Introduction🔗

"The NSP is truly a unique experience. It is something that I would not have even imagined would be possible. I had only fantasized about such things while reading spiritual books. But to be in the presence of a living Guru and feel the sheer authority with which he liberated me from my emotional baggage was an exhilarating experience. One has to experience it to believe it."

"The NSP is a too-good-to-be-true program. Profound insight into the fear complex and its impact on life itself and a lifetime opportunity to unburden the Being, this program makes one feel reborn with a wonderful lightness at the levels of body, mind and spirit. The intensity of this program cannot be adequately expressed through words."

I welcome you all with my love and respect. Let me first introduce the word Nithyananda Spurana to all of you.

Nithyananda - nithya is eternal, ananda is bliss. Spurana is flowering. Continuously, eternal bliss is flowering within us, happening within us; but we keep stopping it!

Ananda means the feeling or the energy that never subsides. The opposite of it is nanda, which means that which can leave you, which can be taken away from you. Ananda means that which never leaves you, which can never be taken away from you, which will never reduce. It can never be affected by a certain time or a certain space. It happens irrespective of time and space. Anything that changes based on time and space is nanda. Anything that will not change based on time and space is ananda. Right now, whatever you think of as ananda, is only joy; it is not bliss. And joy changes based on time and space.

At a particular time, we are blissful. In a particular space we are blissful. If we try to reproduce that same time or space, we find that we are not as blissful as before! That is what I mean when I say that the joy that we know is subject to time and space, and also inconsistent at that.

In each and every one of us, there is an energy continuously flowing, which never changes. There is an energy that can never be taken away from us. Of course, again and again, all the masters who appear on planet earth say that in every being, ananda is flowing. Apart from the masters saying it, even if we start searching inside, we will understand that if there is no Ananda sustaining us at the bottom line, we won't be able to move even an inch in our lives. Even the inhaling and exhaling is happening because of the underlying bliss. Our life continues because either we experience this bliss, or we hope to experience this bliss some day. The hope of bliss is what keeps us alive even if we are not aware of it.

It is only because of this ananda, that even our inhaling and exhaling happens. Either we experience it, or we have an idea that we will experience. It is the continuous flow of ananda that makes our life also flow. Otherwise, our life will not flow. That is why still we are alive. That is why still we are breathing. That is why our system is still functioning. This energy that we call ananda is continuously working within our being.

There is a beautiful saying in the Upanishad (vedic scriptures), 'If two rishis (sages) agree on some point, be very clear, one of them is a fake!' No two rishis will agree on any one concept. They will always have some conflict, because each one expresses things in a different way. All of their experiences are the same, but each of their paths and expressions is different. That is the problem.

If we ask about food, some of them will tell us to have only vegetarian food; some will say that we can have non-vegetarian food; some will say that we should fast unto enlightenment! Some will say that there are no food restrictions. Each one will have his own opinion about it.

If we ask about marriage, some will say, ‘Don’t marry, be a celibate.’ Some will say, ‘You can marry; being a householder is okay.’ Some will say, ‘You can marry even four or five times.’ Marrying four or five times is the straight way to enlightenment! If we marry four or five times, we can’t manage our life without enlightenment! It becomes a basic need then. If we marry once, enlightenment is an option. If we marry more than once, enlightenment is a basic need without which we can’t live!

Anyhow, jokes aside, each of these masters has got his own idea, his own opinion on every subject. No two masters agree with each other on the same subject. But when it comes to this one concept ‘ananda’, all of them agree to the statement, ‘We are bliss. Our inherent nature is bliss.’

There is no being on planet Earth that is not filled with bliss. In every one of us, bliss is flowing. In every being, bliss is continuously happening. As far as this one concept is concerned, there is no master who disagrees. If all the masters are agreeing on this point, it must be a fundamental Truth.

In USA, 115 years ago, a young lady asked the great sage Vivekananda, ‘What is life?’

He said, ‘Come with me to India. I will teach you.’

She asked, ‘What will you teach me?’

He said, ‘I shall teach you how to die.’

The question is about life but the answer is about death! It seems strange! What Swami Vivekananda is saying is, if you know the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change.

Death is not a mere incident at the end of your life. It is a profound knowing. If you know how to die, you know how to live. Living and leaving are two sides of the same thing. Your life will be totally different once you understand death.

The NSP journeys you through your own life, simultaneously revealing the secrets of death. It makes your inner space pure and clean by unloading the baggage of emotions that you usually carry with you. It teaches you to live blissfully and leave peacefully. It puts death in the right perspective so that your life becomes more joyful and meaningful.

People who don't believe will never allow these words to enter into them. That is one group. Those who believe never have the courage to experiment. That is a big problem also.

People who believe and people who don't believe - both are not going to be helped! Both are going to be in trouble. When we start believing, we don't experiment. I always tell people: the moment we declare that we believe something, we stop experimenting with it; we stop following it; we just hang it on the wall. The moment you hang my picture on the wall, you have made plans to escape experimenting with what I have to say. Worshipping me is a very convenient way of escaping from me. We classify things continuously. The moment we classify, we start thinking that we have understood everything about it; that we know everything about it.

That is why I always tell people, only for a maximum of six months, you live with your husband or wife, that's all! After that, you create an image about him or her and your spouse in turn creates an image about you. After this is done, you live only with the images. You don't live with the real person! You don't live with the real being. It takes real intelligence to live with the person instead of living with images. The problem is there because we classify things. The moment we classify, we stop relating with the real person.

The best way to get the most out of the NSP is to come with an open mind.

When you come in with an empty mind, with no prejudice, you can completely absorb what I am saying in its totality. If you come in with your knowledge, you will be constantly comparing every word of mine with what you know, with what you have heard about from someone else earlier, and you will simply miss what I am trying to tell you. You can absorb me only if there is some space in you to take me in. If you are already full, you cannot take me in.

If you want to experience me, if you really want to gain something for having taken the time out for these few days, just be like an empty cup here. I will then fill you up beautifully. Be totally open and receptive. Be like a child - innocent and curious; like a sponge, ready to absorb; that is enough.

Why are we not able to relate directly? Why are we not able to listen with an open mind? For this, we need to understand the science behind the working of the mind.

How does the mind work? The diagram shows how the information that enters through the eye is processed; actually, not just the information through the eye but information through all the five senses, that is through the nose, the ears, the tongue, touch and the eye. As an example, we are now taking the eye. Let me explain it to you.

When you see something, first, the eye sees it. There is something called chakshu in Sanskrit, which digitizes the information seen by the eye. It is something like a digital signal processor – the DSP. The signal or the input is converted into a digital file by this chakshu. As I said earlier, this conversion happens to the information received through all five senses, not just the eye.

Then the file goes to the memory - chitta. In the memory, a little more work is done on the file. It analyses the file received through the process of elimination as the first step to identify what has been received. For example, if you are seeing me now, the file is processed through the chakshu and taken to the chitta, memory. The memory starts analyzing it. It starts saying, ‘This is not an animal, this is not a plant, this is not a rock,…’ It does the process of elimination.

Then the file goes to the mind or manas. The mind does the job of identification. It concludes, ‘This is a human being, a human being who is teaching a class.’ The mind concludes, ‘This is it.’

Next, the whole file takes a quantum leap to the ego and your ego decides to act based on your past experiences. If you have stored past experiences with similar classes, say yoga or meditation, and they have been alright for you, you will decide to sit here, or else you will think it is better to move on!

Let us go through the process again. The first step is you seeing me. The eye passes the information to the chakshu. The chakshu converts it to a digital signal. The memory then does the elimination work on the file – ‘This is not…’, ‘This is not…' Then, the mind does the identification of the file – ‘This is it.’ Then the whole file takes a quantum jump to the ego. In this zone of stored memories, you decide whether to sit here or leave.

I always give this example to understand the process of elimination versus that of identification:

Let us say that you want to find the word ‘Home’ in the dictionary. You start from the letter ‘A’ and you eliminate: not A, not B, not C, until you come to the letter ‘H’. Until you come to the letter ‘H’, it is only an elimination process. Once you come to ‘H’, it is an identification process. You start identifying ‘HO’, then ‘HOM’, and then you come to ‘HOME’. Even in the identification process, there is elimination, but that cannot be considered elimination, because your whole attitude is different during this time. Until you come to ‘H’, you don’t even look at anything; you only eliminate. Once you come to ‘H’, ‘H’ becomes a standpoint. Then you start looking for HO, HOM, etc. There is a difference in your attitude in the identification process when compared to your attitude during the elimination process.

