Chapter 9: The Initiation: Be Unclutched🔗

This session's subject is about how to be unclutched, the science of inner bliss. What do I mean by the words, 'Be unclutched'?

We have two identities: one which we show to the outer world and the other, which we believe in the inner world. The identity which we project to the outer world is how we want society to recognize us, how we want society to respect us. In Sanskrit, we use the word ahankar for this. The identity which we project to the outer world is ahankar. Usually it will always be a little more than what we are. The identity which we believe we are in the inner world is mamakar, which will always be less than what we are. Ahankar will always be a little more than what we are and mamakar will always be a little less than what we are.

On the outside, we will always be projecting a little more than what we are. Inside, we will always be concluding a little less than what we are. This is what we call the superiority complex and the inferiority complex.

Our life is nothing but the fight between these two worlds. If you are spending your whole energy expanding your ahankar, the identity which you project to the outer world, your life will become materialistic. If you are spending your whole life chiseling and developing the mamakar, the identity which you think is you, your whole life becomes moralistic, suppressing.

Working in the outer world with ahankar, and working in the inner world with mamakar, both lead only to more and more suffering, more and more depression.

The person who works on ahankar, on trying to prove himself to others, on trying to develop the identity which he shows to the outer world, ends up in depression of success around the age of 40 or 45. What I mean is, you will have achieved all that you wanted to achieve, but you will feel depressed, not knowing what you wanted to achieve it for.

Figure 14: Water Bubbles

The basic truth is that you are much more than these two identities of ahankar and mamakar that you carry. You are beyond the identity which you project to the outer world, and the identity which you believe is you in the inner world. You are beyond these two. This is the truth. When you unclutch from these two identities, suddenly you realize you are beyond these two; these two can never bind you.

Let me expand on the word ‘unclutching’. What do I mean by the word ‘unclutching’? As of now, you are constantly connecting all your thoughts and creating shafts in your mind. For example, the headache which happened in you ten years ago, the headache which happened nine years ago, the headache which happened eight years ago and the headache which happened yesterday, are all independent experiences which happened in your life. For the sake of nurturing memory, or for the sake of easy reference, you put all these headache experiences together in your mind. You store all these memories in one area in your mind. You archive it this way just for utility, just for reference. But by and by you start believing that they are really connected!

At the initial level, you archive them for the sake of easy reference. Just like how you file your office work, you archive these incidents also. You put them all in one file. After some time you start believing that all those experiences are connected.

The suffering which happened ten years ago happened for a different reason, for a different purpose, and it was a different place and totally different experience. The suffering which happened nine years ago was for a totally different reason. It was also a different experience as well. The suffering which happened eight years ago was for a different reason, for a different purpose, and in a different place. When you start believing they are connected, you create a shaft. If you connect all the painful memories, you create a pain shaft. You think, ‘My life is suffering. My life is pain.' You start believing that your whole life is a chain of suffering, a long chain of suffering.

When you start believing that your whole life is suffering, you have created a pain shaft, and you will wait in your life only for painful incidents so that you can elongate this shaft. You start looking to develop that shaft.

One more thing you should understand is that whatever you believe in you expand that. If you believe in something, you will again and again see that same thing happening in your life. That is why again and again, vedic rishis say you create and see what you want to see, not what is. You create what you want. Whatever you believe in, you will create it and expand it.

Once you start believing that your life is painful, you are waiting unconsciously for painful incidents to happen in order to strengthen that belief, to strengthen your judgment. We don't usually collect arguments to pass judgments; we collect arguments to support our judgments. The judgment is ready; we only collect arguments to support it.

When you are clear that your life is a pain shaft, a big chain of essentially unrelated pains, you are waiting for some more incidents to support your faith, more judgments to support your belief. A person who believes that life is a pain shaft will unconsciously create and elongate the pain shaft.

Second thing: whenever you are adding painful incidents unconsciously, consciously you will be trying to break the shaft also.

Sometimes you believe that your whole life is a chain of joyful experiences. Of course, usually we don't believe life to be this way, but just assume this for now. It is very rare to believe that your life is a shaft of joyful experiences. If you do, then constantly you are in fear, thinking, 'Will it continue?' You think, 'Will it continue in the same way?'

