You can Unclutch from the Mind Maze🔗

We have thus far looked at the basic emotions that drive us. When these emotions are negatively expressed, we destroy the energy within us and block ourselves from receiving energy from without. If you have practised the techniques that have been given with each of the preceding chapters, you would also have seen how you could overcome these negative energies and unblock yourself.

Let us now look at a few other issues, which if we understand well, can change the way we live. These understandings can transform us.

Let us start with something very simple, something that we all take for granted. Let us look at the way our mind really works.

Try a very simple experiment for just ten minutes.

Take a sheet of paper and a pen. Sit down alone. Write down whatever thought comes to mind — as if a transcribing software has been connected to your mind; transcribe exactly what you think. Do not edit or suppress any thoughts. It is an experiment only for you. No one else is going to look at what you have written. Just like how the transcribing software which is connected to a taped speech transcribes everything, transcribe whatever is going on in your mind verbatim. At the end of ten minutes, read what you wrote just once. You will be amazed! You can clearly see that there is no logic in the way thoughts form in your mind!

For example, you see a dog on the street. Immediately you remember the dog you were afraid of when you were young, or the one you used to play with when you were young. The next thought could be about your childhood. The third may be about the teacher and the room you used to sit in at school. The fourth may be about the house where your teacher used to live.

There is no logical connection between the dog that you recently saw on the street and the teacher who taught you in school. However, in a few seconds you simply jumped from seeing the dog to your childhood teacher.

You can see that your thoughts are just moving, drifting from one thing to another. We can't even call this 'thinking'. It is just 'association', that's all. You associate the dog with your childhood, your childhood with the teacher, and so on.

Actually, if you do this exercise just once, the very understanding that it gives you will transform the way you think about yourself, and how you treat yourself and others. Your whole life will be transformed.

How does our mind work? How do we create thoughts and how do we give meaning to them? How do we experience life?

Let me give you a simple diagram to understand how thoughts flow in the mind and how you connect them.

Each thought in your mind is shown here as a square or rectangle. Each is a different shape, size, and color. Different thoughts are continuously flowing in you. One may be related to pain or a painful experience. Another may be related to joy or a joyful experience. The next one may be related to joy, but you think of it as pain. It is referred to as JP on the chart —joyful experience, painful impression.

Similarly you may have a thought that is related to a painful experience, but you think of it as joy. It is referred to as PJ painful experience, joyful impression.

Generally, all your thoughts are related to something about the past or the future. You cannot have thoughts about the present. In the present moment you can have only consciousness, no thoughts. Thoughts are either related to some joyful experiences that you had in the past and want to have in the future, or painful experiences that you had in the past and don't want to have again.

Even at the time of some serious problem, you will suddenly have a positive thought. Even in the peak of joy, you will have some unconnected negative thought. Each thought is completely independent, completely unconnected to the previous thought. That is why you are able to have a happy thought amidst sad thoughts and vice versa.

Understand that no two thoughts are logically connected. No thought is responsible for the creation of another thought. They all appear randomly, independently, and illogically. How do you 'unclutch' from this random stream of thoughts? We will be using the word 'unclutch' again and again. Let's clearly define what is meant by 'unclutch'. When we change gears while driving a car, whether we change from first to second, or second to third, or any gear for that matter, we have to pass through neutral every time. We have to completely depress the clutch, or 'unclutch', move through neutral, and only then we can go to the next gear, right? In the same way, we experience a neutral space between any two thoughts in our mind. That neutral space, that silence that exists between two thoughts, is peace and bliss. When we no longer grab onto thoughts and connect them to the past or future, we remain 'unclutched.'As we remain 'unclutched' from our thoughts we become more aware of the neutral spaces between thoughts. The gap between the thoughts will automatically extend when we remain 'unclutched' from the stream of thoughts. We will dwell in the neutral space longer and experience more and more peace and bliss.