It is like this: you have thousands of files stored in your mind. Now let us say that you are seeing me. You will first start eliminating: this is not a stone, this is not a tree, this is not an animal. Then you come to man and say, ‘This is a man.’ Once you come to man, you start identifying me: six feet tall, saffron clothed, talking about meditation, my master, Nithyananda! So, you are eliminating until you find the right classification. That is the first step. Going in-depth into that classification to identify what is seen, is the next step. Elimination is breadth, identification is depth. The elimination process is like handling many files. The identification process is like going deeply into a specific file.

The process between the eye and the mind is logical and conscious. You are completely aware of this process. Now, the quantum leap from the mind to the ego is mostly unconscious. That is the time when actual decisions are made and is mostly an unconscious process for you. It happens without your awareness. During this time, you simply decide illogically; you decide against your logical thought process. You make an illogical decision.

Why does this happen? Why do you decide unconsciously and regret it later?

The reason is that this unconscious zone is filled with restlessness and negative memories. All of your past memories, which we call samskaras in Sanskrit, are stored in this zone as different files. In the field of psychology the word engrams is used to denote these stored memories. There are so many of these files stored in this zone. Without any logical connection between each other, these memories or incidents are stored together here.

What happens is that when the incoming information takes a quantum leap to this zone, the heavy data stored here causes so much restlessness in you that the incoming file does not even reach the ego properly for a decision. The stored engrams just start playing on the information received. They just impose themselves and cause havoc in the decision making process. As a result, the ego makes a hasty decision purely from an instinct level, and passes the file back. It happens as an unconscious process.

For example, according to the data that you have collected, you know that smoking is injurious to your health; it is not good for your body or your mind. But once the mind takes the leap to the ego, the engrams just instruct you to smoke; you simply decide to smoke! The conscious process says, 'No, it is not good for my health'. But the unconscious process says...actually it doesn't even say, it just makes the decision and you execute it!

It is because of your engrams that you repent what you have done and regret your decisions most of the time. You wonder, 'Why did I behave in that fashion? This is not me! How did I allow this to happen? How did I make that decision?' This happens because the unconscious mind that is filled with all your samskaras has emotional attachments to your memories. If you only remember the past in a detached way, you learn from it and the resulting intelligence is used to make better decisions in the future. But if there are positive or negative emotional attachments associated with your memory, what happens? You are not able to see anything objectively. You look at the present through the tinted glasses of the past, tinted by the memories of the emotions that you went through when so-called similar incidents happened in the past. You are not able to look at this incident as a fresh and new moment of your life.

The NSP is all about going deeply in and cleaning your deep-rooted samskaras that are controlling and playing havoc with your life. We will understand in depth about the various layers or energy bodies that we have and which emotion or samskara each of them is ruled by. This intellectual understanding along with the actual cleansing of the samskaras is the essence of the NSP.

The NSP has a complete healing effect at the physical, mental and spiritual levels. People come and ask me how I heal through meditation. Please understand: I do not heal through my physical body. It is my presence that heals. When the sun rises, the lotus blooms by itself. The sun does not go and open the petals of the lotus. Similarly, in the presence of the master, healing happens. Be very clear that healing is not done; it happens.

I can heal your body, since it is in my presence. In the same way, if you open your mind too, it can be healed. In the NSP, that's what we do - opening of minds. You are asked to write down about yourself - about your pains, desires, guilt and pleasures. You will not be showing these to anyone else. It is for you, to know clearly what your deeply embedded samskaras are.

During the NSP, people ask me why I have them write down all this since they are neither expected to show them to me nor to each other. Understand: by writing it all down, you are opening your mind in my presence. You are opening your mind and hence I can heal your mind. If you open your wounds, the sun can heal them. Similarly if you can open your mind, the energy will heal all the wounds.

NSP opens up your energy layers one by one. Your pains, pleasures, guilt and desires are opened up. Once these open up and get healed, you experience a glimpse of God within you. At the end of the program, you don't even have to search for God, your mind will be so clear and relaxed that you will realize that God is already within you and is not something separate from you.

There are seven energy layers or bodies in us.

You need to understand three things.

The first thing is that it is because of these layers that you are not relating with reality as it is. The mystics always say, 'The world is God. God is everything. Whatever you see is God. Everything is God.' But we don't experience everything as God. We always see everything as evil! We always think, 'Everyone is trying to exploit us. Everyone is trying to enter into our territory. Everyone is trying to disturb us.' So what the mystics say is one thing, and what we feel is a totally different thing. Why do we feel this way? It is because we are not able to relate with reality as it is.

So the first thing you need to understand is that because you are not experiencing these layers as you should be experiencing them, they just become a cancer. Whenever something is not becoming a part of your being, it becomes a separate growth, a cancerous growth.

Unless you express, unless you start living these layers, you will never have the satisfaction that you have lived. Because, if the major portion of your life is unlived, you will never have the satisfaction in your life - not only in spiritual life, but also in the material world.

One more thing: we will be working with so many techniques related to visualization; you will be asked to visualize so many things. Generally, we have a very deep disrespect for visualization. We always think, ‘Oh... with my imagination, what can I achieve?’ Understand: your whole life is nothing but your visualization. Your whole life is nothing but your imagination! So, it’s like using one thorn to remove another thorn. If one thorn enters your foot, you take another thorn and remove it with the other thorn, don’t you? In the same way, so much of imagination has entered without your knowledge, without your consciousness. To remove this, conscious imagination is going to be put into you and the process will be done. So, whenever meditation instructions are given, just put your total energy into making them happen. Don’t bother about your opinion of them.

The person who creates a formula to re-create his experience of the outer world is a scientist. For example, Newton created the law of gravity. He had a certain experience. When he saw the apple falling from the tree, he had a certain experience. So he created a formula to reproduce the same understanding about gravity for others.

A person who creates a formula for others to understand the experiences of the outer world or the things of the outer world is a scientist. A person who creates a formula to reproduce the experiences of the inner world is a master! Understand: a person who creates a formula to reproduce the things of the outer world is a scientist. A person who creates a formula to reproduce the inner world experiences is a master. This whole program is a formula created by me to reproduce certain experiences that happened in me a few years back. So we will see what those experiences were and how this formula appeared.

First, we will see how this experience happened in me, and second, how this formula will reproduce the same thing in you. Unless we understand these two things clearly, we will not be able to work with the formula.

The whole motivation for the NSP came out of two incidents in my life.

The first one happened before enlightenment.

It was probably in the year 1999. I was in Varanasi – Kasi. There was an elderly sannyasi – a very old sannyasi suffering from cancer. He was in the hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit.

I had the responsibility of taking care of him. He was a great sannyasi, but not an enlightened person. He was a great

Figure 3: Varanasi, India

tapasvi – a spiritual seeker undertaking severe asuterities. Everyday I used to bring him food, take care of his needs and stay in the hospital.

One day, the person in the third bed from him was slowly passing away; he was dying. I was just sitting on the bed and watching the whole thing. The doctors were standing around him. They were trying their best to help, but they were not able to do anything.

Even though I was not enlightened at that time, I had had my conscious experience of death by that time - one of the most wonderful spiritual experiences I had ever had. Because of that, I was able to see what exactly was happening to him.

Slowly, he started suffering and struggling. First, he started suffering tremendous pain in the physical body. His face started showing the pain. Next, he became breathless. He started inhaling and exhaling erratically. I was able to see very clearly the pain and the agony. The pain was what it would be like if one thousand scorpions were stinging him at the same time. His whole consciousness was being torn. Just imagine… if we cut our little finger with a blade, how much pain we experience! Now imagine… his six-foot body was as if it was literally being cut into pieces along its length. Imagine the suffering!

I was able to experience the pain, the agony, the feeling which he was undergoing. Of course, slowly, very slowly, he started moving away from the physical body.