Understand clearly that if you believe life is a shaft of pain, you do two things: unconsciously you gather more and more incidents and strengthen your faith, and consciously you try to break it, fighting to stop it. On the contrary, if you believe that it is a joyful chain, unconsciously you will be in fear that it will end, and consciously you will try to prolong it.

Understand these two big dramas that happen in us. When you believe it is a pain shaft, you try to break it consciously. When you believe it is a joy shaft, you try to elongate it consciously. But the big difficulty, the important thing that we forget, is that you can neither break the shaft nor elongate it because the shaft itself does not exist!

The shaft does not exist. When you started archiving all the incidents from your life for the sake of easy reference, by and by you started believing that they are existentially connected. You connected all the incidents of your life for the sake of utility. But after some time, you start believing that they are existentially connected to each other and believe your life to be either a pain shaft or a joy shaft. When you start believing it is a pain shaft, you try to break it. When you believe it to be a joy shaft, you try to elongate it. But one important thing you forget is, you can neither break nor elongate the shaft, because the shaft itself does not exist!

It's only your faith, or your belief which makes these things happen.

So many thoughts are flowing in your mind constantly.

Try this: sit for ten minutes and write down all your thoughts without editing them, without judging them, just as if a transcribing software is connected to your mind. Then read what you have written. You will understand that all your thoughts, whatever is moving in you, are illogical, independent, completely unconnected and unclutched thoughts! Try to do this in your house when you are relaxed. Just sit and pen down whatever is going on in your mind.

If you start judging your mind while writing, you will interrupt the natural flow of thoughts. If you start judging your thoughts, you are actually teaching your mind to play a hypocritical game with you. Whenever you judge your kids and express your judgment to them, you are actually teaching them to hide things from you, that's all.

Do not judge. Just plainly see what is going on, and pen the whole thing down. Then read what you have written. You will understand that your thoughts are illogical, independent, unconnected and unclutched. You would be sitting here and thinking, 'I think I should go to the office tomorrow.' The very next moment you would think, 'I need to go to Australia to settle that deal this week.' Then the next moment, you would think, 'I wish I could attend my kid's annual day celebrations.' Is there any correlation between your office, Australia and your kid's annual day celebrations? No!

Your thoughts are just like water bubbles in the fish tank. They just appear and disappear.

If you look a little deeply, suddenly you will understand, that by your very nature you are unclutched. There is a gap between one thought and another thought, just like how there are gaps between the water bubbles in the fish tank. But the gaps are too small; you are not able to perceive them and so it looks like a continuous stream to you. Although they are independent bubbles coming out of the same source, they look like a stream to you.

In the same way, if you look a little deeply into your thoughts, you will realize that your thoughts by their very nature are independent. For example, if you see a dog on the street, suddenly you will remember the pet you used to play with when you were a child. Then you will remember your teacher you taught you when you were a child. Next, you will remember the house where your teacher used to live. If you look at it logically, you will see that the dog in street and the teacher are not connected. There is no logical connection between the two, but your mind simply flows with thoughts like these. If you look a little deeply, you will understand that your thoughts are illogical, independent, unconnected and unclutched. But the problem is, you can't live in this wilderness. You can't live with this natural flow because you need a clear-cut idea about everything. So you pick up your thoughts and connect them in the way in which you wish to. If you believe that life is joy, you pick up all the joyful thoughts and connect them. If you believe that your life is pain, you pick up all the painful thoughts and connect them to create a shaft of pain.

Whatever you believe about life, you pick up the thoughts related to that and create a shaft. If you see what is going on in your mind, it will be an illogical mixture of pain, joy and every other emotion possible. Not only that, the depths of the thoughts will be so varied that you will not be able to make any logical statements about them! You will not be able to come to any logical conclusion about them. As such, what is happening is, that completely illogical, independent, unconnected and unclutched thoughts are just emanating from your mind, that's all. What you do is, you collect all your painful memories and create a pain shaft, or collect all joyful experiences and create a joy shaft.

Not only that, you start firmly believing in the shaft as well. Then the trouble starts, because you will try to elongate or break the shaft, but you will not be able to do it. You can neither elongate it nor break it, because the shaft does not exist; because by your very nature, you are unclutched! By your very nature, you are an unclutched being. But societal conditioning causes you to create these shafts. There starts the conflict between your genuine nature and that which is created by your mind.

