic existence by devotion it is called Upāsanā. If your individual existence becomes nothing, by allowing the cosmic existence, it is called Vipāssanā.

In both extremes, you are awakened. Whether Upāsanā or Vipāssanā, you will be awakened. But go through any one extreme, only then you will be awakened.

Don't continue to play in the field of confusion. You will continue to be just in this dilemma - waking state. Dilemma destroys your dignity; takes away your respect for yourself.

Stop seeking, you will find your God! All around us, we come across people who are running towards God. Or who they think God is! They spend so much time and effort in seeking God in all kinds of places. Often, after they believe they have found Him in one place of worship, they will again begin their search in some other new place. They become professional seekers.

Even those who deny God, the atheists, are seekers. They too are seeking their own version of God! In reality, seekers do not ever truly find God. This is because in the inner world, the logic is very different.

The process of seeking is not the same as in the material world, where things exist in separate physical forms.

In the spiritual realm, God is not at the end of a journey. He is not the achievement. He is just in the Awareness.

God is already in each one of us, only we have lost the sensitivity to know His presence! When God is all around us, and inside us, it means that we cannot run towards Him, for in which direction shall we choose to run? He is everywhere!

This is the Awareness we need to have to reach God. This is in fact is true of all goals.

Goals are not reached by frantically running towards them. That makes us tense and creates barriers in the quest. The path should be the quest, not the destination.

If we move towards the destination without expectations, if we work towards goals with no attachments to failure or success, we will find that we become far more productive. We would then work with no stress at all, completely focused on the journey, the process, and the present.

To work in the present in our daily life we need to trust life itself. We need to trust existence or God. This abiding trust in existence is actually the path to God. But we spoil this path by judging all events against our goals set by our minds.

When we sincerely make efforts, immersing ourselves in trust, whatever happens will be good for us. This is what I mean by saying that you actually achieve your goals when you stop running towards them.

Zen masters say: 'When you see Buddha on the road, kill Him!' If you see Him, or think you see Him, he is not real.

When you stop seeking, you will find Him. Seeking makes you tense. It makes you miss your real purpose.

to you in every passing moment.

This is what I mean when I say, 'start living!' This is what we are actually seeking, but we are caught up in the act of seeking instead of in the act of living. So now I tell you: Stop seeking and start living; you will then find what you are seeking!