Even though it is a little difficult to receive this whole thing logically, even if it is a little difficult to understand this intellectually, this is what really happened. Understanding this whole thing is like working with a formula like X x 2 =

4. To understand the formula, to understand how to solve it, first we assume some value for X. First we assume that X = 2. Then, we put 2 in the place of X. Then we understand: 2 x 2 is 4. Once the answer is right, we know X is 2. Until the calculation is done, we have to have a little patience. But when I say, let us assume X = 2, immediately if we start raising the question, ‘No, why not 3? Why not 1? Why not 4?’ we will not be able to proceed at all. Even if we understand it as a hypothesis, it is enough. At the end of the calculation, we will be able to understand how this whole thing happens. It is the same with what I am sharing with you. It may be difficult to understand it logically, but just relax and take it as a hypothesis for now.

I was able to see and experience the tremendous pain and agony of that being. It was an excruciating pain and deep suffering. The being started moving from the physical body to the pranic layer, which is the second layer body. The Pranic layer is our breathing energy.

All these seven bodies are seven energies or energy layers of our being. When the being started moving towards the pranic layer, again there was deep suffering! Our prana shareera – breath body - is filled with all our desires. Our breathing and our desires are very closely related. If we change our breathing, our desires can be changed. Our desires and breathing are very closely related. So, when the energy was moving into the pranic layer, all the desires of the being started coming up. The being started suffering with all the unfulfilled desires.

Then, when the being started moving towards the next level body, all the guilt started rising - ‘Oh! I should have lived that way, I should have lived in this way, etc.’ In this fashion, slowly, the being moved layer by layer and finally died. I saw the whole death happening right in front of my eyes. I was able to see the whole process of death very clearly. But I was not able to help in any way. I was not enlightened at that time. I was not able to help. I just witnessed the suffering. But the pain created in me just by seeing the suffering itself was too much.

I started feeling a pain similar to what we might experience if we witness a nasty accident on the road. What will happen? Will we be able to eat for the next two days? If we see a terrible accident on the road, will we be able to eat soon after that? No! It was the same kind of feeling for me. In an accident, we see only one body. But I was able to see all the seven layers, all the seven bodies. Then imagine the pain I felt. The pain became so deeply engraved in me. It was recorded in my being so deeply that I was not able to eat or sleep for the next three to four days. Anyhow, after a few days, I left Varanasi and wandered further.

I continued with the tapas and after about a year, became enlightened. Then, driven by the will of Existence, I came down to South India. I stayed there for one or two years. It was around that time that again, I had one more opportunity to see death happening in front of my eyes.

Again I saw the second death in a hospital, and in an Intensive Care Unit. This second person did not suffer at all. He simply passed away, moving through one layer after another seamlessly. I was surprised. I asked his relatives if he was a highly spiritual person. They said that he was far from it; he probably never went to a temple all his life. Nor did he meditate or do anything remotely related to spirituality. I started analyzing, ‘Why did the first person suffer and why did the second person not suffer?’

The death that I saw in Varanasi was so painful; there are no words to describe it fully. But the death that I saw the second time was so different! I saw that the person neither experienced pain nor did he have any suffering. He was moving beautifully from the first body to the second layer, to the third layer, to the fourth layer and so on! Like how a ball rolls in the snow, just like that his being was moving! I was surprised. As I was watching, his being slowly moved away and just disappeared. He became enlightened! He was liberated.

When I was pondering over these two incidents, suddenly the truth jumped up: the second man left his body in the presence of an enlightened being. That was the reason why he left the body painlessly. When the first person was dying, as I told you earlier, I was not enlightened; I had only had a conscious death experience myself. So, my presence did not in any way influence his death. Whereas, when the second man left his body, I was there in his presence and the very enlightened energy caused him to leave the body easily.

No sooner did this revelation happen than did the means to design a program for human beings to leave the body painlessly and consciously come up! That is the formula based on which the NSP is done today.

Let me narrate to you my own conscious death experience in Varanasi. Let me describe exactly what happened within me when I had my experience with this technique. I always used to think that I should have an experience of death, that I should face death directly. But somehow, that thought never became a priority.

Any thought has to become the topmost priority, only then the corresponding experience can happen; it should not just be in one corner of your mind.

Usually on our ‘to do’ lists, we have washing, cleaning, paying the rent and phone bill, and finally if time permits, enlightenment also! And if time permits, meditation also. No! Enlightenment will not happen if it is this way. Only when it becomes a top priority, only when the urge becomes urgent, everything around you will start aligning itself for the experience to happen in you. And this is the case not just with enlightenment. With anything, it is true. Understand: if you are complaining that what you wish would happen is not happening, it is because it has not become the topmost item on your priority list, nothing else. Nothing else and no one else should be blamed for it. You will see that the moment it becomes the topmost priority, there will be an energy play that comes into being and it will simply happen. Until then, it will wait for you, that's all.

A small story:

One man goes to the doctor and says, 'Doctor I tried to commit suicide by taking 1000 aspirins.'

The doctor asks, 'But what happened?'

The man replies, 'After taking two, I felt better and I stopped.'

Understand: only when the desire is in the absolute top position on the priority list, the experience can be achieved. The death experience was not my top priority and so somehow, it was getting postponed.

In my wandering days, I had been to Varanasi, the holy city for Hindus. It has the largest floating population in the world. Per day nearly 300,000 people enter the city and leave. Further, per day, 300 dead bodies are burnt in a place called Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the sacred river Ganga. It is traditionally believed that if somebody dies or somebody's body is burnt in that area, they will be liberated; they will have direct enlightenment. It is not just a traditional belief. Ramakrishna confirms it with his own experience. He says, 'I saw very clearly, Mahadeva (Shiva) himself going near every burning body, taking the soul, unclutching it from the body-mind and liberating it!' So you can't say that it is a mythological belief; it is a solid experience.

I had the fortune of going to Manikarnika Ghat. Traditionally, it is not only believed, but it is true, that for the last 2000 years, the fire that is used to light pyres has never been put off. Whether it rains or shines or there are floods, people never bring fire when they come with a dead body to Manikarnika Ghat. The fire will already be burning and they will just take it

Figure 4: Manikarnika Burning Ghat, Varanasi, India

from there and light the dead body, that's all. The fire has never gone out. It just continuously burns the bodies as they arrive. Sometimes I would see that two to three bodies are burnt at the same time, so many bodies keep coming!

Especially in the evenings, the bodies will be more in number. From near the place where the person dies, they will start walking, carrying the dead body, chanting mantras such as, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai' (It means Rama's name is the ultimate and eternal truth). By evening, they will reach Manikarnika Ghat.

The scene there, the very experience of just being there, I cannot describe to you verbally; only you have to be there to experience it. To tell you honestly, the fear of death just disappeared from my system. You see so many bodies continuously being burned every day. You feel, 'I am also going to go like this one day, alright', that's all! You feel there are so many people giving you company! It's like one more trip that you make, that's all; you don't feel lonely about death at all.

In your life, if you see maybe one or two bodies being burnt, then you will still have the fear of death. But in that place, there will be no ritual done. They will bring the body and straightaway dip it in the river Ganga three times while chanting, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai'. By this time, the fire will be ready, and the wood will be arranged. They will bring the body straight from the water and burn it, that's all!

One strange thing you can see there, none of the relatives will stay there and do any further rituals. The moment they dip the body in the Ganga, they will place the body for burning there and go away, that's all! The people who maintain things there will take care of the rest. You will not know how long it will take for the body that you brought to be burnt completely. There will be a queue and bodies will be burning continuously.

I thought to myself, 'Let me try to sit here and see what goes on.' I sat. In just an hour's time, I felt that death is no more a strange incident which happens once in a while only for some relative or friend. I was watching bodies arriving one after another. It was like: ok, next, next, that's all. Different sizes, genders, ages, communities, of people arrived to be consumed by the same burning flame.

When you continuously see dead bodies being burnt, you actually lose respect for death! Now you have too much of respect, too many ideas about death. That is the problem. It is actually nothing but this: the breath that goes inside the body doesn't come out, that's all. Nothing much can be done about it. Neither you can rewind it nor fast forward it. As I was watching this scene continuously, initially the little fear that I had for death also disappeared and slowly it became interesting to watch. I went near the people who maintain the fire and started helping them. As I was helping them, I was thinking to myself, 'After all, this body of mine is also going to become like this one day.'

