You need someone to take care of your needs. You need someone who will boost you up when you are down. You need someone who will sympathize with you and confirm your worries for you. This is what you call love. But true love is beyond names and forms, body and mind. Only a person who can love the whole world beyond all these can become a *sannyasi*. Only he can become a Vivekananda!

### *How we complicate love*

When Vivekananda says, *Arise! Awake!* Does it mean that we are sleeping? Of course! We are sleeping even without knowing that we are sleeping. And we pass judgments while we are asleep. We criticize when we are asleep. We condemn when we are asleep. We think we are awake and we criticize. We think we know everything about everything including love.

A small story:

A man had a wealthy old aunt whom he visited regularly.

He coveted her wealth and went out of the way to please her.

She had two cats, which she loved.

The man knew this and would look after the cats religiously hoping to win her over.

His secret wish was that she would make him a part of her will when she wrote it out.

He would come everyday, feed the cats with milk, play with them, spend a lot of time and go back.

The old lady was very pleased at the way he looked after the cats.

Soon, she passed away. In her will, she had left him the two cats.

You can imagine the disappointment in the man! He must have felt cheated!

With ordinary love, there is every possibility that you will feel cheated. People love for wealth, for the favors that they get done, for the words of advice that they get, for other people's forgetful ways, which they can exploit… and what not. Love always comes with a reason.

But people will never accept this for a fact. They don't accept it because they are deluded by their own ordinary love. They think that that is the way love happens. And they think that while they are so loving, I am simply bringing down their love.

Honestly, if you sit and think by yourself, you will understand that what I am saying is true. Do an honest enquiry on yourself and see. Just sit down and try to visualize how you would react if your father or mother or sister behaved in a slightly different way towards you. You will then understand what I am saying.

We are all the time in need of something from someone and so we are continuously paving the way to get it from them in a smooth way. This smooth way is what we call love. Don't think that this applies to getting only material wealth. Even when you expect a person's behaviour to be in a particular fashion, you behave accordingly with them. As long as both of you are behaving in this fashion, you love each other. If someone misses it somewhere, your love takes a momentary dip!

Take me for example. You all claim that you love me very much. Each one of you has got a particular idea of how I should behave

### **G**uaranteed **S**olutions

towards you. I simply behave towards each of you in the fashion. That is what I am doing now actually. What happens? If even once I don't smile at you or I say something to you that does not fit me into your frame, you start thinking that I don't love you any more.

You start thinking that maybe I am not so loving after all. You start imagining about why I said a particular thing to you, or why I did not smile at you.

I might have been talking to someone else, or I might have simply not smiled at you, just to allow your ego to settle a bit, that's all! But you miss the whole game and start interpreting my actions with your own dictionary of love. What will happen? You will land up in deep misery.

This is how you simply complicate love. At least when it comes to me, there is no complication added to it from my side! Imagine what will happen when two of you start relating with each other in this fashion? There will be total chaos! You will simply be moving from low love to high love to low love, that's all!

People tell me, '*Swamiji*, we love our children…'

When it comes to putting up with their naughty behaviour, how many times have you sworn at them? One girl was telling me at the ashram, '*Swamiji*, my mother loves my children only if they behave themselves well. She wants me to bring the children to show them off as her grandchildren to her friends and then scolds me for the chaos that they create!'

When you see children, you are pulled by their innocence. That is one thing. The second thing is, it gives you a feeling of pride, an ego boost, when you see that they are your creation. And of course, you provide for them and make them happy. But what I am saying is, this love also comes with limitations and preferences. It is highly subjective to the ways of the children.

A small story:

A man was laying a concrete road.

He had just finished laying the road when a group of children from the neighborhood came running onto it leaving footmarks.

The man got very angry and swore at them.

His friend asked him, 'Hey, what is the matter? I thought you liked children.'

The man replied, 'Yes I do, but not on concrete.'

Ordinary love always comes with some condition somewhere! With some fine print somewhere. This is what I am trying to say. We love people subject to name, place, moods and situations.

#### *The love of an enlightened being*

A small story from the life of Vivekananda:

One night, Vivekananda woke up at 2 am and awakened his disciples. His disciples were anxious and wanted to know what was happening. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a natural calamity that was happening which was causing him the pain. The papers the next morning announced a terrible earthquake in Fiji islands that had consumed many lives.

He was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world, thousands of miles away! Do you think normal humans can be this sensitive? Even if our neighbor is sick, it will not have any effect on us!

A small story:

A man called up his family doctor and said, 'Doctor, I think you should visit us and do a check-up on my wife.'

The doctor asked, 'Why? Is she unwell?'

The man replied, 'I think so, doctor. Yesterday, she got up at her usual time, had a bath, cooked food, sent the children to school, cleaned the house because the maid did not turn up, washed our clothes, brought the children back home, attended to their homework and went to bed. Around midnight, she was complaining that she was tired. Maybe she needs to be checked up.'

We have become so insensitive today! We are not able to connect to the other person who is living with us 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. Enlightened beings on the other hand are deeply sensitive to the universe surrounding them.

What happened in Vivekananda is what you call empathy. Mind you, it is not sympathy; it is empathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells you about their suffering, you just confirm their suffering for them; that is sympathy! If someone tells you that their husband is ill, you tell them, 'Oh! How awful, you must be very unhappy. Don't worry, everything will be alright*.*' In the name of sympathy, we confirm their suffering for them and they in turn tell us that we are so caring and loving.

Actually, they love us because we have agreed that they are enduring suffering; it is a subtle ego boost for them. They feel good that we are acknowledging that they are managing such big worries. This is what society calls sympathy.

What masters feel is not sympathy; it is empathy. Empathy is when you feel another's suffering in your own being. Then, a person does not have to tell you his suffering, but you simply know because the Existential energy in you feels it.

Masters are one with you, because they are one with Existence, and you are a part of Existence; only you see them as separate. And because they are one with you, they feel *your* pain in *their* heart. They don't know any other way. And they have the capacity to witness the pain that comes with it also.

Ordinary love gives birth to children while real love gives birth to your own real self. You give yourself a new birth, a transformation. Like how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, man becomes a realized soul. You awaken to the energizing love that is lying dormant in you.

A master transforms you with his love. I always tell my disciples, 'When I am compassionate, I cheat you and when I fire (scold), I

## Guaranteed Solutions - For Lust Fear Worry..._English_part_3.md

### **G**uaranteed **S**olutions

teach you.' Either way, you grow! Sometimes I demonstrate my compassion in a very loving way so that you are more malleable to my transforming fingers! Sometimes I show my compassion by simply firing you so that you are jolted into deeper awareness. In both cases, pure love for you is the only reason.'

A master is an ocean of infinite love and knows only to give. If you approach him with a bowl, you will take back a bowl of him with you. If you approach him with a pitcher, you will take back a pitcher of him. It all depends on how thirsty you are, that's all. The thirstier you are, the bigger the vessel you will approach with.

But he is there always, watching you walking up to him with vessels of various sizes and laughing to himself at your own uncertainty, at the play of your mind which you project on him!

Be very clear: I am not asking you to love God or any Master. It is very difficult for you to love something you haven't seen. But you can love all that you can see, can you not? You can love the animals, the plants, people and what not. Simply love them for no reason except the joy of loving.

Feel a deep connection with them and love them. Once you start doing this, you will develop a certain faith in Existence because Existence is the common thread that runs through all these things. Faith is something that cannot be imposed upon you. If it is imposed, you will harbour a deep vengeance towards the object of faith.

When faith happens, slowly, your love will become love towards the whole of Existence. Then, the ultimate religion will take root in you – the religion of gratitude and love.

Gratitude and love are closely related. When you experience gratitude at the core of your being, there will be only love in you, nothing else. The first step towards feeling real love is feeling gratitude. As long as there is discontentment in your system, there cannot be real love. Gratitude and love go hand in hand.

# *Just disappear! That is love*

Some people tell me, '*Swamiji*, I love the whole world. I don't do harm even to a small ant…'

Why do you want to delude yourself by saying all these things? Can you even love your neighbor whole-heartedly? I tell you: it is easy for people to say things like they 'love the whole world', because they don't have to do anything tangible to prove it! They can continue to say that they love the world and not do anything about it! They don't have to do anything special to show it. The world is after all an intangible entity; it is not a clear representation.

