CHAPTER 3: Pranic Body🔗

The pranic layer is filled with all our desires.

Prana is the life energy that sustains us every moment of our life. Understand, it is not the same as the air you breathe in and out. Prana is the life energy that is carried by the air. For example, if you have to carry a truck of mud from one place to another, the truck is just the carrier. The mud is the real content you are interested in. Similarly, air is the carrier which carries the real content, prana. We don't need air to survive; prana is what is needed.

Prana is associated with five different types of movements or circulation in the body. They are: prana – inhaling of prana, vyana – prana staying inside the body, udana – prana spreading all over the body to every nook and corner, samana – prana leaving the body, and apaana – cleaning of the system.

Please understand that when your desires change, your prana flow or your air flow will change.

For example, if you are caught in lust or any intense desire, your inhaling and exhaling will become intense. The prana going in and coming out will increase. With any desire, the prana flow will change appropriately. If you are in a silent and peaceful mood, the prana flow will be different. It will be so mild that you will not even know that the prana flow is taking place.

Desire is nothing but energy. How should we handle this desire energy?

Mahavira, a great spiritual master, says that when we are born on planet earth, we bring with us all that we need to survive and achieve those desires for which we took birth. Yet, why do we feel we do not have enough? For instance, we take ten thousand dollars and set out to buy a car.

We meet someone on the way who talks of the latest television that one should buy if one can afford to. What happens? We are carried away by the friend's words and enthusiasm for the TV, and we end up buying the television. Then we find that we do not have enough money to buy the car that we actually needed! This is how we experience the inadequacies in our lives.

Those desires that you bring with you to fulfill in this life are called prarabdha karma. But after you are born, society imposes thousands of desires on you. You pick up desires from each and everyone whom you meet in life and from commercials and try to fulfill them. All the time, you are fulfilling someone else's desires and not your own, like the example of buying the latest television. You are caught in a trap. You do not have energy, money or time to fulfill all these desires. Therefore, forgetting that all those desires were really the ones that you picked up from others, you blame life and God for not being able to fulfill your desires. You do not feel a sense of abundance and the blessed showering of Existence in your life. Instead, you feel depleted and cheated.

When you infuse energy into the pranic layer, only your real desires will stay. The borrowed desires will leave you! As with a tree when you shake it, the old and dry leaves fall while young leaves of energy stay, when you do this meditation, other people's desires will all fall away and only your dreams, your desires, will stay. Understand that your own desires that you came with, into this life are already imbued with the energy to fulfill them. Borrowed desires are not so deep and energy filled. But what happens is that you use the energy you came with to fulfill these borrowed dreams and complain that life does not supply you the energy you need to fulfill your desires. When you work on energizing the pranic layer, all the desires imposed on you by others will drop.

You design your desires when you are born. When other desires are imposed on you, your breathing changes; it becomes shallow. If you have observed kids when they are asleep, you can see that they breathe with their whole body. When social conditioning happens, your breathing becomes shallow and confined to the nose.

Prarabdha karma is your own samskaras that you brought with you. Borrowed samskaras change the way your prana happens. When you readjust your prana, all the false desires fall off. The purpose of this meditation is to strengthen your own desires, not to drop all desires.

If you do not work out the desires that you brought with you, that is your prarabdha, you become suicidal; you develop cancer. Right from birth we bring with us the plan for major events such as what we want to be in terms of career, marriage, children, etc.

The idea that your desires are never to be fulfilled is wrong. Drop that idea. Prarabdha karma itself means desires that you bring along with its own energy for fulfillment. Understand this very clearly.

Our desires are like Pandora's box! We have accumulated so many and kept them. Now, open Pandora's box and see what is inside. Do not condemn your desires; do not suppress them; do not judge. Whatever is there, let it out. We can classify desires into four types: desires to do with sensual pleasures, name and fame, material possessions and spiritual experiences.

Write down all your desires. Do not edit them as you write. Write in the language you think is the most effective way to express your desires. It is for you and only you. Write on a separate paper. When you have finished writing, go through your desires. Wherever you find a self contradicting thought or desire, change it to a positive thought. For example, instead of saying, 'I should not be poor', you can say, 'I should be wealthy.' Drop the word poor. Every time you use the word poor, you are empowering it along with the words 'I should not be'. So change the sentence to the corresponding positive statement: I should be wealthy.

Let go of the negative thoughts. You can follow this small technique to get rid of the negative words in your system: Talk to yourself especially in the mornings and before going to bed. Express all your thoughts only through positive words. Use that time to go deep into your system and spread only positive words and thoughts. Then your whole mental setup will change to a highly positive one. This very change will cause things to happen for you.

A man with an advanced mental age is the one who learns through intelligence; he is the one who clearly understands from his very first desire, that no desire, when fulfilled, will give him true happiness! He realizes that the ultimate goal lies beyond all desires. He will be able to see through the whole thing and analyze it. He will know that the real fulfillment comes from within himself, and not from outer world things such as desires.