When you remember that death is going to happen to you, the respect that you carry for your ego will come down. Because, whenever you think that something should not leave you, it is just the ego, nothing else. When you know for sure that everything is going to leave you, then the respect for the ego just drops drastically. The respect I had for my ego dropped at that moment.

Then I decided, 'After all I am going to die. Either I should have a conscious death experience now itself and live the rest of my life without the death-fear, or really die, that's all.' But I decided that I have to see the death happening to me one way or the other. There was a small Shiva temple around the corner and a small tower above the temple. I went and sat in that tower so that nobody would disturb me.

I sat in that tower and from there I started seeing the dead bodies being burnt.

I still remember the strong click that triggered the whole experience that was to follow an elderly lady's body being burnt. She had a big belly; the cloth was consumed by the fire and the fat that was in the belly started melting and flowing. Sorry for describing this so vividly! I could see clearly that because of the fat flowing, the fire was burning with full momentum. That

Figure 5: Sitting in Manikarnika ghat, in the very tower where the death experience happened prior to enlightenment. (Picture taken during Varanasi tour, 2006)

gave a very strong click to me and I said, 'God! Yes, the same thing is going to happen to this body also. Let it happen!'

That click opened up a deep fear of death inside me. The fear spread all over the body, but I faced it consciously. I could see very clearly, the fear spreading all over the body, and when the fear met my awareness, when it hit my awareness, that became the death experience. I went through a conscious experience of my own death, and came out of it.

Whenever your fear is suppressed, it stays inside you as a suppressed fear. Whenever it comes out and you are not consciously facing it, it becomes a fear stroke, and shakes your whole nervous system and breaks it down. If it is faced consciously, it becomes the death experience, that's all!

If you just escape from the death-fear, when the fear happens, it becomes death. When you face it consciously, it becomes death experience. Death-fear not expressed plus unconsciousness is suppression.

Death-fear expressed plus unconsciousness is a nervous breakdown.

Death-fear expressed plus conscious awareness is the death experience!

I have given a clear equation now. Understand again:

Death-fear plus unconscious-ness, is suppression or perversion.

Death-fear plus unconscious-ness means, you don't suppress but you don't face it either. You just get shaken, frightened, have a fear stroke, or a nervous breakdown.

Death-fear plus conscious awareness is a death experience.

I was able to see very clearly, the fear that arose. When I faced it consciously with awareness, it became my death experience. The body was dead; it was not moving.

For two and a half days I had no food, no water, no thought, no question, no doubt. The body was there. Only after the experience had passed, I realized that I had been like that for two and a half days! I could see with closed eyes that the body was dead, and there was no movement. Suddenly, after two and a half days, the click happened again, 'God! The body is dead but I still exist! I am there!' That clarity, when it clicked, became such intense ecstasy in me. The fear of death left me once and for all.

I was in such deep ecstasy, such joy, such bliss. I slowly opened my eyes and I was able to move the body. The first thing I felt was such a surge of ecstasy and gratitude. I went down to the Ganga, sprinkled a little Ganga water on myself, took the Ganga water in the kamandalu (small water pot that I used to carry, as wandering monks do), took a little ash from the fire, and went straight to the Kasi Vishwanath temple. I went up to the Shiva linga, offered the ash I had brought, did the puja. It was done with such inexpressible gratitude. I saw that Vishwanath was alive there.

Understand, because I died Vishwanatha became alive! Until the day before that, because I was still alive, Vishwanatha was always an ordinary stone. I had always felt that to touch this stone, 300,000 people are coming everyday from so far away... what foolishness!

You see, when you touch the deity yourself, you will tend to lose respect for it. In South India, you can't touch the deities in the temples. But in North India, you can touch it yourself and do the offering. Anyhow, I always felt that the Vishwanatha deity was an ordinary stone. I felt that way because I was still alive. When I died, I saw clearly, He is alive! Only one can be alive, either Him or you. When you see the Truth, He will become alive. You will not be alive anymore as you now think.

The fear of death left me once and for all. I can say that this is one of the very strong experiences that transformed me to search for the ultimate experience of enlightenment.

– Passing through the seven layers…

There is a beautiful website on near-death experiences. An American doctor did this research. He started meeting people who had near-death experiences. ‘Near-death’ means those who are clinically declared dead and who come back to life after three to four hours. There are many such cases. In our Indian villages there will always be four to five cases.

The other day a doctor was telling me, ‘There are so many cases of those who are medically declared dead, and who come back to life after four to five hours.’ In some persons’ lives, it happens three to four times even, and they come back to life. This doctor somehow got interested in this subject and he started going all over the world, meeting these types of persons. He met 10,000 people from all over the world and collected all their memories and their experiences of how they had their death experience. He did research for 30 years.

After analyzing all their experiences, he reached a conclusion. He made a statement, a beautiful statement that people on the planet earth, only when they live, they are Christians or Muslims or Hindus or Jews or Buddhists. When they die, all of them die in the way that is described by Hinduism. We may be a Hindu, Muslim, Jew or Christian, but when we die we are a Vedanti (person who seeks the Truth).

In the Kathopanishad (ancient vedic scripture), there is a clear description of death. This researcher says, in all these 10,000 people's experiences which he collected, everybody's experience exactly matches with what Kathopanishad describes!

Let us see how exactly death happens. First, we move away from the physical body. You may be thinking, 'I came to learn how to live, but he is teaching all about death!' Understand: unless we understand the mysteries of death, we will not have a clear idea about life. Our concept about death totally changes our concept about life. Our philosophy about life changes when our philosophy about death changes.

See, in the East, nobody cares for time. Things will happen at their own pace, taking their own sweet time. Why? Because all the eastern religions believe that humans have many births. They have eternity in their hands! If not today, tomorrow, that's all. If it is not coming today, tomorrow, otherwise, next birth, so relax!

All western religions talk only about one birth. They say that after death we don't have any rebirth. That is why western people are so time conscious. Whatever has to be enjoyed has to be enjoyed in these 70 to 80 years. Nothing else can be done. We have to finish it. That is why their life style, everything is organized around time consciousness.

The idea of death changes the whole idea of life. So never think that learning about death is a waste of time. It is the basic lesson everyone has to learn.

First, a person moves from the physical layer, that is the body which we are having, to the pranic layer, which involves inhaling and exhaling, that is the energy or the air movement, the prana movement inside our system. Prana refers to the life force that is brought in by the air into our system when we breathe. It is the life sustaining energy needed for us. Air is just a medium to bring prana in. Prana is what is needed to sustain life.

When we move from the first layer to the second layer, all our desires, our unfulfilled desires, all the ways in which we wanted to live but did not live, all those things usually come up. When this happens, it is almost as if in a room, ten people are standing, kicking a football around. What will happen? Just like how the football is kicked from corner to corner, our consciousness will be kicked from all corners. In each corner, some desire will be standing and kicking it. At the time our consciousness is trying to leave the body, all our desires will be forcing us to enter back into the body so that we can fulfill and enjoy them further.

On one side, our desires will be forcing us to enter into the body again so that we can live and enjoy, while on the other side, the body will say, ‘No! I am tired. I can’t host you anymore, just leave!’ On one side, the body will say, ‘I am tired; I can’t host you.’ On the other side, the pranic layer that houses our desires forces us to live inside the body. That is what causes the pulling and pushing at the time of death. Pulling and pushing is nothing but the fight between our desires and the body.

Somehow, if we manage to move away from the pranic layer, we enter next into the mental body. When we enter into our mental body, all our guilt rises! All the guilt that we had about the way we felt we should have lived our lives but never lived, all the mistakes that we committed, all of our regrets, etc.

Please understand, desire is about the future and guilt is about the past. But actually, both are one and the same. The same thing, when it is about the past, it is guilt, and when it is about the future, it is desire! The way in which we want to live is desire, and the way in which we wanted to live but didn't, is guilt. I always tell people, guilt is nothing but reviewing our past decisions with updated intelligence.

