What More do you Want?🔗

A small story from the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata:

There was once a king by the name of Yayati. He lived extremely well for a hundred years, enjoying his kingdom and all the physical and mental comforts of life.

At the end of one hundred years, Yama (God of Death) came to take him, as it was time for him to leave planet Earth.

The king was shocked to see Yama and started crying, 'Why have you come so fast and suddenly, without any notice? I have not lived my life fully yet! Please, give me some more time to live!'

Yama replied that no extension was possible to one's span of life.

Yet, Yayati pleaded with him and begged him for more time.

Yama finally conceded that if any one of his sons was ready to give his life for Yayati, then he could live for that much more time.

Yayati was happy.

He called one of his sons and said to him, 'Please give up a part of your life and give me more time to live.'

The son was dutiful and fond of his father. He gave up the remainder of his life and died instantly. Yama granted Yayati another hundred years to live.

Yayati continued to enjoy all the material comforts in the same manner as before and lived another hundred years.

At the end of this period, Yama returned to take Yayati.

This time too, Yayati felt he had hardly lived his life.

He begged Yama saying that he was not prepared to die yet and wanted more time.

Yama gave him another chance.

Another of Yayati's sons gave up his life for his father, and Yayati's life got a lease of another hundred years.

Now after Yayati enjoyed the next hundred years, Yama came back to take him.

Again as before, Yayati asked for more time, but Yama refused to oblige him this time.

Instead of agreeing to Yayati's plea as before, this time, Yama asked Yayati compassionately, 'Great king! Do you think you can put out a fire by pouring oil into it? Do you think you can fulfill your desires by living them out more and more?'

In just a few beautiful words, Yama explained the whole purpose of life to Yayati.

The Mahabharata says that Yayati, at that moment, experienced Lakshmi (Goddess of wealth) in his being. You may note that the Mahabharata does not say Yayati experienced Saraswati (Goddess of Learning); it says he experienced Lakshmi (Goddess of wealth). Lakshmi here does not symbolize outer world wealth; it symbolizes the richness of the inner world and the enhanced quality of life because of that. He finally realized the truth, followed Yama and rested at the feet of the Divine.

The quality of our life does not depend on the quantity of our wealth or our possessions. If this were so, then all the rich and wealthy people, the so-called successful people, would enjoy the highest quality of life. But if you just ask around, you will come to understand that it is not so.

There are many people who have failed to achieve what they want in life and as a result suffer from discontent and the feeling of failure. We may think that people who have been successful in being able to get whatever they wanted in life should be contented and fully satisfied. On the contrary, many times we see the strange situation where people who have achieved everything material and emotional in life, still feel dissatisfied. These people suffer from 'depression of success'.

It is true that we need wealth to enjoy life, even to lead what we may call a reasonable standard of life. But we may have all the wealth we want in life and still be discontented. Wealth as such, does not fulfill one. There is a deep driving need within us that goes beyond material possessions and acquisitions. There is a part of all of us deep within that we are not even aware of, which keeps telling us that there is a purpose to our life which is beyond material success. The discontent that arises out of this is what I call 'depression of success'. But most often, we don't diagnose this feeling properly, and suffer because of this.

When we fail in our attempt to achieve something, we have the hope that the next time, we will be able to achieve success. So with depression of failure, at least there is the hope that keeps us going in life. However, if we have already achieved everything and we are still not satisfied, there is nothing that can give us satisfaction through the material world. Depression of success has no cure in further acquisition, either material or emotional. We need to understand that we have to raise the quality of our life. That is the only action that will bring us true happiness and true wealth.

The story about the origin of Lakshmi is also representative of this fact: when the ocean of milk (the mind) was churned by the devas (gods) and rakshasas (demons), using the Meru Mountain as a fulcrum and the giant serpent Adi Sesha as a rope to churn, from deep inside the ocean, Lakshmi, the Goddess of wealth emerged. This is actually a metaphorical representation: when the mountain of pure awareness churns the ocean of milk, that is the mind, it raises the quality of our lives in the form of Lakshmi.

