What is Intensity?
Intensity means deep passion and patience – strong will and strong prayer. Strong will is passion. Deep prayer is patience.
Please understand, if you understand intensity as just will or passion, sometimes you may become serious. Seriousness is sickness.
Intensity is sincerity but not seriousness. You should be intense yet relaxed.
Just passion without patience will raise the number of thoughts. It may lead to outer world success but never the inner world success.
Just a deep patience, acceptance without having thoughts, may lead to inner world success, silence and peace but not the ultimate enlightenment itself, which gives you fulfillment in the outer world and inner world.
Enlightenment is the totality of the outer world and inner world. It is having intense number of thoughts with a deep silence; your very frequency will be different.
People ask me, 'Swamiji, do enlightened beings have thoughts?' Please understand, if you have 10 acres of inner space, all the 10 acres is filled with thoughts.
In my inner space, I have 10 million acres and about 100 acres is filled with thoughts. It is a negligible percentage of the total inner space, yet it is much more than your number of thoughts. For the inner space I have, it is negligible. That is why it is called no-mind. But the actual number of thoughts is much more than yours.
That is why I say I have a mind which you don't understand by the word 'mind'. What you understand as mind, I don't have. It doesn't mean there are no thoughts in me or that the process of thinking is not there. The process is 100 times more intense than in you. But the background, the canvas on which the process is happening is so vast the process is negligible.
Please understand, in intensity you don't have just passion, you have patience also. Then you become complete and fulfilled. Intensity is a strong feeling, 'I should achieve' and a strong prayer, 'I should achieve.'
You put your whole being, whole effort and you know the Ultimate is supporting you. If either the strong will or deep prayer is missing, it can't be called intensity.
If you understand the Divine is supporting you, the effort you put even if little, success happens – just by the remembrance that the Divine is supporting you. You don't even have to bother whether it is factual or not. You don't have to measure, 'Am I supported? How many hours did He stand with me?'
A small story:
One man prayed to God, 'God, you should always be with me.' God said, 'Alright; I will always be with you.'
Whenever the man walked, he used to see one more set of footprints behind him. Whenever he was in joy, he saw two sets of footprints - one of his and one of God's.
Whenever he was in suffering, he saw only one set of footprints. So he called God again and asked, 'What is this? Whenever I am in joy, you are following me. Whenever I am in suffering, there is only one set of footprints. You are not following me!'
God laughs and says, 'Fool! When you are in joy, you are walking and I am following you. When you are in suffering, I am carrying you. So the footprint which you see is mine, not yours!'
So, be very clear, when you are intense, when you know He is supporting you, even with simple effort, suddenly you will see it will become reality, success. So even a simple thought that He is there is enough. When you know you are supported, suddenly you will see you are successful.
A small story:
A man drove his car into a ditch in an isolated place. Fortunately for him, there was a farmer passing by in a horse carriage. The man asked the farmer, 'Can you please help me? Can you please get your horse to pull my car out of the ditch?'
The farmer said, 'Sure. My horse Buddy is a big, strong horse. Let's see what he can do.'
The farmer took his horse to the car and said, 'Pull Joe pull.' Buddy the horse did not move an inch. Then the farmer said, 'Pull Atlas pull.' Buddy did not move an inch. Then the farmer said, 'Pull Jerome pull.' Buddy did not move an inch.
Then the farmer said, 'Pull Buddy pull.' Buddy the horse effortlessly pulled the car out of the ditch.
The driver was grateful but curious. He asked the farmer, 'Thank you so much! But please tell me why did you keep calling your horse by all the wrong names like Joe, Atlas, Jerome?'
The farmer said, 'Well, my Buddy is blind. And if he thought he was the only one pulling, he would never have moved!'
We are all blind. If we think we are the only one pulling, we will never even try. But if you realize the Divine is supporting you every inch, you will be relaxed, happy and successful.
In the case of Buddha also you can see, when he was filled with passion but no patience, he tried and tried but nothing happened. Suddenly at one moment, he relaxed. When he understood he is not alone pulling, he relaxed. The patience joined the passion and he became enlightened.
If you think you are alone, you will not even try. Passion takes care that all other thoughts disappear except that one thought. Now you need patience to relax even from that one thought.