When you suddenly become aware, any thought that flows in front of you becomes your life for that moment. You start giving attention to it, either to fulfill it or to escape from it. It is like slides on a projector. Any slide that is kept in front of the projector light is seen as reality on the screen. The problem is that in your inner space, the projector light is not continuously on. When I say projector light, I mean your awareness. It just comes and goes, comes and goes — you are not fully, continuously aware.

Many times, even though your eyes are open and your body is moving, you are not aware of your existence. An example from everyday life is like when you get into your car and drive for half an hour to the office. It is only after you reach the office, park the car, and get out, do you suddenly realize, 'Oh, I have reached the office!' It means that in those moments of driving, the projector light was off most of the time.

Any slide that is placed in front of the projector during moments that the projector light, your awareness, is off is not part of your life. You don't remember it at all. When the light comes on again, when your awareness comes back again, whatever thought you have at that time becomes a part of

you. Understand that this is a very subtle truth. Your life is the totality of all the thoughts you have when you are aware and unaware.

Unfortunately, many times there are thoughts, many major decisions, and life- changing incidents that happen when you are not aware. These are also part of your life, part of your biography. Unfortunately, you are not aware of these scenes, decisions, or thoughts when they come up. Without your knowledge they have contributed significantly to your life.

Be very clear, every moment that passes in your life without you being aware of it, without your presence, is suffering. You will either directly or indirectly create situations for suffering. Just like when the turn indicator light in your car blinks, your consciousness blinks also. But, because of your lack of awareness, you do not know when it is on you. You do not remember your biography as it happened. You remember it only as you want it. Just take a simple example. Your life is filled with different kinds of incidents relating to joy, suffering, guilt, pain, and depression. and when it IS off.

I read a joke the other day: One man got into his car and started the engine. He flipped on the turn indicator and asked his son to see if the light blinked in the rear of the car. His son shouted back, "Yes, it''s on...no, it''s not on...yes it''s on...no it''s off...now it''s on!"

If you just see the thought flow in front of you, suddenly you will realize, ‘Oh god, all these things are actually going on in me! I don’t have a clue where I am heading. I don’t know what is happening in me!’

You are not aware, but constantly you believe you are aware. That is the first illusion. If you become aware continuously, you open up to reality for the first time. It might be a bit intense initially, because until now, you have spent most of your time in unawareness. Ultimately, it will lead you to experience only joy and bliss.

This is the first truth — you are not aware of all the things that are happening in front of You don’t look at life as it is. What do you usually do? You collect only the incidents related to suffering and create a shaft, connecting only these ideas, and you think your life is nothing but suffering. You think that your life is a long chain of suffering, a pain shaft.

Very rarely, you create a joy shaft. It is very rare that you collect joyful incidents, create a joy shaft, and feel life is joy. It is rare not only in the number of joyful shafts, but also in the quality of them. Most of the time you collect all the painful memories and incidents, and create the idea that life is only pain. The moment you believe life is continuous painful occurrences, unconsciously you try to strengthen that belief, even though consciously you try to break the pain shaft. Please understand, your belief that life is a pain shaft or a joy shaft will stay only as long as you are unconscious, not when you are aware.

If you normally enjoy lustful thoughts, then whenever lustful thoughts cross your system, you come to the awareness, 'I exist'. If you normally enjoy violent thoughts, whenever violent thoughts come into your system, you come to life and know that you exist. This is what I call a vicious circle: you powering negativity and negativity bringing you back to life; you empowering more negativity, and more negativity bringing to life perceived excitement.

There is a very beautiful analogy by Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened master from India. A dog will chew a dry bone. As it chews, fragments of the bone will poke into its mouth making it bleed. The dog thinks the blood is coming from the bone and it enjoys the blood. It continues to chew on the bone for the pleasure of the blood! It doesn't realize that the blood is coming from its own mouth and not at all from the bone. If violence excites you, you wait for that kind of incident in your life. If pain excites you, if you believe life is a pain shaft, you wait for that kind of incident in your life in order to strengthen and reinforce your belief. That is the general human psychology. Although people claim they want to break the violence shaft or pain shaft, they secretly nurture it.