You need to understand an important thing about renouncing: you don't need to renounce any thing. People come and ask me, 'Should I renounce everything to achieve enlightenment?' I tell them, 'Don't renounce what you have. Just renounce what you don't have. That's enough!'

You carry so many things that you don't actually have, like your fantasies and your fears. Greed gives rise to fantasy, and fear itself is nothing but negative fantasy. We are living with so many things that we don't really have. Our fantasies, our fears, our worries - all of these things that we are living with, we don't really have. They are creations of our mind.

So just renounce what you don't have. That is enough. Then automatically, whatever you have, you will live with. Understand, the shaft which you have created for yourself is the original sin that you have committed. By connecting thoughts, by clutching onto your thoughts, you commit the first sin.

Understand that by your very nature, you are an unclutched being. By your very nature, you are an unconnected, independent, causeless being! You don't need to renounce anything because by nature you cannot hold on to anything. It is only when your mind plays up, you start thinking that you need to renounce many things. Actually you can't hold on to things even if you wish to. People come and tell me, 'I am so depressed. I don't know how to come out of it.' I tell them, 'Just try to hold on to it!' You will not be able to!

For half an hour, sit and try to hold on to the depression. You will see that you can't. Try your best to sit and meditate on your depression. Suddenly you will come back and tell me that you are not able to meditate on it any more because it is not there!

By your very nature you are unclutched. What do I mean by this? You see, any thought will come up only if the previous thought has died. No two thoughts can co-exist. Until the earlier thought is renounced, you can't have a new thought. The fact that a new thought is happening in you proves that the earlier thought has been renounced. Fortunately you can't have two thoughts at the same time. Even if you suspect you are schizophrenic, meaning you have contradictory thoughts within you all the time, you can't have two thoughts at the same time.

All these ideas such as 'unconscious', 'split personality', 'schizophrenia', etc. are modern day sins. In those days, the priests gave life to the concept of sin to create guilt in you and rule you. In the same way, the psychologists and psychiatrists created these words such as unconscious, split personality, schizophrenia, etc to aid in their profession. Understand: these are all the modern day terms to exploit you, nothing else.

This might be shocking to you because you always believed that there is something called the unconscious, that there is something called split personality, there is something called schizophrenia, etc. But just look a little deep inside, and you will understand, the very fact that you are having new thoughts means that the earlier thoughts have been renounced. It is similar to trashing your emails. But the problem is, you also decide to pick up your emails from the recycle bin!

Every moment thoughts are being renounced by you, by your very nature. Whenever a new thought appears in you, it means that the old thought has been renounced. But even after renouncing, you try to pick up the thoughts from the trash can and create a new shaft. It is like you feel that some valuable thoughts have been dropped in the trash can, so you pick up the thoughts from it. You pick them up and put them near your bed. You also spray a little perfume on it to keep it a little nice. You try to decorate it.

Just do a few basic things to get liberated from this life and death cycle. First, have a clear understanding that you are creating a shaft, a shaft of pain or shaft of joy, and trying to fight with it by either trying to elongate it or break it.

Second: don't even think that you have to unclutch yourself. By your very nature, you are an unclutched being. So stop creating a shaft, and you will be unclutched.

You don't need to unclutch. People come and ask me how long it takes to teach meditation. It takes only two words: be unclutched. To teach what is not meditation takes one or two years for me. To teach what is meditation takes only one minute. You don't need to learn meditation. All you need to do is stop creating the shaft.

Constantly you are creating the shaft: the pain shaft or the joy shaft. And you think your mind is flowing with a certain logic. When you stop creating the shaft, suddenly you will realize you are unclutched by your very nature.

The moment people hear this truth, they feel shaken. They think, 'What will happen to my ego if I unclutch? What will happen to my property, my wealth, my name and fame, and all that I have created based on the outer world and my ego?

What will happen to my 'feeling of mine', my holy personality which I created by my penance, discipline, mediation and all those things? What will happen to 'I' and 'mine' if I remain unclutched? When you have a great amount of vested interest in your 'I' and 'mine', when you are holding on to too many things based on 'I' and 'mine', then it is very difficult to understand you are unclutched by your very nature.