But when you say that you love your neighbor, the problem starts! You have to see his face everyday. You have to do something tangible to prove your love for him! Then it becomes a problem!

And how can you feel great in not doing any harm to an ant? Is the ant capable of violating your property or person? Is it capable of testing your love for it? It is not even visible to the eye and you talk about it to me. These are all ways to escape from the truth.

Just try to understand one thing: your inherent nature is love and love is permanent. All other emotions simply come and go, that's

### **G**uaranteed **S**olutions

all. You are caught in thinking that all the other emotions are real and that they are destroying love. Love can never be destroyed. If love could be destroyed, it would have become extinct long ago.

Also, when you really love, the opposite emotions cannot enter into you. They will simply be excluded. When there is bright light in a room, can darkness be brought in? No! Only when you dim the lights, darkness can enter. In the same way, only when real love has not happened in you, the other emotions can enter. When you are brimming with love, there is no way another emotion can enter.

You might have experienced that when you do something intensely, you forget yourself. It can be anything - as simple as coloring or painting or reading….or anything. When you go deeply into it, you forget yourself. When you have an intense headache, just try doing some activity very keenly. Your headache will go away!

Because you are continuously aware of your head, your headache continues. The moment you go deeply into something else and lose awareness of your head, your headache will simply disappear. Only when you remember your head, you can have a headache. When you go deeply into any emotion, only that emotion remains and *you* cease to exist. This is what we mean by 'totality'.

This moment of 'you' disappearing, you may experience for just a few seconds. But if you work on being intense and total in everything, this experience of 'you' disappearing will happen more often to you and for longer periods also. Soon, you will master the art of doing work intensely, and being absent!

In the same way, when you are brimming with love, you don't feel yourself, you feel only love; you *become* love. Only when you become love, have you found real love. When you become love, you automatically exude compassion towards everyone and everything around you. You take up a lot more responsibility around you. This responsibility is not out of ego of serving people, but out of the overflowing love energy in you.

# *Love and responsibility*

Love and responsibility always go hand in hand. When you truly love, you will take up total responsibility as well. People think that *sannyasis* are those who run away from responsibility. Understand: When you forego responsibility towards your own family, you are taking up responsibility for a much bigger family, for humanity at large, for a family which is millions of times bigger than your own. People don't understand this and they simply criticize.

Responsibility is something that can be easily shrugged. The more responsibility you take up, the more you expand and the divine energy will automatically flow in you! I always tell my healers to take up as much responsibility for the suffering and pain around them as they can and to continually heal people.

When you feel that you are responsible for the pain around you, you will automatically stand up to help reduce it in some way or the other. People often think that it is enough if they do things for their own family. This is a way of contraction, not expansion. You need to expand for growth to happen. Existence will automatically flow through you when you take up responsibility.


People tell me, '*Swamiji*, it is enough if I am able to feed my family properly*.*' Be very clear: this is just an excuse to draw a tight boundary around yourself; a way to contract yourself.

You might have heard of the famous lines of Bodhi Dharma:

*Buddham sharanam gachami Dhammam sharanam gachami Sangam sharanam gachami*

It means:

I surrender to Buddha; I surrender to *Dhamma* - the teachings of Buddha; I surrender to the *Sanga* or institution created by Buddha.

It is very easy to surrender to Buddha or any master. You don't have to do much for it. Masters are so alluring because of their divinity. It doesn't take much from your side to do this. People tell me that the moment they see me, they feel a certain belief and faith in me. I tell you, it is not a big deal. The Existential energy that is flowing through this form simply pulls you, that's all!

The next statement: *I surrender to the teachings of Buddha*, is a little more difficult to follow than the first, because the moment you say this, you have to show that you are following it! For example, I say to you, '*Be blissful'*. That is my teaching. What do you then say? 'No, no *Swamiji*, it is not practical…' Be very clear: I say *only* practical things. You start thinking that I am enlightened and that I don't know anything about your so-called practical life.

I say only those things that you can *become* in day-to-day life. I am sharing my experience with you when I say, *'Be blissful.'* I am not just preaching the words. Understand that first. When I say, '*Be blissful'*, I am drawing you to experience the bliss that I am in. And it is perfectly practical because I am alive here in front of you, experiencing it!

The third line says: '*I surrender to the institution created by Buddha*.' Here starts the real problem. This requires a tremendous responsibility to be taken upon oneself.

Understand that masters live in their mission more than in their body. Only 33% of their energy is in their body. The remaining 66% is in their mission and teachings. That is the kind of responsibility they taken up. I always tell people that I get my energy from my *movement,* not from the food that I eat.

Masters never take up birth to fulfill any *karma* or unfulfilled desires in themselves, because they don't *have* any *karma* to be fulfilled. They take birth out of sheer compassion, sheer love to kindle divinity in people.

Masters live more in their words and movement than in their body. That is why I always tell you to drop my form and become sensitive to the energy in my mission instead.

But what do you do? You try to keep holding my elbow all the time! Instead of doing my work, which is your own flowering, you tag behind me wanting to be around me all the time. You never understand when I say this to you.

### Guaranteed Solutions

Understand that when you do the work of a divine mission, you are doing two things. One is meditation for your own spiritual growth and the second is service to society which is the greatest responsibility. The second is only a by-product. The transformation that happens in you while you are doing the work is the actual mission of transforming you!

So just take on responsibility with joy! You will feel selfless love growing in you. The whole world will become your family. When you are confronted with seemingly high responsibilities, simply nod your head to them. Mere nodding without resistance is enough. The rest will be taken care of by Existence.

Have you heard of the *mysore pak,* the famous Hindu sweet? It will look and feel heavy, but the moment you put it in your mouth, it will melt and dissolve and give you a renewed source of energy. Likewise, when you simply nod your head to any heavy responsibility, you will immediately get the energy to execute it. The very act of taking up responsibility will bring the necessary energy into you. This is the loving energy of Existence that you need to discover in you.

To take up responsibility, you need to love the whole of Existence without discrimination. When you love without discrimination, you can take up responsibility without discrimination. Responsibility is nothing but the ability to respond spontaneously. When you can respond without a thought, without a plan, ready to take on anything, you have arrived!

### Q: I want to be loving but I am unable to let go...

To be totally loving is a big challenge for the ego. To be totally loving is to merge oneself with the Whole. This is great trouble for the ego. You are right now fragmented; you are not integrated. When you are fragmented, you simply play with your different fragments and escape, that's all. To become loving means to become integrated. But you are scared because when you become integrated, you grow as a whole. Your parts have to die and become a whole.

You are so used to being fragmented that you feel threatened when you have to integrate yourself. Your ego refuses to allow it to happen. When you become loving, you are melting your ego. Earlier your ego was hard; it was solid and you felt good. What will happen when your ego melts? You will feel like you are losing your whole identity, your grip.

If you just decide to let go at least once, you will feel such a tremendous freedom, such liberation inside yourself. You need courage to let go and become loving. As a first step, at least become aware of this deep inside; the rest will automatically happen. Awareness is the key to open any lock.

When you start loving beyond names and forms, you are not losing anything, you are only losing what you are *not*; the illusion which you need to lose. What you have gained is reality. So just have faith and don't fear when you find yourself merging with the whole.

Just let go and watch the inner transformation happen in you. You will then realize how foolishly you were holding on to the ways of your ego; you will realize how much you missed because you were behind the mask of ego.

And understand that real love never calculates. Real love is from the heart and the heart never calculates. Only the mind calculates. It is time to move from the mind to the heart. You have listened enough to your mind. Decide now and listen to your heart. When you live with your heart, you will never regret anything in life because there will be completeness in anything that you do.

You can never experience true love with your mind. You can experience it only with your heart. Love needs to be experienced at the very center of your being. The center of your being is totally silent; it does not know any words or thoughts. No thought can ever penetrate it.

That is why time and again masters tell you to go deep inside yourself to discover your real nature. Your center is your true nature. This is actually *you*. But you seek to find yourself in all other places – in relationships, in material things and what not. You continuously miss seeing the truth. It is now time to look in.

We continuously talk about love, simply because we are missing it; simply because we have not had a taste of it. When a person is thirsty, he talks and dreams of water all the time. The moment he has quenched his thirst, he will stop talking about it. We need to let go and experience true love, the love that merges you with the whole. Then we will stop talking about it.