Our intelligence is continuously being updated. The problem is that with this updated intelligence, we try to review our past decisions. For example, as a seven year old, your mother comes and calls you to eat your food. She says, 'You have played enough with your toys. Put them away, and come eat.' What do you say? 'No, I don't want to eat. I want to play.' If your mother comes and tries to snatch the toys, what do you do? You not only cry, you even curse her! But all these years later, now, you know that the toys are not so important as your mother is to you, is it not? Now, your intelligence is totally different. At that time, toys were so important to you that you cursed even your mother.

Now you know your mother is much more important. With this updated intelligence, is it good to create guilt? 'Oh! At that time, I cursed my mother. I feel so ashamed.' No! At that time, we had only that much intelligence. All our decisions are made with the available intelligence at that given point in time in our lives.

If we start reviewing our past decisions with updated intelligence we will always create guilt. All our guilt is nothing but trying to review past decisions with updated intelligence. All the guilt that we collect over our lives rises as we pass through the mental body. Then, if we move a little away, a little deeper , we come to the etheric layer that is related to all our sufferings. All the suffering that we went through during our life is stored here. Like this, each and every layer has got its own samskara or stored memories. Actually, traveling through these layers is what we can think of as hell. There is no other separate place called hell. Hell and heaven are not geographical locations; they are psychological spaces.

One more thing: when we enter into the dream layer and start dreaming, we have seen that this whole world in which you live in now becomes black and white because we are in the dream world. We forget this whole world and the dream world becomes multicolour. If we come out of the dream, this whole world is again seen in 4 dimensions, like 4D.

Now, when we are in this physical layer, this whole world is seen as 4D. We experience this world as 4D, in multi-colour. When we are in the dream world, we experience that world as 4D. So, when we are here, the dream world becomes black and white, and this world becomes 4D, and when we are there, the dream becomes 4D, and this world becomes black and white.

In the same way, when we move away from the physical layer to the pranic layer at the time of death, this whole world will become black and white. All of your achievements, your pride, your efforts, your sorrow, your happiness, everything will appear in black and white. You will wonder 'Why did I do all this work? Why did I think of all this as a base for my life?'

Let me explain why this happens. When we are alive we invest in our personality; we build up our personality based upon a few pillars. There are a few pillars or foundations on which we build our personality. Those pillars are money, name and fame, relationships, pride that we have a big community, support circle, etc.

If somebody asks you, 'Who are you?' what will you say? 'I am an engineer', 'I am a doctor', 'I am a lawyer'. Or you will say, 'I am the owner of four houses.' Or, 'I am such and such a person's husband or wife', or 'I am her husband', or somebody's son, or somebody's daughter, or somebody's wife. Our personality is built on these few foundations.

When we move from the physical body, all these foundations will be completely shaken. We can't sign our name on our cheques any more. Our signature is not accepted. Our bank balance is no more related to us. We can't handle our bank account. Our car will not be useful to us. At the most, only the ambulance will be useful! Our house will be filled with all our relatives. They will be weeping to see us dead. But neither our house nor our relatives will be useful to us. We can't even relate with our relatives. We can't talk to any of them. If we try to they will run away!

Your wife will come up to the last point in the procession and weep. Your son will come through to the end and do the last rites and rituals. But who will come after that? Nobody! Nobody can come. Only the conscious glimpse can come with you. In this way, whatever is the foundation for your being, that whole foundation will be shaken. When the foundation is shaken, naturally you don't have anything to hold on to.

Understand this one thing; if we suddenly hear of some loss in our business, we will feel that our whole body is suffering. The suffering will not be just in one portion. The whole body will be suffering. It will be almost like our being is crushed. We can see in our life, if we just sit in our office and worry about something, we don't have to do any work, if we just sit and worry alone, we will have shoulder pain! If we just sit and worry for ten minutes, what will happen? We will have shoulder pain.

So understand that when something moves away from us, our whole body suffers. When we move away from the physical body the same suffering starts happening in us. Whatever we thought was a foundation for our life is shaken.

As of now, this whole world will appear in 4D. All this talk about spirituality, meditation, growing the inner being, consciousness etc will appear as black and white. That is why, when I call people for meditation, they tell me, 'I don't have time to meditate. Let me finish all my work and then come. I have a few more years.' Never say, 'I don't have time to meditate.' Be very clear to yourself and say, 'I don't feel that it is that important in my life right now.' If we are ready to say, 'I don't think meditation is so important in my life,' then we are honest. But if we say, 'I don't have time,' then we are just fooling ourselves. Everyone has got the same 24 hours on hand to do what they feel they should. It is not that the few who are meditating are jobless. It is just a question of priority, of what we want in our life. If spirituality and meditation appear as black and white to us now, we will not divert our energy in that area, that's all.

But what happens is that when we move away from the physical body at the time of death, whatever we thought of as 4D when we were living will totally disappear, everything will be totally shaken and appear as black and white! At that time, they will not have any basis at all. In them, we will not be able to find any space where we can rest. That is the reason why death is always a suffering. But at that moment, if we can have a conscious glimpse, or glimpse of consciousness from our past, then we can consciously enter into death!

Let me explain further. If we understand this concept completely, we will not develop attachment to whatever we think of as 4D. We may enjoy them but our personality will not be built on them. We will become intelligent, and when we are living, we will create at least one part of the foundation or one pillar in the other dimension that is spirituality!

You see, now we are in two dimensions, the material world and spirituality. Right now, what is happening is that however many pillars we build our personalities and life upon, all those pillars are based on the material world which appears to be 4D. Not a single pillar is based on consciousness or our inner space. Our whole personality is built only based on the outer space - our name, our fame, what society speaks about us, etc. Our complete personality is structured only on what society speaks about us. If everyone's opinion of us is that we are great, what do we think? We think we are great. If everybody says, 'You are useless', what happens? We start getting depressed.

This happens because not even a single pillar of our building is based on spirituality, our inner core, our being. The entire thing is based on the outer space. That is the reason that when those pillars are shaken by anybody, we start suffering terribly. If we have even one pillar from consciousness, we can depend on that to stand straight without suffering. One more thing: these outer world pillars are not in our control at all. Anyone passing by can easily shake them. Even if a small child comes up to us and says that we are a fool, we will get a little shaken, is it not? That child might have even said it only to try a few new words that he is learning! But you get shaken. So understand that these outer world pillars are that weak.

That is what the Bhagavad Gita says: what comes and stands in our mind at the time of leaving the body will alone decide about our next birth or enlightenment. If we have at least one pillar on consciousness, naturally we will not have suffering when we leave the body. All the other pillars will become black and white. But even if the other pillars become black and white, this one pillar will be there in multi colour – 4D. This one pillar will be there to take us through the process.

As of now we have no pillar to take us through, that is the problem. As of now, our whole personality is based on the outer space. All our pillars are made up of what we think is 4D now. And there is no inner space for us either. That is why, like a football, people can kick us from corner to corner in the outer space. Anybody can just throw one word towards us to make us depressed. If somebody says we are mad, we shout at them and prove that we are mad! A single word is enough to make us mad. Nothing much is necessary. We are almost like the street dogs - if we just throw one stone at it, it becomes mad.

If anybody throws one word at us, it is enough to make us mad or depressed. This happens only because we don't have strength in the inner space. Please understand that if we build at least one pillar based on our inner space, this pillar will shine in 4D at the time of death and help us leave the body beautifully.

Vivekananda beautifully says, ‘Even if we have one single thoughtless awareness experience in our life, that is, a single conscious experience in our life, that is enough. At the time of leaving the body, it will come up and we will leave our body peacefully. We will have just awareness without thoughts.’

The idea ‘I’ exists in all of us when we are awake. In deep sleep, is it there? No. In the same way, almost every one of us has thoughts when we are awake. In deep sleep, do we have thoughts? No. There are two states of mind and two states of being. These two criss-cross each other and create four states of being in which we exist and live our lives.

The first state is to be with ‘I’, and with thoughts. This is what we experience as our waking state. In Sanskrit, we call it the jagrat state; jagratavastha – the waking state.

Figure 6: Four States of Consciousness

In the next state, there will be thoughts, but there will not be the sense of ‘I’ that we experience in the waking state. That is what we call the dream state. You may ask how is it that in the dream state we don't have the sense of 'I'.