Try your best to create something based on ahankar - 'I', and feel fulfilled; you will never be able to. In the same way, try your best to create something on your mamakar – 'mine', and feel fulfilled; you will never be able to. There is a story of Brahma and Vishnu searching for the head and foot of Lord Shiva respectively. This incident is part of a mythological recording. It happened in my native place, Tiruvannamalai where the sacred Arunachala hill is. It is a spiritual nerve centre. I call that place a spiritual incubator. Just like how premature babies need an incubator to supply air and all the basic things, so also for enlightened beings to land on the planet earth, you need a spiritual incubator to protect and help them, and allow the whole expansion to happen before they settle down in their body. Tiruvannamalai is such a spiritual incubator.

The story says Brahma had to find Shiva's head and Vishnu was asked to find His feet. If you know the background of Brahma and Vishnu, you will be able to see how beautiful the story is. Who is Brahma? He is the husband of Saraswati. Saraswati is the Goddess of learning or knowledge, symbolically signifying intellect or the head or the 'I' - ahankar.

Who is Vishnu? Vishnu is the husband of Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth, symbolically signifying possession or the 'mine' - mamakar. The story says Brahma started searching for the head, the sahasrara of Shiva. Vishnu started searching for the feet.

Vishnu came back after some time and said, 'I am not able to find Your feet. Please forgive me. I realize no one will be able to find it either.' He understood the truth and surrendered.

But Brahma who was going upwards to find Shiva's head, continued. Suddenly, he came across a flower (called Tazhampoo in Tamil) which was falling downwards from Shiva's ear. He learnt from it that it had been traveling for four ages of Brahma in order to reach this point of travel. Brahma realized the futility of his own mission but did not want to accept the situation. He requested the flower to come as a false witness to Shiva to say that Brahma had seen the head of Shiva. The flower agreed. Brahma went to Shiva with the flower and the story. Shiva at once knew the truth and got angry. He cursed Brahma and the flower for lying. Later, when Brahma understood his mistake and surrendered, Shiva graced the two of them.

You need to understand the story well. Vishnu is the embodiment of wealth, Brahma of intellect - ahankar and mamakar, that is, I and mine. Neither by wealth nor by intellect you can achieve enlightenment... that's the truth of the story.

One important thing, if you dig in the line of wealth, mamakar, you will get frustrated like Vishnu. You will face the depression of success and you will become humble. You will fall, only to understand the truth. You will surrender easily if you dig in the line of mamakar. Very soon you will realize that wealth cannot take you to God. That is why Vishnu surrendered so quickly to Shiva in the story. That is the real significance of choosing Vishnu, beholder of wealth, for this role.

On the other hand, the intellect is so strong like Brahma, that you will not only be unable to find Shiva, you will not be willing to surrender either! But once you complete your ego trip and discover the futility of the intellect, you receive the Divine grace.

If you travel in the line of mamakar, in the outer world, at least at one point in time, you will understand, and you will experience the depression of success and turn towards spirituality. You will say, 'Enough. Let me rest. I understand that enlightenment can never be achieved in this line.'

But the person who travels in the line of ahankar, the line of intellect, not only does he not achieve, he will not even be able to understand that he cannot achieve. The intellect or the ego becomes so sharp, and so subtle, that he will cling on to false claims and false techniques to declare that he has achieved it. Those false claims are the Tazhampoo flowers, the false witnesses!

The person who travels in ahankar in the outer world, who projects his identity in the outer world as well as the person who travels in mamakar, who projects his identity in the inner world, neither will be able to understand the truth.

Almost all these self development techniques are done to give you a feel-good feeling; nothing but a feel-good feeling. First thing: understand that your self can't be developed because it doesn't exist the way you think it does. Try your best. I have conducted hundreds of self development programs. With that authority I am telling you this. With that clarity I am speaking.

I can give you some simple tips and techniques to develop your own self-development program. All you need to do is make sure that the person who is attending the program should feel good for two to three days, that's all. You will be successful, nothing else is necessary.

There are best sellers on how to maintain relationships, how to influence others, how to stop worrying and start living etc. These books talk about how to live happily with your wife, how to stop suicidal tendencies. But you will be shocked to hear, that the authors of these books themselves would have committed suicide in their lives, or would have had the most unhappy of marriages!