Love is actually surrender. But it becomes a fight for most of us. When I say surrender, I don't mean surrendering out of acceptance. I mean surrendering out of a deep understanding. When you surrender out of acceptance, you are compromising. Love can never be a compromise. The moment you compromise, it is not love. Only when you understand and dissolve, it is love.

When you are with a master, you have a lifetime opportunity to discover love; you have the opportunity to die and resurrect with true love. The alchemy process that happens in the presence of a master will give you no option but to die and be born again with true love. All you need to do is be willing to dissolve in his presence. When you have the courage to do this, you are ready to take a leap into higher consciousness that is called love.

Love is not an object, it is the subject. It is *you*. *You become love*, that's all. Then you will start loving without a reason. You will love the trees, the flowers, the earth and what not. You will simply radiate love and merge with Existence.

### *The root is love*

You see, when you grow in love, you learn to include everything and everyone. When you see a master, you will understand how encompassing he is. He never excludes anything or anyone. He sees no imperfections in anyone. He is just pure love, that's all. And pure love sees no imperfections.

Existence is pure love. Society is *always* against pure love. Deep inside, society is actually against Existence or God. All its worship is mere hypocrisy. It hides in the name of worship. The best way not to follow anything deeply is to start worshipping it! Society escapes in the name of worship. When you worship, you don't have to do anything else! And people will not trouble you because you are worshipping! But what happens to your inner space? It remains where it was.

Society never approves of letting go and loving every plant and animal with love. It would tell you that you are mad. It will approve only of love that is governed by give and take; love that comes with a reason.

But I tell you: don't give up. Keep on loving with all your heart. See Existence in everything. Feel the plants with tenderness in your heart. See the animals as if they were your own. See every person, stone or tree as a part of God. *That* is real worship. It is easy to worship God in the temple. The real worship is seeing everything as God. Start with your neighbor first.

People never go to the root of anything; that is the problem. The root of God is love. The root of God lies in seeing Him in everything. People are afraid to go to the root and so they delude themselves in superficial layers. They don't have the courage to explore beyond a certain point in anything in life. That is why they don't allow you also to explore. They tell you what they have found is the truth. They tell you that it is enough if you follow what they are saying.

Have the courage to go deep inside and love. You will start feeling the common thread of Existence in all that you see. You will understand that all that you see are illusory happenings held together by the real thread that is Existence. Automatically, you will start loving everything in the same way without any trouble because you will see only Existence in everything. This is the real shift in consciousness.

You can talk for years about Existence or God, and still not have any experience of it. Of course, your ego will be nice and solid because you will feel that you know so much about God! But if you look in, there will be no solid experience. And because you have no solid experience, you will keep getting caught in words, because if you stop talking, there is nothing left; there is no experience.

So start feeling love towards everything simply for what it is. Understand: because all of you are here, I am talking to you. If you were not here, I would be continuing to talk to this banyan tree, to these plants, to these animals! Every leaf here talks. That is the language of love!

For years people have been telling you that you are an advanced species of animals. Be very clear, even animals are not merely animals. Each and every atom on this earth is divine, a part of Existence. If you understand this clearly, you will be able to start feeling for everything around you.

Your mind does not need love, but your being needs it. Love is an adventure where you go into dissolution. When *you are not*, love *is*. We don't have the courage to 'not be' and so we hold on; we pull back from unconditional love.

Those who are ready to take the adventure into dissolution, into experiencing the whole, are the brave ones. The ordinary love that you know is like fighting within four walls. Real love is like fighting in the cold on the open streets. The courageous ones will fight on the streets and win. When you fight within four walls, you feel good, but you are missing reality. When you are ready to fight on the streets, you are in reality and alive!

You need not have any fear of fighting in the open. If you fight knowing that you are fighting under the compassionate eyes of Existence, you need not fear because even if you fall you fall into the very lap of Existence! But you have to have the courage to stand up and fight. That is the step that you take on your side. The rest, Existence will take care.

This will happen if you are just a little more than curious to know the truth. Mere curiosity is not enough. If you are just curious, you will come, flirt and get away. If you are more than curious, if there is a burning desire in you that surfaces at least once in a while, you can start knowing and experiencing the truth. If you are merely curious, there will be no devotion or dedication. If there is a fire, there will be devotion and dedication. Dedication is what brings you here, again and again.

Try as you might to run away from here, you can't! You might stay away for a few days, but the burning desire inside will draw you again and again. To discover true love, you have to have this intensity within you.

# *Love makes you beautiful and rich*

Love as much as you can, without asking for anything in return. Loving for a reason is not love; it is just a business deal. When you can love without a reason, when you can love anything and anyone that comes your way, you will release tremendous energy and beauty. You will appear beautiful irrespective of whether you are physically beautiful or not.

Don't think that unconditional love will not get you back anything. It will get you back things in more than one way. But you should evolve to an extent where you see these things coming to you and continue loving, for the sake of loving. Your intelligence will make you see the things that you get in return, and the same intelligence will keep you blissfully untouched by them also!

There will be a revolutionary change in your heart and you will be a new person. Others will see a beautiful change in you. They will develop a new respect for you. They will see that you are flowering in a way incomprehensible to them.

To be able to love unconditionally, you need to feel free. What do I mean by free? Not being bound by caste, creed, sect, religion, family, relatives and any such thing. Because when you are bound by all this, your love will remain bound, and bound love is not real love. How can you love with boundaries? It is against the very definition of love!


Can you say that the Ganges is inconsistent? Can you say that the Ganges should flow in a more orderly fashion? No! That is the way it flows, that's all; you can't pass judgment on it. In the same way, a master also flows. You can't call me inconsistent. I live moment to moment. You live with interconnected and complicated moments. What is the result? You feel burdened and worried.

When you have so many moments weighing on you, you will definitely feel heavy. In the same way, when only the moment is on you, you will feel so light. All your worries are because you connect the present and the future with past patterns. In the whole process, you miss the present, which is actually a gift for you. You continuously miss the present for the sake of the past and the future. Finally, only the future and the past remain, never the present.

These patterns that cause the current of worry have become a life-sustaining element for you.

A small story:

- Two friends went to a cinema theatre to watch a newly released film.
- One of them noticed that the other was frequently looking at his watch.
- Finally he whispered to him, 'Are you not enjoying the film?'

The friend replied, 'I am. I am just wondering how much more time is left to enjoy.'

Most of us are like this! We are so tuned to worrying, that even if there is nothing to worry about, we worry about how long this state of no-worry is going to last! When we are enjoying ourselves, we worry about how much time is left to enjoy. How will we ever enjoy then? When you are continuously thinking this way, you are keeping yourself in the future all the time. When you do this, you have missed the pleasure of the moment!

Everyone feels important and productive when they harbor worries. Actually, the more a person worries, the more he feels good about himself because he feels he is managing so much worry! That is why most often you will see that when you talk about your worries to someone, they will say, 'Ah! This is nothing; listen to my problems; then you will know what worry is.' People feel superior in shouldering big worries!

By thinking of worries all the time, what is going to happen? Nothing. With your ten worries, an eleventh worry called depression will happen, that's all.

We worry while we work. When there is worry, you cannot work and when you are really working, you cannot worry. Where there is worry, there cannot be any creativity and where there is creativity there cannot be any worry. Creativity is God's job. When you create, you are close to God. Creativity comes from the heart. Worry comes from the mind.

### *Past is an unwanted baggage. Drop it.*

By going behind the past or thinking about the future, you miss the present. Spirituality is all about dropping the past and living in the present. Right now, you are accumulating the past. You feel bogged down because of this.

You don't know how to unload your past. You feel that you have to carry it with you. Society has taught you that you have to carry it with you. You are taught to feel guilty if you try dropping it.

Society tells you that you are ungrateful if you drop the past. There is absolutely no need for you to carry your past with you. The people who tell you these things don't know that gratitude is something that you have to feel continuously in you towards Existence and everyone as a whole, and not something that you feel towards isolated incidents in life.

When you drop your past, the present will take you by surprise. Society always teaches you to enjoy the present as past, never as present. It teaches you to make everything a past and then enjoy it.

I have seen people who go out on holidays – they are all the time with their still camera and video camera. In the most scenic of places, instead of enjoying the nature surrounding them, they will be scrambling with their cameras to capture all the scenes.

They will then go home, wash their film rolls, sit on their sofa inside four walls and enjoy the same scenery through the camera. And they will show all the photographs to family and friends just to tell them that they have visited the places seen in the pictures. But they never enjoyed the places when they were there!