Let me provide a deeper understanding. The pain that you had ten years ago, the pain that you had nine years ago, the pain that you experienced seven years ago, the pain that you experienced three years ago, and the pain that you experienced yesterday are all unconnected, independent, individual incidents. But you start connecting all of them and create a shaft of pain. You connect all these thought shafts and create one big shaft. You start thinking and believing, 'My life is pain.' Is that true? No! What happened to all the sweet incidents of joy that you experienced in between? Surely, there must have been at least a few moments of joy in between? They are simply forgotten. They are never picked to form a shaft. So the shaft, any shaft, is never true, because it focuses on only a fragment of your complete biography.

First, you start archiving the painful memories for utility purpose. You archive all your pains, probably for medical history sake or to tell your doctor. By and by, you start believing that all these pains that happened in your life are connected. You decide that your life is pain; your life is suffering. The moment you come to the decision that your life is pain or your life is suffering, you create hell for yourself.

For example, until yesterday you were only walking, you were not able to fly. You know in your past you never flew, you only walked. Can you believe you can start flying from tomorrow onwards? You can't. You know tomorrow you will still only be walking. You rely solely on your remembered past experiences to predict your future, eliminating many new possibilities.

The joy that you experienced ten years ago, the joy that you experienced nine years ago, the joy that you experienced three years ago, and the joy that you experienced one year ago are all independent, individual, unconnected thought shafts. At the present time, you connect all of those thoughts and create a big shaft of joy.

You may identify your joy with an object, a person, or a space, like a particular vacation resort. Now you will try again and again to bring that back in your life, to bring that person, that object, that space, or that same incident back in your life. Try as you might, you will not be able to experience the same joy again. This puts you in further pain!

In life, we constantly create either shafts of pain or joy. Once you create a shaft of pain, you try to break it. If you create the shaft of joy, you try to elongate it! But you don’t understand that you can neither elongate the joy shaft nor break the pain shaft - simply because the shaft itself doesn’t exist. It is just selective memory. The very shaft is your imagination.

There is no linear connection between one thought that we have and another thought that we have. The only relationship between thoughts is that they come from the same source. But we constantly connect one thought and the next thought in a linear manner. Just as bubbles in a fish tank rise from the bottom, our thoughts also rise in the same manner. When one bubble comes and reaches the surface of the water, the next bubble starts and then the third bubble starts. Because the bubbles are rising at a high speed, they look like a continuous stream! Actually there is always a gap between two bubbles. Like the bubbles, we also experience a neutral space between two thoughts. Since the gap or the neutral space between two thoughts is so small, we think all thoughts are connected and form a shaft. But there is always a gap between two thoughts. But we constantly connect one thought and the next thought in a linear manner.

Just as bubbles in a fish tank rise from the bottom, our thoughts also rise in the same manner. When one bubble comes and reaches the surface of the water, the next bubble starts and then the third bubble starts. Because the bubbles are rising at a high speed, they look like a continuous stream! Actually there is always a gap between two bubbles. Like the bubbles, we also experience a neutral space between two thoughts. Since the gap or the neutral space between two thoughts is so small, we think all thoughts are connected and form a shaft. But there is always a gap between two thoughts. Let me tell you about an incident that happened:

A middle aged man came to me and said, "I am going to divorce my wife. Please bless me!"One gentleman around forty five years of age came up to me and said, "Swamiji, I am going to divorce my wife, please bless me." I told him, "I only bless people for marriages. Why do you want me to bless you for a divorce? " He replied, "No, you have to bless me, because I have suffered so much. " I told him, "I only bless individuals for marriages. What made you come and ask me to bless you for a divorce? " He replied, "No, no, Swamiji, you have to bless me, because I have suffered too much. " I

said, "Suffering is always give-and-take. It is never just taking. You must have given your wife enough suffering too. So, please tell me the truth about what happened and then we will analyze the situation. "

He replied, "How do I decide which incidents to tell you, and which ones to leave out? There are so many of them! From day one she has been torturing me. You don't know how much torture I have gone through!" Then he narrated an incident from the day of his marriage!