Most of us think that our minds are very logical. Actually, the mind is most illogical. Just try this experiment: sit down for five minutes, write down all the thoughts that come to your mind in these five minutes honestly without editing. Then, read what you have written and you will realize how illogical your mind is. We are running a mental asylum inside our heads! One moment, we might have been thinking about our workplace, then, for no particular reason, we find ourselves thinking about our house. The next moment, without realizing it really, we might be thinking of our children. There is no connection, no rationale and no logic in the way our mind moves from one thought to another. The association of thoughts is highly illogical.

And we have entrusted our whole lives to this mind of ours. Can we imagine the nature of the mind to which we have entrusted the entire control of our lives? Vivekananda says, 'The mind is like a drunken monkey that has been stung by a thousand scorpions.' Just imagine the state of this monkey! Our mind is like this monkey that just jumps madly with no control over itself! The mind is not under our control; we are under its control.

I have studied the working of the mind of thousands of people by asking them to write down their thoughts, unedited, the way I have just now described. When I analyzed these outputs in detail, I found that in the majority of the cases, what we may refer to as the average human, there was a commonality running like a thread. The commonality was: eighty percent of their thoughts were based on greed and fear. These thoughts, these desires and fears, were in fact controlling them.

The interesting part was that they were not even aware of this. It was the unconscious part of their mind that was generating these thoughts of greed and fear. The unconscious mind was not only generating these thoughts but also actually deciding what was to be done in their lives.

A small story:

There was a man who had just bought a new car after learning how to drive.

He was very eager to go around town and so started driving it.

He started the engine and drove for sometime and gained speed.

Soon, he lost control of the car and the car went all over the road in a zig zag fashion and crashed into a tree and stopped.

A friend who came to his rescue asked him in surprise, 'Why are you driving the car when you don't know how to drive? And that too such an expensive car!'

The man replied, 'What do you mean I don't know how to drive? Of course I know how to drive; I just don't know how to stop!'

Most of us are in a similar situation like this man who knew how to get the car to move but did not know how to stop it. He was not driving the car; the car was driving him! Similarly, most of us are not in control of our minds; our mind controls us. Be very clear: the mind is just a collection of all our thoughts. So if we lack clarity in our thoughts, it only means that we are having too many contradictory thoughts crowding in our mind.

But somehow, we are happy just being caught in the contradiction of our thoughts, unproductively. There is a popular saying that goes: if you make people think they are thinking, they love you. But if you really make them think, they hate you! All our energy gets sapped in thinking unproductively. If we expended energy to make only productive and quick decisions, we can make 10 times more decisions in any given time. We have to get out of the unconscious zone of crowded thoughts and get into conscious thinking.

It is possible to move from this seemingly generic state of unconscious non-awareness, to a state of awareness and conscious thinking. When we reach this state of awareness, almost 90% of our thoughts are for universal benefit and self-healing. Our very presence will radiate positive vibrations. That is why when you sit around a master, you feel an unexplainable goodness and a longing to be there for as long as you can. The master is an embodiment of goodness because he in a state of pure awareness all the time. When we internalize these concepts, our awareness too will increase and slowly our mental set-up will be generated anew. Then, what the master does at his level, we will do at a microcosmic level!

When we analyze clearly what is right and what is wrong, what is eternal, what is the truth, and what is not, from this analysis, intelligence will arise and our quality of life will increase. This feeling of fulfillment is what is referred to as Lakshmi. Goddess Lakshmi stands for wealth and richness; for overflowing, for prosperity. All these refer not just to the material wealth but to the wealth of the inner world, to the inner richness. Real richness is not money, it is the quality of the being and of life itself.