As we said earlier, your prarabdha is the desires that you bring with you when you come. Let us now analyse how exactly these borrowed desires take shape. It is not necessary that you yourself pick them up. Society also imposes them on you. Society is the one that first teaches you how to pick up desires from others. At a very young age, parents sow the seed of comparison in you for small things like academic performance, following cleanliness, keeping your things neatly and so on. They know to teach only by comparing you with others in all these contexts. They never just tell you the importance of it and leave it at that. This is how you learn how to borrow desires from others.

For example, when you are on your own at home, you will feel grateful for all things that you own and are blessed with. You will feel a pleasant feeling engulfing you, and a beautiful sense of gratitude overflowing from you. But the moment you open your eyes to the outer world, if you happen to pick up some desire that belongs to others, it becomes ugly again. The earlier beauty in you and your home disappears and the whole thing becomes ugly again. Again, you start pulling and pushing yourself with the freshly borrowed desires. Anything borrowed is ugly because it is not natural; it is forced or artificial, and anything that is artificial is not beautiful.

If you wish to be an artist but land up being an engineer because your father wanted you to be so, then, that again is ugly. You being an engineer is a borrowed desire. Had you been an artist, you might have been so beautiful. Who knows, maybe you were a born artist. Whatever is your nature, that is your own desire. The rest are borrowed. This is a great truth that I am telling you.

Understand this very clearly. Whatever is your nature constitutes the desires that you brought with you when you came. If allowed to, these desires will express through you in a natural way and fulfill every moment of your life. All other actions and miseries that happen in you are due to borrowed desires. Your own desires if allowed to be fulfilled, will by nature purify and expand your inner space. Borrowed desires on the other hand, will take you again and again to the outer world and put you only in depression. You will be true not to yourself or your own being, but to others and you will lose your way in life. You will waste your energy and land in depression and low energy again and again.

I tell you that almost every desire of ours is borrowed because our own desires are our nature! So if you sit and think, you will be able to clearly see how each and every action of ours is driven by what we picked up from someone. It is a very subtle game sometimes. But with intelligence, we will be able to trace the root of every action of ours. If we live with this awareness, it is more than enough. Just the awareness will take us beyond desires and keep us in peace and bliss.

In Jainism, there is a belief that when you are born, the entire quantity of food and energy that you will need during your lifetime is sent along with you. This is a way of saying that whatever are your true requirements in this birth, Existence equips you with the energy to fulfill them before sending you to planet earth.

So understand that if at all you are feeling that your desires are not getting fulfilled, it is because of your own doing, not because of God or your parents or anyone around you.

One more important thing about desires, I want to tell you. Desires are energy for our body. It is the fuel without which we will not even get up from our bed. The reason why you even stir from your bed is because of the desire to do something. Without desire you will not even get up from the bed. To move out of bed, you need energy. That energy is desire. Desire itself is no problem. There is nothing wrong in having desires and fulfilling them.

The whole problem is we start having self-contradicting desires. For example, we want all the comforts, but we don't want to take up any responsibility. This is one major area of self-contradiction. Next, we want to take a vacation for which we need money. For money we need to work. These two desires are contradictory. What happens because of this? You lie on the Hawaii beach thinking about work! Misery starts! There is no fulfillment. This is exactly what I mean by self-contradicting desires. You pick up something from someone, you go behind it, but when you are trying to fulfill it, you start thinking about something else because you have picked up something else from someone else! This is why we need to bring awareness into our borrowed desires. They start becoming self-contradictory because you are picking up different things from different people!

Another more subtle example of self-contradictory desire lies in the language we use. If you want to get rid of a headache, what do you say? 'Let me not have headache.' But, the word 'headache' gets impressed in your inner space as deeply as the words 'let me not have'. The vibration of the word 'headache' is filling your inner space. So this is again self-contradictory because while you don't want the headache, you are repeatedly empowering it! And if you say 'I am healthy' you create another conflict within yourself since immediately another voice inside you will answer, saying 'That's not true. I'm not well.' Now the fight has started! Just say, 'Let me be healthy.' That's all.

Similarly, there is a difference between your needs and wants. Your needs are already taken care of in some way. It is possible to satisfy your needs, but it becomes impossible to satisfy your wants because they are changing and unclear all the time. Every time one want or desire is fulfilled, a hundred more come up. It is our nature to want endlessly, because we are continuously getting input through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch! The more input we get, the more we want.

What is the difference between a need and a want? Take, for example, a creeper that is growing in your garden. For the creeper to grow upwards, it needs a support like a tree or a bamboo stick or a pillar or something. Without this support it will only grow horizontally and get crushed by people walking over it. This is an example of a need for the plants' survival. If you analyse all your desires with the help of this example, just imagine what will happen! You will see that virtually everything that you desire is a want and not a need!