In my own experience, I was taught by an enlightened master Annamalai Swamigal, the technique of contemplating and looking in at the source of thoughts. I was practicing for more than a year and half. By and by, this became the only thought in my inner space. But because I had not realized the source of thoughts, it became a kind of strong pain memory in me. I could neither drop the technique because of my strong yearning for enlightenment nor was I able to realize the source of thoughts.
One day, I was sitting at the foothills of Arunachala. It was Vaikasa Purnima evening. I was just sitting with open eyes; the sun was setting and the moon was rising. I was not even meditating. Normally I would have only two thoughts. One would be to find out 'Who am I?' The other would be the pain, 'Even if I try, I won't be able to realize.' Only these thoughts would be bouncing like binary 0s and 1s! And both the thoughts have the same source.
Suddenly, as I was sitting, watching the moon rising, the passion lost its hold over me when I experienced the deep patience and relaxation. I experienced the deep passive feeling, the settled feeling.
See, I had burnt all other thoughts with this one thought, 'Who am I?' But this one thought was torturing me. In a way, I can say I was fed up with the whole thing. That moonlit night, I just sat in a relaxed mood for a few seconds.
My being forgot to seek, forgot to create the passion of seeking. It just entered into a space of patience. Suddenly something clicked. Because of my passion, already I had raised my frequency to a different level. Suddenly the patience happened.
Something broke inside my being. How you all feel alive inside your skin, the same strong feeling that I am alive I started experiencing outside my being, with the whole – trees, hill, stones, earth, sky, with everything. Suddenly I started feeling I am alive, vibrant, living.
As long as the passion and patience, the intensity, was there inside me, the experience stayed. But after two and half days, the passion took over the patience. The passion to hold onto the experience took over the patience to relax into that experience. The experience disappeared.
Again it took more than ten years to completely tune and polish my being and relax with that deep passion and patience. Then the experience never left; it just stayed and started radiating through this body.
You need intensity to start any spiritual practice. You need intensity to continue any practice. You need intensity to achieve satori. I needed intensity to start my seeking. I needed intensity to achieve enlightenment. I need intensity to live enlightenment after enlightenment. Understand, for ultimate fulfillment, you need three things. First is intensity. Second is intensity. Third is intensity.
Based on your intensity level, there are different levels of success. You can just drag on and waste your life. Life will just pass through you. You just jump between the future and past. This is one way of life. If you postpone, you delay the process. Intensity suddenly reduces this whole span of traveling.
The other way is trying to be completely in the present, feeling intense pressure just to be in the now.
If you realize you have many lives, you will have patience. You will drag on and life will just pass through you. If you think there is one life only, you will have deep passion. You will be highly pressured and stressed and there will be no time to enjoy. If you have intensity, you will have both. You will have this moment intensely and the whole eternity for you.
Ramana Maharishi describes intensity as, if you close your eyes, even if the whole world comes to you, you should reject it as a small speck of dust. And if you open your eyes, even if a small speck of dust comes to you, you should live it and use it as if the whole world has come to you.
So realize intensity, and you will have intense life eternally. It is a paradox. With intensity, you will be intensely centered but live eternally. You will have the past, present and future all as part of your life.
If you have just patience, only the past and future will be your life. If you have only passion, you will only be in the present. You will not be relaxed about your future and past. If you have intensity, you have past, present and future. You will be living as a whole. Enlightenment means living in the past, present and future at a time.
My past is never past for me, my future is never future for me. My present is imbibing the past and future. That is why I have so much of freedom to alter any of my past decisions and correct and create present decisions and project them into future life - because the whole thing is in me. If you are just living in the present, you have no freedom to correct the past and project it into future. If you are living only in the past and future, you have no freedom to correct the present.
If you are living in the past, present and future, only then you have freedom to correct, to amend and project into the future.
Understand, living in the present is not enlightenment. I am throwing a new light on enlightenment. I am breaking an old pot! Living in the past, present and future simultaneously is enlightenment.
In your present moment, the whole past and whole future will be present. This is what I call living enlightenment. It is ecstasy in the restful awareness, bliss in peace, and excitement in restful awareness.
Bring intensity as part of your life, whether in the inner world or outer world. You will explode in all dimensions, in 360 degrees. Internalize this one truth: totality never fails.