You enjoy the present after making it a past. That is why people say, 'Those were the golden days.' When the days were actually there, you would have surely not thought they were golden. At that time you would have been saying that the earlier days were golden days!

When you are in the present, every moment will become a celebration and you will not be searching for past incidents to celebrate.

Also, it is such a waste of time dissecting the past for worries because you are a new person every moment. Every moment you are evolving; every moment you are getting updated. You are a part of Existence and Existence changes every moment. Then how can you dissect past incidents with your updated intelligence? It is totally irrelevant and meaningless.

Never analyze the past with updated intelligence. It is a totally foolish thing to do. It will only lead to more worry and guilt. Every moment you are dying and becoming a new person. This is the truth.

Have you seen any buffalo or cow worried? Have you heard of any plant that is worried? Are they not conducting their lives without a hassle? Why do *you* worry then? I tell you: worrying is the most unproductive habit of man.

# *Words are the unit of worry*

All our worries are nothing but a collection of words in the languages that we know. And they cause so much confusion and misinterpretation in us. But what to do? Words are the only form of communication man is familiar with.

I always tell people: when I say something, you understand it as something else. And that is where the problem starts. Each one carries his own dictionary and interprets the words in his own way.

A small story:

One man told his wife, 'You know, it is said that over 5000 camels are used in a year to make paintbrushes.' The wife replied, 'Oh God! Is it not amazing to see what they can make animals do!'

The husband says something and the wife understands it as something else. This is how most of us relate. That is why I say, words cause confusion. Sadly, the only form of communication that man knows is words. He gets caught in words and more words.

You see, words will always give rise to more words. But there is a silence or a gap between one word and the other – a tiny gap not perceivable by us; this is the gap we need to be aware of! This is the gap that holds what we are seeking.

This gap is so microcosmic that although we go through it all day, we are blissfully oblivious to it. When I talk, you become intensely engrossed in my speech. Sometimes, I give long gaps between words. I give those gaps for you to absorb and witness the silence, which holds what you are seeking. But invariably what happens? The moment I give gaps, you start getting restless. You start fidgeting with your things or you start looking around and talking, collecting words again!

Real silence is that which is flooded with only awareness and nothing else. It is not just keeping your mouth shut.

Now your mind will start asking, 'How can I stop this inner chatter and thoughts? How can I experience real silence?' This thought will start haunting you and it will become one more worry!

Try to understand: you can never stop the thinking. The thought that you have to stop your thinking itself is another thought! If you forcibly try to be silent for a second, that silence is not the silence we want to achieve; it is just a forced and dead silence. The silence that we want to achieve is a vibrating and blissful silence, the silence of Existence.

So what is it that needs to be done? Simply watch the mind, that's all. Be an observer. Don't pass any judgments; don't resist any thoughts. Watch it with the deep gratitude that it is God's gift to you. Automatically, silence will happen.

Your awareness will slowly grow and make you centered in yourself and increase the silence in you. When I say increase the silence, I mean your inner chatter will reduce and you will be more of a watcher. With that increased silence, there will be more awareness in you and it will become a cyclic process.

With greater awareness, you will be able to enjoy the beauty that surrounds you. It is not that the beauty came in suddenly; it was always there! But you were not aware of it. You were too busy within yourself. Now with your awareness, you will be able to celebrate it! Suddenly, nature will start revealing itself to you as very beautiful. Your inner self will transform, and along with it, the outer world will transform too!

When you learn to be in awareness, you can use your mind at your discretion. It becomes a vital tool at your disposal. You can use it just when you want to. From being a dangerous enemy, it becomes a reliable friend.

# *Bring down the number of thoughts per second*

When your inner chatter comes down, when your TPS or Thoughts Per Second comes down for even a split second, for that split second you are totally in the present and for that split second, you have the ability to access your past and future like an open book! When your inner chatter is high, your TPS is high and you are all the time either in the past or in the future; never in the present.

Let me explain to you what I mean by being able to access your past and future. Sometimes you might have experienced that when you are at a lecture or at a party, or in any other place, suddenly out of nowhere, you feel that the whole scene has happened before. The voices, the conversation, the place, even a few curios in the place, all will look like a replay of a scene that you have witnessed earlier. You are shocked.

Or, suddenly you think about a particular person, a friend whom you haven't contacted in a long time, and that person calls up on your phone. You are able to predict what is going to happen in the next few moments. You feel jolted when these things happen to you. Be very clear: in these few moments, you are accidentally completely in the present. Accidentally, somehow, you fall into the present.

You are never consciously in the present. You are always in the past or future. You move from past to future without touching the present. This is the truth. But accidentally your thoughts per second come down for a moment and you are jolted into the present.

When you are completely in the present for even a second, your past and future become transparent to you. That is why you see these kinds of intuitive things happening in you.

Our thinking is never clear. It is always just association; it is never real thinking.

Let me explain what I mean by association. You wake up in the morning and see a rose that has bloomed in your garden. Immediately your mind goes to someone who gave you a rose sometime in the past. Your thought then goes through your reaction at that time to the flower, or you start thinking about that person. You then start thinking about incidents that have happened with that person. In the end what happens? You miss the rose that is in front of you!

This is how you run behind the past and miss the present. This is what I mean by the word association. This is the nature of your current mental set-up. As long as your mental set-up is mere association, you will continue to go behind the past or the future, creating words and more words within yourself.

Enlightened masters live always in the present. That is why they have access to the vast ocean of the past and the future. For you, it is an accident. It is a split second when this happens to you. You even feel scared when this happens! You are so used to living unconsciously, that when you are jolted into consciousness, it is too much. Reality becomes too much!

Your TPS plays a major role in determining how far you are from the present. When your TPS is high, you live unconsciously; you are so far flung from reality. When your TPS is low, you come close to the present. Meditation and awareness is the way to bring down the TPS.

People tell me, '*Swamiji*, we went for a vacation and it turned out to be hell*.*' I tell you: hell is inside you; you carry it with you everywhere. Obviously you will find it anywhere you go! When you live, you give hell to others. When you die, you get hell! Wherever you go, you want to carry your hell with you. You are so familiar with hell that even if you are shown heaven, you will feel a misfit there!

A small story:

Three fisherwomen went to sell fish one day and it became late that night when they were returning home.

They decided to spend the night in some house on the way. They entered the house of a lady who sold jasmine flowers for a livelihood and they requested to spend the night there. The lady agreed and they went to sleep in the room given to them.

The house was filled with the fragrance of the jasmine flowers.

But however hard they tried, the fisherwomen could not sleep.

They were tossing and turning, and they did not know what to do.

Then suddenly, one of them got up, brought in the empty fish basket and kept it by their heads. They went to sleep in no time!

We carry our worries with us everywhere we go and feel comfortable nurturing them! But we also complain that we are so worried all the time! We want to be free from something but we are not willing to transform and be free from it. This is what I mean by being self-contradictory. If we don't want to worry, then we should not worry. On one side we don't want to worry but on the other side, we want to worry all the time!

# *Stop reacting*

How can we be free from this? What should be our attitude?

Both questions have only one answer: *whatever* you do, do with a feeling of bliss, that's all. Your inner space decides the quality of your life. This space should be pure and blissful always.

It has been proven that the consciousness of a scientist plays a major role in the experiment that he conducts. It has been observed that the same experiment when done in the same controlled environmental conditions produce different results when done by different scientists. They have clearly proven that a person's thoughts control his actions and the results of his actions.

Bliss attracts fortune. This is a great truth. When you are blissful, automatically, Existence showers on you. Material wealth comes to you. Be with a sense of gratitude always. The rest will happen automatically.


One day, they came to know that his wealthy uncle had died leaving one million dollars to him.

They were very excited and at the same time did not know how to break this news to him. They were afraid that he might collapse hearing it.

One of them suggested, 'I think we'd better call the family doctor and tell him to handle this.'

They all agreed.

They called up the family doctor and told him the matter.

The doctor said, 'Don't worry, I will handle it. It is not so hard as you think.'

He soon arrived at their house and went into the room and started talking to the man. He casually asked him, 'If you were suddenly told that you were given one million dollars in cash, what would you do?'

The man replied, 'I would give half of it to you, doctor.' The doctor collapsed and died.