Writing best sellers or delivering a self-development program is very easy. Just three tips are enough. Write what you can't practice! Second: write it in such a way that you will only talk about the problem. Third: never give a solution! Just with these three tips, you can become a self-development guru. Nothing else is necessary. Write what you can't practice; try to complicate it as much as possible; never give a solution. These three are more than enough.

You see, your self can't be developed because it does not exist. If you have done enough of spiritual practices you will understand what I am saying. Second, if you have done enough of techniques to keep you in one shaft, be it verbalizing or visualizing, then you will understand what I am trying to say. Verbalization means chanting mantras. Visualization means meditating on various forms. If you have tried any of these intensely, you will understand the truth of what I am expressing. If you have not tried, then please try.

If you have tried enough, understand the truth that by your very nature, you can't connect things and create a shaft. I have seen people who chant mantras for 30 or 40 years and they come and ask me how to concentrate on the mantra; how long it will take to make their mind settle down and focus on the mantra. I tell them, I am not sure how long it will take, but I am sure that it is surely not going to happen in this life! Understand, it is very difficult to connect and keep to one line. You are fortunate that you can’t be clutched! You should feel fortunate that you are by nature unclutched. It is like this: while by your very nature you are unclutched, you try to clutch and cause misery to yourself! One more thing is that since by your very nature you are unclutched, you can’t be in bondage either. You come under the clutches of bondage only because you forcibly clutch to people and relationships. Each person and each interaction is independent. That’s all. You form a shaft and make the relationship also one of pain or joy and fall into bondage because of that.

If you worked too much in the outer world, creating more and more wealth, the idea that you are unclutched by your very nature comes as a big shock to you! You start thinking that you can no longer attend to your outer world duties. If you had been pursuing the inner world, you may start thinking, ‘If I am unclutched, then what will happen to all the spiritual practices I did? If I am unclutched, then why did I do so many meditation techniques; why did I do so much of penance? Why did I control myself to keep such discipline? What have I done? What am I doing? Is everything useless?’

So now you have a big problem. If you understand and accept the truth that you are unclutched, all the work that you did based on your ahankar and mamakar becomes useless! Understand: whether you believe it or not, it is useless. Nothing can be done about it. You can strongly believe again and again that it is not true. You can try and cover yourself up with all sorts of lies to dodge the truth, but whether you believe it or not, understand it or not, by your very nature you are unclutched. You are unclutched.

You need to understand only these two things: the identity which you are showing to the outer world and inner world - both are not what you actually are. You are much more than these two. Second thing: you don't even need to renounce these two identities because by your very nature you are unclutched from these two identities!

When you constantly believe you are connected to these two identities, you start working to identify with them. When you want to disconnect from these two, you start working to unclutch from them. Both are unnecessary because you need to neither strengthen them them nor unclutch from them, because by your very nature you are unclutched!

What do I mean by again and again saying you are unclutched? Let me explain. Let us say that you are sitting. The moment you decide to stand up, it means that you have renounced the thought of sitting. The moment you decide to walk out, it means that you have renounced the thought of sitting and listening. The very fact that a new thought has appeared itself means that the old thought has been renounced. This is what I mean when I say that by your very nature you are unclutched. You cannot have two thoughts at the same time! That is why I say that by nature you renounce the first thought when the second comes and so on. By nature you are a renouncer! You don't need to make any effort to renounce. Fortunately that is the way you have been designed by Existence! If you understand this, it is enough. Just the mere understanding will cause you to stop retrieving thoughts back from the trash can. You will also understand that you don't even need to renounce both your identities, because the identities which you are carrying are anyway not you!

When you understand this, suddenly there will be so much space available in you for yourself! The moment you understand that you are beyond these two identities, a tremendous inner healing will start happening in you. You will start accepting yourself. The moment you understand you can't develop yourself anymore in the way you were thinking, and that you are much beyond the self you are thinking, you will begin the ultimate self development process.

Someone goes to Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi and says, 'Bhagavan, prescribe some spiritual practice for me.'

Bhagavan says, 'Meditate.'