In Indian villages, when a wedding takes place, the newly married couple plays games after the marriage ceremony. For one of the games, a ring is dropped inside a pot filled with water. The husband and wife put their hands inside and compete to pick up the ring. Whoever grabs it first wins. These small games were created mainly to reduce the unfamiliarity between the couple because in arranged marriages the bride and groom first meet during the wedding ceremony.

They have small games to reduce the distance between the couple because they are new to each other. This man said, "During that game, she scratched my hand. With her nails, she scratched my hand! " And he started a big story about everything that she had done to him since that day! For all practical purposes, he had kept a file, like a police report from the first day of his marriage.

After two or three incidents, I told him, "Please stop! If this is the case, she should be happier than you to part ways. It is very difficult to live with someone who keeps such large and detailed files in his head! " Any time she does something, this man will always be looking through the files.

Then he told me the immediate reason for the divorce. He said, "She spilled some coffee on my clothes! " I told him, "Spilling coffee on your clothes cannot be a reason for a divorce! " He said, "No, you don't know. Today she poured coffee, " tomorrow she will pour acid! " He really said this. I did not understand the connection. I asked him how he could possibly connect coffee and acid. Again he said, "No, no Swamiji, you don't know." He may seem extreme and you may laugh when you hear this. But just look intensely at your own life. You are doing the same thing - constantly creating illogical connections. You forget to see incidents as being independent of each other. You forget to see thoughts as independent.

If you just learn this one simple technique of unclutching, you will be able to retain a significant amount of energy in your system, in your being. As a result, you will be many times more productive and creative. Your relationships will be much friendlier because you will not clutch incidents that are not related. You will not feel suffocated by people or their expectations of you. You will have tremendous inner space available to you to fulfill your needs, as well as others' needs. You will also have tremendous compassion to know why others are suffering. It is only when you don't understand why the other person is suffering that you are harsh with them. When you unclutch, you are able to accommodate that person in your inner space. You are automatically compassionate. Your very life has a different quality and you become a different person in the world.

Every single happening in our lives is unconnected, even our everyday activities like eating and drinking. Each and every experience is independent by its own right. Drinking water yesterday and drinking water today are two completely different incidents. The food that you ate yesterday and the food that you eat today are different, even if they seem physically the same! But your mind creates the shaft between these two incidents and says, 'I eat the same food every day.' Please be very clear, you don't eat the same food every day. You may use the same word 'eating' for both the experiences, but they are not the same experience. Do not be cheated by the words that you use.

Yesterday's eating, today's eating, and tomorrow's eating are separate incidents, separate experiences. They are completely independent and unattached.

A beautiful incident from the life of an enlightened master from central India: During the last ten years of his life, the doctors asked the master to eat a particular kind 0 ff ood. He was not allowed to eat anything else. He had to eat the same kind of food three times a day, everyday.

After two years the person who cooked for him came and complained, "Master I am bored with cooking the same food. How are you able to eat the same? The master just laughed and said, "I am not eating the same food every day. How can I eat the same food every day? I can only eat this food today. Tomorrow's food is totally different!" Life is new every moment. It is the mind that makes it look repetitive, dull and mundane.

You may think, 'How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?'

I saw this in my days of spiritual wandering. In the forests of Northern India the hunters use a trap to catch birds. They tie a rope between two trees. In the middle of the rope, they secure a wooden stick. The rope is tied at the midpoint of the stick. This is actually a hunter's trap for birds.