The wandering sadhus (spiritual seekers) in the Himalayas live with so little. Their entire list of possessions will be a stick to wards off wild animals and a small water pot. That's all! I lived like that for so many years during my pre-enlightenment period! You don't know the liberation it is to live like that. You might say 'Swamiji, for sannyasis it is alright, but what about householders like us who have so many things to be done with husband, wife, children, etc.' Understand, I am not telling you to have only a water pot and stick, no! I am more practical than you - understand that first! I am only saying, first become clear of the difference between needs and wants. That is the first step towards more peaceful living. As this becomes clear, slowly, the want-based attitude in you will start changing and automatically, life will move from discontent to fulfillment, that's all. You will see that fulfillment happens not because you got what you wanted but because you understood that you have all that you need!

When this understanding happens, you will also stop picking up desires from others. You will stop comparing yourself with others. You will remain focused within yourself instead of outside of you. Once this happens, your wants will in no way affect your inner space.

There is a beautiful sutra in the Shiva Sutras where Lord Shiva gives a technique to handle one's desires. It says,

Do you see how simple this technique is? But anything simple is complex for the human mind. To begin with, all simple things need you to be simple yourself. This is the basic requirement, or the pre-requisite to understand or internalize the technique.

Here Shiva directly says, 'Whenever a desire arises in you, consider it.' He means, 'Just see, don't judge'. Simply be an unbiased witness, an observer, not a judge.

If you judge something as right or wrong, you will not be able to drop the idea or desire. The moment you say that something is wrong; you have unconsciously begun to enjoy it because right from a young age you have been trained to derive pleasure in enjoying what society labels as wrong. The moment you judge something as right also, you start enjoying it because it is right!

Shiva says, 'See it, and the moment you see it, unclutch from it!' He is teaching renunciation - simple and pure. People may ask, 'How can this be possible? How can we renounce?' I tell them, 'Then follow the method that you know to overcome it, that's all, simple!' You either learn from an enlightened master, or life will teach you. Life is going to teach you. If you learn from the master, it will be a lot easier for you because he will talk to you in the language that you can understand directly. You may not directly understand the language that life speaks in. Because of this, the process for you will be delayed and you will receive strong punches also. By the time you start realizing the punches, start interpreting and understanding the messages conveyed by the incidents in your life, it might be too late.

Please understand that it is always better to learn from the master who is talking to you in the same language that you understand, the language that you communicate in, relate with. If you learn from him, it will be a lot easier for you as you do not have to go through all the painful experiences.

So, Shiva says, ‘Suddenly unclutch! Even before the mind starts arguing with you, even before the mind starts asking, ‘Should I unclutch or not?’ suddenly unclutch, that’s all. If you keep arguing with the mind, you will never unclutch.

I always tell people, ‘Don’t think before you jump. If you think, you will never jump’. If you keep thinking, you will never jump. You will jump only the moment you stop thinking. So don’t think before you jump. There is a saying, ‘Think twice before you jump,’ or ‘Look before you leap’. I say ‘No! If you think, you will never jump.’ Even before your mind becomes aware, unclutch; you are enlightened.

There is a beautiful story:

One lady goes to Ramakrishna, the great enlightened master and says, ‘Master, my husband threatens me that he will become a swami, that he will leave me and go away, that he will renounce life and go away.’ Ramakrishna says, 'Don't bother, it will never happen'. She is surprised to hear this and says, 'No, no master. He is not joking. He is very serious about what he is saying.'

Ramakrishna then narrates an incident to her.

There was one man threatening his wife, 'I will go away and become a swami. I will renounce life and go away.' This is actually a technique used by frustrated men mostly in India. They threaten their women because in India women are not economically independent. If the wife nags the husband too much, this is the way he will respond.

This lady goes and complains to the man's elder brother, her brother-in-law, 'Your brother is threatening me that he will become a swami, please advise him.'

The elder brother says, 'Don't bother, it will never happen.'

The lady asks, 'How do you say it will never happen? My husband is very serious about what he is saying.'

He replies, 'I shall show you how a person becomes a swami, just watch.' So saying, he removes his clothes and throws them away. He picks up a towel and walks away. He left the house and became a swami!

The elder brother shows, 'This is the way to become a swami,' and really became one!

The person who talks will never do. The person who keeps thinking also will never do. The person who is thinking will never jump. Ramakrishna relates this story and consoles the lady, 'Don't bother, the person who threatens will never move.' When you are filled with some desire and you suddenly disconnect from it, you will experience a new inner space, an empty space - that inner space which is ready to experience your own reality. However, the big problem is that whenever you are ready to unclutch from some desire, it is for the sake of some other desire! You are not ready to unclutch completely. You are ready to unclutch from one if you have the promise that the other will come to you. If you are greedy for some other desire, you are ready to unclutch from this desire.