The man goes away and after two years, he comes back and says, 'Bhagavan, I am not able to meditate.'

Bhagavan says, 'You have achieved the results of meditation.'

The man says, 'I don't understand. I tell you that I am not able to meditate and you tell me that I have achieved the result of meditation.'

Bhagavan says, 'Understanding that you are not able to meditate is the result of meditation.'

Let me tell you an important business secret: techniques are given to people to make them understand that they are not able to practice them. It is very shocking, but it is the truth. Techniques are given to people to make them understand that they are not able to practice.

Of course, I myself have given techniques and meditations to over one million people. More than one million people have been initiated. Let me be very clear: techniques are given to people so that they understand that they can't practice. What do I mean by this? As you practice, suddenly you will start realizing, there is something deeper. Ramana Maharishi says beautifully, 'You are asked to meditate to make you understand you can't!' You will realize that the more you struggle with the understanding that you can't, the deeper you will travel. All you need to do is understand this truth.

For spiritual practice or whatever words you may use, understanding that you are much more than these two identities is the aim. Understand that you are not clutched; that is enough.

You may start asking 'How will I do my job if I am unclutched? How will I take care of my things? Will I not just lie down in my bed?' Understand that the moment you ask these questions, it means that you have a little hatred or vengeance against your routine like your job, or taking care of your family. That is why, the moment you get an excuse, you want to escape from it!

By asking this question, you are merely expressing your anger or violence against your routine, nothing else. Everyone invariably harbours vengeance against their routine and responsibility. They will continue to play their role no doubt, but with a deep and subtle vengeance. That is the truth.

When people ask me if they can just leave everything and be unclutched, I tell them, 'Alright, don't do anything. Just be unclutched. Let us see for how many days you can lie in your bed!' How many days do you think you can lie in your bed? For ten days maybe? Maybe until your tamas (laziness) gets exhausted, you can lie down. Understand: you have a certain amount of tamas in you. Until your tamas gets exhausted you will lie there. But after that what will you do? Naturally you will start working. You will start moving!

So you don't have to be afraid that if you are unclutched you will not do your daily routine. I tell you, what you think as you is not at all necessary to run your day to day life. This is the basic truth. What you think as you is not at all necessary to run your day to day life. This might hurt. But truth always hurts us.

See, our mind is such that if someone is happily independent of us, we can't tolerate it. It is too much to take. Constantly we should feel that we are needed. Understand, what you think is you is not at all necessary to run anyone's life or even your own day to day life.

So let me summarise the truths that we have just discussed.

First thing: you are much more than these two identities of the outer world and the inner world that you are carrying in your life; the identity which you show to the outer world and the identity which you show to yourself.

The second thing is that you don't need to unclutch, you are already unclutched. The third thing is that all you need to do is to stop creating the shaft that you are constantly trying to create. Constantly you are referring to your past experiences of the same kind and connecting them and creating some idea. Constantly you are creating an idea about everything with the help of the shaft. You have around ten to twelve shafts of pain, joy, painful joy, joyful pain, etc., with which you simply play one after another. You just see the scene around you and pick up any shaft and start to connect, that's all. All you need to do is stop connecting and creating shafts.

The problem is, you always think that life has to have utility. Two kinds of societies have been created. One believes that man will work and he can be controlled only if he is constantly taught that he is not enough. He can be made to work only if he is controlled through fear and greed.

The other group believes that man will express his energy if he is fulfilled. The focus is on making man feel fulfilled and then the expression of the energy does all the work! The Eastern rishis believed that man will express his energy to the maximum if he believes he is fullfilled. That is the first truth you are taught in Eastern mysticism, by the Eastern mystics: you are full and fulfilled.

When the Whole is removed from the Whole, the Whole remains as the Whole. This is the essence of man. It tells you to express yourself just out of your fullness and that if you do so, your fullness will still remain! This is the truth of your existence. When the whole system operates from this truth, you don't run based on fear and greed. But the Western society, the Western social system, is made to believe that man will work only through fear and greed. That is why you are taught in your colleges and universities that life has got some utility and that you have to go behind that for fulfillment.