You may think, 'How can a bird be trapped with a small stick? How is it possible?' Actually, all they do is just hang the stick between two trees using a rope, that's all. When a bird comes and sits on the stick, the bird's own weight turns the whole stick upside down; it turns topsy-turvy. The bird is now hanging upside down, clinging to the stick.

The moment it turns upside down and loses its sense of balance it feels totally shaken and tightens its grip on the stick. It simply holds onto the stick as if its life depends on it. Because it is hanging upside down, it thinks, 'If 1 unclutch from this stick, what will happen? I will fall and die.'

There is no record that any bird has ever fallen and broken its head! But the bird does not have the intelligence to realize this. It keeps hanging on. By not letting go, not only does it lose lts freedom, it loses its life too, because ultimately the hunter traps it.

Just like the bird, you don't realize that if you just drop your mind, at that moment you can become a paramahamsa". That very moment you can be liberated. You can simply start flying.

The same fear that the bird clinging to the stick had, you have now. Your fear and the bird's fear are one and the same. The bird believes that it can't let go; if it does it will die. Similarly, you hold on to your mind and feel, 'I can't let go. If I start trusting that I am unconnected, unclutched, independent and illogical thoughts, I might be lost.'

The hunter comes leisurely, after four or five hours, takes the bird, puts it in the cage, and leaves. Now the bird neither has the freedom to fly nor the stick to balance. The foolish bird doesn't know that if it had just let go of the stick, it could have simply flown away!

In the same way, you hold on to whatever you think is your identity and security — your education, your mind, your life, your relationships, or your bank balance. Yama, the god of death, ultimately comes to remove the stick — that is your identity. Then you are neither a Paramahamsa', a liberated soul, nor are you able to hold on to your identity. You will neither have the freedom, nor will you have the stick of your identity that you are clutching, because the stick itself is an illusion.

Let me tell you, if the bird lets go and relaxes, it may flutter to balance for a moment or two. It may take one or two moments to balance itself, but it will never fall and die. When it leaves the stick, maybe for a few seconds it will fall, but then it will adjust itself and start flying.

Be very clear, let go and you will never fall and die. You will only become a Paramahamsa!

This moment, trust yourself. Don't bother about losing your identity. Just trust yourself and let go of your identity. You will immediately become a Paramahamsa and be liberated. All you need to do is trust that you are unclutched - even if you don't trust that it is still the truth!

When you unclutch, there will be some revolutionary changes in your life, in your day- to-day thinking, your decision-making, and your daily routine - your lifestyle. Courageously going through that revolution, going through the transformation that happens in you, is what I call tapas - penance.

On rare occasions during my wanderings, I have seen a bird hanging on the stick. Another bird that was once stuck in the trap, but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back. It pokes the hanging bird and says, ‘Hey, let go! Relax! I was like you. I had the same problem. When I relaxed I just started flying. All it takes is just two or three seconds to balance. When I opened up, I never fell and broke my head or died. I only became liberated. I only became a free bird. Come on...’ But the hanging bird will not believe it.

When you unclutch, there will be some revolutionary changes in your life, in your day- to-day thinking, your decision-making, and your daily routine - your lifestyle. Courageously going through that revolution, going through the transformation that happens in you, is what I call tapas - penance.

On rare occasions during my wanderings, I have seen a bird hanging on the stick. Another bird that was once stuck in the trap, but had the courage to let go and open up, comes back. It pokes the hanging bird and says, ‘Hey, let go! Relax! I was like you. I had the same problem. When I relaxed I just started flying. All it takes is just two or three seconds to balance. When I opened up, I never fell and broke my head or died. I only became liberated. I only became a free bird. Come on...’ But the hanging bird will not believe it. Understand that the responsibility of the free bird is to go about freeing other birds. It is the responsibility of the free bird to go and poke the bird trapped on the stick and say, ‘Free yourself.’ I am that free bird and I have created a safety net. Even if you fall, you won’t hurt yourself. Relax! Let go, you will only fly! See, the sangha, the community of the master, is the net. Even if you fall, you will not hurt yourself.