We handle desires at three levels. In the first level, we have too many desires that are always self-contradicting. Even if there are only two desires, they will contradict each other. In the second level, there is only one object. You fulfill that but still feel emptiness. You do not feel completely fulfilled. In the third level, there is no object, there is just overflowing energy. Desire without any object is bliss. In kids energy overflows as desires.

Pure desire is desire without any object. It is overflowing energy for no reason. Pure desire is actually just an overflowing, that's all. It is a causeless overflowing. When you further purify this with awareness, you come to the stage of satori; you get a glimpse of samadhi; that is, you are in a state of pure awareness. You reach this not by suppressing, but by being aware, by purifying it.

What is the root cause of desire? We feel we have to achieve something, some goal in life all the time. We feel we need to fulfill the purpose of life. All desires are to reach towards what we think is the goal of life at that moment. That brings us to the important issue of renunciation…

I have seen people who renounce drinking because they hear that in heaven, they are served much better liquor. This is part of the promises that are made to them. It is believed that in heaven you will have dancing maidens and you get different kinds of liquor and music. These people are fantasizing about heaven and renouncing this world! Of course in a way, it is good that they don't do these things here! But I always tell them, renouncing purely for enlightenment is renunciation; renouncing for some other desire is not renunciation. It is a bargain, a business.

A small story:

One man thought to himself, 'If I undertake austerities here and renounce everything, I may get all the best things in heaven.' So he was practicing all kinds of austerities, and became a big guru with many disciples and followers. One day, he died and reached heaven.

One of his disciples who was always with him thought, 'How can I live without my guru?' So he also died and reached heaven.

While he searched for his guru in heaven, he was thinking, 'My guru led such an austere life that he must have got the best rewards. He must be enjoying all the beautiful heavenly women and all the liquor that is served here. He must be really singing and dancing and enjoying this eternal pleasure.'

Suddenly, he saw the guru sitting next to a beautiful woman, probably a famous actress! He was sitting with her, drinking and enjoying. He approached his guru and said, 'Master! I am so happy to see your austerity well rewarded. O! What a gift she is for you!' At that point, the girl immediately intervened and said, 'Stop! I am not the gift for your guru; he is the punishment for me!'

So do not expect any heavenly pleasures while renouncing! See, even in day to day life, if you meditate with the thought that you will have more power to enjoy pleasures later, that you will have other benefits, you are again using meditation as a utility.

This is a million-dollar question!

The answer to this is:

The whole of Existence, the whole universe, is purposeless!

Of course, it would be very shocking to hear this. From a very young age, we are taught and socially conditioned to believe that life has got some purpose. We are made to run towards some goal, towards some purpose, all the time.

'What is life without purpose?' you may ask. Any activity, let alone one's entire life, has to have a purpose, a definition, and an end point, to make it meaningful. That purpose is what drives us, motivates us and provides energy to carry on with our day-to-day activities.

So to hear a statement such as 'Life has no purpose', might confuse you. You would say, 'All our lives, we have been brought up to believe that we are here for a purpose.' This is because at every stage of our lives, a different purpose is drilled into our heads and we are made to work towards that purpose. As children, we are expected to do well in school. Once grown up, we are supposed to be married happily, and bring up children.

During each phase in our lives, we have specific templates, specific guidelines, that society and our families have set up for us. So you might now ask, 'How can we let them down? How can we believe that all these expectations are wrong, and that there is no purpose to life?' You might feel that I am trying to turn your whole life upside down!

The more you run towards a goal, the more you are considered to be a successful person. More the speed, more you are respected; more the speed, more the rewards. From your birth, again and again, society teaches you that life has got some purpose, that life has some goal. Life without purpose seems meaningless to us. We cannot even comprehend such a possibility.

Just understand that this is only what you have been brought up to believe, and nothing else. This is not the truth of Existence. Life does not need any defined goal to make living worthwhile, meaningful and happy. In fact, the absence of purpose makes our life meaningful. The absence of goals makes living worthwhile.

The universe or Nature has no purpose. It just is. It exists. A river runs downhill towards the ocean because it is its nature to run downhill. It is not because it has a purpose to meet the ocean. Our life too, has no purpose. We were not born for a purpose. We were born to live, to enjoy life and to be happy. Instead, we set ourselves up for unhappiness by setting goals for ourselves. And almost always, these goals are based on fantasies, not on realities. In the process, we stop enjoying real life.

The more you run towards goals, the more you miss life itself, because when you run, you miss the wonderful touch of the earth beneath your feet!

The man who is continuously bothered about the goal will never be able to enjoy his life. He continuously lives in the future and ignores the present. When we are in the present moment, the 'here and now', we do not need a goal to guide us.

Just awareness of the present moment will automatically lead us to do what needs to be done at that point in time. When the present moment is taken care of with awareness, the future gets resolved by itself. As long as the path is right, whatever destination we reach will be right. We do not need to define the destination; the right path defines its own destination.