Let me explain. Now, in the waking state, if you choose, you can control your thoughts, am I right? You can suppress them, alter them, and recreate them in a different way. You can do whatever you want with them because the frequency of 'I' is higher than the frequency of thoughts. 'I' is more powerful here.

But in the dream state the frequency of your thoughts is more than the frequency of the 'I' consciousness. That is why you are not able to control your dreams as you wish to. Are you able to control your dreams and dream the way you want to? No! Wherever the dreams take you, you have to go, that's all. In the dream state, the frequency of thoughts is greater. That is why they just flow. You can't do anything about it. If at all we have the opportunity to dream what we want to, we know what type of dreams we will be having! So understand, the dream state is when you don't have 'I' but you do have thoughts.

In the third state, neither have you the 'I' nor have you the thoughts. This is the deep sleep state, or sound sleep state.

There is a fourth state that we never experience. In that state one will have the 'I' consciousness but not have any thoughts. This is what we call turiya or meditation or samadhi or atmagnana, nirvana, the self-realization experience, whatever you want to call it. This is what we call samadhi. This is the state where you have the 'I' consciousness but no thoughts. This is what I mean when I say, 'thoughtless awareness' or 'consciousness'. Even one glimpse of this state is enough. Even one experience of this state is enough, that when you leave your body you will have your rest there!

As of now, this turiya state or samadhi state or consciousness… all these things will look like black and white to us. We will not give that much importance to all these things. We will think this is for philosophers or for people who are ready to die of old age. It will be very difficult to surrender to even the idea of this turiya state. It will be very difficult to work for this consciousness because it appears only as black and white to us, of little or no value to us.

You must be thinking, ‘Who knows what the truth is? He must be telling something to do his business!’ I always tell people that it is not so easy to understand all these things. It is not so easy to surrender to these ideas as of now.

The moment you hear the words ‘consciousness’ or ‘surrender’ or ‘samadhi’ or ‘meditation’, immediately, what do you think? ‘All this is very difficult for me.’ And not only that, we will always have the fear, ‘You may now tell me to surrender, but tomorrow you may take away my property or you may take away my husband or you may take my wife away from me. You may take away my kids also. Or, I myself may get inspired and go behind you!’ There are so many troubles, so many problematic possibilities that you see when you hear all this.

It is very difficult to trust somebody. It is very difficult to enter into this fourth state or even come close to it. But it seems difficult only because all these things appear in two-colour now – black and white. But when you leave the body, then it will appear as four-colour and whatever you thought of as four-colour now will become completely two-colour, black and white.

Now, let us see how the second death happened so peacefully. Again the statement which I am going to make now is a little difficult to understand but I have no other way. The truth has to be explained as it is. The truth has to be expressed. Only then, you will be able to enter into the formula. This is the way the formula happened to the person who died peacefully in the second death that I saw in the ICU.

When the second death was happening, the moment the person left the first layer, because an enlightened being was there, because of my presence, somehow he was able to catch a glimpse of that consciousness! He was able to catch my presence. During the first death that I witnessed, I was not enlightened. I was only doing my tapas (spiritual practices). I was wandering all over India and doing tapas. But during the second death, I was enlightened. Somehow, because of that, he was able to catch a glimpse of consciousness. The moment he left the first layer, he was able to feel me or experience me. The moment he started experiencing me, his whole consciousness simply became centered on me.

Usually, what are the things that stop you from surrendering to the master? The list is the same for everyone -your bank balance, your house, your car, your relationship, your wife, your own insecurity about your life etc. You may think, 'If I surrender to him, what will happen to my life? I may start becoming a servant to him. There are so many other things that I still have to do.' All these thoughts are stopping you from surrendering or entering into the consciousness. 'Surrendering' and 'entering into the consciousness', both are one and the same. But, for that person who was at the stage where death had started happening, all these things became valueless! They had no significance for him anymore! As I told you earlier, when you leave the first level, the body itself, all these things will become valueless to you. So whatever strings were pulling him down were already cut or disconnected. None of the usual attachments or fears was binding him.

As long as you think that the outer world is worthy, that it has got value and you fear that somebody may take it away, you are caught. You fear that somebody may snatch it from you and you can't surrender to the experience of consciousness. As long as you think that whatever you collected in your life is valuable, you will have tremendous fear of losing it. That is why I tell people, 'As long as you think these things are valuable, you will never be able to experience fearlessness.' There will be a continuous fear. The more you have the attachment to those things, the greater the fear. Continuously your being will be shaken. Every moment you will be waiting with fear as to what might happen next and what you may lose.

But for that dying man, at that moment, whatever can be taken away from him has already been taken away. Now there is nothing for him to lose. Trusting the master is very easy at that moment. Somehow, fortunately for him, he had my presence there. He could simply see the whole thing! The moment the physical layer things were taken away from him, he understood that all the other things are valueless and of no significance, and that very moment his whole consciousness, without any doubt, without any difficulty, caught onto me. It became centered on me! Naturally, when he was centered on an enlightened being or conscious being, he simply dissolved into enlightenment without any suffering.

Whatever is stopping you now, will not stop you at that time. Understand: at that time you don't have to practice renunciation consciously. Everything will simply be taken away from you by force. That is the nature of death. Only as long as you have a choice, you have to practice commitment, renunciation, charity, righteousness and what not. At the time of death, you don't have to practice anything. Everything will simply be taken away

Figure 7: A divine farewell to the departed soul of Sri Sri Nithya Arunachalananda Swami from you without your permission or control. Then, what is there to practice? Renouce what? You won't have anything even to renounce!

In those moments there is nothing that can stop you from entering into the enlightenment experience. There is nothing that can stop you from entering into the conscious experience. But there is only one thing you need when you leave the body. You need a conscious being around you. Without that, it is not possible. Now, what am I supposed to do? I can't go and stand in all the ICUs in the world and ask people when they plan to die! How can I help so many people at the time of death without physically being there with them? So I thought about it seriously and the formula to achieve this revealed itself.

From my own experience I tell you that leaving the body peacefully is the greatest gift anybody can have. If you have that gift, you have achieved whatever needs to be achieved. You have lived your life. Nothing else needs to be achieved. If you have not achieved that, nothing else is worth achieving.

After seeing this second death, I started seriously contemplating on how this could be reproduced. How can I help people leave their body consciously? As I was telling you, I cannot go and stand in all the ICUs. That's impossible.

Suddenly, like a lump, like a conscious ball, something landed in me. A formula happened in my consciousness. The formula revealed itself to me. This formula is what I call the Nithyananda Spurana Program. The first thing you must know is that energy is not bound by space or time. Energy is beyond time and space. All we need is a tuning system, that's all. See, if you have a cable box in your house, you can just tune your television to any channel. If you tune to BBC, you will see BBC. If you tune to CNN, you will see CNN. Whatever channel you tune to, you can see the program on that channel.

In the same way, at the time of leaving the body, if you can tune yourself to consciousness, if you can tune yourself to 'thoughtless awareness', 'conscious experience', you will simply see that your life itself was a conscious experience. You will be able to beautifully and peacefully cross this ocean of samsara (worldly life of engraved memories that you lived in all along), or ocean of all these seven layers.

In this program we are going to work with this formula. Please understand, if you work seriously with the theory of gravity you can always understand fully what Newton experienced. In the same way, work with this formula. You can simply experience what that person experienced. What has happened in my consciousness can happen in your consciousness also. All you need to do is work with this formula intensely. Just go with this formula as intensely as possible. Nothing else needs to be done.

Another important question arises here. 'Forget about dying… what about living?' Please be aware that as of now all the seven layers are not so clear as you think they are. It is like seven coats that you are having. If you are wearing the seven coats properly, you can remove them whenever you wish to and hang them on the wall. But as of now, you are not wearing these seven coats properly. The first coat button is locked with the seventh coat. The third coat button is locked with the first coat. The second coat button is locked with the fourth coat and so on! You see, if you can remove a coat whenever you want, it can be called a coat. If you can't remove it, then it is not a coat; it is a bondage.