First of all, you will not fall. But just to give you the deeper assurance, the sangha, the spiritual community, is created. So, I invite all of you to come and experience the sangha.

Understand that it’s a free bird’s responsibility to liberate all the trapped birds, to help them, to inspire them to free themselves.

Similar to the bird trap, hunters also have a trap to catch monkeys. They catch monkeys using a small box for a trap. They place some sweets inside a box that has a small opening. The monkey puts its hand inside the box and grabs the sweet. As long as the monkey holds onto the sweet, it will not be able to take its hand out because its fist is larger than the hole!

If the monkey lets go of the sweet, it can remove or slide its hand out immediately. But the monkey is not intelligent enough to realize that. It holds onto the sweet - and just because it is holding on, it is not able to take its hand out. If it just lets go of the sweet, it can take its hand out and be free. If you allow the understanding of this story to happen in you, you will instantly unclutch from your shafts and be free this very moment.

Fortunately, by your very nature, you can have only one thought at a time. The moment a new thought comes inside your system, it means that the old thought has lost its power or influence over you. If the new thought has entered you, it means the old thought has been renounced because you can't have two thoughts at a time. You can have only one thought at a time. If you say that the old thought is also there, it only means that for that moment, the new thought has been renounced!

There is a beautiful story by Ramakrishna Paramahamsa‘:

A king who was inside a huge fort, was once attacked by an army that was two million strong. The king only had two or three people around him and got very frightened. He told his advisor "Two million people, and I am all alone. They will kill me!"

The royal advisor said, "Don’t worry, King. Open only one door. Surely through one door only one person can come in at a time. As they come in, stand on this side of the door and kill them one by one. Over! Do not try to fight with the whole crowd"

If you think all your enemies are gathered together, you will start having unnecessary fears. You cannot have two thoughts at a time. You can only have one thought at a time. This means that every thought is replaced by the next thought.

I'll repeat: the first thing is that you can have only one thought at a time.

The second thing is that unless the old thought is pushed out, the second thought cannot come.

The third thing is that if somebody can push me out and sit here, he is surely more powerful than me! Any thought that comes in and pushes the old thought out is more powerful than the old thought. This means that any thought that is coming now is rooted in the present moment. It has more power than the thought that is

being renounced, whatever that thought may be about. By your very nature you are renouncing.

You don’t need to learn renunciation. Every moment you are renouncing. What do I mean by the word ‘renouncing’ here? I mean that at every moment you are letting go of one thought after another. Only then is it possible to allow new thoughts to keep entering your system. Every moment your inner space is getting cleared of the old thought.

Thoughts are constantly getting renounced by themselves. The only issue is that when you create the belief your thoughts are connected, you have the problem of linked suffering, the shaft. Your belief that you have some problem is your only problem.

Every moment your inner space is purified by the new incoming thoughts. If you allow this process to continue, it will happen by itself and clean itself also. There is no need for you to clean your mind. All you need to do is just get out - just get out of the system so that the system can proceed on its own.

One important truth you should know is that even if you want, even if you try consciously, you cannot possess or hold onto your suffering for long.

Even if you try to hold it, you cannot hold your suffering because continuously, your thought that creates suffering is also replaced by newer thoughts! In fact, to hold onto suffering will require a lot of effort on your part because thoughts are continuously flowing.

Be very clear, your power to bring on a new thought itself proves you have the power to drop the old thought. The problem is, instead of just watching the new thoughts flowing through you, you try to bring back old thoughts into your system. It is like picking up your trashed emails and bringing them back to the inbox. Is there any need to bring back trashed emails? No! If you constantly look to bring back the old thoughts, you will create only suffering.