When we don't live with awareness in the present moment, our mind starts straying towards either the past or the future. That is the problem. We constantly worry about the future. We constantly think of the past, relate it to our future and define our expectations based on what we have missed in the past, or what we believe will provide us happiness in the future.

For example, when you are studying, you always think, 'When I have a job, my life will be happy.' When you have your job you think, 'After marriage my life will be happy.' After marriage, you think, 'When I have kids and my own house, my life will be blissful.' After you have kids and your own house, you think, 'When my kids grow up and support themselves, all my responsibilities will be over, and I will be peaceful and happy.' By the time your kids are settled, by the time your responsibilities are over, when you want to relax, your being is conditioned so much, that you can't relax!

A small story:

The emperor of a city came out from his palace for his morning walk. While he was walking, he met a beggar and asked the beggar, ‘What do you want?’

The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, ‘You are asking me if you can fulfill my desire?’

The King was offended by the beggar and said, ‘What is it? Just tell me and I can fulfill your desire.’

The beggar told the emperor, ‘Think twice before you promise anything.’ This was no ordinary beggar! He was the emperor’s spiritual master from the king’s past life. In the previous birth, the emperor missed the goal of enlightenment so the master promised to return to awaken the emperor in the next life.

But the king had forgotten all this completely. Nobody remembers past lives.

In his arrogance, the emperor insisted to the beggar, ‘I will fulfill anything you ask for. What is your desire that I cannot fulfill it? I am a very powerful emperor.’

The beggar said, ‘My desire is a very simple one. Do you see this begging bowl? Can you fill this bowl with something?’

The emperor called one of his ministers and told him, ‘Fill this man’s begging bowl with money.’

The minister went, got some money and put it in the bowl. Soon it disappeared! Again he put in some money and again it disappeared. No matter how much or how often money was put in, the begging bowl remained empty. The news of this spread throughout the whole capital, and a huge crowd gathered near the palace. The emperor's prestige was now at stake. He told his ministers, 'Even if the whole kingdom is lost, I am ready for it, but I cannot be defeated by this beggar.' Pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and his treasuries were being offered, all lost into the begging bowl.

As evening arrived the people stood and watched in utter silence. The king fell at the feet of the beggar and admitted his defeat. He said, 'You are right. I cannot manage this simple thing! Before you leave please tell me one thing, what is the begging bowl made of?'

The beggar laughed at the emperor and said, 'There is no secret. It is made from the same stuff as everyone's mind. It is simply made up of human desire!'

When you understand deeply that the mind is like the begging bowl that can never be filled, it can have a great, healing effect. This understanding can transform your life completely.

Let us get into the mechanism of desire. First, there is a great excitement, a great thrill and a feeling of adventure. We feel a great kick about the deisre. It could be a new car, a new house, increased bank balance...anything. But suddenly, there are moments when everything becomes meaningless!

What happens after some time? Our mind has dematerialized the whole thing. The car is standing in the garage, but there is no excitement anymore. The excitement was only in getting it. The desire is fulfilled, the car is in the garage, the money is in the bank account, but the excitement has disappeared. Again the emptiness is there, ready to eat us up. Again we have to create another desire to escape this abyss.

This is how we move from one desire to another desire. This is how one remains a beggar. Our whole life proves it again and again. If we observe the subtleties of it we will see that every desire only frustrates. The day we understand that desire will fail to satisfy us, then comes the turning point in our life.

Most of us need to get stressed out before we can relax. We don't know what it is to relax. When I tell people to relax during the meditation workshops, they ask me, 'Swamiji, please give us a few guidelines how to relax!'

The tension of running behind something has become part of our being. It has become part of our conditioning. After that, resting will not be rest anymore; it will not be relaxation anymore. Happiness is where we are. It is not where we think we should be. It is good to have an idea about where we should be, in terms of business strategies, but it is not a good idea to have our happiness invested in it. The two are clearly exclusive. What happens to your goals is a separate thread. What you ARE is a separate thread. If you are able to separate the two, relaxing will never be a problem. It is only because you have tied happiness and your goals together, that you need to run behind the goals at the cost of your real happiness.

And one more thing: when you are too caught up in your goals, you might be shutting yourself out to so many beautiful things that are going on around you simply because you don't have the time to stop and look at them!

Another small story:

A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided that he was going to give up and move to the country. He wanted to become a chicken farmer. He found a nice, used chicken farm, and bought it. It turned out that his next door neighbor was also a chicken farmer.

The neighbor visited him one day and said, 'Chicken farming isn't easy. I will help you get started; I will give you 100 chicks to start with.

The city man was thrilled. Two weeks later, the neighbor stopped by to see how things were going. The city man said. 'Not too good. All 100 chickens died.'

The neighbor said, 'Oh, I can't believe that. I've never had any trouble with my chickens. I will give you 100 more.