If you have had a single conscious experience you will not be continuously tortured, pulled and pushed by your samskaras or engraved memories. If you look back at your whole life you will be able to understand what I am saying. If you look back at your whole life with a little intelligence, you will be able to understand that you never really lived. Only your engrams (engraved memories) lived through you. For example, suppose you have created a samskara that in the morning, at 7 o'clock, you need to drink coffee. At exactly 7 o'clock, you don't have to even see the watch, from inside you the alarm will sound, 'Coffee!'

Like this, you have many samskaras. For example, every morning at nine o'clock your mind will automatically start worrying about your office. In the evening at five o'clock you will start worrying about your house. In the night at eight o'clock you will start worrying about your kid's education. If this becomes a routine, even on Sunday, you will start worrying about your office at nine o'clock. Even if you don't have to go to office, you will start worrying about it. Suddenly, you will remind yourself, 'No, no. Today is Sunday so don't bother about it. We don't have to go to office.' Even then, you will continue to have that same low mood during that time. Even your worry, your mind, is nothing but recorded samskaras.

Never think you are really living. Your samskaras are living through you, that's all. These samskaras are recorded in all the seven layers. Only when you cleanse your samskaras, your mental habits, do you really begin to live.

When you can't sit with yourself, you miss a major dimension of your life. When I say, you can't sit with yourself, I mean when you can't sit enjoying your own reality, your own Self. And why can't you enjoy your own Self? It is because your samskaras are enjoying you. Your samskaras are living through you. You are not living. That is the reason why you can't sit with yourself. You are driven to continuously do something.

During these few days, all we are going to do is only one thing

The way in which you enjoy your whole life will decide how your last moment will be.

One more important thing, please understand. This might be shocking to you, but it is the truth. Only after seeing the first death was I able to realize this statement: even your paapa (sin) or punya (merit) doesn't come with you or count for anything, at the time of your death. Please understand: even your sin or merit doesn't come with you. Don't think that your sin or merit comes with you. Don't think that if you do some charity here, if you give some money to some temple here and get a receipt, you will be given a VIP pass there! No! There is no exchange offer between this world and the other world.

Then, the next question comes – ‘If that is true then can I commit any sin?’ Understand this truth: if somebody commits 100 murders, the attitude of committing murder goes with him upon his death. The exact number of murders does not go with him. The attitude goes with him. And one more thing: never think that because you commit sins you will therefore go to hell. You commit sins because you are in hell! A person who is happy will never be violent. If you are happy, will you torture others? If you are happy, will you be violent? When you are established in goodness, even if your staff or employee makes a mistake, what you will say? ‘Alright, leave it!’ So understand this important point: hell is not where you will go to. It is where you are. If you understand this, you will take back your question about committing sins!

In the same way, never think that you will do good things and therefore reach heaven. You do good things because you are in heaven. The mental setup that you have when doing an activity is what makes up your experience of hell or heaven. While doing something wrong, whatever mental set up you have that created your attitude and choice, that suffering itself is the only hell. While doing a noble thing, whatever mental setup you have that initiated such an action, that setup and feeling is heaven. So don't think your sins or merits come with you. Only one thing comes with you – the conscious experience that you had in your lifetime.

All of humanity can be categorized into just two categories: people who have had the conscious experience when they were living and people who have not had the conscious experience, that's all! All other concepts of hell and heaven are just beautiful stories. Please be very clear - there is no hell or heaven as you understand it to be. If at all you can carry something with you, there is only one thing that you can carry and that is this conscious experience. Either you can become enlightened, or you can come down for another birth according to your choice.

Please be clear, there are many people who are thinking, 'If I give this much money to that particular temple, that powerful deity will be standing there at the gates of heaven to take care of me.' Or, 'If I give this property to this church, God will be waiting with a special pass into heaven to let me in. Nothing like that will happen! People generally think, 'If I give this much of money to Venkateshwara Swamy, He will send a special flight from Vaikunta (His abode) for me.' No! This will never happen.

There is a beautiful story in the Upanishad, about a rishi by name Jadabharatha. One rishi called Jadabharatha somehow became attached to a deer. From morning till night, he used to spend his time taking care of that deer. When he was dying, he was not able to forget the animal. He started worrying about that animal, 'Oh! Who will take care of the animal? What will happen to it after my death?' He started worrying about all these things, because he was so attached to that deer. When he died, in the next birth, he was born as a deer. Beautifully the verse says that whatever you think in the antima kaala - in your last moment - you become that!

Some people think very cleverly, 'Let me live my whole life, the way I want to live. In the last few moments, I will chant Hare- Rama, Hare-Krishna or Govinda-Shiva and enter heaven somehow.' Or you may think, 'I don't have interest in spiritual things. I'll deal with it on my death bed.' It is not so. Only that which you thought of in your whole life, only that will come up when you leave the body. Don't think that at that moment you can play the game! No! Actually, when you leave the body your whole system will be in such agony, because 80 or 90 years of your life will run through in a fast-forward mode. All that will be seen are the scenes being fast-forwarded. Whatever experience you had intensely, or whatever you enjoyed intensely, only that will come up in multicolour. All the other things will run past in black and white.

If you have lived throughout your life only eating, then naturally, only that will come up in those last moments. When it comes up, what will you decide? 'After all, I am going to only eat in my next birth, so let me take birth as a pig!' You will think, 'Why take birth as a human body?' Suppose that you spent your whole life sleeping, you will decide, 'Why unnecessarily choose a human body and go to office? Let me take birth as a buffalo!'

I am not joking! It is only based on the way in which you enjoy your whole life that you decide in the last moment about your next birth. In the last moment, the whole thing will come up in fast-forward mode. What you enjoyed deeply, what was an intense experience in your life will appear like a pop-up; that will come up and appear in multicolour. All the other things will be in black and white as the background. If you had a single conscious experience, a single instance of thoughtless awareness in your life, naturally when you leave your body only that will come up in multicolour because that is the strongest experience anybody can have.

Please understand that 'thoughtless awareness' is the strongest experience you can have in your life. All the other three states are only shallow. Even for a single moment, if you had that experience, that is enough. Naturally, when you leave the body that will come up. That will come up and you will simply move into the light. That will act as a light and you will be able to move into the consciousness.

One more thing is important to understand about the time of death. If you had met with an accident and died prematurely or committed suicide, if you did not have the conscious experience before your death you have to wait for the remaining years you might have lived before you can enter a new birth. For example, when you took this body, if you decided to live in this body for 90 years and then committed suicide at age 60, then for the next 30 years, you have to struggle, waiting for the next body. If it is a natural death, then there is no problem. Of course, disease is a natural death. But death due to murder or suicide will have to wait with a lot of suffering to get into the next body.

Never contemplate suicide. Why do we normally contemplate suicide? Because we think of this life as torture, as suffering. But if you commit suicide, only then you will understand that what you are going to go through will be a much worse torture. Never ever contemplate suicide.

If I have to describe the torture in a way, it will be like this: you will have sweets in front of you, but you will not have a tongue to taste or hand to take it and put it into your mouth. How much of suffering it will be! In the same way, the whole world will be in front of you, but you will not have the body to enjoy it when you float around waiting for your next body after having committed suicide. That is why I say never contemplate suicide.

A recent research report says that if a mother dies at a very young age, the child is prone to paralysis attacks. If the mother dies at a very young age, the child is prone to paralysis because that part of the energy given by the mother is not nourished by her presence, by her nearness. That is why in our ancient system until the age of 14, children were always kept in the nearness of their parents. They were allowed to sleep in their laps.

Till the age of 14, you should hug your children. Put them to sleep in your lap. Keep them always around you. Never put them in a boarding school. If you put your kids in a residential school before the age of 14, you need to get ready to go to old age home in your old age! They will put you in an old age home when it comes to that. If you put them in boarding school before the age of 14, they will put you in old age home later, that's all. There is no other way, because by putting them in boarding school, you would not have built a relationship with them. They will put you in the old age home at the time you need nearness. So please give them your nearness.

Within three kshana of death a person takes another body. It happens within three kshana. Kshana does not mean one 'second' of time. In vedic mathematics or vedic time calculations, the gap between one thought and the next thought for that particular person is one kshana. Kshana is determined by the individual and their thought flow. It is subjective to the person and not an objective calculation of time as we would think of one second on a clock.