Understand that if you nurture the fact that any suffering can be replaced by a stream of fresh thoughts then that becomes reality for you. And there is no suffering. If you are nurturing the thought, ‘No, however much I allow replacing, the suffering comes back, you will make that into reality. If you mother the thought that the suffering is going to come back, it will come back. If you mother the thought that it is going to go away, it will go away.

All you need to understand is that if even once you can replace a thought in your inner space without returning to the previous thought, you will get the confidence, ‘I have replaced it once. I can do it again.’ Then you can tell yourself, ‘If the old thought comes back ten times, let me replace it ten times!’ that’s all. Soon you will see the old thought will stop coming back.

There is a very beautiful incident in Buddha’s life:

Buddha says, "Whenever I said in meditation, "I am going to get up after a few hours", I never became enlightened. Once I decided, "If I am not going to become in this very place. Until I become enlightened, I am not going to get up from this seat. I am not going to move." Buddha says that the moment he created that strong clarity, the authentic sankalpa,, - vow, the next second, he became enlightened!

When you sit down to replace your suffering and think, ‘Today I will replace it ten times. If it comes back the eleventh time, I can try again tomorrow, then nothing will happen. No transformation will take place for you. Decide very clearly, ‘Until it stops coming, I am going to replace the negative thoughts.’ That is what I call courage. When you sit down to replace your suffering and think, ‘Today I will replace it ten times. If it comes back the eleventh time, I can try again tomorrow, then nothing will happen. No transformation will take place for you. Decide very clearly, ‘Until it stops coming, I am going to replace the negative thoughts.’ That is what I call courage.

When we unclutch, the first thing that will happen to us will be an inner healing effect - a deep silence and peace in us.

Second, that inner healing will start radiating as physical wellbeing, which is our health.

Third, naturally it will start radiating in our relationships also.

Fourth, because these three are going beautifully, we will be creative and productive!

People come and tell me, "Swamiyi, for the last twenty years I have had knee pain.' No, it cannot be! Please understand that in reality it cannot be. I am not disrespecting you or adding more suffering to you by saying all your problems are only in your head. I am just telling the truth: all your problems are in your head! I am just stating the truth.

The knee pain you experienced two years ago, the knee pain you experienced one year ago, the knee pain you experienced two months ago, and the knee pain you experienced two hours ago are independent experiences. Only because you connect all of them, you conclude that you have been having knee pain for twenty years. Is it really true that you have knee pain continuously for twenty years? What happens to the moments of'no knee pain' in between? The important thing you need to understand is that because you connect and see all these as one continuous incident, you block the possibility of self-healing.

The depression that happened one month ago, the depression that happened one year ago, and the depression that happened three years ago are independent, individual, unconnected, and unclutched. The problem is the same as with physical pain. You start connecting them and concluding that you are having the same depression continuously. You create an idea that your life is depression. Then you start fighting with it. That only gives more life to the depressive thoughts.

When you strongly believe that your last ten years have been filled with suffering and depression, ou create a strong mental setup surrounding 1t. Naturally you start thinking that your future is also going to be painful and filled with depression.

Suppose there is a person sitting in front of you who you think is an enemy. Suddenly if you notice that his head is separate, his legs are separate and his hands are separate, would you even feel like fighting with him? No! He is not even worth fighting! He doesn't even have a solid existence, as you imagined him to have. So what is there to fight?

In the same way, only when you imagine you have a huge problem in front of you, that a big person is in front of you, you start fighting and getting into more trouble. Your depression is not the huge enemy that you think it is. It is just like the person with disjointed body parts. It is you who joined the parts and gave it life. Your fighting with depression is the root cause of your depression.

In Ramayana" there is a beautiful story. Whoever stands in front of the monkey king

Vali" and fights with him, loses half of his power to him. In the same way, whoever stands in front of the thought shaft and starts fighting with that shaft, half of their power will go away to that shaft.