Another two weeks went by, and the neighbor stopped in again. The city man said, 'You are not going to believe this, but the second 100 chickens died too.'

Astounded, the neighbor asked, 'What went wrong? What did you do to them?'

'Well,' said the city man, 'I'm not sure whether I'm planting them too deep or not far enough apart.'

Just imagine! The city man was actually planting the chicks! This is what happens when you are stuck with ideas and goals. You miss the many more beautiful ways in which things are done.

Be very clear that life has meaning but no purpose. Enjoy the path and the goal is reached! Your very nature is bliss. Experiencing that every moment is the path and the goal.

We may wonder why we exist when there is no goal to work for or look forward to.

We have to understand an important thing. When desire disappears, the energy behind the desire still remains. Man as such is energy. That should not be forgotten. We have always been trained to think that man is matter.

The first line of the Isa Vasya Upanishad is 'Isa vasyam idam sarvam' - All that exists is energy. Desire is also a form of energy. That is why you can turn one desire into another. The desire energy at one point may be a manifestation of greed; in another moment, the same energy may transform into anger. In another case, it may transform into depression.

Energy cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed. This is what science also says. What happens when we transcend desire? It cannot now be manifested as greed or fear or anger, which are all due to external causes. The whole energy manifests itself as pure causeless compassion! You cannot create compassion. It happens because of transformation of energy. Then the whole energy starts overflowing causelessly! That is the beauty and definition for compassion. It is the causeless overflowing of energy. It is causeless because there is no cause like greed or fear or anger or anything. It just IS.

An important thing to understand is that desire can exist only in unconsciousness. Only when you are unaware can desire exist. Look inside yourself when you have a desire or when you are angry or depressed. Look clearly at what is rising in you, what is happening inside you. The moment you look at the desire objectively, with awareness, you will see that the desire simply loses power; it just dissolves!

A fundamental law of Existence is that you and your desires together create the reality around you. Existence responds to what you desire. For example, if you are afraid, that very desire of having fear will invoke the desire to frighten you in the other person. If you are not afraid, the desire in the other simply disappears.

Existence simply responds to what you ask for. Constantly, It is giving you what you request. We only need to have the intelligence to know what to ask for.

Your thoughts and energy directly affect your body, your cell structure, your decisions, your capacity to fulfill your decisions, the outer world incidents, and even accidents. Currently you are always centered in either greed or fear. Every action that you do, is out of either desire or fear. It becomes very easy for others to exploit you because of this. You become very vulnerable. You create a mental setup that creates and attracts similar incidents to you. You also corrupt your energy flow with this.

If you can change your mental setup from this type to one of bliss, or ananda, then your energy flow will start brimming and your thoughts will be much clearer and more in the present. When you do this, you have every power to control the outer world incidents because you and Existence have a very deep connection at the energy level. This is the thread that you need to catch in order to understand that Bliss attracts fortune. When you are blissful, when your mental setup is not one of worry, fear and greed but one that is in the present and always joyful, you will automatically attract all good things to yourself.

Figure 8: The Time Shaft

It is not that desire is right or wrong. It is also not the object of desire that is of concern. Desire itself will be dropped when we develop the maturity to realize that desire is never in the present; only Truth is the present moment.

Another thing we need to know is that desire is always from the past. We cannot desire something absolutely new. Can we desire something we do not have some idea about already? No! So desire is always from the past. Now, having said that, can you ask for anything from the past or future? No, because neither exist. The only thing that exists is the present. And in the present, you cannot desire. You can just be in it and enjoy it. So understand that desire can be dropped if we are just in the present moment and enjoying what is evolving every minute.

The Bhagavata Purana (an Indian epic) has a beautiful story:

Once a crow was flying with a piece of meat in its beak.

There were many crows pursuing it trying to grab a share of the meat.

The crow tried flying higher and higher to escape from them. It became tired and suddenly it dropped the meat.

Immediately the twenty crows simply followed the falling piece of meat.

Seeing this, the crow realized, ‘How nice it is to carry nothing! The whole sky belongs to me now.’

The piece of meat he was carrying was creating all the trouble for the crow. The moment he dropped it, all the birds pursuing it simply disappeared!

Similarly, in our life also, once the meat of desire is dropped, the whole sky of enlightenment belongs to us!

Desiring means you have moved away from reality. You have moved away from that which IS.

Desire means you have fallen into the trap of a dream. Desire means you are not ‘here’ and ‘now’, you have gone somewhere in the future which doesn’t exist. Desire means you are not satisfied with what you have. If you can be in the present moment and enjoy, you will drop from the vicious cycle of desires. This is the nature of surrender. Surrendering is non-desiring, which allows your nature to express itself.

When you light the candle of understanding, desire disappears. It is not a question of what you desire. The very act of desiring itself is misery. When you are desireless, the ‘I’ or the ego disappears, so the misery disappears.

