6. Safety net of the sangha🔗

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

The whole purpose of social training is to make you believe that you have continuity of thoughts. Society constantly trains you to hold onto either the shaft of pain or the shaft of pleasure. If you start believing the shaft of pain, you will spend your whole life trying to break the shaft and you will waste your life. If you start believing the shaft of pleasure, you will spend your whole life trying to elongate the shaft and you will end up wasting your life again.

Society cannot tolerate your freedom. That is why it never gives you the courage to unclutch. Because once you unclutch, you cannot be controlled, manipulated, or exploited by anyone!

If you are in a cage, society can play with you and make you follow all the rules it wants you to. It can feed you when it wants to, and what it wants to. You become very useful to it. But you will be just a utility. The society does not really care for you, you are only a means to an end for them. The moment you understand the truth that you are by nature a liberated being, the moment you relax, the inner healing or the bliss comes out and you feel the freedom. Once you start feeling the freedom, it is enough. It will give you tremendous confidence and courage to fly, to spread your wings in the sky. You will see that your being simply becomes a Paramahamsa in the pure cosmic Consciousness.

Man does not have an unconscious or subconscious mind as we have been taught. Please be very clear, I am making a bold, courageous and challenging statement. Of course, I have the support of the vedic rishis⁴ who dove deep into human consciousness, who did enough research in the inner world. So be very clear, the idea of unconscious or subconscious mind is just one more concept generated to create more fear in you.

You can have only one thought at a time, am I right? Can you have two or three thoughts at a time? No, you cannot. You can have only one thought at a time. Then where is the question of

subconscious or unconscious? Where is it and what is it? Be very clear, creating the pain and joy shafts is the original sin. You are not a sinner in any other way.

This is why the vedic rishis beautifully address humanity as amrutasya putraha⁵ – Sons of Immortality! By very nature, man is immortal nectar. There is no need to achieve that state separately. Man is the outcome of intense enlightened experience.