The moment you unclutch from the shaft, you experience the neutral space, and inner healing starts. The moment inner healing starts, physically also you are healed. Do not try to renounce your depression, because by your very nature it is getting renounced, flowing away from you. By your very nature just as joy disappears from your mind, depression also disappears from your mind. The moment you try to eliminate the depression, you will extend it and give it more life.

See, if you have a deep depression, will you stop going to the office? No! You may carry the depression in your mind but your body moves. You work. You may not be that productive or efficient. But your body still moves. Instead of 'living depression', I am saying, 'live unclutched'.

When we live in depression, we don't have all these questions, 'If I am depressed, how can my body move?' We don't have such questions. The depression becomes part of our life. In the beginning you may have questions, 'How can I live unclutched? How will I even move my body?' Understand that the constant remembrance of unclutching does not interfere with your mind or body movements. It only removes the depression because it lets the depression thoughts rise and fall without clutching to them.

What is addiction? It is a behavior or action that if you don't do it, you will feel terrible that you are missing something. But, if you do it you won't feel any joy, it will only be mechanical. Addiction means believing that joy or ecstasy happens due to some object, person, or situation.

Understand that this is the definition of addiction: trying to elongate the joy shaft by recreating it. You bring the same persons, situations, incidents, or happenings into your life again and again, knowing that the same joy is not going to happen. Some people are addicted to partying, some to smoking, and some to drinking — there are so many addictions.

Remember that anything you bring to your life again and again will not give you the same excitement as it gave you the first time. It can only lead to addiction, not happiness. The first time you enjoy a sweet, it is a wonderful experience. The excitement is totally different. But if you keep eating more of the same sweet, the same experience is not there anymore. Eventually if you eat enough sweets you will not even like the sight of them. You Will look at them and say, Oh no, not more sweets. They make me feel terrible.' In the same way, when meeting a person for the first time, the excitement is totally different. Later on, the excitement falls off.

People come and ask me, 'How can I break my habits?' See, habit is a beautiful word. If you remove 'h', 'a bit' will remain. If you remove 'b', 'it' will remain. Only when you remove the 'I', the shaft 'it' will die. Only when you remove 'I', only when you throw 'I' away, will it completely die. Be very clear, your smoking two days ago, ten years ago, and twenty years ago - all these three incidents are completely independent. They are not connected. Mentally, when you start connecting, when you start believing that you have the habit of smoking and that you are addicted to it, the belief creates a shaft. Then you start fighting with it. That is what I mean when I say the 'I' has to be dropped. It is your belief that makes it a habit. If you drop the belief, the habit drops.

If you believe it is a joyful experience, you continue to smoke more and more. If you believe it is a painful experience you start fighting with the shaft. Either way you don't win. Even if you believe that smoking is joyful, try to smoke without restraint and see for yourself how you feel. When you smoke and inhale, it can never be a pleasurable experience. It is never really joyful.

When you smoke, in that moment, just see what is happening in your inner space. You

are not enjoying anything. You are just trying to escape from something. You merely believe that smoking is joyful. Even if you don't feel joyful when you are smoking, you try to squeeze joy out of it.

If you deeply scan your life and see, you will understand that whether it is smoking, or sex, or money, or any other pleasure, even if you don't feel the same joy as you felt the first time, you try to squeeze joy out of it. You try to console yourself, 'No, this is joy. What else is joy?' You try to cover the frustration by believing it is joy. You want to believe it is joy.

Try your best to drop some addiction. You can never be successful. Even if you drop it you may be dropping it out of some fear or greed, which is a much bigger addiction. If you drop smoking out of some fear or greed, you are not doing anything good to your consciousness, to your inner space. You are only damaging yourself more.

You might have dropped smoking, but the fear or greed that made you drop it will be added to your inner space. At least with smoking, you will destroy only this body. With fear or greed you will destroy your whole being, life after life! In the next body, you will carry over the fear and greed. The smoking habit may not carry over to the next body but the emotions of fear and greed will be carried with you to the next body. So the best way is to drop the idea that you have an addiction, and it will drop.