All desires must disappear. Only in a desireless moment, will what you are asking for happen.

When we hear this, the next thing that occurs is your wanting to be desireless! But this is one more desire! You cannot desire desirelessness. You must simply understand the futility of desire. Through the understanding itself, the greed for desirelessness drops.

Watch every act that you do. Watch every thought, every desire that possesses you. As you watch, your chattering mind chatters less, because the energy that was earlier chattering and fuelling the desire is now being transformed into watchfulness. When this happens, clarity arises and the desire dissolves. Actually, the attachment to the desire drops.

When you watch your desire, you will be able to see two things: desire by its very nature cannot bring you fulfillment. When you realize this, the desire disappears. Second, you will see that only when you transcend desire do you reach fulfillment.

When you realize the very nature of desire, you accept that desiring is the nature of the mind. Please be very clear: acceptance is not the same as resignation. Resignation is defeat. One becomes resigned when one feels nothing more can be done about something. Acceptance is a totally different thing. Acceptance does not mean that you have accepted defeat. It simply means that there you have clearly seen and understood the real nature of something, that's all! Acceptance has nothing to do with defeat or victory. It is just clearly seeing what IS, that's all.

Alright, now let us get into the meditation.

Sit down and tie your eye bands.

There are four steps to repeat here.

1. Inhale as deeply as possible.

2. Hold the breath, fill your lungs and remain that way for as long as possible.

3. Then, exhale through the mouth, emptying out your lungs.

4. Keeps your lungs empty for as long as possible. This is one cycle.

Start doing the meditation. Inhale very deeply; fill your lungs to the maximum extent possible, little by little. Hold on to it for as long as possible.

When you feel you can't hold anymore, try to extend it one second further. Then try for another one second. When you feel you have crossed your limit, breathe out through the mouth slowly and deeply. Exhale as deeply as possible, as slowly as possible.

Continue this cycle, but very slowly. Inhale as deeply as possible through the nose. Hold for as long as possible, then exhale gently through the mouth for as long as possible and keep the lungs empty for as long as possible. Repeat this cycle.

(After 10 minutes)

Stop the breathing and relax. Let your eyes be closed. Relax. Come to your normal breathing now.

Now slowly, very slowly, visualize all your dreams, all your desires. One by one, feel that all your desires are getting fulfilled, that all your desires have come true. Imagine as deeply as possible as if it has actually happened. Visualize consciously how your life will be after fulfillment of all your desires. If one of your desires is wealth, visualize how you will be when the desire is fulfilled and feel that way now. Visualise how you will live after getting all that wealth. Visualise realistically to the maximum possible extent, in a very detailed fashion. Don't think that any particular detail is silly to include. Include everything that you can think of.

Never condemn any desire. Never condemn the fulfillment that comes because of the visualization. Just ensure that you are completely fulfilled. Live the ecstasy, live the joy of having your desires fulfilled. It is completely alright to go through it.

Visualise all your desires having to do with name and fame. Visualise how your life and actions will be once the name and fame have been achieved. Visualise and enjoy your new social status. There is nothing wrong in doing so. Visualise how you will be attended upon by people because of your new status. Feel gratitude towards them and enjoy the whole scene.

Visualise all your sexual fantasies coming true. There is nothing wrong in doing so now. Go deep into them and visualize them coming true. Once your sexual desires get fulfilled, how complete you will feel, feel that way now. There is nothing wrong in this. Feel the relaxation and fulfillment upon satisfying all your sexual desires.

Once your spiritual desires are blessed, how fulfilled you will feel, feel that way now. Visualise all your spiritual aspirations coming true.

If there are any broken relationships that you desire be repaired, now is the time... Visualize that you have taken the steps needed to repair the relationship and that it has become alright. Feel the relief and joy because of the repaired relationship. Feel the joy of being able to talk to that person like the good old days again. Feel the joy of having the relationship healed.

Visualize and feel that all your desires have come true. Visualize that your life now is in complete fulfillment, exactly how you would want it to be in all aspects. Consciously put your whole effort and visualize things in a detailed way.

Don't avoid this. Don't again push the desires to the unconscious. Bring them up to the conscious and live them. Live them totally with all the juice in them! Understand that there is nothing wrong in going fully ahead in your visualization. This is your best opportunity because you are in the master's presence.

When you start visualizing all your desires, you will start automatically concentrating on the third eye, on the brow chakra located between the eyebrows. Allow that to happen. Encourage your mind to get concentrated on the third eye.

With all your power and consciousness, give life to all your desires. Live everything. Allow yourself to have life as you wish to. Let all your sexual fantasies come true. Let all your desires for wealth become reality. Let all your spiritual desires become reality.

Let your eyes be closed. Now, stand up with your eyes closed.

Give at least one feet gap between your feet and place them wide apart.