We are ready to see life as a drama when it comes to others but when it comes to us, it becomes hard to digest! We are always ready to give advice to others. I read in a book that advice is something which everyone loves to give but no one is ready to take!

You can watch your own life also like a witness. You can be like a lotus – untouched by the water although deep inside it. Then you have learned to play the game of life. Understand one thing: Existence is trying to express itself continuously in many ways. Our role is to understand and flow with it with deep awareness.

Understand that the whole of creation is flowing in accordance with Existence. Then you will automatically drop your worries and anxieties. You have to reach a stage where your core is untouched by what is happening around you. This will happen if you understand that Existence is continuously changing.

Outwardly, you may express different emotions, but in your innermost core, you must be able to continuously see that all the incidents outside are like beads that are strung on the common thread of Existence. The thread is what holds them together.

## Q: But we don't intentionally worry. How do you then say that we bring worries upon ourselves?

Worry has become the unconscious state of your mind. You don't have to put any intention into it. It simply happens, that's all! You don't have to make a conscious effort; it is there in you all the time.

#### A small story:

A woman called up the reception desk of a hotel and screamed for help.

The receptionist came to her room.

The lady screamed at her, 'I can see a naked man, across the way in the window of the other room.'

The receptionist looked through the window and saw a man standing with his upper body bare.

She said, 'Ma'am, only his upper body is bare. How can you conclude that he is naked?'

The lady screamed, 'Get on top of the wardrobe and see!'

Even if everything is alright, we search with a torchlight for worries! We don't do this intentionally at all. We do it in the most natural fashion ever - that is the problem! Our state of mind has to undergo a 180 degree change.

Another small story:

A policeman was going on his night rounds when he saw a cow dead in the middle of a lane.

He started dragging the animal towards the adjacent street. A passerby asked him why he was dragging the dead animal all that way.

The policeman replied, 'When I report this tomorrow, it will be easier because I know the name of that street.'

Because we don't know how to be spontaneous, we are worried all the time! We complicate things in our lives in order to fit them into our framework. We don't live in a fluid way. When you live in a fluid way, you don't have to work unnecessarily. You can simply enjoy and move on.

For example, if I now tell you that you should be blissful always, you will start worrying about how to be blissful! You know to start anything only with worry; that is the problem. That is why most of the time when you ask me something, I never tell you anything directly or in many words. I simply tell you a few abstract statements so that your mind cannot be put into any track of worrying but at the same time I give you the energy to understand and implement it.

### Q: Then how do we start following what you are saying if we don't start worrying about it?

Just absorb the energy and inspiration behind my words and start living in the present, that's all. When you allow logic to come in, the trouble starts.

Just feel the energy behind my words, what I call the silence, the silence with which I am trying to enter you all the time. This silence will ultimately take you where it has to take you. Never try to get into the real meaning of my words. I have my own dictionary, while you have yours! It will not match. Just absorb the energy. Energy is intelligence. It will guide you.

Never collect words. Only intellectual nuts collect words and more words. They collect words and get more and more confused. They collect words thinking that they will get clarity at some point in time, but it never happens.

Whatever I say, even if it seems contradictory, it is the complete truth for the moment that it is spoken. Whatever I say is the complete truth for that moment that I am speaking it. But you cannot infer from my words alone. So for that moment, simply take them in with a mood to experiment. That will give you the energy and intelligence to follow through.

So don't listen with your intellect. Listen with deep meditation. Whatever may be your emotion or path at that point in time, just go deeply into it and listen to me. That is enough. You will automatically be filled with energy and clarity. These are all the basic secrets that I am giving you.

When you cling to my words, you will be worried that you might forget them. You will start jotting them down. I tell you, the moment you start jotting things down, you miss the whole thing. You will neither have absorbed the energy behind the words nor would you have completely taken down the words. You will go home with scribbled notes and a few days later, even that will be lying in some corner of the house. Sometime later, even if you find them, you will not be able to make anything out of them.

It is something like this: Let us say you read a book and retained only the last two pages of it in your hand. With just those two pages, would you be able to re-compile the whole book? No! In the same way, don't try to jot down a few of my words and try to recollect the whole thing. Just be present completely when I am talking. That is enough.

These words will penetrate you and do the work if you give your whole presence here. So listen with your being, not with your mind. Don't bother about forgetting these words. When you understand something and transform, you will never forget it. If you have forgotten, it means that you have not understood!

Not just my words; don't cling on to *anything.* Every moment is going past; then what is there to cling to? Clinging will bring misery upon misery. There is no point in thinking about the future also. It is yet to come. What are you thinking about? The future will also come in the form of the present only. So focus on the present.

When you are in the present, you don't choose at all. Worry basically arises because you are in the past or future and choosing all the time. When you decide not to choose at all and just totally accept and drink in the whole experience, there will be no worry.

People ask me, '*Swamiji*, I am afraid when I think that the world might suddenly come to an end.'

So what if the world comes to an end? If the world comes to an end, everyone is going to be ending along with it. There will be no one and nothing remaining for anyone to be worried about! You were earlier worried only because there was something in the world to worry about. If the world itself is coming to an end, then there should be nothing to be worried about. But you worry about that also!

See how self-contradictory the mind is? It worries if there is something to worry about and it worries if there is nothing to worry about also. But it wants to be free of worry all the time!

Actually, all of your emotions are nothing but the play of the unconscious in you. When you live with total awareness, you can never be under the sway of emotions. That is why again and again I tell you to flood yourself with awareness.

You see, your worries, your words, really make or break your life. They have got that much power - to influence you and others. For example, when I utter the word 'cow', immediately what happens? A figure with 4 legs, 2 horns and 1 tail appears in your mind. A simple 3-letter word can bring to your mind a whole image! Words are that powerful. When we don't respect words and use them wrongly, we are asking for trouble.

A small story:

Birbal, an enlightened master, and Akbar, his king, were walking together on the streets.

They saw a sandalwood dealer and Akbar said to Birbal, 'I don't know why but I feel like hanging this man.'

A month later, they walked past the same sandalwood dealer and Akbar this time said, 'It's strange but I feel like giving this man some endowment now!'

Birbal replied after a long pause, 'A month back, the sandalwood dealer's business was suffering and when he saw you walking past, he thought to himself that if you die, the courtiers would come to buy a lot of sandalwood from him for your funeral pyre. He sent out these negative vibrations, which prompted you to feel hatred towards him. I immediately purchased a lot of sandalwood from him to make tables and chairs for our kingdom. Today, he feels very grateful towards you and you have been struck by these positive vibrations from him and therefore you feel like giving him some endowment!'

Understand that your thoughts have a lot of power in themselves. It is therefore very important that you have positive thoughts and a worry-free mental set-up.

#### Q: There are books that say 'don't sweat for small stuff'. But small things do matter, do they not?

When you function with intelligence, you will not fall into the category of sweating for small stuff.

A small story:

A young man went to visit his friend. He found him scraping the wallpaper off the wall. He asked him, 'Are you repainting?' The friend replied, 'I am moving house*.*'

You see, you cannot ignore the small things. But you should be intelligent enough to pay only the amount of attention it warrants, or else you will start to sweat. Never listen to people when they say not to pay attention to small things. Remember that small holes can sink a great ship. Just operate with your intelligence and awareness and you will know which the real small stuff is.

If you are convinced without self-contradiction that you need to do those small things, automatically you will find the energy to do them. When you are not fully convinced, you will not have enough conviction and energy to go behind them. Your intelligence will not be fully backing you, because intelligence is energy and energy is intelligence.

If you are sweating about the small stuff, then there is something wrong somewhere. Be very clear that all miseries arise because of self-contradictions. You yourself are not fully clear about what you want to do and so you are unable to do it. For that clarity to happen, you need to nurture your own intelligence.

When intelligence happens, self-contradictions disappear and you start becoming integrated. When you start becoming integrated, your intelligence grows more. This is the cycle you need to get into. This is the cycle that can clear your worries also.

If you are really interested in dropping your inner chatter and worries, you could try a small exercise. Think of all the things that give you joy. Make up your mind that you will allow your mind to linger on only these things and nothing else. Anything else, you will give just enough energy to get it done and then forget about it. Try this exercise and you will see that you conserve a lot of energy.