Money can be got through any means. It is not a big deal. It does not require much. Just a few business techniques and greed for money is enough; you will become rich! But the inner richness is what we need to work for. It is the inner richness that is the real overflowing, the real

prosperity.

Our house is filled with all kinds of comforts, with all kinds of things to make us feel happy and fulfilled, but our being is unfulfilled. Fulfilling our being is called Lakshmitva, having Lakshmi within us. Our mind always works towards having more and more. However, by its very nature, 'more' can never be 'fulfilling'. I can say, 'more' is the opposite of 'fulfilling'. But we always feel we need more to be fulfilled! That is where we miss the whole thing. Have you seen a single person who has been fulfilled by having more? Never! They only want more and more! So understand, the moment you ask for more to be fulfilled, you will never be fulfilled. Just see what you have with full awareness for a moment; then you will be fulfilled!

We always travel in the horizontal dimension of 'what next'? 'What next'? Sankara (an ancient enlightened master) says beautifully that the mind is like a musical instrument that continuously plays tata kim, tata kim (what next? what next?). As long as we are moving in this horizontal plane, we will run and run till we drop dead in our grave. Greed is what really drives us in life. If it is not greed it is fear. Either this or that.

A small story:

An eminent doctor successfully cured a sick child.

A few days later, the child's mother called on the doctor.

She first expressed that his services were of the sort that could not be fully paid for. She paid her deep gratitude for what he had done and continued, 'But I hope you will accept as a token from me this purse which I myself have embroidered.'

The doctor replied very coldly to the effect that the fees of the physician must be paid in money, not merely in gratitude, and he added, 'Presents maintain friendship, not a family.'

'What is your fee?' the woman inquired.

'Two hundred dollars,' he replied.

The woman opened the purse. There were five \$100 bills. She took them out, put back three, and handed over two to the doctor and left.

The doctor sat alone and self-conscious.

Greed drives our thoughts, words and actions. We therefore fail to recognize the beautiful things in life. We are blind to the beautiful things. We see only what is there in everything for us. We miss because of this. We are in a hurry to travel in the horizontal direction. Traveling from more to more is only traveling towards our grave. It can never be life; it is just slow death.

Another small story:

A man was sitting in a bar, drinking. He noticed an old lady from the Salvation Army going from table to table, advising people not to drink and to clear their lives of bad habits.

He tried avoiding making eye contact with her, but still she came to his table and started saying, 'Don't you realize that you are consuming slow poison?'

The man, who was already irritated by her preaching replied, 'I know. But I am not in any hurry!'

The idea of more and more is also slow poison: traveling towards death. It will never allow us to taste life. It will never allow us to enjoy life, to totally and truly relax. If we have a deep satisfaction, we will enjoy life. If not, the greed for more will enjoy us. To a certain level, we drink alcohol. Then, alcohol starts drinking us. Up to a level, we smoke tobacco, after which tobacco smokes us. Up to a level we eat food, after that food starts eating us. If our life is based on craving, if we move on the horizontal line continuously, it will be a never ending process.

We need to understand that there is one more dimension to existence, to our life, to our being: what I call the vertical line. When you travel in this line, you start living the reality that you have; you start enjoying intensely what you have. This will give you an immensely deep satisfaction and reveal a whole new space, a whole new dimension of life. Instead of going for more and more to enjoy, your enjoyment will increase with what is already there.

Most of us think that we crave for things because we enjoy them. No! If we are sensitive, our consciousness expands and we will only enjoy and never crave. When I say enjoy, I mean enjoy what is there as reality, what is there in front of us. If I really enjoy this chair I am sitting on, I will not crave for a more sophisticated sofa. Just think: if we can enjoy this chair, will we be even thinking of the sofa? No! We think of the sofa only because we are dissatisfied with the chair. The thought of the sofa itself will not surface in our range of consciousness if we are happy with the chair! And when we don't have the mindset to enjoy the chair, be very clear, we will not have the mindset to enjoy the sofa either, because the problem is not with the chair but with the mind. If we cannot sleep on an ordinary cot, even a queen-size bed will not satisfy us because once we get it, we will start dreaming about a king-size bed! You may say, 'No, no, how will we think beyond a queen size bed?' But I tell you, it will happen. It is happening to you in so many other ways already, if not with the example of the queen size bed.