Stop all the movement of thoughts. Whatever thoughts may come up, just witness them. Just step away from your own body by one foot mentally and witness your thoughts, your breath, your mind and your body. Look at your whole body from a distance. Don't associate yourself with the body or the mind, just be a witness.

Witness the thoughts that are arising. Let your hands be loose and relaxed, just witness.

Now, relax. Slowly, you may open your eyes and relax.

When your mental body becomes empty, when your pranic body opens, your being becomes porous to the live energy. When the desires become energy, you become porous to the energy. Many of your unconscious desires disappear. Many of your wants exist just because others also have the same wants. When you bring all those wants to consciousness, they will just melt and disappear. And the energy which was invested in those wants or desires will now aid in fulfilling your conscious desires. Those energies will become a support to fulfill your conscious desires.

Not only do the unconscious desires disappear, the energy that was locked in them now becomes a positive support for your conscious desires. You will start seeing that even when you don't ask, things start happening for you. The desires have started melting and becoming energy for you. Actually they are energy. They are not cancers as we think. We always think that desires are blood clots. No! They are not blood clots, they are blood. Because you have not brought consciousness into them, they have become blood clots. When you bring consciousness to them, they become blood again.

PARTICIPANTS...

I am usually a person who gets startled quickly. After my NSP, I noticed that the situations that would have jolted me earlier, caused no fear stroke or jumpiness in me! And I was able to disover this within that millisecond of reaction! I feel like a different person now. Things that used to affect me just do not touch me anymore. Anxiety, worry, just gone... desires too...

In Nithyananda Anand Deoskar

I did my NSP at Yercaud in Tamil Nadu. During the course the most memorable experience for me was the pranic layer meditation. After writing down reams of desires for hours, when I went into the meditation, all I could recall were a handful of desires, and each one unconnected with anything material. I almost literally saw in my mind's eye a tree with a few golden leaves that Swami had predicted. Swami said that these few remaining desires were our prarabdha. I had no clue what He meant but was quite surprised that someone like me who had been an aggressive corporate warrior found nothing of material value to remember as my core desire.

But the course was magic. All that registered was the master's guarantee: 'I promise you that none of you will take birth again if you do not wish to. You will be reborn if you wish in whatever form you wish to be.' I was so relieved that I was not going to be reborn.

Three months ago I would have dismissed this as the claim of a crazed soul. But sitting in front of the master, (who was younger than my son!) I had no doubt that whatever He said would come true. The four days passed rapidly and the last night was a sleepless Ananda Darshan for nearly 300 people, all of whom received a spiritual name. I remember falling at the feet of everyone, young and old, with no thought as to who I was.

During the program we formed groups and performed skits. Swami sat on huge speakers and enjoyed the way we made fools of ourselves. During one skit that had an all female cast, a few of the participants made fun of the women in what I thought was an uncouth way. I could not help telling them to stop heckling the women. One of them I found especially distasteful and I was quite rude to him in front of Swami telling him to lay off. Surprised perhaps, this person did and the skits continued.

I forgot about the incident after that. But when I went back to the ashram for acharya training I started wondering why I was so critical of this person while Swami was laughing his head off at this man's antics. The thoughts wouldn't go away. 'If my master didn't mind, why should I?' was the refrain that kept playing in my mind. 'How dare I? Who was I to judge?' I remember asking Ayya, Swami's secretary and senior disciple. He said that the very fact that I was thinking this way meant changes were happening in me. I had no idea about what these changes were.

A few days later this person was in the ashram for some work. I was near the kitchen beyond the Laughing Temple and I saw him approach from a distance of about 100 meters away. When he saw me I saw that he hesitated. Not surprising, since I had been quite rude to him during the NSP. Suddenly something broke within me. I can recall perfectly clearly the exact moment. I walked forward towards him with my arms open. As I hugged him half way down the pathway, I guess nobody would have been more surprised than this person. I had tears in my eyes. Neither had I anything to say, nor there seemed a need.

Today I know him very well. He has a heart of gold. We have nothing in common except the master. Knowing what a wonderful person he is now, I realize what a judgmental person I was till my NSP days and what a poor judge of people I was. My judgments were based totally on social conditioning. Though I feel no guilt, thanks to my master, I shiver involuntarily when I think of how silly I was.

From that moment it was as if all my negativities dropped. Anger, irritation, dislike ..emotions that made me operate previously in high gear seemed to drop in quick succession. Each time I felt a negative emotion about an event or a person, it was as if a hammer would knock my head saying, 'Wake up, you idiot, perish the thought.' True enough, they perished.

Attachments too dropped rapidly. Like the desires that dropped from the tree, there seemed no hold for attachments. For the first time in my life, I was free of conditioning, however much of a cliché it may sound. Looking back, NSP was when my transformation really began from a subhuman to a human.

Sri Nithya Advaithananda CEO, Crucible Consulting