Please understand that life has got no utility. It has got a purpose, but not utility. Utility is when you live life and get some product out of it. Purpose is when you enjoy life and express the purpose of life, which is fulfillement! Purpose is entirely different from utility. In utility, you are constantly hypnotized into thinking that you are not enough unto yourself and that you need to achieve a product to attain fulfillment. But with the Eastern rishis, you are constantly taught that you are enough.

Understand, the Indian lifestyle, the vedic lifestyle, is based on 10,000 years of research and development with more than ten million inner scientists. When I say inner scientists, I mean the rishis who were full time scientists, working in the inner world. 10,000 years of inner research and development, and at least ten million inner scientists are behind the technology and strength of the vedic culture, and there is only 0.6 % registered psychiatric patients and 0.6% patients of depression.

We are talking about 10,000 years of research and development, 10 million inner scientists and inner science laboratories! Not only that, there are at least ten million ashrams and places where congregation - satsang - happens everyday! Everyday gatherings happen at temples and satsang centers in the name of spirituality. It is not a holiday religion, or weekend religion, or weekend congregation. It is an everyday congregation!

Even if you see the crime rate of people from the vedic tradition, it is negligible. If you understand that you are full and express your fullness, your whole attitude will be one of pure compassion. You will attract more and more joyful experiences in your life. On the other hand, if you believe strongly you are not enough unto yourself and start running based on fear and greed, you will attract only more fear and greed experiences.

One more thing: by your very nature you will reproduce what you believe in. Anything, if it has to survive, should reproduce itself. If you believe your life is running based on only fear and greed, you will reproduce fear and greed in yourself and in everyone else also. You will reproduce that same fear and greed in everybody you see.

When you think you can run only on fear and greed, you forget you can run gracefully, that you can live gracefully. If you are handling a child, and you say, ‘Hey! Do this and I will give you candy,’ or, ‘If you don’t do this, I will discipline you,’ it is alright to a certain extent. Until the child stabilizes, it might be needed to once in a while wield the consequence. But after growing physically also, if you should be handled through fear and greed, it means you are mentally retarded. You have not grown.

A child can be handled with fear and greed, but you don’t need fear and greed. When you ask the question, what is the utility value in this?, be very clear that what you are asking is based on fear and greed.

The more I travel outside India, the more love and respect I feel for the vedic culture. I am not able to help myself in this regard. People ask me why I wear this rudraksh string, why I wear this kumkum, why I wear all these things. I tell you it is because simple things like these beads, and this kumkum, the great, enlightened masters of the vedic tradition have developed after

10,000 years of research and development! Nothing was ever done without proper research and development. They spent their whole lives and used their whole bodies as inner science laboratories, and did vast research and development.

Currency is beautiful and necessary for life. But it is too poor a substitute for the explosion of your consciousness. You cannot run behind currency at the cost of your consciousness! It is beautiful to maintain your body and your mind. It is good to maintain your lifestyle, food, clothing, basic things etc. But I tell you, there is something much more than all this. There is something called your consciousness.

You are constantly taught to live a consumerist lifestyle so that you will be pulled to buy all the consumer products that are sold. It is a pure and effective marketing strategy. Your life is too precious to be wasted through somebody’s marketing strategy. Your body cannot be used as someone else’s income source. You are drilled with all sorts of ideas. Your entire software is programmed by them. Because of this, your hardware is spent in fulfilling their vested interests, that’s all.

Let me clarify one thing: kids should not be handled through fear and greed. Only when you don’t have the patience to explain, you use fear and greed. Not only that, only when you have fear and greed, you will create fear and greed in them. Understand: the person who is a leader for you, has he gone beyond fear and greed? No! Then what does it mean? It only means that he is expressing his fear and greed through his command.

Whatever frequency you live in, you will attract people of that frequency. You do this unconsciously so that you feel always comfortable and strong. So naturally, if you are in the fear and greed frequency, you will create the same type of fear and greed based people around you.

Painful memories get registered because you need to learn lessons. You need to update yourself, you need to develop yourself. Maybe for that reason you start recording the painful memories. When you refer to them again and again, it becomes a painful memory itself! Memories that you record in your system are not wholly true. You record only what you need.