If our mind set is trained towards a philosophy of 'more and more', a new layer which psychologists call the cerebral layer opens up, where we start enjoying things mentally but not physically. This layer stores all our fantasies and when we enjoy, we enjoy thinking of those things, and not the things that we really have. We just mentally enjoy, that's all. If we have a Lexus, our cerebral layer will be enjoying a Benz. When we get the Benz, our cerebral layer will already be steering the wheel of a Rolls Royce! This way, we continuously escape reality.

In today's society, we are continuously living in the cerebral layer. If we feel like dancing in a public place and we cannot, since society does not permit us to do so, what do we do? We satisfy ourselves vicariously by watching people dancing on television. Why do you think there is so much pornography around? Youngsters enjoy sex through watching it, that's all; just mental enjoyment. At least with physical enjoyment, there is an end. When we get tired, we will stop dancing or stop enjoying or stop watching. But with mental enjoyment, where is the end? We can keep on enjoying the dance visually in our mind and we will never get tired! That is why this so dangerous. Two things happens when we mentally enjoy. One: as we continue to watch and enjoy, we accumulate more and more fantasies from what we see, and second, we never get fulfilled through it.

People ask me, 'Master, what is renunciation? Should I renounce the world to become enlightened?' I tell them that there is no need to renounce anything that you have. Just renounce what you don't have. What we have is not a problem: it is ours; we should enjoy it. Renounce what you don't have. We are trying to continuously enjoy what we don't have through fantasizing. Renounce that! That is what I mean when I say, 'Renounce what you don't have.' That is what craving is.

Enjoying reality never disturbs one. It is only the ghost of craving that troubles us. In Sanskrit, there is a beautiful word called maya, which cannot really be accurately translated to English. maya: ya ma iti maya (that which is not there is *maya*). That which is not there, but which troubles us as if it is there, is what is maya.

When we fantasize about a super model or Miss World, immediately, our wives seem ugly. Be very clear: the outer woman never disturbs us; it is only the inner women who disturb us. Reality never creates trouble; only when we try to convert our fantasies to reality does the trouble begin.

Let me tell you a small story which I repeat very often in my discourses:

There was once an old man who used to go to the beach regularly in the evenings, sit on the sand, and watch people walking.

A curious young man who had seen this old man coming everyday to the beach and sitting there for hours walked up to him and asked him why he was doing this.

The old man replied, 'I am in search of my perfect life-partner.'

The young man was shocked. He asked him, 'How long have you been in search of her?'

The old man replied, 'Since I was twenty-five.'

The young man was surprised and asked if he ever came across a single woman who met his expectations.

The old man answered, 'Yes, I did meet her some years ago.'

The young man asked, 'Then what happened?'

The old man answered, 'But then she was in search of the perfect man!'

Drop your fantasies, your imagination about what you don't have.

We pick up these ideas from the media, advertisements, television and movies - about the best eyes, nose, mouth and lips, and start yearning to have these for ourselves. Then, our body starts looking imperfect, even ugly to us. The billion-dollar cosmetics industry is thriving, thanks to this acceptance by us to base our self-esteem on their ideas of a perfect body. We start hating, consciously or un-consciously, this beautiful gift of our body bestowed on us by Existence. When we do this, we create a deep wedge, a deep wound in our being.

God is not an engineer to mass-produce the same type of beings. He does not have a mould to turn out identical clay dolls. He is an artist who creates unique pieces of art in His creations. Each of us is as unique as every one of His unique creations. If we understand this, we will love our bodies. And when we love our bodies, we stop asking for more.