Understand that you have given a lot of power to your worries by simply talking about them more and more. For example, when a housewife picks up the telephone, she will start by telling her friend that the house maid did not turn up for the day. That is her depression for the day. If you are really depressed about the maid not coming and you are really interested in coming out of it, then you should simply finish doing the work yourself! Doesn't this sound more logical?

But what do you do? You keep on talking about it and expecting your friend to feed your depression as well. If she doesn't sympathize with you or if she tells you that is how life is and you have to move on, you will make a call to another friend and tell that friend about how inconsiderate this friend was! Just think, if you really wanted to move on with your life, you would appreciate the words of the friend, would you not?

But why are you reacting differently? The reason is, you are so comfortable just talking about your worries and not finding a way out of them.

If you start doing this small exercise, you will see that all your worries simply disappear and you acquire a new mental set-up altogether. You will find a surge of energy within you because all the energy that you previously spent on harboring your worries is suddenly available to you!

Do an honest check for yourself and find out if you are secretly nurturing your worries or whether you are ready to take on the transformation.

When you stop going behind your worries, you will be able to see how others are helplessly caught up in that cycle. You will be able to see how they magnify their worries by endlessly talking about them to people. This talking about worry is what I call 'worrying about the worry'! Only when you are able to watch this, will it stop. Until such time as you become the watcher, you are caught up in the emotions, giving so much of power and control to them.

I am not asking you to run away from your worries. I am saying, don't magnify them by talking about them. Don't expend your energy on them. Instead, address them for what needs to be done so that they stop worrying you. Address them without loss of time, that's all.

Check yourself to find out if you are starting to feel comfortable with your worries. This is the scale to see if worries are controlling you or you are controlling your worries. If you are feeling comfortable talking about them repeatedly without taking any action, then worries are controlling you. If you don't linger on them and address them correctly, then you are controlling them!

## Q: *Swamiji***, earlier you mentioned about drinking. My husband drinks ever so often claiming that he drinks to forget his worries. What do I do?

As I told you, this is a common problem and if your husband were here, it would have been helpful. If you analyze the habit of drinking, you will understand how self-contradictory you are in this habit. Let me try to explain:

You drink to feel joyful, but you end up becoming miserably miserable.


I was shocked. I told him, '*Ayyah*, why do you want to move from coffee to acid without any reason? All she did was spill coffee in some anger and haste and in any case, she is going to be the one who is going to wash your clothes!'

He continued, '*Swamiji*, during our marriage ceremony, there is a custom wherein three pots of water are kept and the couple are meant to leave their hands in all three of them to try and find a ring which has been dropped in one of them. As early as that time, she scratched my hand with her fingernail!'

In order to zero down the distance between the couple, small games such as these are played during Hindu weddings. The man had been keeping a 10-year track of such trivial incidents!

I asked him, '*Ayyah*, if you maintain such a police track record, how can one live with you?'

You see: there are two things that we do: One is, presenting arguments and looking for a judgment, while the second is, forming a judgment and then collecting arguments to support that judgment. The second is what we do *99%* of the time.

There are many things happening around us but we register only what *we want* to register, never what is really happening. Because of this, we miss reality. Reality continuously exists but we see only what we want to see. In marriage, within the first few months, the man or woman forms a judgment about the other and from then on, whatever the other does, he or she sees from the point of view of the judgment. They search and collect arguments to maintain their judgment.

That is why, if you decide that your wife is a fool, she will always look like a fool no matter what. If you decide that your husband is the type who controls you, he will always appear in that way to you, whatever he may be doing.

If you do this, you will never be able to see the real aspects of your spouse; you will see only those aspects that feed your judgment. This is like when you are hungry, only restaurants hit your eye on the road. In the same way, before killing a dog what do we do? We call it a mad dog and then kill it.

Drop this attitude. Only then you will find a certain freshness in every person and thing that you come by.

A small story:

A man walked into a police station to complain that his wife was missing since three hours.

The policeman asked him, 'Can you give me details about her height, weight etc.'

The man said, 'Oh! I don't know.'

The policeman asked, 'What was she wearing when she left the house?'

The man said, 'I did not notice, sir. But wait, she took the dog with her. I know that.'

The policeman asked, 'What kind of dog is it?'

The man replied, 'A dalmation breed with grey spots instead of black; he weighs 50 lbs and has a pure white tail with no spots on it; he wears a brown collar with a silver chain. His name is Spot.'

The policeman said, 'That's enough. We will find them!'

A husband and wife live with each other with a certain freshness for probably a few months after marriage. In those few months, they collect judgments about the other. After that, they don't relate with each other at all. They don't actually see the other person itself. They relate with the judgments, that's all.

The husband relates with the judgments that he has collected about his wife and the wife relates with the judgments that she has collected about her husband. The actual husband and actual wife are different! They become four people in one house.

Just do an honest check. How long is it since you looked into the eye of your husband or wife and spoke to him or her? A very long time I am sure. And we feel that the early days were golden days and that life has become boring. If you really see, it is your attitude that makes it boring.

You give absolutely no room for a person to evolve. You are in such a hurry to typecast them. You don't want to take in anything new on their account. I tell you, you don't even see your wife or husband after a few years of marriage because you are happy relating with your image of them.

What will happen then? You will land up like this man who was clueless about his own wife's particulars! Not knowing a wife's particulars is a very superficial level problem. The understanding I am trying to express goes deeper than that. You actually miss the real person who is living with you. You live with your *idea* about the person.

For just 24 hours, make up your mind that you will see your wife or husband as if you are seeing her or him for the first time. Receive every word or action of hers with a freshness and innocence without jumping to conclusions. Feel lovingness in you towards her. Even if she says things that provoke you, listen to those statements with awareness and respond in a calm and loving way, instead of in the usual resistive way. You will see that you are actually opening out new avenues for both of you; you are giving the two of you a new space to relate.

Suddenly, you will realize that all along it was your attitude that made things look miserable. Of course, you might say that the other person too must reciprocate. You have the power to transform yourself and others. With just a change in your mental make-up, you can do much. When you decide to change, the other person will automatically change their ways too.

A small story:

A man was walking past a cemetery one day when he heard a loud cry from inside.

He felt obliged to stop by and see if he could offer help. He walked in and saw a man crying loudly near a tombstone.

He was repeatedly saying, 'Why did you have to go? Why did you have to go?'

The man felt really sad for his suffering, so he went near him and asked, 'Sir, I am sorry. Was it your wife?'

The man replied, 'No. It is her first husband.'

Relationships turn out to be a trauma because of a sheer mismatch between one's own imagination and reality. Still worse, people move from one relationship to another thinking that the next one is going to match their imagination. They go with it for some time and find out that there is something lacking there also and move onto the next. It never occurs to them that there is nothing wrong with the other person.

Today, it is becoming increasingly difficult for youngsters to tolerate one another and marriages are breaking up so easily. It is such a pity to see these things happening. An awakening is needed now. Only a deep understanding can bring about this awakening.

If you read all the love stories written until now, you will find that nowhere have the man and woman stayed with each other on a full- time basis at a functional level, in reality!

In a story about eternal lovers written by Rabindranath Tagore, the hero and heroine decide to live as eternal lovers on the two sides of the river Ganga. Periodically, they come by boat, meet each other and get back.

If they do this, obviously they will be at peace during the time they meet. Every time they meet, there will be freshness in the air because they know that they will be together for only a few hours; the moment becomes precious!

All eternal lovers, be they Romeo and Juliet or Laila and Majnu or Ambikapathi and Amaravathi, never really lived together!

The problem is, life doesn't have background music! When you watch the love stories on television, they all come with background music and so you easily enter into a fantasy world. All the scenes that you see, especially the love scenes, come with background music. You enjoy it so much because of the background music. You are completely mesmerized by the atmosphere created in the television box.

In real life, you search for that music and don't find it! But if you find that music within yourself, then you won't look for it outside. Finding it within yourself is nothing but creating the beautiful space within you where everything is experienced as wonderful part of Existence.

Remember that your husband or wife is a creation of God. Your creation cannot compete with God's creation! Only His creation will win!

Today, there is a very large instance of pornography, fantasy, dreams and perversion in society. People have started going to other poor substitutes to fulfill their fantasies. Pornography does not fulfill sexual life; it creates more fantasies and perversion, that's all. But there is such a compulsion for fantasizing. Understand one thing: unless you are weak, nothing becomes a compulsion for you. When you are strong, you can drop anything.