Also, you don't need to renounce them. Whenever you try to renounce them, you actually strengthen the memory. You don't need to create a law for yourself that you should not refer to your memory either, because by your sheer unclutched nature, you will forget it the next moment. It will simply disappear! For example, the moment you decide to stand up, you renounce the decision to sit. Am I right? You are constantly renouncing. So if you allow the process to happen, your painful memories will simply disappear. But by consciously trying to renounce them, you only strengthen them further. They are strengthened when you try to renounce them. People come and tell me that they constantly repeat positive affirmations such as, 'I should stop smoking, I should stop smoking,' but it is not working. Why?' All these creative visualizations create only more and more trouble. Because in the very words, 'I should stop smoking,' the word 'smoking' is there as a contradicting word. You are not only empowering 'I shoud not', you are also empowering 'smoking'. That is why by repeating this so called affirmation you are unable to quit smoking! When you decide ‘I should get rid of this headache,’ you are constantly remembering the word headache also. So what you need to do is this, whenever these memories rise, have a glass of water! The moment you decide to have a glass of water, your greed has disappeared; your fear has disappeared! But you say it comes back. How? Your faith in it is what brings it back; that is the basic problem.

You feel frustrated about it coming back. But if it comes back, it also means that it leaves you right? Why don’t you then celebrate those moments when it left you? Why do you constantly remember only the moments it comes back? A young man came and asked me, ‘I am suffering a lot because of my lustful thoughts and fantasies. What to do?’ I told him, ‘Just have a cup of coffee.’ He was surprised. Unless the lustful thought has left you, you can’t have a cup of coffee. You can’t have the thought while having a cup of coffee. Only if it has left you, you can move to the coffee, but what do you do? You bring it back while you are having coffee. That is the problem.

It is so easy to renounce a thought. You ask me how it can be so simple! It is simple. The problem is that you are constantly taught that it is not so simple. If you really understand the whole process, it is so simple. Constantly people are telling you that it is not so easy. But I am telling you that it is so easy. Nothing needs to be done. Just a simple understanding is enough.

People come and tell me, ‘I have a constant fear of death, what should I do?’ I tell them to come and sit and have a cup of tea. When they are having tea I ask them, ‘What happened to the death fear?’ For that moment, it is not there! So all you need to do is have tea. Understand what I am trying to convey through the tea. Your fear of death can be replaced with just the thought of having a cup of tea! That is all it is worth. But you empower it so much and allow it to wreck your life.

One elderly person, a well read scholar, came to me and said, ‘I am constantly searching for enlightenment. For the last 35 years, I have been searching. Please teach me meditation for enlightenment.’ I sat down and started talking to him. I asked him about his family, where he is from and those types of things. He was with me for four hours. He did not even remember his first question again! He did not remember because his question had only that much depth. It did not come from his being. So just remember that your thoughts rarely have depth.

You see, all your negativity has only one power, and that is the faith you place in it, that’s all. Understand that it is a simple game, that’s all. You do not need to work for unclutching. People ask me again and again why they fail when they try to unclutch. I ask them why they are connecting their past failures with their present failures. When you connect your past failures, you create one more shaft: failure shaft.

The failure which happened nine years ago, the failure that happened eight years ago, and the failure that happened yesterday, are independent incidents. Why do you connect all of them and influence the experience that is yet to happen? Just relax and stop connecting, and suddenly you will see such deep inner healing happening in you, such deep peace happening in you. Suddenly you will see that you have dropped out of the war that was going on within you.

I tell you, when you become a drop out, when you drop out of this war, when you dropout from this whole game, suddenly you will realize that the whole thing is just a psychodrama that is happening. Because you are constantly supporting it, you are constantly creating these shafts.

Let us spend a few minutes unclutching now. I will give you a few tips on unclutching, and you can just experience how this unclutching works on you. If you have done some techniques earlier, you will see that this technique will straight away bring you to your inner space.

Now we will spend a few minutes unclutching. Close your eyes. Just do not connect any words. Whatever words are rising in you just let them rise. Don't connect them with any other thought. Just don't create the shaft. Just unclutch. If you feel bored, or if your mind asks what to do, just unclutch from that thought also. Don't even connect with that thought. Just sit and be unclutched. If your mind connects with a thought just unclutch. Unclutch from both your identities. Do not create, maintain, or destroy any thought.

(After the meditation)

Om Nithyanandam.

You may open your eyes slowly.