If you lived a peaceful life, your kshana can be even two months. If you have lived a restless life, your kshana will be one microsecond. If you have lived a restless life hurrying and worrying, your kshana might even be one microsecond. If you have lived a peaceful life, a relaxed and especially conscious life, if your life was with a conscious experience, your kshana could be even three to four months. It can be extended to even one year.

There are two things - chronological time and psychological time. If you are sitting with somebody whom you really love, or who you really care for, you will not notice time pass. Even if you sit for three to four hours together, you will feel that the time flew by. Whereas, if you are sitting with somebody who doesn't interest you, whom you don't really care for, after every five minutes, what will you do? You will check your watch. You will wonder why time is not moving. You will feel so bored.

If the number of thoughts is too much, then the number of kshanas passed will be more and you will feel that too much time has passed whereas only a few minutes might have passed. This is what happens when you are with someone who doesn't interest you. Your mind becomes restless because of that. If the number of thoughts is fewer, the number of kshanas passed will be fewer and you will feel only a little time has passed, whereas a lot of time would have passed by. This is what happens when you are with someone whom you love. That is why we always say that if the number of thoughts is less, you are in heaven. See, for devatas (heavenly beings), our earthly one year is one day for them! Have you heard this before? Our entire year is one day for them! How is this so? It is because their number of thoughts is so few. So they don't even know how the chronological time moves past so quickly.

That is why in the Chidambaram temple in South India, which is considered to be the temple belonging to the heavenly beings, the presiding deity – Nataraja, will have only six abhishekas (ceremonial baths) in a year. He is worshipped by the devatas. In regular temples, usually we do six pujas per day. But in this particular temple, only six pujas are done in a year itself, because the calendar of the devatas is totally different. The number of thoughts for them is less; they are in heaven. So naturally their kshana, the time between two thoughts is more.

This concept of kshana should be understood clearly. From this we can understand how our one year is only one day for the devatas. The people who are residing in the sixth layer, the spiritual body, are called devatas. That space itself is called heaven.

If you have lived a restless and continuously worrying life, the moment you leave the body, you will feel so restless that within three kshanas, you will take the next body. You cannot be without a body because you are so dependent on the body and mind to survive. You must quickly get another body so that you can continue to try to fulfill desires.

See, all along your life, your ten pillars, your foundation, were in the outer space of the world. Your attention was always directed outwards. So naturally you are dependent on the body to survive. You can't be without a body. What will you do? You will be in a great hurry to take another body. It is like this example. You wait in the railway station just to get into the first train that stops. You will not be bothered about which train is coming, which way it is going, which platform, etc. You will simply jump into it, that's all. If you have lived a simple life, a peaceful life, if you have had one glimpse of consciousness, a single glimpse of this turiya state, then when you leave the body, you will leave it beautifully, and you will have a VIP lounge there to wait in. There is no hurry and you take another body at your leisure. You will not be pushed and pulled by desires, guilt and painful experiences of your life. You will not be forced to take whatever next body is available. You can have a beautiful and relaxed way of living. You can wait and decide whether to take a certain available body or to wait further. It will all be your choice. All you need to do is work towards one conscious glimpse in this life and in this body.

If you have learnt to live without your body and mind for even a moment, that is what I mean when I say ‘thoughtless awareness.’ You will have the same thoughtless awareness at the time of leaving the body also. If you master the art of living with the body and mind, then, you will have the maturity and experience to know that whatever is taken away from you will not be you. You will have your inner space safe all the time. It is clear and there is no suffering. As of now you don't have that inner space. As of now, all we think as ‘we’ is based on the outer space only. Our inner space is simply corrupted with everything we encounter in the outer world. We never protect our inner space, our greatest treasure. That is the problem.

Ramakrishna says beautifully, ‘If you put a little curd into milk and keep it in a corner for two to three hours, it will become curd. Then, you can churn or shake the curd. You will have only butter; nothing will go wrong with it. But immediately after putting the curd into the milk, if you keep on churning it, you will never have the whole thing as curd; the curd will never happen.’ Now understand that for these few days, you need to keep your outside world connections away from your inner space so that the curd can form. Once the curd has happened, you can go back into the world. Then, anything may be done to you; nothing will shake you. But in these few days when the process is happening, please cooperate. We will be working intensely here.

Even if you try to get some information from your home or office, whether it is good or bad information, the problem is, your whole office mental setup or home mental setup will come back to you. And in just ten minutes, you will come down and become like how you were earlier. It is like this, even if you see a single encounter on the street, it is enough to create a chain of thoughts in you, is it not? So, please understand, in the next few days, even though it is a little difficult, try to avoid cell phone conversations. Avoid even the incessant mental chatter, the mental thoughts about your office, house, etc.

Whenever you remember this instruction, quickly bring your mind and consciousness back to the present moment. You can watch your breath or you can feel your whole body in order to bring yourself to the present moment. Continuously, come back to the present moment, just for these few days.

Around the world, thousands of people have worked with this NSP formula and have been successful. If you are successful in the NSP, that is, if you have had even one conscious glimpse during the program, not only at the time of leaving the body do you become conscious, but even if you are given anesthesia for any surgery you will enter into the conscious state at that time.

After the NSP, some people undergo minor surgeries in hospitals. They write to us that when they were given anesthesia, automatically they fell into the conscious state. Even under a full dosage of anesthesia, they fell into the conscious state! They say, ‘We didn’t feel pain, but were clearly witnessing what was happening. We were aware of the whole thing, and we were able to experience the whole operation very clearly.’ This has happened not just with one or two persons, but with hundreds of people.

Even while doing some activity, if you feel giddy and fall, you will not enter into the darkness that you usually enter; you will not become unconscious. You will enter only into light.

All your major diseases are rooted in your mental set up. If you don’t change your mental set up, when healing is given, what will happen? You will get the same disease in ten days’ time and come back for healing again. As long as you have a knee, you will have knee pain. If you drop your idea about your knee, the pain will disappear.

When you have a conscious glimpse in your lifetime, no karma (unfulfilled actions) can touch you. Your frequency becomes much more than the frequency of karma. See, karma can work on you as long as you have thoughts. In conscious awareness, you go beyond thoughts. So naturally, you will start ruling karma!

It is said that meditation is like exposing your film directly to the sun. If the camera shutter opens for just one moment, whatever is in front of the camera will be recorded in the film, is it not? If the shutter is left completely open, what will happen? If the sun's rays directly fall on the film, what will happen? Whatever is recorded will be erased.

Now, when you took birth, for one moment the camera shutter opened, and life entered your body. So whatever was there in the scene got recorded. It means that whatever planetary positions existed at that moment got recorded. That is why the time of birth is very important. It is only based on that, your consciousness functions.

Now, consciously, I am keeping the shutter open for quite a bit of time during this program. So naturally, whatever is recorded... what will happen to that? It will be erased, meaning all your past karma is erased. That is why it is said that when you take birth it is like opening the camera shutter for one moment. When you are initiated, the shutter is completely opened. Naturally, the sun's rays enter and all your karmas are wiped out. That is why, when you are initiated, you are called dvija – twice born. You take a second life, a new life. And the one who operates your camera to hold the shutter open for that extra time is called the Guru.

Based on all the intelligence that you have when you leave the body, you decide what type of a body you want to take next. It is based upon the lifetime you just completed. With the 'file' created by the experiences and impressions of the past life, you review the entire file. You ask yourself, 'What is the best experience that I wanted to have in my life?' Then you refer to the past life to see all the experiences you had in your life. Whatever you think was the best, even if it was just a glimpse, you choose. In order to repeat the same peak experience, you decide on the sort of place that would be good to be born in. Then you decide what type of father and mother are needed. After considering all this, you take birth. That's all.

Even poverty is a conscious choice! Please understand: poverty is a conscious choice. It is very difficult to understand this, but it is the truth. When you don't want to take responsibility of having and guarding money, you choose to be in poverty. Having money means a lot of responsibility. You are always in danger; anytime you can be harassed. You can be kidnapped and your money can be taken away from you. These are all the risks money will bring in life. Therefore, you may choose to be born in poverty! That is why we say even poverty is a conscious choice.