*(A lady shares her views) Swamiji, you ask us to be as we are. But how can we live in society just as we are? I think we have to change according to the family, the society.*

Yes, everybody faces this problem on a practical level. You say, 'Swamiji, I have to act according to the other.' I ask you, why not also make sure that others act according to you? True, in society, we have to be dependent on each other. There is no other way. But be very clear of your limits.

Be independently dependent!

Be very clear, which is your space and which is the other's. Try your best to enrich your own life, without disturbing one another.

### Q: Can't the other person's muladhara chakra be opened, so that he drops his expectations?

How will you do that? You can only make sure that your own expectations are dropped, so that from four people sharing one house, you at least come down to three!

How to change the other person...? These days marriage counselors suggest even hypnotism!

The other day, I read about a case where a woman wanted to bring down her husband's anger levels. I read that the Chicago University once performed an experiment where they implant electrodes in a person's brain and completely control anger. When they asked for volunteers to participate in this research, it seems hundreds of women forcibly brought their husbands!

After the experiment, 72 women – this is a fact – 72 women came back and told the university, 'Please remove these electrodes. I want my old husband back! I want my old angry husband back!' When asked why, they say, 'Life has lost its taste! Unless we fight, there is no interaction. He pays me no attention!'

Everybody needs attention! Behavioural psychologists say that a normal man can survive without food for up to 90 days, but without attention from others, only for 14 days! He will start going insane.

What has happened is that we have forgotten how to love each other and care for each other. Love is a forgotten language! So the only interaction and attention we can hope to have is by fighting with each other!

I think even the people sitting here and complaining that their husbands or wives are not spiritual… if their spouses become spiritual, they may come back and complain that they want their old partners back!

### Carry heaven with you wherever you go

The beautiful thing about this *mūlādhāra chakra* is, if this one *chakra* is opened, you will find that 50% of your problems have disappeared! This one *chakra* manages more than 50% of your life. In whatever you do, you will find a trace of this *chakra*! Even in your signature, you'll find a trace of this *chakra*! What I mean is, even the way you put your signature shows what kind of emotions are pent up in you. When the *mūlādhāra chakra* is activated, even your signature will look different. If you pluck a flower, the way you do it will be different. It will be so soft and gentle, with no violence.

There are a set of Tamil saints called the *Nayanmars*. There is a song which says about them, that when they pluck a flower, the tree will not feel the pain! What do we mean by that? You become so sensitive and loving, when this *chakra* is opened. When the energy of this *chakra* is transformed, it will overflow from you as love!

Sex is carbon, love is diamond. Sex is mud, love is the lotus that blooms in the mud. It is the same substance. But the thing is, you should know how to process it. Just drop your expectations, and you will find a tremendous upsurge of energy.

Today I want you all to try this technique when you go home:

Sit down and concentrate on your *mūlādhāra chakra*. If you notice, your *mūlādhāra chakra* is always tense. It is always tight.

For five minutes, mentally forgive your husband or wife for anything disturbing that they have done. Really forgive them. Go to the root of all your misgivings and drop the feeling of resentment. Do it totally. Just welcome them as they are. Give them your deep love.

After just five minutes, you will see that the *mūlādhāra chakra* is totally relaxed.

If just five minutes can give you this result, just imagine what will happen if you change your entire attitude! What a tremendous energy flow you will experience!

The way you are living now, it is as if you have got 100,000 rupees, but you have locked away ninety thousand in some place where you can't recover it. You try to manage your whole life with the remaining ten thousand. Then naturally you will feel that you are poor!

In the same way, all your energy has been locked away in this *chakra* – in anger, in sex and what not. You don't have enough energy even for your day-to-day living! Once this *chakra* is opened, your life will become rich. You will be able to think better, understand better, plan better. You will feel this energy consciously working in you. It will open a new dimension that you would not have experienced before. You will actually realize that your husband, your wife, and everyone in this world are spiritual beings!

You need to understand that heaven and hell are not geographical places. You can't locate them on a map. They exist only psychologically. It's up to you to transform your life into heaven or hell.

When you are full of expectations, you carry your own hell in you. So wherever you go, you will find that your personal package of hell travels with you! Like how a circus troupe carries and spreads its tents everywhere it goes, so also you carry this hell with you to any place you go to. And when two such people meet, there is a great clash of hells, not bells!

Why do you want to carry this load around with you? Just drop it!

Just think of all the energy you waste in trying to chisel the other person to suit your expectations. Isn't it much easier to just drop the chisel? If even 10% of that energy is channeled into meditation, your life can be transformed into true living.

Living is 'life led with awareness, with freedom'. We have a choice! We have a chance to become conscious. It is up to us to decide.

### Lust to love, the alchemy process

Lust, like anger, is a tremendous energy. Actually, until such time when you understand what lust is and how it can be transformed, any action that you do is lustful. Even if you pick up a pen, it is lustful; if you are petting a small child, it is lustful. There is a certain animal nature in it because your energy is still driven by greed. It has not transformed into higher energy.


When love becomes the centre of your being, sex becomes a deep union of two beings. The problem is, true love is lost under the covers and lust has taken over. As a result, the beings never come together; only the bodies come together. The relationship remains at a very superficial level. Anything superficial can be shaken easily.

Also, lust always blinds you. It takes you into unconscious intoxication. Love also intoxicates you, but it takes you into deep awareness. Lust and love are two ends of the same spectrum. Anything that puts you into deep awareness is meditation. Anything that puts you in an unconscious state is not conducive. This is the scale to see if what you are experiencing is good for you or not.

Also, when you love deeply, there will be no room for jealousy. Jealousy is there because you are afraid that the shallow roots will give way. If the roots are deep, why would you be afraid? Why would you get jealous? The trust in your partner gets shaky because the relationship is superficial, it is a relationship based on fantasy and lust.

Romance is not real romance if you feel it towards only one person. Life itself is romance! Your very being has to exude romance - towards Existence. When your being expresses itself through your head, it is intelligence; when it expresses itself through the heart, it is compassion; when it expresses itself through the body, it is energy and when it does not express itself but just IS, it is bliss!

When you reach this stage, you will not be dependent on anyone outside for joy. You will simply resonate with joy all the time inside yourself. Of course, you will be able to multiply it by sharing it with others outside.

When you feel deeply connected to a person, there will be no need for physical proximity to that person. You will feel happy and satisfied with just the feeling of connection with him or her. You will feel complete unto yourself and not look for anything outside for fulfillment. This connection will not suffer separation or anything else.

A relationship is all about feeling connected to someone at a deep level, beyond all things. When you don't understand this, you bind yourself to people with many conditions and you call it a relationship. It becomes shaky and you work hard at maintaining it and conclude that relationships are a problem!

People tell me, 'Swamiji, I want to come and stay in the ashram. I am not happy staying at home.'

I always tell them that if they are not able to be happy with 4 people in their house, they cannot be happy with 100 people at the ashram! Do you think that the ashram is some escapist lodge?

Be very clear: home is not anything outside of you. Being blissful all the time irrespective of what goes on around you is what is 'being at home'. If you are not able to do this, you will not be at home anywhere.

When I stayed for months together in an 8 feet by 8 feet enclosure, I was as blissful as I am today sitting on this throne. Please try to understand this. The capacity lies in understanding that your happiness has nothing to do with the outer world objects.

Imagine that a dog is biting a bone and starts bleeding from the mouth. It thinks that the blood is coming from the bone and bites further into it and licks the blood. What will happen to the dog? Only pain will happen. In the same way, we also think that the pleasure or pain is to do with things outside of ourselves and indulge further and further in it and become miserable.

## Q: How can we protect our children from developing these kinds of problems?

To be frank, you cannot fully control the process. You cannot control all of the child's interactions with society. But there are some things you can practice at home.

As I said earlier, don't suppress the child's other half. Let it freely express and experience itself in different ways. Don't teach it to be gender conscious.

Just allow the child to be its own natural self, giving it adequate opportunity to explore itself. Children when untouched by social conditioning are by nature so comfortable inside their own boundary.

You might have noticed babies playing with their genitals, or pulling their big toe to their mouth and doing similar other things. These things just show that they are so comfortable and loving inside their own boundary, exploring and enjoying. But we don't allow them to do these things. We immediately stop them and tell them that it is wrong. It is good to allow them to explore.

And when it comes to their clothing, it is always better to dress them in single-piece clothing instead of two-piece clothing. The latter gives them a sense of dividing their body into two and with time, they forget and become insensitive to the lower half of their body. It is almost a division in their consciousness. That is why today, if you are asked to visualize yourself, almost always, only your upper half will come to your mind. You simply neglect your lower half.

Just allow the child to be free in its ways, even if it means that you have to take certain risks. Children have with them a certain sense of intuition and instinct. So, you can take the necessary precautionary measures and allow them to explore.

Also, children are so total in their expressions. So don't suppress them. They don't know to bring in their mind and exhibit superficial or hypocritical behaviour. We have all mastered the art of hypocrisy by allowing our mind to exercise restraint. We never express totally.

#### Guaranteed Solutions

Also, allow them to use both their hands freely. We all discourage them from using the left hand for various things. Why can't the child be ambidextrous? There is nothing wrong in it. Arjuna in the *Mahabharata*, the Hindu epic, was ambidextrous. When we hear of these things, we listen with awe but fail to understand that we are also perfectly capable of these things, if only we give ourselves the chance!

Also, if you have noticed, all children enjoy whirling. Whirling is their way of allowing centering of their energy to happen. You can whirl freely only when your worry center is clear. Children are so innocent and worry-free and hence they are able to whirl effortlessly. But when we see them whirl, our head starts whirling and so we stop them! We tell them, 'Sit in one place! It's not good for health,' and what not. I tell you, just allow them to whirl. Place a blanket beneath them so that even if they fall, they will not get hurt.

Never instill fear in your child! Let him be free; let him climb and fall a few times. If you constantly discourage the child, it can lead to various phobias like height phobia, darkness phobia, which can later turn into fear of climbing, of making new decisions etc. Just follow these simple things, it is enough.

### Q: *Swamiji*, you were talking about how there is no such thing as a perfect partner. Then what is the purpose of matching horoscopes before marriage?

Now if I start speaking on this subject, I will have to pull down the whole structure of astrology! Not astrology itself, but the way we follow it today is foolish and nonsensical.

Understand that it is *your* life. You are living it; you should know the pros and cons. But you don't know anything about your life, and so you go around asking others! Where is your intelligence?

To surrender your life to a stranger, to let him make your life's decisions, just shows that you no longer even know how to run your own life. You have to take responsibility for your own life.

When people come to me with questions about their future, I tell them: Don't approach me to predict your future. Approach me to design your future. All these predictions are only for the weakminded, be very clear about that.

Ancient astrology was a pure science. There was truth in it.

Let me tell you how astrology evolved.

In the past, when a child was sent to the *gurukul* to the master to study, astrology was used to diagnose what kind of personality, what kind of attitudes and aptitudes he possessed. Accordingly, he was trained.

The master would see what his natural tendencies were. If he had *brahmin* tendencies where intelligence was the prime factor, he would be initiated into *Veda Vidya* - studying of the *vedic* scriptures. If his personality was that of a *kshatriya*, where bravery and strength were the most dominant, he would be trained in martial arts. If he showed *vaishya* tendencies, wherein he exhibited many skills, he would be taught business. If he seemed to possess *shudra* qualities, where he was happy giving his time to routine labour work, he would be initiated into service. All four roles had equal value and earned equal respect.

## Guaranteed Solutions - For Lust Fear Worry

#### Guaranteed Solutions

This was the purpose for which astrology was used. Incidentally it also helped predict certain major milestones in a person's life. It was a science mainly used for this kind of diagnosis. Look around you today. A person who is a doctor by nature has become an engineer and an engineer has become a serviceman and what not! That is why there is a sense of total chaos in society.

#### Q: So ancient astrology is a proven science?

This is what I was afraid of! The moment I say, 'Yes,' you will all start running behind astrology! Tomorrow morning I will see a long queue before me with each one carrying his horoscope and saying '*Swamiji*, please predict my future!'

Don't worry so much about astrology!

Vivekananda gave a befitting answer to someone who questioned him about astrology. He told him, 'Go, eat well, exercise well, sleep well. You will become strong, physically and mentally. Then you won't worry about all these things!'

Only a person who is mentally weak depends so much on astrology.

## Q: Does that mean that all the people who follow astrology are weak-minded?

No, you can't say that. But the majority are weak-minded. Even people who are normally intelligent sometimes behave foolishly in these matters. They come and ask me, 'Swamiji, if I wear such and such a stone or gem, will it be lucky for me?' How can you depend on a stone! You are live consciousness. You are nothing but God! I can't imagine… I am teaching you the science by which you can harness this whole cosmic energy, and you ask me about stones!

You might have heard about Swami Yateeshwarananda. He was a great man, an enlightened person. When he traveled abroad for the first time, he started out during *rahukala -* an inauspicious hour of the day, calculated by using the positions of the planets.

Someone asked him, 'Swamiji, how can you start during *rahukala*?'

He answered, 'You fool! I am the energy that guides the planets! How can they control me?'

See the courage of the man! It is a courage that comes out of deep understanding.

I am teaching you the science by which you can control the planets! So why do you bother about where the planets are and how they will affect you? Pick up the science of meditation, that's enough. Then nothing can touch you.

#### *Go by consciousness*

All our values are nothing but a substitute for consciousness.

If you are conscious, aware of what you are doing, you don't need values to tell you what to do. You don't have to follow any rules. Rules will be following you! If you are conscious, all virtues and discipline and spirituality will happen to you and you will naturally flower into a state of spiritual elevation.

Somehow, whenever we hear words like consciousness or spiritual elevation, we always think, 'No, no, this is not for me!' Without even trying any meditation technique, any practical way of elevating the consciousness, we come to the conclusion that this is not for us. So we go in for a substitute, for pseudo-consciousness – which is called morality, conscience, values.

Values are fine when you are at the starting point – but not as the ending point!

Vivekananda says beautifully, 'It is good to be born in the church, but not to die there!'

We should first drop the idea that to be spiritual is very difficult and different.

There is a song by Bhagwan Ramana Maharishi, an enlightened master from Bharat:

*Ayyae, ati sulabham, atmavidyai, ayyae, ati sulabham!*

It means, *'Oh, so easy, this spirituality; oh, so easy!'*

In a later stanza he says,

If you want money, you need to work hard.

If you're looking for name and fame, you need to work hard.

*If you want self-realization, all you need to do is keep still!*

If you can slip into deep laziness, you will fall into divinity! This laziness is not what we normally know as laziness. It is not physical laziness. It's a kind of… mental laziness! If you can

completely – I mean completely – calm yourself, you can verily be spiritual.

To be spiritual is neither easy nor difficult. It's just the idea that you have. If you think it's easy, it's easy. If you think it's difficult, it's difficult. To be as you are, what is needed? Is it difficult or easy?

You cannot even use the word easy! It is as you are, right? You are already that, then how can you say it is easy to become that?

Just look in. Turn inward. A little trust in spirituality and a little meditation; that is enough! When you drop the fear that to be spiritual is very difficult, you will get the confidence that, '*Yes, I can be spiritual. I can be conscious.'* Then the question of 'is it right to drop my values', will not arise at all.

Right now you are afraid to drop your values because you have nothing else to hold on to! We know, once we drop our values, all the suppressed desires will jump as if the Pandora's Box has been opened! And we know, if the Pandora's Box opens, there will be only chaos! We are afraid of our subconscious.

If you continuously practice meditation, your subconscious will be cleared. Then you will see, even if you open the Pandora's Box, there is nothing in there to jump out. You will see your face reflected in it; you will see a clear mirror!

Now let us enter into a meditation technique called the *Dukkhaharana* Meditation that will act upon the *muladhara chakra* and awaken the energy in it.

Emotion: Lust, desire, greed

*Chakra: Muladhara chakra*

Location: Base of the spine

In Sanskrit, *muladhara* means 'the root and basis of Existence'. Mula means root and adhara means basis.

This *chakra* is locked by fantasy and imagination and it flowers when you drop your fantasies and welcome reality!

*Meditation Technique to transform lust to love:* Dukkhaharana Meditation – a technique from Kulaarnava Tantra

#### *The Dukkhaharana Meditation*

# **(Total duration: 30 minutes. To be done on an empty stomach.)**

This meditation technique is called *Dukkhaharana* and is taken from Kularnava Tantra. It will bring out all the suppressed emotions in you. Many masters have employed this technique. It takes a total 30 minutes.